"If you can keep a civil tongue in your head," said Tony, "I 'll ask your pardon for this disturbance."
"What's your apology to me, you young scamp!" cried the other, wrenching open the gate and passing out into the road. "I'd rather give you a lesson than listen to your excuses." He lifted his stick as he spoke; but Tony sprang upon him with the speed of a tiger, and, wrenching the heavy bludgeon out of his hand, flung it far into a neighboring field, and then, grasping him by the collar with both hands, he gave him such a shake as very soon convinced his antagonist how unequal the struggle would be between them. "By Heaven!" muttered Tony, "if you so much as lay a hand on me, I 'll send you after your stick. Can't you see that this was only a drunken frolic, that these young fellows did not want to insult you, and if I stayed here behind them, it was to appease, not to offend you?"
"Dinna speak to me, sir. Let me go,--let go my coat I 'm not to be handled in this manner," cried the other, in passion.
"Go back to your bed, then!" said Tony, pushing him from him. "It's clear enough you have no gentleman's blood in your body, or you 'd accept an amends or resent an affront."
Stung by this retort, the other turned and aimed a blow at Butler's face; but he stopped it cleverly, and then, seizing him by the shoulder, he swung him violently round, and threw him within the gate of the garden.
"You are more angered than hurt," muttered Tony, as he looked at him for an instant.
"Oh, Tony, that this could be you!" cried a faint voice from a little window of an attic, and a violent sob closed the words.
Tony turned and went his way towards London, those accents ringing in his ears, and at every step he went repeating, "That this could be you!"
CHAPTER XV. A STRANGE MEETING AND PARTING
What a dreary waking was that of Tony's on the morning after the orgies! Not a whit the less overwhelming from the great difficulty he had in recalling the events, and investigating his own share in them. There was nothing that he could look back upon with pleasure. Of the dinner and the guests, all that he could remember was the costliness and the tumult; and of the scene at Mrs. M'Grader's, his impression was of insults given and received, a violent altercation, in which his own share could not be defended.