"At a meeting which took place with pistols, this morning,
between two English lords at the White Meadows, one fell so
fatally wounded that his death ensued in a few minutes. An
instantaneous cry of foul play amongst his friends led to a
fierce and angry altercation, which ended in a second
encounter between the first principal and the second of the
deceased. In this the former was shot through the throat,
the bullet injuring several large vessels, and lodging, it
is supposed, in the spine. He has been conveyed to the Hotel
Royal, but no hopes of his recovery are entertained."

"I suspected what would come of your discussion, Bob. Had you only been
minded to slip away with me, you'd have been in the enjoyment of a whole
skin by this time. I wonder which of them shot him. I'd take the odds
it was the Frenchman; he handled the pistols like a fellow who envied us
our pleasant chances. I suppose I ought to write to Barnard, or to his
people; but it's not an agreeable task, and I'll think over it."

He thought over it, and wrote as follows:

"Dear Bob,--I suspect, from a very confused paragraph in a
stupid newspaper, that you have fought somebody and got
wounded. Write and say if this be so what it was all about,
who did it, and what more can be done for you,

"By yours truly,

"H.C.

"Address, Como."

To this he received no answer when he called at the post-office, and
turned his steps next to Orta. He did not really know why, but it was,
perhaps, with some of that strange instinct that makes the criminal
haunt the homes of those he has once injured, and means to injure more.
There was, however, one motive which he recognised himself; he wished to
know something of those at the villa; when they had heard from Loyd, and
what? whether, too, they had heard of his own doings, and in what way?
A fatal duel, followed by another that was like to prove fatal, was
an event sure to provoke newspaper notice. The names could not escape
publicity, and he was eager to see in what terms they mentioned his own.
He trusted much to the difficulty of getting at any true version of the
affair, and he doubted greatly if anyone but Graham and himself could
have told why they were to meet at all. Graham's second, Rochefort,
evidently knew very little of the affair. At all events, Graham was no
longer there to give his version, while for the incidents of the d