"There was a boy cousin. He was reckless, I reckon; and she was ve'y unhappy; and one night he found her crying in the garden; and there was a ve'y painful scene, and she let him kiss the hem of her petticoat on his promise to go away fo' ever. And--Colonel Arran caught him on his knees, with the lace to his lips--and the child wife crying. . . . He neither asked nor accepted satisfaction; he threatened the--_law_! And that settled him with her, I reckon, and she demanded her freedom, and he refused, and she took it. "Then she did a ve'y childish thing; she married the boy--or supposed she did----" Celia's violet eyes grew dark with wrath: "And Colonel Arran went into co't with his lawyers and his witnesses and had the divorce set aside--and publicly made this silly child her lover's mistress, and their child nameless! That was the justice that the law rendered Colonel Arran. And now you know why I hate him--and shall always hate and despise him." Ailsa's head was all awhirl; lips parted, she stared at Celia in stunned silence, making as yet no effort to reconcile the memory of the man she knew with this cold, merciless, passionless portrait. Nor did the suspicion occur to her that there could be the slightest connection between her sister-in-law's contempt for Colonel Arran and Berkley's implacable enmity. All the while, too, her clearer sense of right and justice cried out in dumb protest against the injury done to the man who had been her friend, and her parents' friend--kind, considerate, loyal, impartially just in all his dealings with her and with the world, as far as she had ever known. From Celia's own showing the abstract right and justice of the matter had been on his side; no sane civilisation could tolerate the code that Celia cited. The day of private vengeance was over; the era of duelling was past in the North--was passing in the South. And, knowing Colonel Arran, she knew also that twenty odd years ago his refusal to challenge had required a higher form of courage than to face the fire of a foolish boy's pistol. And now, collecting her disordered thoughts, she began to understand what part emotion and impulse had played in the painful drama--how youthful ignorance and false sentiment had combined to invest a silly but accidental situation with all the superficial dignity of tragedy. What must it have meant to Colonel Arran, to this quiet, slow, respectable man of the world, to find his girl wife crying in the moonlight, and a hot-headed boy down on his knees, mumbling the lace edge of her skirts? What must it have meant to him--for the chances were that he had not spoken the first word--to be confronted by an excited, love-smitten, reckless boy, and have a challenge flung in his face before he had uttered a word.