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As they swung through the gates, the crowd cheered as Charteris gave the word, and the whole party went off at a sharp canter down the long, winding street. The night wind was soughing mournfully through the dark line of she-oaks fringing the banks of a small, swiftly-running creek, when Sheila was awakened by some one calling to her from outside the little tent in which she was sleeping.
And again there was a pause which a delectable and lazy conference of leaves made eloquent. "I suppose it is because they know that if it ever did come true, we would be gods like them." The ordinary associates of John Charteris, most certainly, would not have suspected him to be the speaker.
Circumstances had enabled him to assume, and he had gladly accepted, the blame for John Charteris's iniquity, rather than let Anne Charteris know the truth about her husband and Clarice Pendomer. The truth would have killed Anne, the colonel believed; and besides, the colonel had enjoyed the performance of a picturesque action.
The injustice of the thing rankled. No one so dislikes being punished unjustly as the person who might have been punished justly on scores of previous occasions, if he had only been found out. To a certain extent, Charteris ran amok. He broke bounds and did little work, and he was beginning gradually to find this out got thoroughly tired of it all.
Meanwhile the two chiefs, each attended by a special friend and adviser, met in the midst of the lists, having, to assist them in determining what was to be done, the Earl Marshal, the Lord High Constable, the Earl of Crawford, and Sir Patrick Charteris. The chief of the Clan Chattan declared himself willing and desirous of fighting upon the spot, without regard to the disparity of numbers.
Sir Patrick Charteris then stepped forward, and with the courtesy of a knight to a female, and of a protector to an oppressed and injured widow, took the poor woman's hand, and explained to her briefly by what course the city had resolved to follow out the vengeance due for her husband's slaughter.
It was fitting that the mighty drama should be played out there, on that incomparable stage, where earth rose up to make a fitting channel for its most magnificent river. "It's all that you think it is," said Charteris, again reading his thoughts; "a prize worth the efforts of the most warlike nations."
It was this conversation that Gerrard was uncomfortably turning over in his mind on the verandah. The natural man in him rebelled, very naturally, against humbling himself to Charteris, who was at least as much to blame as he was, and had made his resentment offensively evident. But it was Charteris who would suffer if a reconciliation was not effected in some way.
"Oh, well," she sighed, "it's out of my hands altogether now. I'm sorry, but being sorry doesn't make any difference. I'm the least factor, it seems, in the whole muddle. A woman isn't much more than an incident in a man's life, after all." She dressed to go to the Charteris, for her day's work was about to begin.
"Young men are so uncontrolled nowadays, you know, and Mr Charteris, I believe, is extremely passionate. I have heard that he makes use of the most frightful language to his servants " The slightest possible gesture from the great lady stopped her.
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