He had been quarrelling with a cigarette during the conversation, and now threw it away impatiently. "You are certainly a very ingenuous person, Belle. On the whole, perhaps you had better stick to the truth. You couldn't manage anything else satisfactorily."
"Of course I shall stick to the truth, John," she replied hotly.
"Well, I don't want to be disagreeable, you know; but in your place I shouldn't, and that's a fact."
"Why?" she asked, in a startled voice.
"For many reasons. To begin with, the boy comes of decent folk; Marsden used to swear by the father. There were three brothers in the regiment, and one of them saved the Major's life, or something of that sort. Why, Belle, what's the matter?"
She had risen, and was now fain to catch at his outstretched hand to steady herself. Why, she scarcely knew; finding the only explanation in an assertion, made as much for her own edification as his, that her nerves must be out of order.
"Nerves!" he echoed, as he placed her with half contemptuous kindness in his chair, and brought her a scent-bottle. "I'll tell you what it is, dear, no woman should have both nerves and conscience. It's too much for one frail human being. It is no use my advising you to forget all about this wretched business, or to suppress the disagreeable parts; and yet, in your place, I should do both."
"Oh, John!"
"Yes, I should, from a sense of duty,--to myself first, and then to society. What will be gained by hanging that blatant windbag of a boy?"
Murghub Ahmad, who, in his cell awaiting trial, was meanwhile comforting himself with the belief that the fate of nations depended on his life or death, would no doubt have resented this opinion bitterly. Yet it was all too true. The evil lay much further back than the utterance of the half-realised words which had poured from his lips like oil on the flame. He had said things as wild, as subversive of the law, dozens of times before, and nothing had happened; no one had taken any notice of it. And now! The boy buried his face in his hands, and tried to think if he was glad or sorry for martyrdom.