“I am sorry that I came to you,” he said.

“It would have been better that you should not have done so,” she replied.

“And yet perhaps it is well that there should be no misunderstanding between us.”

“Of course I must tell my brother.”

He paused but for a moment, and then he answered her with a sharp voice, “He has been told.”

“And who told him?”

“I did.  I wrote to him the moment that I knew my own mind.  I owed it to him to do so.  But my letter missed him, and he only learned it the other day.”

“Have you seen him since?”

“Yes;—­I have seen him.”

“And what did he say?  How did he take it?  Did he bear it from you quietly?”

“No, indeed;” and Phineas smiled as he spoke.

“Tell me, Mr. Finn; what happened?  What is to be done?”

“Nothing is to be done.  Everything has been done.  I may as well tell you all.  I am sure that for the sake of me, as well as of your brother, you will keep our secret.  He required that I should either give up my suit, or that I should,—­fight him.  As I could not comply with the one request, I found myself bound to comply with the other.”

“And there has been a duel?”

“Yes;—­there has been a duel.  We went over to Belgium, and it was soon settled.  He wounded me here in the arm.”

“Suppose you had killed him, Mr. Finn?”

“That, Lady Laura, would have been a misfortune so terrible that I was bound to prevent it.”  Then he paused again, regretting what he had said.  “You have surprised me, Lady Laura, into an answer that I should not have made.  I may be sure,—­may I not,—­that my words will not go beyond yourself?”

“Yes;—­you may be sure of that.”  This she said plaintively, with a tone of voice and demeanour of body altogether different from that which she lately bore.  Neither of them knew what was taking place between them; but she was, in truth, gradually submitting herself again to this man’s influence.  Though she rebuked him at every turn for what he said, for what he had done, for what he proposed to do, still she could not teach herself to despise him, or even to cease to love him for any part of it.  She knew it all now,—­except that word or two which had passed between Violet and Phineas in the rides of Saulsby Park.  But she suspected something even of that, feeling sure that the only matter on which Phineas would say nothing would be that of his own success,—­if success there had been.  “And so you and Oswald have quarrelled, and there has been a duel.  That is why you were away?”

“That is why I was away.”

“How wrong of you,—­how very wrong!  Had he been,—­killed, how could you have looked us in the face again?”

“I could not have looked you in the face again.”

“But that is over now.  And were you friends afterwards?”