The very danger of the enterprise reassured me: to save Sim and Candlish (suppose the worst to come to the worst) it would be necessary for me to declare myself in a court of justice, with consequences which I did not dare to dwell upon; it could never be said that I had chosen the cheap and the easy--only that in a very perplexing competition of duties I had risked my life for the most immediate.
We resumed the journey with more diligence: thenceforward posted day and night; did not halt beyond what was necessary for meals; and the postillions were excited by gratuities, after the habit of my cousin Alain.

For twopence I could have gone farther and taken four horses; so extreme was my haste, running as I was before the terrors of an awakened conscience.

But I feared to be conspicuous.

Even as it was, we attracted only too much attention, with our pair and that white elephant, the seventy-pounds-worth of claret-coloured chaise.
Meanwhile I was ashamed to look Rowley in the face.

The young shaver had contrived to put me wholly in the wrong; he had cost me a night's rest and a severe and healthful humiliation; and I was grateful and embarrassed in his society.