“What!  How dare you treat with unparalleled rudeness a visitor, whose claim upon the courtesy and hospitality of this household is certainly more legitimate and easily recognized than that of—­”

He stopped and kicked out of his way a stool upon which Edna’s feet had been resting.  She had risen, and they stood face to face.

“I am waiting to hear the remainder of your sentence, Mr. Murray.”

He uttered an oath, and hurled his cigar through the window.

“Why the d—­l did you refuse to shake hands with Allston?  I intend to know the truth, and it may prove an economy of trouble for you to speak it at once.”

“If you demand my reasons, you must not be offended at the plainness of my language.  Your cousin is a murderer, and ought to be hung!  I could not force myself to touch a hand all smeared with blood.”

Mr. Murray leaned down and looked into her eyes.

“You are either delirious or utterly mistaken with reference to the identity of the man.  Clinton is no more guilty of murder than you are, and I have been led to suppose that you are rather too ‘pious’ to attempt the role of Marguerite de Brinvillers or Joanna of Hainault!  Cufic lore has turned your brain; ’too much learning hath made thee mad.’”

“No, sir, it is no hallucination; there can be no mistake; it is a horrible, awful fact, which I witnessed, which is burned on my memory, and which will haunt my brain as long as I live.  I saw him shoot Mr. Dent, and heard all that passed on that dreadful morning.  He is doubly criminal—­is as much the murderer of Mrs. Dent as of her husband, for the shock killed her.  Oh! that I could forget her look and scream of agony as she fainted over her husband’s coffin!”

A puzzled expression crossed Mr. Murray’s face; then he muttered: 

“Dent?  Dent?  Ah! yes; that was the name of the man whom Clinton killed in a duel.  Pshaw! you have whipped up a syllabub storm in a tea-cup!  Allston only took ‘satisfaction’ for an insult offered publicly by Dent.”

His tone was sneering and his lip curled, but a strange pallor crept from chin to temples; and a savage glare in his eyes, and a thickening scowl that bent his brows till they met, told of the brewing of no slight tempest of passion.

“I know, sir, that custom, public opinion, sanctions—­at least tolerates that relic of barbarous ages—­that blot upon Christian civilization which, under the name of ‘duelling,’ I recognize as a crime, a heinous crime, which I abhor and detest above all other crimes!  Sir, I call things by their proper names, stripped of the glozing drapery of conventional usage.  You say ’honorable satisfaction’; I say murder! aggravated, unpardonable murder; murder without even the poor palliation of the sudden heat of anger.  Cool, deliberate, willful murder, that stabs the happiness of wives and children, and for which it would seem that even the infinite mercy of