"My dear Mrs. Hale--excuse me--I am not telling the tale to you here. I have not the slightest intention of doing so." "But everybody knows it, of course." "I think not," said Mr. Dalrymple. "That you had a quarrel with a man who had once been your friend," proceeded Mrs. Hale, with a vulgar woman's unscrupulousness about trespassing on sacred ground; "and that you hunted him round the world, and then, when you met him in that Californian diggings place, shot him across a billiard-table where he stood, without a moment's warning." "Oh, yes," said Mr. Dalrymple, calmly; "he had plenty of warning--five years at least." "Not five minutes after you met him. Mr. Gordon was there, and said that he was a dead man five minutes after you came into the room and recognised him." "Gordon can tell you, then, that I satisfied all the laws of honour. The meeting had been arranged and expected; there were no preliminaries to go through--except to borrow a couple of revolvers and get somebody to see fair play. There were at least a dozen to do that; Gordon was one." "Poor fellow," ejaculated Mrs. Hardy with solemn indignation. "And _he_ fired in the air, I suppose?" "He would have fired in the air, I daresay, if he had any hope that I would do so," replied Mr. Dalrymple, with a face as hard as flint, and a deep blaze of passion in his eyes. "But he well knew that there was no chance of that. He was obliged to shoot his best in self-defence." "Then you might have been killed yourself!--and what then?" "That was a contingency I was quite prepared for, of course. What then?--I should have done my duty." "Don't say 'duty,' Roden," interposed Mrs. Digby, very gently and gravely. "My dear Lily, the word has no arbitrary sense; we all interpret it to suit our own views. It was my idea of duty." "Poor fellow!" exclaimed Mrs. Hardy again. "It is a dreadful story. And did he leave any family?" "I would rather not pursue the subject, Mrs. Hardy--if you have no objection." "I wonder you are not afraid to go to bed," Mrs. Hale persisted, undeterred by the darkness of his face. "The ghost of that poor wretch would haunt _me_ night and day. I should never know what it was to sleep in peace." Rachel listened to this fragment of a conversation, which had evidently been going on for some time; and her heart grew cold within her. Mr. Dalrymple happened to turn his head, and saw her looking at him with her innocent young face scared and pale; and he was almost as much shocked as she. A swift change in himself--a straightening of his powerful, tall frame, and a flash of angry surprise and pain in his imperious eyes--aroused a general attention to her presence. "You here, my dear?" exclaimed Mrs. Hardy, much discomposed by the circumstance. "That is the worst of these irregular shaped rooms--with so many doors and corners, one never sees people go out and come in." "How is baby?" inquired Mrs. Thornley eagerly, thankful for the diversion. "Is he sleeping nicely?"