“It is not I who so call him; but the facts. Colonel Danvers has run away.
“Danvers gone?” cried Ferguson, voicing the consternation of all.
Wilding shrugged and smiled; Grey's eye was offensively upon him. He elected to answer the challenge of that glance. “He has followed the illustrious example set him by other of Your Majesty's devoted followers,” said Wilding.
Grey rose suddenly. This was too much. “I'll not endure it from this knave!” he cried, appealing to Monmouth.
Monmouth wearily waved him to a seat; but Grey disregarded the command.
“What have I said that should touch your lordship?” asked Wilding, and, smiling sardonically, he looked into Grey's eyes.
“It is not what you have said. It is what you have inferred.”
“And to call me knave!” said Wilding in a mocking horror.
The repression of his anger lent him a rare bitterness, and an almost devilishly subtle manner of expressing wordlessly what was passing in his mind. There was not one present but gathered from his utterance of those five words that he did not hold Grey worthy the honour of being called to account for that offensive epithet. He made just an exclamatory protest, such as he might have made had a woman applied the term to him.
Grey turned from him slowly to Monmouth. “It might be well,” said he, in his turn controlling himself at last, “to place Mr. Wilding under arrest.”