“Harry is number three,” says my lord.  “You needn’t be afraid of him, Jack.”  And the Colonel gave a look, as much as to say, “Indeed, he don’t look as if I need.”  And then my lord explained what he had only told by hints before.  When he quarrelled with Lord Mohun he was indebted to his lordship in a sum of sixteen hundred pounds, for which Lord Mohun said he proposed to wait until my Lord Viscount should pay him.  My lord had raised the sixteen hundred pounds and sent them to Lord Mohun that morning, and before quitting home had put his affairs into order, and was now quite ready to abide the issue of the quarrel.

When we had drunk a couple of bottles of sack, a coach was called, and the three gentlemen went to the Duke’s Playhouse, as agreed.  The play was one of Mr. Wycherley’s—­“Love in a Wood.”

Harry Esmond has thought of that play ever since with a kind of terror, and of Mrs. Bracegirdle, the actress who performed the girl’s part in the comedy.  She was disguised as a page, and came and stood before the gentlemen as they sat on the stage, and looked over her shoulder with a pair of arch black eyes, and laughed at my lord, and asked what ailed the gentleman from the country, and had he had bad news from Bullock fair?

Between the acts of the play the gentlemen crossed over and conversed freely.  There were two of Lord Mohun’s party, Captain Macartney, in a military habit, and a gentleman in a suit of blue velvet and silver in a fair periwig, with a rich fall of point of Venice lace—­my Lord the Earl of Warwick and Holland.  My lord had a paper of oranges, which he ate and offered to the actresses, joking with them.  And Mrs. Bracegirdle, when my Lord Mohun said something rude, turned on him, and asked him what he did there, and whether he and his friends had come to stab anybody else, as they did poor Will Mountford?  My lord’s dark face grew darker at this taunt, and wore a mischievous, fatal look.  They that saw it remembered it, and said so afterward.

When the play was ended the two parties joined company; and my Lord Castlewood then proposed that they should go to a tavern and sup.  Lockit’s, the “Greyhound,” in Charing Cross, was the house selected.  All six marched together that way; the three lords going a-head, Lord Mohun’s captain, and Colonel Westbury, and Harry Esmond, walking behind them.  As they walked, Westbury told Harry Esmond about his old friend Dick the Scholar, who had got promotion, and was Cornet of the Guards, and had wrote a book called the “Christian Hero,” and had all the Guards to laugh at him for his pains, for the Christian Hero was breaking the commandments constantly, Westbury said, and had fought one or two duels already.  And, in a lower tone, Westbury besought young Mr. Esmond to take no part in the quarrel.  “There was no need for more seconds than one,” said the Colonel, “and the Captain or Lord Warwick might easily withdraw.”  But Harry said no; he was bent on going through with the business.  Indeed, he had a plan in his head, which, he thought, might prevent my Lord Viscount from engaging.