r see them
otherwise, save once, in respect to that grief. She gave him a cold hand
as she went out: "Thank you, brother," she said, in a low voice, and
with a simplicity more touching than tears; "all you have said is true
and kind, and I will go away and ask pardon." The three others remained
behind, and talked over the dreadful story. It affected Dr. Atterbury
more even than us, as it seemed. The death of Mohun, her husband's
murderer, was more awful to my mistress than even the Duke's unhappy
end. Esmond gave at length what particulars he knew of their quarrel,
and the cause of it. The two noblemen had long been at war with respect
to the Lord Gerard's property, whose two daughters my Lord Duke and
Mohun had married. They had met by appointment that day at the lawyer's
in Lincoln's Inn Fields; had words which, though they appeared very
trifling to those who heard them, were not so to men exasperated by long
and previous enmity. Mohun asked my Lord Duke where he could see his
Grace's friends, and within an hour had sent two of his own to arrange
this deadly duel. It was pursued with such fierceness, and sprung from
so trifling a cause, that all men agreed at the time that there was
a party, of which these three notorious brawlers were but agents, who
desired to take Duke Hamilton's life away. They fought three on a side,
as in that tragic meeting twelve years back, which hath been recounted
already, and in which Mohun performed his second murder. They rushed
in, and closed upon each other at once without any feints or crossing
of swords even, and stabbed one at the other desperately, each receiving
many wounds; and Mohun having his death-wound, and my Lord Duke lying
by him, Macartney came up and stabbed his Grace as he lay on the ground,
and gave him the blow of which he died. Colonel Macartney denied
this, of which the horror and indignation of the whole kingdom would
nevertheless have him guilty, and fled the country, whither he never
returned.

What was the real cause of the Duke Hamilton's death?--a paltry quarrel
that might easily have been made up, and with a ruffian so low, base,
profligate, and degraded with former crimes and repeated murders, that
a man of such renown and princely rank as my Lord Duke might have
disdained to sully his sword with the blood of such a villain. But his
spirit was so high that those who wished his death knew that his courage
was like his charity, and never turned any man away; a