Neither tone nor attitude nor look had changed in the least its calm gracefulness. It began to act upon Thorn.
"Well, in the devil's name, have your own way," said he, throwing down his pistol too, and going back to the cabinets at the lower end of the room,--"there are rapiers here, if you like them better--I don't,--the shortest the best for me,--but here they are--take your choice."
Guy examined them carefully for a few minutes, and then laid them both, with a firm hand upon them, on the table.
"I will choose neither, Mr. Thorn, till you have heard me. I came here to see you on the part of others--I should be a recreant to my charge if I allowed you or myself to draw me into anything that might prevent my fulfilling it. That must be done first."
Thorn looked with a lowering brow on the indications of his opponent's eye and attitude; they left him plainly but one course to take.
"Well speak and have done," he said as in spite of himself;--but I know it already."
"I am here as a friend of Mr. Rossitur."
"Why don't you say a friend of somebody else, and come nearer the truth?" said Thorn.
There was an intensity of expression in his sneer, but pain was there as well as anger; and it was with even a feeling of pity that Mr. Carleton answered,
"The truth will be best reached, sir, if I am allowed to choose my own words."