Wharton looked on with tight-pressed lips, and wondered.
Rotherby recovered, and for a moment the two men stood apart, seeming to feel each other with their eyes before resuming.

Then his lordship renewed the attack with vigor.
Mr.Caryll parried lightly and closely, plying a beautiful weapon in the best manner of the French school, and opposing to the ponderous force of his antagonist a delicate frustrating science.

Rotherby, a fine swordsman in his way, soon saw that here was need for all his skill, and he exerted it.

But the prodigious rapidity of his blade broke as upon a cuirass against the other's light, impenetrable guard.
His lordship broke ground, breathed heavily, and sweated under the glare of the morning sun, cursing this swordsman who, so cool and deliberate, husbanded his strength and scarcely seemed to move, yet by sheer skill and address more than neutralized his lordship's advantages of greater strength and length of reach.
"You cursed French dog!" swore the viscount presently, between his teeth, and as he spoke he made a ringing parade, feinted, beat the ground with his foot to draw off the other's attention, and went in again with a full-length lunge.

"Parry that, you damned maitre-d'armes" he roared.
Mr.Caryll answered nothing; he parried; parried again; delivered a riposte whenever the opportunity offered, or whenever his lordship grew too pressing, and it became expedient to drive him back; but never once did he stretch out to lunge in his turn.