Now, Asgill knew the Major's skill with the sword; none better. And under other circumstances the Justice—cold, selfish, scheming—would have gone many a mile about before he entered upon a quarrel with him. None the less, love and much night-thinking had drawn him to contemplate this very thing. For surely, if he did this and lived, Flavia would smile on him. Surely, if he saved her brother's honour, or came as near to saving it as driving the foul word down his opponent's throat could bring him, she would be won. It was a forlorn, it was a desperate expedient. For no worldly fortune, for no other advantage, would Luke Asgill have faced the Major's sword-point. But, whatever he was, he loved. He loved! And for the face and the form beside him, and for the quality of soul within them that shone from the girl's eyes, and made her what she was, and to him different from all other women, he had made up his mind to run the risk.
It went for something in his decision that he believed that Flavia, if he failed her, would go to the one person in the house who had no cause to fear Payton—to Colonel Sullivan. If she did that, Asgill was sure that his own chance was at an end. This was his chance. It lay with him now, to-day, at this moment—to dare or to retire, to win her favour at the risk of his life, or to yield her to another. In the chill morning hour he had discovered that the choice lay before him, that he must risk all or lose all: and he had decided. That decision he now announced.
"I will make it possible," he said slowly, questioning in his mind whether he could make terms with her—whether he dared make terms with her. "I will make it possible," he repeated, still more slowly, and with his eyes fixed on her face.
"If you could!" she cried, clasping her hands.
"I will!" he said, a sullen undertone in his voice. His eyes still dwelt darkly on her. "If he raises an objection, I will fight him—myself!"
She shrank from him. "Ah, but I can't ask that!" she cried, trembling.
"It is that or nothing."
"That or——"
"There is no other way," he said. He spoke with the same ungraciousness; for, try as he would, and though the habit and the education of a life cried to him to treat with her and make conditions, he could not; and he was enraged that he could not.
The more as her quivering lips, her wet eyes, her quick mounting colour, told of her gratitude. In another moment she might, almost certainly she would, have said a word fit to unlock his lips. And he would have spoken; and she would have pledged herself. But fate, in the person of old Darby, intervened. Timely or untimely, the butler appeared in the distant doorway, cried "Hist!" and, by a backward gesture, warned them of some approaching peril.