“Once more, Captain Falconnet, will you let me pass?” she said.

“No!” he snarled, adding a horrid blasphemy. “’Twas passion in me once, and I am none so sure there was not a time when you could have cooled it into love.  But now ’tis hatred and revenge.”  He snapped his fingers in her face.  “The thing they’ll find here in the morning—­”

He fell face downward at her feet and I set my heel in the small of his back to hold him whilst I could drive the point of the Ferara between his ribs.  But my dear lady would not have it so.

“No, no! for the love of heaven, not that, Monsieur John!” she cried; and for the moment her fine courage was all swallowed up of pity and she became a compassionate woman pleading for a life.

But now my blood was up.  “You are my wife,” I said, coldly.  “If he had a dozen lives I should take them all for that which he said to you.”

“But not that way—­oh, not that way, I do beseech you!” she begged.  “Think of what it will mean to you—­and—­and to me.  For your own sake, Monsieur John.”

I took my heel from the man’s back.

“Your wish is law to me, dear lady.  But your way is clear now; you may go.”

She took a step toward the door.

“You will not kill him when I am gone, Monsieur John?”

“By the name he bears he was doubtless born a gentlemen; since you wish it, he shall die like one.”

I saw she did not take my meaning; that when she was gone I should let him have his chance to die sword in hand.

“Remember, I have your promise,” she said, turning to go.  “The army is on the march for Salisbury, and in a little while your friends will be here to—­”

The sentence ended in a very womanly shriek of terror.  Watching his chance, my dastard enemy had bounded to his feet to make a quick lunge, not at me, but at her.

Of course I came between to parry the murderous thrust, and after that it was life for one of us and death for the other.  I looked to see my lady run, shrieking; indeed, I called to her to go; but she stood fast as if her terror had frozen her; and so it was her candle that lighted the grim vault for the duel.

As you will know full well, I was not minded to give this thrice-accursed fiend more than the gentleman’s chance I had promised to give him.  But now, as twice before, he fought most desperately, trying by every trick of fence to come between me and the silent little figure holding the candle aloft.  As I have often said, he was a pretty swordsman, and at this crisis, with life at stake, and all the fury of the seven devils of disappointed vengeance to nerve his arm, his sword play was most masterly.

Yet twice in his stamping rushes I found my opening; once the Ferara’s point passed his blade, and but for the ringed guard of the German long-sword that stopped it when his parry failed, the steel would have passed through him.  After this he grew warier, having in mind, as I supposed, that other time when I had shown him that my wrist and arm could outweary his.  Yet his savage onset never flagged for an instant; and when the light fell upon his hideous face, I could see the fierce eyes glinting like a basilisk’s, with no sign in them that my time was come to press him home.