"You ain't a outlaw, sir," he muttered. "You could take the title, if
you would."
"Oh, no! I left England under a criminal charge. I should have to
disprove that before I could inherit."
Rake crushed bitter oaths into muttered words as he heard. "You could
disprove it, sir, of course, right and away, if you chose."
"No; or I should not have come here. Let us leave the subject. It was
settled long ago. My brother is Lord Royallieu. I would not disturb him,
if I had the power, and I have not it. Look, the horses are taking well
to their feed."
Rake asked him no more. He had never had a harsh word from Cecil in
their lives; but he knew him too well, for all that, to venture to press
on him a question thus firmly put aside. But his heart ached sorely for
his master; he would so gladly have seen "the king among his own again,"
and would have striven for the restoration as strenuously as ever a
Cavalier strove for the White Rose; and he sat in silence, perplexed
and ill satisfied, under the shelter of the rock, with the great, dim,
desolate African landscape stretching before him, with here and there
a gleam of light upon it when the wind swept the clouds apart. His
volatile speech was chilled, and his buoyant spirits were checked. That
Cecil was justly outlawed he would have thought it the foulest treason
to believe for one instant; yet he felt that he might as soon seek to
wrench up the great stones above him from their base as seek to change
the resolution of this man, whom he had once known pliant as a reed and
careless as a child.
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