Both were brave men, and in the bloom of manhood.  Elliot was the taller, but Le Gallais, some seven or eight years older, far exceeded in strength and weight.  After scant ceremony the thrusting began.  Feet trampled, steel rang.  A furious pass from the Jerseyman was with difficulty caught in Elliot’s cloak, and the sword for a moment hampered.  Before Le Gallais could extricate it, Elliot, with a savage cry, ran in upon him, drawing back his elbow, so as to stab his adversary with a shortened sword.  A scuffle ensued, of which no bystander could follow with his eye the full details, till the Scot’s sword was seen to turn upwards, and the point to pierce his own throat.  Each combatant fell backwards, Le Gallais bleeding from the left hand, and Elliot spouting black gore from a severed artery.

At that instant cries name from the outside of the ring, “The guard!” On which the spectators hastened to disperse, while the Lieutenant-Governor rode up at the head of a mounted patrol.  Elliot was taken from the ground in a dying state, and Le Gallais arrested, and ordered to Mont Orgueil, to await the arrival of the magistrate, who should make the preliminary inquiry.

Left in that irksome durance, but with wound duly cared for, Alain had abundant time to muse over the mistakes and misfortunes of the past.  After the inquiry he was necessarily committed for trial at the next criminal session; and fell at first into a semi-mechanical existence.  But slowly the twin stars of memory and hope rose out of the dark, while conscious integrity began to clear the moral aether.  He tried in vain to cherish remorse, but Elliot’s treachery overbore the effort; slowly calm returned.

It was true that the news of Elliot’s fraud had been made known to the ladies of Maufant by himself.  But as he thought over the matter in the solitude of his chilly cell, he could not see any reason to blame himself on that account.  Hearing from Querto—­who was connected with the family—­that Elliot was unquestionably a married man, he had only done his duty in warning Rose and her sister against the groom of the chamber.  He would not admit to himself that jealousy had influenced him in so doing.  As Lempriere’s agent, as the old friend of the family, he could not have done otherwise.  All was over between him and Marguerite, yet he could not forget that, by the wish of the young lady’s friends, if not by her own, he had once been her affianced husband.  As for the death of the courtier, it was not in itself a subject for much regret; and, further, it had been wholly the consequence of the dead man’s own actions, from his deceit towards the ladies to his final ferocity and foul play in an encounter of his own provoking.