“Now you are weeping,” said Rand, “and that will ease your heart.  Could I have helped it, I would not have told you of this quarrel.  You could not, however, have failed to hear; it was a public thing, and the town is buzzing with it.  See, Jacqueline, I am no longer passionate.  The dog is down.  The mistake, if mistake it was, is made; we are not over the mountains; we are here in Albemarle, at Roselands, underneath the beech tree.  I was never one to weep for spilt milk.  This way is stopped, and this moment foreclosed.  Well, there are other moments and other ways!  The sun is down and the night falls dark and cold.  Come, dry your eyes!”

“That is soon done.  The thorn is in my heart.”

“I will draw it out,” he answered.  “I’ll draw it out with love.  Don’t think that Ludwell Cary can hurt me; it’s not within his kingdom.  Do not grieve that men are enemies; smile and say, ’It will be so a few years longer!’ I am glad with all my heart that you are friends again with all at Fontenoy.  As for this journey, I stayed for you, Jacqueline.  It was needful for me to go, but I stayed that you might part friends with your kindred.  Remember it one day.”

“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