"In five minutes," said he to the clerk. Griffith took the hint, and bade him good-bye directly.
As he went out, the gentleman who had sent in his card rose from a seat in the outer office to go in.
It was Mr. George Neville.
Griffith Gaunt and he saluted and scanned each other curiously. They little thought to meet again so soon. The clerks saw nothing more than two polite gentlemen passing each other.
The more Griffith thought of the approaching duel, the less he liked it. He was an impulsive man, for one thing; and with such, a cold fit naturally succeeds a hot one. And besides, as his heat abated, Reason and Reflection made themselves heard, and told him that in a contest with a formidable rival he was throwing away an advantage. After all, Kate had shown him great favor; she had ridden Neville's horse after him, and made him resign his purpose of leaving her; surely, then, she preferred him on the whole to Neville: yet he must go and risk his chance of possessing her upon a personal encounter, in which Neville was at least as likely to kill him as he to kill Neville. He saw too late that he was playing his rival's game. He felt cold and despondent, and more and more convinced that he should never marry Kate, but that she would very likely bury him.
With all this he was too game to recoil, and indeed he hated his rival too deeply. So, like many a man before him, he was going doggedly to the field against his judgement, with little to win and all to lose.
His deeper and more solemn anxieties were diversified by a lighter one. A few days ago he had invited half the county to bury Mr. Charlton on Saturday, the 19th of February. But now he had gone and fixed Friday the 18th for a duel. A fine thing, if he should be himself a corpse on Friday afternoon! Who was to receive the guests? who conduct the funeral?
The man, with all his faults, had a grateful heart; and Mr. Charlton was his benefactor, and he felt he had no right to go and get himself killed until he had paid the last rites to his best friend.
The difficulty admits of course of a comic view, and smells Hibernian; but these things seem anything but droll to those whose lives and feelings are at stake; and, indeed, there was something chivalrous and touching in Griffith's vexation at the possibility of his benefactor being buried without due honors, owing to his own intemperate haste to be killed. He resolved to provide against that contingency: so, on the Thursday, he wrote an urgent letter to Mr. Houseman, telling him he must come early to the funeral, and be prepared to conduct it.