"Why," she cried,--"why did you not go without me? You would not have been long gone, and I should have waited your return there at Fontenoy! Then this day and this quarrel would not have come! Ludwell Cary and you to meet--O God!" "I did not wish to go without you. You do not understand--but trust me, Jacqueline; trust me, trust me!" He took her in his arms. "Come, now! It is twilight, and there's a dreariness in these fallen leaves. Come indoors to the fire and the light, and the books and the harp. Deb arrived to-day, did she not?" "Yes; she is somewhere with Miranda. They have been playing dolls with the last flowers." He stopped a moment as they were moving over the grassy ring. "Flower dolls! They were playing flower dolls that morning in June when I came down from the blue room and out into the garden. There they sat, on the red earth in the little cedar wood, with their bright ladies. Deb told me all their names. She told me more than that--she told me you were reading in the arbour. Jacqueline, are you sorry that I found you there?" "No, I am not sorry; I am glad. You could make me wretched, but you could not make me repentant. Oh, Lewis! I shall hear those shots to-night--" "No, you will not--I shall read you to sleep. Why, if you were a soldier's wife, would you hear all the bullets flying? There, the last red has faded, and I hear the children's voices! Come in; come in out of the dark." CHAPTER XXIV THE DUEL It was nine o'clock of a November morning when a coach, driven out from Richmond, passed a country tavern and a blacksmith's shop, and, turning from the main road, went jolting through a stubble-field down to the steep and grassy bank of the James. It was a morning fine and clear, with the hoar frost yet upon the ground. The trees, of which there were many, were bare, saving the oaks, which yet held a rusty crimson. In the fields the crows were cawing, and beyond the network of branch and bough the river flashed and murmured among its multitude of islets. The place was solitary, screened from the highroad by a rise of land, and fitted for a lovers' meeting or for other concerns of secrecy. The coach drew up beneath a spreading oak with the mistletoe clustering in the dull red upper branches. Three men stepped out,--Lewis Rand, the gentleman acting as his second, and a good physician. "We are first on the field," said Rand, looking at his watch. "It is early yet. Pompey, drive a hundred yards down the bank--as far as those bushes yonder--and wait until you are called. Ha! there could be no better spot, Mr. Jones!"