"The trouble is with Lorraine himself, I think," Carstairs remarked. "It isn't that he hasn't the nerve, but that he hasn't the determination, the stability, the something essential in the man who does. I fancy he has changed his mind on the subject of what to do in this matter as often as he has changed his clothes. He is a queer compound—none other like him."
"And yet he is a mighty attractive fellow at times," Smithers observed.—"It wasn't until this Amherst affair that he revealed anything particularly vacillating."
"He never before had occasion to reveal it," Devonshire explained. "The trial came—and he wasn't equal to it. Some of us might not be equal to it either, if we were in similar case. It's a mighty difficult case, my friends. Moreover, Lorraine has done the decent thing now—he is anxious for a reconciliation."
"It's decent, after a fashion," Smithers agreed—"it would be decenter if he first followed your notion and beat up Amherst—beat him until he couldn't walk; half killing would be about right, to my mind."
"This is all very well by way of discussion but what by way of prophecy?" said Carstairs. "I'll lay a bottle of wine that Lorraine doesn't do a damn thing."
"So will I," Smithers agreed. "That is why Amherst has the courage to come back. He despises the man he has wronged."
"He may be fooled," said Devonshire.
"I trust he will be," Carstairs remarked—"but I doubt mightily."
"You hear what they are saying, Pendleton?" Cameron asked, with a jerk of his head toward the other table.
"I hear," said Pendleton. "Have you seen Lorraine today?"