"Would she go?"
Cary rose, moved to the window, and stood there a moment in silence. When, presently, he came back to the table, his face was pale, but lifted, controlled, and quiet. There was a saying in the county,—"The high look of the Carys." He wore it now, the high look of the Carys. "Yes, Fair, she would go with him."
There was a silence, then the younger spoke. "She is at Fontenoy. Mrs. Churchill may linger long, and her niece is always with her. Rand could not take his wife away."
"It's a check to his plans, no doubt," said the other wearily.
"He's frowning over it now. He'll wait as long as may be. He would sin, but he would not sin meanly. In his conception of himself a greatness, even in transgression, must clothe all that he does. He'll wait, gravely and decently, even though to wait is his heavy risk." He made a gesture with his hand. "Do I not know him, know him well? Sometimes I think that for three years I've had no other study!"
"You should have let me challenge him that first election day," said Fairfax Cary gloomily. "If we had met and I had put a bullet through him, then all this coil would have been spared. What do you propose to do now?"
"At the moment I am going to Fontenoy."
"I would speak, I think, to Major Edward."
"Yes: that was in my mind. If there is any right, it lies with the men of her family. Fair, on the nineteenth of February I was at Lewis Rand's!"
"Ah!" exclaimed his brother.