Fury rose in Sir William. Napier saw it getting into his eyebrows. Miss Greta saw it, too, Napier could have sworn. Oh, she knew perfectly what she was about. "It is difficult,"—she supplemented Julian's assurance—"very difficult, to see how England could come in, with civil war ready to break out at any minute. She would be sacrificing herself for what?" Miss Greta inquired in her suave voice.
"The statesman who would advocate it," said Julian, "would be committing suicide."
Sir William swung round. "You're wide enough of the mark this time."
"You don't mean—"
"Our obligations to France—" Sir William began.
"What obligations?" the young man demanded. "The country hasn't endorsed any obligations." He jumped up and faced Sir William on the hearth-rug. "If behind our backs they've gone and committed us—" Julian's dark eyes flashed a threat of dire reprisal. Provisionally he wiped the floor with those (including, all too flagrantly, the Laird of Kirklamont) who might, "in their colossal ineptitude, want to commit this nation to war."
"That's your opinion," said Sir William, growing bright red under the friction. "You seem to think we have no right to ours."
Julian halted an instant before the problem. "How much right has a man to the wrong opinion?" Upon the answer to that, he knew, had hung much of the history of politics and religion. In another mood Julian would have maintained, till all was blue, that an intelligent bricklayer had as much right to a voice in the policy of the country as a peer of the realm. None the less, in his heart of hearts, as Napier was whimsically aware, Sir Julian felt that, for all Sir William's official position, he hadn't any such valid right to press his views as had a Grant of Abergarry. Between mirth and consternation, Napier realized that this was the key to the renewed outpouring. It was not so much Julian, but a Grant, very properly telling a McIntyre things good for him to know.
In the heat and fury of the discussion which she had so adroitly precipitated, Miss Greta stretched out a hand and took up her knitting. She sat there with bent head.
"Who? The democracy of England!" Julian was crying to Sir William's angry, "Who is going to prevent?"