"For God's sake, Chris, don't say what you'll be sorry for!"
"I'll say what I think, to you, sir, or to the King of Prussia!"
The gray-bearded, strongly-featured face, with the look of generous sorrow on it, and the younger, fairer, handsomer face, with the stamp of arrogance and vanity and pride marring its manly beauty, confronted each other in silence, until, with an impatient snarl, Brotherton swung round upon his heel.
"Look here!—look here!—where the merry hell are you off to?" Tower spluttered, grabbing at the sleeve of the splendid scarlet tunic. "Not going to part company for a misunderstanding—hey?"
"I am going to part company," Brotherton returned bitterly, freeing himself from the detaining hand, "since the jealousy that hampered me in my military career threatens to mar my prospects now. Where I am going to I cannot tell you—probably you will hear from me, but I cannot promise it. Good-bye! Or—if you prefer it—Auf wiedersehen!"
He shook hands with Tower, nodded coldly to the astonished P. C. Breagh, formally saluted the Doctor, who returned with a slight bow, picked up his cap and cloak and strode away over the sun-dried grass and the hot yellow gravel, making for the gaudily painted iron gates that ended the drive.
"Oh, Chris, man-alive, and am I jealous of ye?" said the Doctor, his spectacles dewy with irrepressible laughter, as the gallant figure in its gorgeous scarlet and golden trappings was swallowed in a crowd of blue uniforms: "If you'd waited another minute, I'd have told you of something else your senior in the service of the paper by seventeen years, some odd days, and a minute or two isn't anxious to share with you, and that is a reputation for not being a hot-headed, unreasonable young ass!"
"He's making a bee-line for the Railway Station," said Tower, wiping his heated forehead with a gaudily-hued silk handkerchief, "and if he comes across any of those Transport swells there'll be the deuce to pay. He's got the bit in his teeth and his tail tight down over the ribbons, by George!—and he'll kick the trap to pieces and lame himself to a dead certainty. Shall I go after him and try to soother him down a bit?"
The Doctor shrugged assent.
"If you think 'twill be any good! ... Meanwhile I have to write a letter or two, and pack, or rout my man out of the servants' quarters to do it. As for you, my boyo!"—he turned on P. C. Breagh a keen, humorous glance that summoned up blushes to mantle under the railway grime—"a wash and brush-up will do you no harm, and besides—my absconding Berliner isn't described on his passport as a mulatto!"