"But forgive me for asking," said Mr. Carleton,--"is this terrible world a party to this matter? In the request which I made,--and which I have not given up, sir,--do I presume upon any more than the sacrifice of a little private feeling?"
"Why, yes,--" said Charlton looking somewhat puzzled, "for I promised the fellow I would see to it, and I must keep my word."
"And you know how that will of necessity issue."
"I can't consider that, sir; that is a secondary matter. I must do what I told him I would."
"At all hazards?" said Mr. Carleton.
"What hazards?"
"Not hazard, but certainty,--of incurring a reckoning far less easy to deal with."
"What, do you mean with yourself?" said Rossitur.
"No sir," said Mr. Carleton, a shade of even sorrowful expression crossing his face;--"I mean with one whose displeasure is a more weighty matter;--one who has declared very distinctly, 'Thou shalt not kill.'"
"I am sorry for it," said Rossitur after a disturbed pause of some minutes,--"I wish you had asked me anything else; but we can't take this thing in the light you do, sir. I wish Thorn had been in any spot of the world but at Mrs. Decatur's last night, or that Fleda hadn't taken me there; but since he was, there is no help for it,--I must make him account for his behaviour, to her as well as to me. I really don't know how to help it, sir."