Meanwhile Linden had returned to his solitary home. He hastened to his room, locked the door, flung himself on his sofa, and burst into a violent and almost feminine paroxysm of tears. This fit lasted for more than an hour; and when Clarence at length stilled the indignant swellings of his heart, and rose from his supine position, he started, as his eye fell upon the opposite mirror, so haggard and exhausted seemed the forced and fearful calmness of his countenance. With a hurried step; with arms now folded on his bosom, now wildly tossed from him; and the hand so firmly clenched that the very bones seemed working through the skin; with a brow now fierce, now only dejected; and a complexion which one while burnt as with the crimson flush of a fever, and at another was wan and colourless, like his whose cheek a spectre has blanched,--Clarence paced his apartment, the victim not only of shame,--the bitterest of tortures to a young and high mind,--but of other contending feelings, which alternately exasperated and palsied his wrath, and gave to his resolves at one moment an almost savage ferocity and at the next an almost cowardly vacillation. The clock had just struck the hour of twelve when a knock at the door announced a visitor. Steps were heard on the stairs and presently a tap at Clarence’s room-door. He unlocked it and the Duke of Haverfield entered. “I am charmed to find you at home,” cried the duke, with his usual half kind, half careless address. “I was determined to call upon you, and be the first to offer my services in this unpleasant affair.” Clarence pressed the duke’s hand, but made no answer. “Nothing could be so unhandsome as Lord Borodaile’s conduct,” continued the duke. “I hope you both fence and shoot well. I shall never forgive you, if you do not put an end to that piece of rigidity.” Clarence continued to walk about the room in great agitation; the duke looked at him with some surprise. At last Linden paused by the window, and said, half unconsciously, “It must be so: I cannot avoid fighting!” “Avoid fighting!” cried his grace, in undisguised astonishment. “No, indeed: but that is the least part of the matter; you must kill as well as fight him.” “Kill him!” cried Clarence, wildly, “whom?” and then sinking into a chair, he covered his face with his hands for a few moments, and seemed to struggle with his emotions. “Well,” thought the duke, “I never was more mistaken in my life. I could have bet my black horse against Trevanion’s Julia, which is certainly the most worthless thing I know, that Linden had been a brave fellow: but these English heroes almost go into fits at a duel; one manages such things, as Sterne says, better in France.”