“To ride with the old guns again,” I faltered in a choking voice.
“It is impossible,” he said coldly. “The men would rise against you after what they know.”
A flush of anger rose to my brow, and I felt my throat hot, as I cried angrily—
“They would not. There is not a man amongst them who would believe me such a scoundrel as you and Haynes do.”
Then my voice broke, and I turned to him appealingly.
“Brace,” I cried; “indeed you are wrong. I would not stoop to beg of you like this, but you are going to their help. My mother and my sister are there, and I seem to see them holding out their hands to us to come and help them. I must come with you. If you say no, I shall gallop on by myself, and if they cut me down, well, I shall have tried to help those I love.”
He had turned from me, but as my words, which I suppose were full of passionate excitement, fell upon his ears, he faced round and stared at me fixedly, as he raised his hand, hesitated, and then dropped it again.
“Gil,” he cried, “swear to me on your honour as a soldier and a gentleman that you had not joined the rajah’s men.”
The moment before I was humble and pleading, but these words, this tone of doubt, this demand for an oath drove humility to the winds, and I felt as if I would die sooner than degrade myself as he wished.
“I will not,” I cried hotly. “I’ll swear nothing. I don’t want you to believe me. I thought you were a gentleman, and my friend.”