"Well, then, what more is there to it?"
"There's a good deal more. There are things I can't explain, and which you wouldn't understand if I did. Coming up to the scratch isn't everything. Charles the First came up to the scratch when he walked up and had his head cut off; but there was more to be said."
"And you mean that your Colonel Ashley would be brave enough to walk up and have his head cut off?"
"I know he'd be brave enough. It's no question of courage. He had the Victoria Cross before he was thirty. But it's a noble head; and it might be a pity it should have to fall."
"But I don't understand why it should."
"No, you wouldn't unless you'd lived among them. They'd all admit he had done the right thing. They'd say that, having come out here to marry her, he could do no less than go through with it. That part of it would be all right. Even in the Rangers it might make comparatively little difference—except that now and then Olivia would feel uncomfortable. Only when he was mentioned at the Horse Guards for some important command they'd remember that there was something queer—something shady—about his wife's family, and his name would be passed over."
He nodded thoughtfully. "I see."
"Oh no, you don't. It's much too intricate for you to see. You couldn't begin to understand how poignant it might become, especially for her, without knowing their ways and traditions—"
He jumped to his feet. "Their ways and traditions be—!"
"Yes; that's all very fine. But they're very good ways, Peter. They've got to keep the honor of the Service up to a very high standard. Their ways are all right. But that doesn't keep them from being terrible forces to come up against, especially for a proud thing like her. And now that the postponing of the wedding has got into the papers—"