’Twas Falconer who began what we all felt was to be the serious part of the combat.  Phil parried the thrust neatly; made a feint, but, instantly recovering, availed himself of his opponent’s counter movement, and sank his point fair into Falconer’s left breast.  The English captain tumbled instantly to the ground.  The swiftness of the thing startled us.  Idsleigh and his medical companion stared in amazement, wondering that the fallen man should lie so still.  It took a second or two for that which their eyes had informed them, to penetrate to their understanding.  But Philip and I knew that the lunge had pierced the heart, and that the accomplished Lovelace on the ground would charm no more women.

’Twas only when we were hastening back to our hackney-coach, that Philip trembled.  Then for a few moments his teeth chattered as if he were taken with a chill, and his face was deathly pale.

“’Tis terrible,” he said, in an awed tone, “to kill a man this way.  ’Tis not like in war.  On a morning like this, in the civil manner of gentlemen, to make of such a marvellous living, thinking, feeling machine a poor heap of senseless flesh and bone that can only rot:—­and all in the time of a sword-thrust!”

“Tut!” said I, “the world is the better for the riddance.  Think of Tom, and all else!”

“I know it,” said Phil, conquering his weakness.  “And such men know what they risk when they break into the happiness of others.  I could not have lived in peace while he lived.  Well, that is all behind us now.  Yonder is our coach.”

We got in, and were driven to the tavern in Dean Street.  We there dismissed the coach, and Philip started afoot for the inn, in the Strand, where our post-chaise was to be in readiness.  I was to join him there after completing the letter and leaving it at Madge’s lodgings, Philip using the mean time in attending to the posting of certain letters of his own.  We had no baggage to impede us, as we intended to purchase new wearables in France:  we had, on the previous day, provided ourselves with money and letters of credit.  My affairs had been so arranged that neither my wife nor my mother could be pecuniarily embarrassed by my absence.  Philip’s American passport, used upon our former travels, was still in force and had been made to include a travelling companion.  So all was smoothed for our flight.

Taking my letter to the house in which Madge lived, I asked for her maid, telling the house servant I would wait at the street door:  for, as I did not wish to meet any of the three ladies, I considered it safer to entrust the letter to Madge’s own woman.  The girl came down; but I had no sooner handed her the letter, and told her what to do with it, than I heard Madge’s voice in the hall above.  She had come out to see who wanted her maid, suspecting some trick of Falconer’s; and, leaning over the stair-rail, had recognised my voice.

“What is it, Bert?  Why don’t you come up?”