Daniel readily translated this as follows: If you tell anyone, I'll send someone round to engage you in a duel .Not that anyone would pay any notice, anyway, if the son of Drake were to level an accusation of moral turpitude against the Duke of York. Drake had been doing such things without letup for fifty years. And so the Duke's strategy was now plain to Daniel: he had chosen Daniel to hear about his syphilis because if Daniel were so foolish as to spread rumors, no one would hear them above the roar of obloquy produced at all times by Drake. In any case, Daniel would not be able to keep it up for very long before he was found in a field outside of London with a lot of rapier wounds in his body.