"Not content?" she echoed. "Not content? After what he's done?" For an instant her eyes flashed hot indignation, her very hair seemed to rise about her head. Then the downcast demeanour of the two, their embarrassment, their silence, told the story; and she gasped. "He's for—fighting my brother?" she whispered.
"He'll be content with no less," Morty answered, with a groan. "Bad cess to him! And The McMurrough—sure it's certain death, and who's blaming him, but he's no stomach for it. And whirra, whirra, on that the man says he'll be telling it in Tralee that he'd not meet him, and as far as Galway City he'll cut his comb for him! Ay, bedad, he says that, and that none of his name shall show their face there, night or day, fair or foul, race or cockfight—the bloody-minded villain!"
She listened, despairing. The house was quiet, as houses in the country are of an afternoon, and the quieter for the battle with death which was joined in the darkened room upstairs. Her thoughts were no longer with the injured man, however, but in that other room, where her brother lurked in squalid fear—fear that in a nameless man might have been pardoned, but in him, in a McMurrough, head of his race, last of his race, never! She came of heroes, to her the strain had descended pure and untainted, and she would rather have seen him dead. The two men before her—who knew, alas! who knew!—she was sure that they would have taken up the glove, unwillingly and perforce, perhaps, but they would have fought! While her brother, The McMurrough—— But even while she thought of it, she saw through the open door the figure of a man saunter slowly past the courtyard gates, his sword under his arm. It was the Englishman. She felt the added sting. Her cheek, that had been pale, burned darkly, her eyes shone.
"St. Patrick fly away with the toad and the ugly smile of him!" Morty said. "I'm thinking it's between the two of us, Phelim, my jewel! And he that's killed will help the other."
"God forbid!" Flavia cried, pale with horror at the thought. "Not another!"
"But sure, and I'm not seeing how else we'll be rid of him handsomely," Phelim replied.
"No!" she repeated firmly. "No! I forbid it!"
Again the man sauntered by the entrance, and again he cast the same insolent, smiling look at the house. They watched him pass, an ominous shadow in the sunshine, and Flavia shuddered.
"But what will you be doing, then?" Morty asked, rubbing, his chin in perplexity. "He's saying that if The McMurrough'll not meet him by four o'clock, and it isn't much short of it, he'll be riding this day! And him once gone he's a bitter tongue, and 'twill be foul shame on the house!"
Flavia stood silent in thought, but at length she drew in her breath sharply—she had made up her mind. "I know what I will do," she said. "I will tell him all." And she turned to go.