Of course Captain Whiteley and Mr. McLeod were among the guests. Her husband, son, and daughter had insisted that Sergeant Gorman should be one of the number. Remembering that he had once told her that he was the son of an Irish gentleman, she consented. Otherwise it was to be a surprise.
It was a surprise. The guests arrived one by one and were presented to Allister. The last to come was the lion of the evening. Mrs. MacAllister greeted him effusively and conducted him to where her son sat in a great easy-chair, hidden by a group of guests.
"Allister, my son, I want you to meet one of our most intimate friends, a particular friend of your sister, the friend of whom I spoke to you to-day, his lordship, the Earl of Lewesthorpe."
Allister had risen to his feet. The two young men were facing each other in silence. The young aristocrat's dark countenance turned a ghastly yellow and his jaw dropped. Allister's pale cheeks had a flush of burning red and his great dark eyes fairly blazed with anger.
"Carteret! The coward!" burst from his lips. On the blanched faces of the guests wonder and consternation were written. But astonishment held them dumb. Before any of them could speak Carteret's ready self-assurance returned.
"Lieutenant MacAllister," he said, "why not let by-gones be by-gones? We have both made mistakes. We have both suffered. These things belong to the past. Why not let them die, and start afresh?"
"If it were only the past, Carteret, I would let them die. But it is the present. You were a coward in the past. You are a scoundrel now."
Sinclair stepped quickly to Allister's side, for he saw that he was becoming dangerously excited. Mrs. MacAllister awoke out of her paralysis of surprise to cry:
"Allister! Allister, my son! What is the meaning of this? Has the fever come back on you? Why do you insult his lordship so? What is the meaning of this?"
"Mother," he said, "it is not fever. It is cool fact. That is the man who ragged me all through my service in the Guards. That is one of the men who insulted me after Tel-el-Kebir. He is the one who was too much of a coward either to take a thrashing or to fight, and Standish was shot. That is the man who has caused me to be an exile these nearly three years, to suffer starvation and wounds under a foreign flag. Yet I could forgive all that, as I have forgiven Standish. But knowing that, and without your knowing it, he has dared to speak love to my sister and ask her hand in marriage. I'll never forgive him that. Never!"