“Where is Katherine?” That was the mother’s first question, and she called her through the house.  From the closed best parlour, Katherine came, white and weeping.

“What is the matter, then, that you are crying?  And why into the dark room go you?”

“Full of sorrow I am, mother, and I went to the room to pray to God; but I cannot pray.”

“‘Full of sorrow.’  Yes, for that Englishman you are full of sorrow.  And how can you pray when you are disobeying your good father?  God will not 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.”