Neither party had much time to think. Every preparation
was made with a skill, secrecy, and rapidity which
left nothing to be desired. Both White and Rochelle were
in their element when presiding over one of the remarkable
orgies of modern civilization—while decking with flowers
and bearing the sacrificial victim to this old surviving image
of Baal and Ashteroth. Middleton strove to write a few
letters, but could not, and remained some hours like Prometheus
on his rock, the prey of thoughts from which he could
not fly. Harry did not even attempt any letters or other arrangements.
He sat by an open window that looked abroad
over the desert square and hushed city, steeped in moonlight
and peopled only with those vague, blended, harmonious
sounds, which float—unresting echoes of the day—
over the dim night masses of a great city. There was no
fear in his bosom. Life was not dear to him, and death
was not terrible. The one had been already scathed with
two blows of fortune, than which he thought none could be
more crushing and insupportable: the fading of his earliest,
only dream of love, and the loss of a brother for whom
his affection was tender and strong. With Frank in one
hand, and Fanny Elton in the other, ah! what a scene of
bliss would the world have been! Both were gone: one
to the grave, the other he believed unworthy of him.
Should the approaching combat leave him a corpse, neither
he nor any one else, he thought, would be greatly the loser.
Sometimes the image of his pale mother, clothed in black,
floated up to his eyes, but Time, that heals all wounds,

[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

must heal hers, or bear her with him into the black and
empty void. Then Frank's well-known voice rang in his
ear—his bright smile, his snowy teeth, his rosy cheek,
his thick, silky hair, his broad, white forehead, his thousand
little endearing ways, and then the image of his stiff, cold
corpse, to be avenged in a few moments.

But all these meditations were vague and mingled,
and he felt oppressed and bewildered by one tremendous
thought of what lay before him—to kill. Sometimes he
asked himself, was it right? but that was too late. Besides,
do not all men—all gentlemen—sanction the duel,
and was ever cause more holy than his? So the silent, fragrant,
soft hours fleeted along and bore him on, as with the
swift, black current of a river that lapses to the edge of the
cataract. He would not pause if he could, he could not if
he would. The custom had caught him with its resistless
tide, and thus duty, honour, vengeance, and necessity, all
united to sanction the deed he was about to do. With a stern
resolution, he sat lost in thought, till the wheels of the carriage
were heard, and White came, and deliberately determined
to take the life of his opponent or lose his own, he
set off for the appointed ground. As the dark shapes of
the city, the open spaces, shadowy woods, fragrant gardens,
and dim, sweet shores of the Elbe flew by him, he could
not but reflect he was on a dark errand, which contrasted
strangely with the calm and tender beauty of outward nature.

“There they are!” cried White.

“They are welcome,” said Harry, gravely.

Nothing could have been better managed. Harry himself
had nothing to do but float with the stream. Before he knew
it, he was standing, with a pistol in his hand, on a green lawn
by the road-side, in the silver light of daybreak, ten paces
in front of the pale and silent Middleton.

“At the word three;” said White, and began to count.

“One!—two!—three!”

They fired. Middleton staggered forward a few paces,
and fell headlong.

Harry stood motionless, looking down on that once
haughty form, now prostrate, and which, after turning twice
over, lay on its back, the face staring wildly upward, at his
very feet. The surgeon knelt, and said, in a hurried voice,

“You had better be off—quick!—quick!”

[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]

“He is not dead?” cried Harry.

His voice sounded strange—like that of ons who addresses
an immense, listening multitude.

“Dead—quite dead—through his very heart!” said the
surgeon.

“Come! Lennox—come!” cried White.

With the smoke in his nostril—the thunder surging in
his ear—his hand benumbed with the thrill of so unaccustomed
a deed—his head reeling and the ground moving
under his feet, Harry stood, still motionless, looking down
on his victim, and only repeated,

“Lord Middleton is not dead!”

“Dead enough,” repeated White. “Won't you get into
your carriage?”

“Yes,” said Harry.

“Your passport is vise'd for Vienna, you know!”

“Is it?”

“Mine is for London. What's the matter with you?
rouse yourself—it's getting light!”

“Frank is avenged, then!” said Harry, “and I have done
my duty.”

His arm dropped without strength to his side. The carriage
drew up, and he got in, but his eyes, as if by a fatal
fascination, were riveted upon the form which, with stark,
marble face, the blood-drenched clothes torn and cut from
the naked breast, the convulsive hands clutched full of grass
and earth, had already received the eternal seal of death.

The carriage-door was gently closed, and the postillion
mounted. Colonel Rochelle and the surgeon lifted their
hats. Harry returned their salutations calmly, and in a few
moments the spot was left far behind him, and the deed was
written among the irrevocable, ineffaceable records of the
past.