Atterbury, the pious creature's almoner and director; and the dean had
entered with her as a physician whose place was at a sick-bed. Beatrix's
mother looked at Esmond and ran towards her daughter, with a pale face and
open heart and hands, all kindness and pity. But Beatrix passed her by,
nor would she have any of the medicaments of the spiritual physician. "I
am best in my own room and by myself," she said. Her eyes were quite dry;
nor did Esmond ever 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 caus