Chapter 7 - Page 2

hear you."

The mother was not pitiless; but she was anxious and troubled, and
Katherine's grief irritated her at the moment. "Go and tell Dinorah to
bring in the tea. The work of the house must go on," she muttered. "And
I think, that it was Saturday night Joris might have remembered."

Then she went back to Joanna, and stood with her, looking through the
gray mist down the road, and feeling even the croaking of the frogs and
the hum of the insects to be an unusual provocation. Just as Dinorah
said, "The tea is served, madam," the large figure of Batavius loomed
through the gathering grayness; and the women waited for him. He came up
the steps without his usual greeting; and his face was so injured and
portentous that Joanna, with a little cry, put her arms around his neck.
He gently removed them.

"No time is this, Joanna, for embracing. A great disgrace has come to
the family; and I, who have always stood up for morality, must bear it
too."

"Disgrace! The word goes not with our name, Batavius; and what mean you,
then? In one word, speak."

But Batavius loved too well any story that was to be wondered over, to
give it in a word; though madam's manner snubbed him a little, and he
said, with less of the air of a wronged man,--

"Well, then, Neil Semple and Captain Hyde have fought a duel. That is
what comes of giving way to passion. I never fought a duel. No one
should make me. It is a fixed principle with me."

"But what? And how?"

"With swords they fought. Like two devils they fought, as if to pieces
they would cut each other."

"Poor Neil! His fault I am sure it was not."

"Joanna! Neil is nearly dead. If he had been in the right, he would not
be nearly dead. The Lord does not forsake a person who is in the right
way."

In the hall behind them Katherine stood. The pallor of her face, the
hopeless droop of her white shoulders and arms, were visible in its
gloomy shadows. Softly as a spirit she walked as she drew nearer to
them.

"And the Englishman? Is he hurt?"

"Killed. He has at least twenty wounds. Till morning he will not live.
It was the councillor himself who separated the men."

"My good Joris, it was like him."

For a moment Katherine's consciousness reeled. The roar of the ocean
which girds our life round was in her ears, the feeling of chill and
collapse at her heart. But with a supreme will she took possession of
herself. "Weak I will not be. All I will know. All I will suffer." And
with these thoughts she went back to the room, and took her place at the
table. In a