but loved life also, he had foreseen, with the cold sweat on
his brow, what he would be driven to do.

He made no haste to answer, therefore, and his tone, when he did
answer, was dull and lifeless. "Is it ill he is?" he said. "It's a bad
morning to be ill, and a meeting on hand."

She did not answer.

"Is he too bad to stand?" he continued. He made no attempt to hide his
comprehension or his scorn.

"I don't say that," she faltered.

"Perhaps he told you," Asgill said--and there was nothing of the lover
in his tone--"to speak to me?"

She nodded.

"It is I am to--put it off, I suppose?"

"If it be possible," she cried. "Oh, if it be possible! Is it?"

He stood, thinking, with a gloomy face. From the first he had seen that
there were two ways only of extricating The McMurrough. The one by a
mild explanation, which would leave his honour in the mud. The other by
an explanation after a different fashion, _vi et armis, vehementer_,
with the word "liar" ready to answer to the word "coward." But he who
gave this last explanation must be willing and able to back the word
with the deed, and stop cavilling with the sword-point.

Now, Asgill knew the Major's skill with the sword; none better. And
under other circumstances the Justice--cold, selfish, scheming--would
have gone many a mile about before he entered upon a quarrel with him.
None the less, love and much night-thinking had drawn him to
contemplate this very thing. For surely, if he did this and lived,
Flavia would smile on him. Surely, if he saved her brother's honour, or
came as near to saving it as driving the foul word down his opponent's
throat could bring him, she would be won. It was a forlorn, it was a
desperate expedient. For no worldly fortune, for no other advantage,
would Luke Asgill have faced the Major's sword-point. But, whatever he
was, he loved. He loved! And for the face and the form beside him, and
for the quality of soul within them that shone from the girl's eyes,
and made her what she was, and to him different from all other women,
he had made up his mind to run the risk.

It went for something in his decision that he believed that Flavia, if
he failed her, would go to the one person in the house who had no cause
to fear Payton--to Colonel Sullivan. If she did that, Asgill was sure
that his own chance was at an end. This was his chance. It lay with him
now, to-day, at this moment--to dare or to retire, to win her favour at
the risk of