Norbert, however, still maintained the same gloomy silence.  He too had need to collect his thoughts.  As he ascended the stairs he knew that he should find the Duchess with a lover, but he had not calculated upon that lover being George de Croisenois, a man whom he loathed and detested more than any one that he was in the habit of meeting in society.  When he recognized George, it was with the utmost difficulty that he restrained himself from springing upon him and endeavoring to strangle him.  He had suspected this man of having gained Diana’s affections, and now he found him in the character of the lover of his wife, and he was silent simply because he had not yet made up his mind what he would say.  If his face was outwardly calm and rigid as marble, while the flames of hell were raging in his heart, it was because his limbs for the moment refused to obey his will; but, in spite of this, Norbert was, for the time, literally insane.

Croisenois folded his arms, and continued,—­

“I had only just come here at the moment of your arrival.  Why were you not here to listen to all that passed between us?  Would to heaven that you had been!  Then you would have understood all the grandeur and nobility of your wife’s soul.  I admit the magnitude of my fault, but I am at your service, and am prepared to give you the satisfaction that you will doubtless demand.”

“From your words,” answered Norbert slowly, “I presume that you allude to a duel; that is to say, that having effected my dishonor to-night, you purpose to kill me to-morrow morning.  In the game that you have been playing a man stakes his life, and you, I think, have lost.”

Croisenois bowed.  “I am a dead man,” thought he as he glanced towards the Duchess, “and not for your sake, but on account of quite another woman.”

The sound of his own voice excited Norbert, and he went on more rapidly:  “What need have I to risk my life in a duel?  I come to my own home, I find you with my wife, I blow out your brains, and the law will exonerate me.”  As he said these last words, he drew a revolver from his pocket and levelled it at George.  The moment was an intensely exciting one, but Croisenois did not show any sign of emotion, Norbert did not press the trigger, and the suspense became more than could be borne.

“Fire!” cried George, “fire!”

“No,” returned Norbert coldly; “on reflection I have come to the conclusion that your dead body would be a source of extreme inconvenience to me.”

“You try my forbearance too far.  What are your intentions?”

“I mean to kill you,” answered Norbert in such a voice of concentrated ferocity that George shuddered in spite of all his courage, “but it shall not be with a pistol shot.  It is said that blood will wash out any stain, but it is false; for even if all yours is shed, it will not remove the stain from my escutcheon.  One of us must vanish from the face of the earth in such a manner that no trace of him may remain.”