You don't know how terrible this duel appears to me. And there's no
escape from it."
He murmured after a pause, "It's a fatality," dropped the Chevalier's
passive hand, and said in his ordinary conversational voice, "I shall
have to go without seconds. If it is my lot to remain on the ground, you
at least will know all that can be made known of this affair."
The shadowy ghost of the ancien regime seemed to have become more bowed
during the conversation. "How am I to keep an indifferent face this
evening before these two women?" he groaned. "General! I find it very
difficult to forgive you."
General D 'Hubert made no answer.
"Is your cause good, at least?"
"I am innocent."
This time he seized the Chevalier's ghostly arm above the elbow, and
gave it a mighty squeeze. "I must kill him!" he hissed, and opening his
hand strode away down the road.
The delicate attentions of his adoring sister had secured for the
General perfect liberty of movement in the house where he was a guest.
He had even his own entrance through a small door in one corner of
the orangery.
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