I take no man's honours." He shook Wogan by the hand as he spoke, and he had spoken with an extraordinary warmth of admiration.

Gaydon could do no less than follow his companion's example, though there was a shade of embarrassment in his manner of assenting.

It was not that he had any envy of Wogan, or any desire to rob him of a single tittle of his due credit.

There was nothing mean in Gaydon's nature, but here was a halving of Clementina's protectors, and he could not stifle a suspicion that the best man of the four to leave behind was really Charles Wogan himself.

Not a word, however, of this could he say, and so he nodded his assent to Misset's proposal.
"It is I, then, who stay behind with O'Toole and the courier," he said.
"Misset has a wife; the lot evidently falls to me.