"A touch of temper against your royal employer, nothing worse; not bad temper, merely temper, so pray excuse it. Mostly I have, as you know, been accustomed to express myself with the sword. . . ."
"Except," I interrupted with some sharpness, for I was still nettled, "when you have confided your language to the dirk, or let it speak in silence for itself."
"Now we are even, Captain Gordon, for that is not worthy of you, if, as I take it, you suggest that, on occasion, I have struck foul. No, sir, not that, never on my honour, as a gentleman; outlawed, if you like, though that troubles me little. But the fine ethics of the broad-sword and the dirk are too nice for discussion between a Gordon and a Farquharson; met as we are with, I suspect, a Forbes to attract and divide us. Besides, I spoke clumsily, not meaning any personal insult, since I want, sincerely want, to be friendly, if that be possible. Anger is a poor hostess, believe me, and I, who have been in its way, should know better than you who are young, amiably young."
Mine melted under his soft words, because such, even when they are not deeply sincere, may turn wrath aside like balm. Moreover, he had a wild charm of manner which, if it did not quite capture another man, as almost surely it would have won a woman, yet had its effect. Where exactly it lay I have never been able to decide, but the melody of his tongue had something to do with it, even when he spoke in Sassenach English. We could have talked in the Gaelic, I also having it natively, but the Black Colonel would always speak English if he met somebody to whom he could show his command of the language. It was one of his several accomplishments, acquired by study and travel in England and France, and he prided and guarded them all, as a woman does her graces of the person.
So we stood in the chasm of night and the Pass, one waiting upon the other, because our trouble, as in all affairs where two men and a maid are concerned, was how to begin, more particularly as we had no idea what would be the end. The Black Colonel had said as much when he spoke the name Forbes, the third of our Aberdeenshire clans, though it may not have all the lustre of the Gordons or the Farquharsons.
"Ehum," he murmured, dropping into a Scots mannerism which made no more than an overture to speech between us, and yet signified something already said.
"Your letter was urgent," I said. "It might have been a summons to another hoisting of the Stuart Standard on the Braes of Mar."
"And would you have come?" he inquired; "would you have come?"
"It is hard," I answered coldly, "to tell what a man would or would not do if his honour could always march with his inclination. But no summons from you would bring me to the colours, even of those who were our rightful Scottish kings."
"Still, you have come to-night."