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"Ah, by G d, I will!" James McMurrough answered furiously. "And kill you, too!" "At eight to-morrow! Do you hear? At eight to-morrow! Not an hour later!" "I'll not keep you waiting," James retorted. Flavia leant almost fainting against her door. She tried to speak, tried to say something. But her voice failed her. And Payton's livid, scowling, bleeding face was hate itself.
"Oh, Colonel Sullivan?" "Yes, your friend who was to return to-day," the other retorted. "Have you seen anything of him?" he continued, with a grin. Asgill fixed his eyes steadily on Payton's face. "I'm fancying you have the advantage of me," he said. "More by token, I'm thinking, Major, you have seen that same friend already." "Maybe I have." "And had a bout with him?" "Eh?"
In fact, it roused my conscience yet more, and made me doubt whether there was anything genuine in me at all. Sometimes I felt as if I really could not go on, but must shut up my poor manuscript, which was 'an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own, and come down from the pulpit, and beg Miss Lizzie Payton's pardon for presuming to read it in her presence.
Toni, taken aback, blushed vividly. "He didn't at least not exactly. I mean " "Oh, I know what you mean!" Eva laughed. "Of course you couldn't have accepted him he's a nice fellow in his way, but impossible as a husband." At times Squire Payton's daughter was quite blatantly aristocratic. "But you might have told me, all the same." "Why? It doesn't matter now." "Not to you, dear."
And Flavia but, as she tried to speak, Payton's shadow once more came into sight at the entrance-gates and went slowly by, and she clapped her hand to her mouth that she might not scream. Colonel Sullivan saw the action, understood, and touched her softly on the shoulder. "Pray," he said, "pray!" "For you!" she cried in a voice that, to those who had ears, betrayed her heart. "Ah, I will pray!"
As he did so he turned, and the turn brought him face to face with James McMurrough. The young man, tipsy and smarting with his wrongs, saw what was before his eyes his sister in Payton's arms but he saw something more. He saw the man who had thwarted him that day, and whom he had not at the time dared to beard. What he might have done had he been sober, matters not.
He knew that, given time and the decent observances of the fencing-school, he would be a mere child in Payton's hands; that it would matter nothing whether the sun were on this side or that, or his sword the longer or the shorter by an inch.
As he went on with Morty, he gave him a hint to say as little in Payton's presence as possible, and to leave the management to him. "I know the man," he explained, "and where he's weak. I'm for seeing the back of him as soon as we can, but without noise." "There's always the bog," grumbled Morty. He did not love Asgill overmuch, and the interview with the Colonel had left him in a restive mood.
Drink and vindictiveness gave him more than the courage he needed, and, with a roar of anger, he dashed the glass he was carrying and its contents into Payton's face. The Englishman dropped where he was, and James stood over him, swearing, while the grease guttered from the tilted candle in his right hand.
He'll stand, or I'm mistaken, for more than'll spoil your sport and mine," Asgill replied. "I'd not have played the trick about your sister's mare, good trick as it was, if I'd known he'd be here. It seemed the height of invention when you hit upon it, and no better way of commending myself. But I misdoubt it now. Suppose this Colonel brings her back?" "But Payton's staunch."
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