"There's nothing like light and warmth if folks are down-hearted," he said to himself; "and really the young master looks down-hearted. Ah! it's the world and its ways. The mistress has the best of it."
Little did Giles's mistress think, as she slept peacefully that night, how the leaden hours dragged on in the room below, where Leslie Travers sat and wrestled with that most relentless foe—an uneasy conscience.
A hundred years ago duels were common enough, and any man who was challenged would have been scouted as a coward if he had not accepted the challenge.
Leslie knew he had thrown the lie back to Sir Maxwell Danby, and that he should be called upon to answer for it, perhaps by his life.
He was no coward, but this very life had become sweeter to him than ever before, during the last few days.
He had gained the love of the woman who was to him a queen amongst all women, and now in vindicating her from the tongue of the slanderer, he might perhaps be on the eve of leaving her for ever.
He had often looked death in the face when he had been lying ill at the Grange, and sometimes for utter weariness it had seemed no fearful thing to die. Since his mother had come under the influence of Lady Huntingdon's ministers, Leslie had heard a great deal of "the King of Terrors," as Death was termed in their phraseology, and he had often thought that it had not worn that guise to him in times of sore sickness—rather, as a friend's arm outstretched to lull his pain and give him peace. But now—now that the strength of his young manhood was renewed—now, when life was as a pleasant song in the possession of Griselda's love, in dreams of a useful happy life, with her to sympathize in all his hopes and aims—parting from life, and all that life holds dear, was very different.
As he sat by the fire, or left his chair and paced the room, he seemed to hear words spoken in the very inner recesses of his soul.
"I say unto you, love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you."
"Yes," he argued, "yes; but it is not for myself, it is for her! That man's disappointment and disgust at her rejection of his suit will goad him to say all evil of her—my pure, beautiful Griselda! And yet——"