“My dear Bathurst, you did not think of your life. I don't think any of us stopped to think of anything; but, constituted as you are, the impulse must have been overpowering. It is nonsense your taking this matter to heart. Why, man, if you had stopped, you would have been murdered when the boat touched the shore, and do you think it would have made her happier to have seen you killed before her eyes? If you had swam ashore with her, the chances are she would have been killed by that volley of grape, for I saw eight or ten bodies lying on the sands, and you yourself were, you say, hit. You acted upon impulse, I grant, but it was upon a wise impulse. You did the very best thing that could have been done, and your doing so made it possible that Isobel Hannay should be rescued from what would otherwise have been certain death.”
“It has turned out so, Doctor,” Bathurst said gloomily, “and I thank God that she is saved. But that does not alter the fact that I, an English gentleman by birth, thought only of myself, and left the woman I loved, who was sitting by my side, to perish. But do not let us talk any more about it. It is done and over. There is an end of it. Now I will tell you the story.”
The Doctor listened silently until he heard of Isobel's being taken to Bithoor. “The atrocious villain!” he exclaimed. “I have been lamenting the last month that I never poisoned the fellow, and now—but go on, go on. How on earth did you get her away?”
Bathurst told the whole story, interrupted by many exclamations of approval by the Doctor; especially when he learned why Isobel disfigured herself.
“Well done!” he exclaimed; “I always knew that she was a plucky girl, and it needed courage, I can tell you, to burn herself as she has done, to say nothing of risking spoiling her beauty for life. No slight sacrifice for a woman.”
Bathurst passed lightly over his fight in the courtyard, but the Doctor questioned him as to the exact facts.
“Not so bad for a coward, Bathurst,” he said dryly.
“There was no noise,” Bathurst said; “if they had had pistols, and had used them, it might have been different. Heaven knows, but I don't think that then, with her life at stake, I should have flinched; I had made up my mind they would have pistols, but I hope—I think that my nerves would not have given way then.”
“I am sure they wouldn't, Bathurst. Well, go on with your story.”
“Well, how did you feel then?” he asked, when Bathurst described how the guard rushed in through the gate firing, “for it is the noise, and not the danger, that upsets you?”