in no friendly
attitude of an ugly brawl that had probably affrighted her Grace, or
her personal attendant, a woman capable of screaming, for he was well
assured that it could not have been Chloe, the least likely of her sex
to abandon herself to the use of their weapons either in terror or in
jeopardy. The antagonists were Mr. Camwell and Count Caseldy. On his
approaching them, Mr. Camwell sheathed his sword, saying that his work
was done. Caseldy was convulsed with wrath, to such a degree as to make
the part of an intermediary perilous. There had been passes between
them, and Caseldy cried aloud that he would have his enemy's blood.
The night-watch was nowhere. Soon, however, certain shopmen and their
apprentices assisted Mr. Beamish to preserve the peace, despite the
fury of Caseldy and the provocations--'not easy to withstand,' says
the chronicler--offered by him to young Camwell. The latter said to Mr.
Beamish: 'I knew I should be no match, so I sent for you,' causing his
friend astonishment, inasmuch as he was assured of the youth's natural
valour.

Mr. Beamish was about to deliver an allocution of reproof to them in
equal shares, being entirely unsuspicious of any other reason for the
alarum than this palpable outbreak of a rivalry that he would have
inclined to attribute to the charms of Chloe, when the house-door swung
wide for them to enter, and the landlady of the house, holding clasped
hands at full stretch, implored them to run up to the poor lady: 'Oh,
she's dead; she's dead, dead!'

Caseldy rushed past her.

'How, dead! good woman?' Mr. Beamish questioned her most incredulously,
half-smiling.

She answered among her moans: 'Dead by the neck; off the door--Oh!'

Young Camwell pressed his forehead, with a call on his Maker's name. As
they reached the landing upstairs, Caseldy came out of the sitting-room.

'Which?' said Camwell to the speaking of his face.

'She!' said the other.

'The duchess?' Mr. Beamish exclaimed.

But Camwell walked into the room. He had nothing to ask after that
reply.

The figure stretched along the floor was covered with a sheet. The young
man fell at his length beside it, and his face was downward.

Mr. Beamish relates: 'To this day, when I write at an interval of
fifteen years, I have the tragic ague of that hour in my blood, and I
behold the shrouded form of the most admirable of women, whose heart was
broken by a faithless man ere she devoted her wreck of life to a