Explore "The Wild Geese" by Stanley J. Weyman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Asgill saw himself in the position of a commander whose force has been outflanked, and who has to decide on the instant how he may best re-form it on a new front. Flavia and Colonel Sullivan, Flavia and Payton, Payton and Colonel Sullivan -- each of these conjunctions had for him a separate menace; each threatened either his suit for Flavia, or his standing in the house through which, and through which alone, he could hope to win her. In addition, the absence of James McMurrough at this critical moment left Asgill in the most painful perplexity. If James knew what had happened, why was he wanting at this moment, when it behoved them to decide, and to decide quickly, what line they would take?
Under the shadow of the great peat-stack at the back of the house, whither he had retired that he might make up his mind before he faced the three, Asgill bit his nails and cursed The McMurrough with all his heart, calling him a score of names, each worse than the other. It was, it must be, through his folly and mismanagement that the thing had befallen, that the prisoner had been released, that Payton had been let into the secret. The volley of oaths that flew from Asgill expressed no more than a tithe of his rage and his bewilderment.