“Evidently neither of you has thought of me, nor cared for me or others.  Yourselves, your own vindictive feelings have engrossed you wholly, yet I know I’m the innocent cause of this brutal encounter, and the world would know me to be the cause whether it believed me innocent or not.  I tell you plainly that if you fight I shall brand you both unworthy the name of gentlemen and I shall proclaim to all your outrage to me.”

“Outrage to you, Miss Baron?” said Maynard, with a bitter, incredulous laugh.

“Yes,” she replied, turning upon him fiercely.  “What can you think of me when you fight about me like a wild beast?”

“I am prepared to fight Lieutenant Whately on entirely different grounds,” he replied, his face flushing hotly at her words.

“You cannot do it, sir.  I would know, and so would all, that I was the cause.  What right, sir, have you to imbitter my life, to fill my days and nights with horror?  I never wronged you.”

“But, Miss Baron, in all ages such encounters have been common enough when a man received ample provocation, as I have.”

“So much the worse for the ages then.  I say that you both were about to commit a selfish, cowardly, unmanly act that would have been an outrage in its cruelty to an innocent girl, to whom you had been making false professions of regard.”

“Now, by the God who made me, that’s not true, Miss Baron.”

“Cousin Lou, you are beside yourself,” cried Whately.

“Miss Baron,” said Maynard, coming to her side and speaking with great earnestness, “I can endure any charge better than your last.  No man ever declared truer love than I to you.”

“I can tell you of a man who has declared truer love,” she replied, looking him steadily in the eyes.

“Who in God’s name?” he asked savagely.

“Any man who thought more of the girl than of himself,” she answered with passionate pathos in her tones, “any man who considered her before his own reckless, ungovernable feelings, who would save her heart from sorrow rather than gratify his anger.  Any man who asks, What is best for the woman I love? instead of What’s my humor? what will please me?  Suppose you both had carried out your savage impulses, and lay on this ground, wounded or dead, what would be said at the house there about me?  What would be your mother’s fate, Madison, that you might gratify a causeless spite?  Have you no home, Captain Maynard, no kindred who would always curse my name?  If you had died like the brave men who lie in yonder graves your friends would ever speak your name proudly; but even I, all inexperienced, know the world well enough to be only too sure, they would hang their heads and say you flung away your life for a heartless girl who was amusing herself at your expense.  Fight if you will, but if you do, I pledge you my word that I will never willingly look upon either of you again, living or dead!”

She was about to turn away when Maynard rushed before her exclaiming, “Miss Baron, I beg your pardon, I ask your forgiveness.  I never saw this act in the light you place it.”