“How I have hated you, Monsieur le Marquis!” he muttered thickly, “How I have hated you!  Yes—­as Cain hated Abel!  For we—­we are brothers as they were—­born of the same father—­ah!  You start!” for Fontenelle uttered a gasping cry—­“Yes—­in spite of your pride, your lineage, your insolent air of superiority—­your father was my father!—­the late Marquis was no more satisfied with one wife than any of us are!—­and had no higher code of honour!  Your mother was a grande dame,—­mine was a ‘light o’ love’ like this feeble creature!” and he turned his glance for a moment on the shuddering, wailing Jeanne Richaud.  “You were the legal Marquis—­I the illegal genius! . . . yes—­genius—!”

He broke off, struggling for breath.

“Do you hear me?” he whispered thickly, “Do you hear?”

“I hear,” answered Fontenelle, speaking with difficulty, “You have hated me, you say—­hate me no more!—­for hate is done with—­and love also!—­I am—­dying!”

He grasped the rank grass with both hands in sudden agony, and his face grew livid.  Miraudin turned himself on one arm.

“Dying!  You, too!  By Heaven!  Then the Marquisate must perish!  I should have fired in the air—­but—­but the sins of the fathers . . . what is it?” Here a ghastly smile passed over his features, “The sins of the fathers—­are visited on the children!  What a merciful Deity it is, to make such an arrangement!—­and the excellent fathers!—­when all the children meet them—­I wonder what they will have to say to each other I wonder . . .”  A frightful shudder convulsed his body and he threw up his arms.

    “’Un peu d’amour,
      Et puis—­bon soir!’

C’est ca!  Bon soir, Marquis!”

A great sigh broke from his lips, through which the discoloured blood began to ooze slowly—­he was dead.  And Fontenelle, whose wound bled inwardly, turned himself wearily round to gaze on the rigid face upturned to the moon.  His brother’s face!  So like his own!  He was not conscious himself of any great pain—­he felt a dizzy languor and a drowsiness as of dreams—­but he knew what the dreaming meant,- -he knew that he would soon sleep to wake again—­but where?  He did not see that the woman who had professed to love Miraudin had already rushed away from his corpse in terror, and was entreating the cabman to drive her quickly from the scene of combat,—­he realised nothing save the white moonbeams on the still face of the man who in God’s sight had been his brother.  Fainter and still fainter grew his breath—­but he felt near his heart for a little crumpled knot of filmy lace which he always carried—­a delicate trifle which had fallen from one of Sylvie’s pretty evening gowns once, when he had caught her in his arms and sworn his passion.  He kissed it now, and inhaled its violet perfume—­as he took it from his lips he saw that it was stained with blood.  The heavy languor upon him grew heavier—­and