"I recommended that course, and I offered them facilities for bringing the matter to a crisis.

The fight, indeed, was to have come off the day after the unfortunate episode which anticipated it." "Do you mean to tell me that you knew--" Francis began.
Sir Timothy checked him quietly but effectively.
"I knew nothing," he said, "except this.

They were neither of them young men of much stomach, and I knew that the one who was the greater coward would probably try to anticipate the matter by attacking the other first if he could.

I knew that Fairfax was the greater coward--not that there was much to choose between them--and I also knew that he was the injured person.

That is really all there is about it.