Are you sufficiently
challenged?"
"But this is rank frenzy!" I protested. "Why should I undertake
this thing?"
"To prove me wrong," he taunted me. "To prove me clumsy. Come,
Bardelys, what of your spirit?"
"I confess I would do much to afford you the proof you ask. But to
take a wife! Pardi! That is much indeed!"
"Bah!" he sneered. "You do well to draw back You are wise to
avoid discomfiture. This lady is not for you. When she is won,
it will be by some bold and gallant gentleman, and by no mincing
squire of dames, no courtly coxcomb, no fop of the Luxembourg, be
his experiences of dalliance never so vast."
"Po' Cap de Dieu!" growled Cazalet, who was a Gascon captain in
the Guards, and who swore strange, southern oaths. "Up, Bardelys!
Afoot! Prove your boldness and your gallantry, or be forever
shamed; a squire of dames, a courtly coxcomb, a fop of the
Luxembourg! Mordemondieu! I have given a man a bellyful of steel
for the half of those titles!"
I heeded him little, and as little the other noisy babblers, who
now on their feet - those that could stand - were spurring me
excitedly to accept the challenge, until from being one of the
baiters it seemed that of a sudden the tables were turned and I
was become the baited. I sat in thought, revolving the business
in my mind, and frankly liking it but little. Doubts of the issue,
were I to undertake it, I had none.
My views of the other sex were neither more nor less than my words
to the Count had been calculated to convey.
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