The party had reached a smooth glade or lawn encompassed by thick shrubs, and to all appearance a hundred miles from a street.

A fairy-ring of verdure, glittering with sunlight and dewdrops, and tuneful with the songs of birds, it seemed a morsel of paradise dropped from the cool blue of heaven.

Sir George felt a momentary tightening of the throat as he surveyed its pure brilliance, and then a sudden growing anger against the fool who had brought him thither.
'You have no second ?' said the stranger.
'No,' he answered curtly; 'I think we have witnesses enough.' 'Still--if the matter can be accommodated ?' 'It can,' Soane answered, standing stiffly before them.

'But only by an unreserved apology on Mr.Dunborough's part.

He struck me.