There was a lark singing just over my head, and its clear notes seemed, during the long, long minute while I stood bending over him in an awful fascination, to be the only sounds in nature. I looked so long at him in that dreadful stillness and absorption, I dared not at last look up lest I should see I knew not what. Yet when a touch fell on my arm I did not start. "You have killed him!" the girl whispered, shuddering. "Yes, I have killed him," I answered mechanically. I could not take my eyes off him. It was not as if I had done this thing after a long conflict, or in a _mêlée_ with others fighting round me, or on the battle-field. I should have felt no horror then such as I felt now, standing over him in the sunshine with the lark's song in my ears. It had happened so quickly, and the waste about us was so still; and I had never killed a man before, nor seen a man die. "Oh, come away!" Dymphna wailed suddenly. "Come away!" I turned then, and the sight of the girl's wan face and strained eyes recalled me in some degree to myself. I saw she was ill; and hastily I gave her my arm, and partly carried, partly supported, her back to the road. The way seemed long and I looked behind me often. But we reached the causeway at last, and there in the open I felt some relief. Yet even then, stopping to cast a backward glance at the marsh, I shuddered anew, espying a bright white spark gleaming amid the green of the rushes. It was the dead man's corselet. But if it had been his eye I could scarcely have shrunk from it in greater dread. It will be imagined that we were not long in crossing the island. Naturally I was full of what had happened, and never gave a thought to Van Tree's jealousy, or the incidents of his short visit. I had indeed forgotten his existence until we reached the porch. There entering rapidly, with Dymphna clinging to my arm, I was so oblivious of other matters that when the young Dutchman rose suddenly from the seat on one side of the door, and at the same moment the Duchess rose from the bench on the other, I did not understand in the first instant of surprise what was the matter, though I let Dymphna's hand fall from my arm. The dark scowling face of the one, however, and the anger and chagrin written on the features of the other, as they both glared at us, brought all back to me in a flash. But it was too late. Before I could utter a word the girl's lover pushed by me with a fierce gesture and fiercer cry, and disappeared round a corner of the house. "Was ever such folly!" cried the Duchess, stamping her foot, and standing before us, her face crimson. "Or such fools! You idiot! You----" "Hush, madam," I said sternly--had I really grown older in doing the deed? "something has happened." And Dymphna, with a low cry of "The Spaniard! The Spaniard!" tottered up to her and fainted in her arms. CHAPTER X. THE FACE IN THE PORCH.