that they fell together. This time Count Victor was uppermost.
His hands were free of a sudden; he raised the knife to stab at the
breast heaving under him, but he heard as from another world--as from a
world of calm and angels--the voice of Olivia in her room crying for
her father, and a revulsion seized him, so that he hesitated at his ugly
task. It was less than a second's slackness, yet it was enough, for his
enemy rolled free and plunged for the stair. Montaiglon seized him as he
fled; the skirt of his coat dragged through his hands, and left him with
a button. He dropped it with a cry, and turned in the darkness to find
himself more frightfully menaced than before.

This time the plunge of the dirk was actual; he felt it sear his side
like a hot iron, and caught the wrist that held it only in time to check
a second blow. His fingers slipped, his head swam; a moment more, and
a Montaiglon was dead very far from his pleasant land of France, in a
phantom castle upon a shadowy sea among savage ghosts.

"Father! father!"

It was Olivia's voice; a light was thrown upon the scene, for she stood
beside the combatants with a candle in her hand.

They drew back at a mutual spasm, and Montaiglon saw that his antagonist
was the Baron of Doom!

CHAPTER XIX -- REVELATION

Doom, astounded, threw the dagger from him with an exclamation. His
eyes, large and burning yet with passion, were wholly for Count Victor,
though his daughter Olivia stood there at his side holding the light
that had revealed the furies to each other, her hair in dark brown
cataracts on her shoulders, and eddying in bewitching curls upon her
ears and temples, that gleamed below like the foam of mountain pools.

"Father! father! what does this mean?" she cried. "There is some fearful
mistake here."

"That is not to exaggerate the position, at all events," thought Count
Victor, breathing hard, putting the knife unobserved behind him.
He smiled to this vision and shrugged his shoulders. He left the
elucidation of the mystery to the other gentleman, this counsellor of
forgiveness and peace, clad head to foot in the garb he contemned, and
capable of some excellent practice with daggers in the darkness.

"I'll never be able to say how much I regret this, Count Victor," said
Doom. "Good God! your hands were going, and in a second or two more--"

"For so hurried a farce," said Count Victor, "the lowered light was
something of a mistake, _n'est ce pas