"On the contrary, I should define the highest type of courage as self-control in the presence of danger--not necessarily absence of fear.

The latter is really no more credit to you than eating your dinner when you're hungry." "Mine, then, I perceive to be the highest type of courage," chuckled Sara.

"It's a comforting reflection." It was, when propounded by Patrick Lovell, to whom physical fear was an unknown quantity.

Had he lived in the days of the Terror, he would assuredly have taken his way to the guillotine with the same gay, debonair courage which enabled the nobles of France to throw down their cards and go to the scaffold with a smiling promise to the other players that they would continue their interrupted game in the next world.
And when Sara had come to live with Patrick, a dozen years ago, he had rigorously inculcated in her youthful mind a contempt for every form of cowardice, moral and physical.
It had not been all plain sailing, for Sara was a highly strung child, with the vivid imagination that is the primary cause of so much that is carelessly designated cowardice.

But Patrick had been very wise in his methods.