is too late to do much good."

"I think you are rather hard upon me, Doctor. I know you were speaking
at me today when you were talking to the others, especially in what you
said at the end."

"Perhaps I was; but I think you quite deserved it."

"Yes, I know I did; but it was hard to tell me it was as contemptible to
despise a man for a physical weakness he could not help, as to despise
one for being born humpbacked or a cripple, when you know that my
brother was so."

"I wanted you to feel that your conduct had been contemptible, Isobel,
and I put it in the way that was most likely to come home to you. I have
been disappointed in you. I thought you were more sensible than the run
of young women, and I found out that you were not. I thought you had
some confidence in my judgment, but it turned out that you had not.
If Bathurst had been killed when he was standing up, a target for the
Sepoys, I should have held you morally responsible for his death."

"You would have shared the responsibility, anyhow, Doctor, for it was
you who repeated my words to him."

"We will not go over that ground again," said the Doctor quietly. "I
gave you my reasons for doing so, and those reasons are to my mind
convincing. Now I will tell you how this constitutional nervousness on
his part arose. He told me the story; but as at that time there had
been no occasion for him to show whether he was brave or otherwise, I
considered my lips sealed. Now that his weakness has been exhibited, I
consider myself more than justified in explaining its origin."

And he then repeated the story Bathurst had told him.

"You see," he said, when he had finished, "it is a constitutional matter
beyond his control; it is a sort of antipathy. I have known a case of a
woman courageous in all other respects, who, at the sight of even a
dead cockroach, would faint away. I have seen one of the most gallant
officers of my acquaintance turn pale at the sight of a spider.
Certainly no one would think of calling either one or the other coward;
and assuredly such a name should not be applied to a man who would face
a tiger armed only with a whip in defense of a native woman, because his
nerves go all to pieces at the sound of firearms."

"If you had told me all this before I should never have spoken as I
did," Isobel pleaded.

"I did not go into the full details, but I told you that he was not
responsible for his want of firmness under fire, and that I knew him
i