"Faith, can a man lose more?" asked Grey contemptuously. He disliked Wilding by instinct, which was but a reciprocation of the feeling with which Wilding was inspired by him.
"I think he can," said Mr. Wilding quietly. "A man may lose honour, he may plunge his family into ruin. These are things of more weight with a gentleman than life."
"Odds death!" blazed Grey, giving a free rein to his dislike of this calm gentleman. "Do you suggest that a man's honour is imperilled in His Grace's service?"
"I suggest nothing," answered Wilding, unmoved. "What I think, I state. If I thought a man's honour imperilled in this service, you would not see me at this table now. I can make you no more convincing answer."
Grey laughed unpleasantly, and Wilding, a faint tinge on his cheek-bones, measured him with a stern, intrepid look before which his lordship's shifty glance was observed to fall. Wilding's eye, having achieved that much, passed from him to the Duke, and its expression softened.
"Your Grace sees," said he, "how well founded were the fears I expressed that your coming has been premature."
"In God's name, what would you have me do?" cried the Duke, and petulance made his voice unsteady.
Mr. Wilding rose, moved out of his habitual calm by the earnestness that pervaded him. "It is not for me to say again what I would have Your Grace do. Your Grace has heard my views, and those of these gentlemen. It is for Your Grace to decide."
"You mean whether I will go forward with this thing? What alternative have I?"
"No alternative," put in Grey with finality. "Nor is alternative needed. We'll carry this through in spite of timorous folk and birds of ill-omen that croak to aifright us."
"Our service is the service of the Lord," cried Ferguson, returning from the window in the embrasure of which he had been standing; "the Lord cannot but destine it to prevail."
"Ye said so before," quoth Fletcher testily. "We need here men, money, and weapons--not divinity."
"You are plainly infected with Mr. Wilding's disease," sneered Grey.
"Ford," cried the Duke, who saw Wilding's eyes flash fire; "you go too fast. Mr. Wilding, you will not heed his lordship."
"I should not be likely to do so, Your Grace," answered Wilding, who had resumed his seat.
"What shall that mean?" quoth Grey, leaping to his feet.
"Make it quite clear to him, Tony," whispered Trenchard coaxingly; but Mr. Wilding was not as lost as were these immediate followers of the Duke's to all sense of the respect due to His Grace.
"I think," said Wilding quietly, "that you have forgotten something."