e woman to precede him.

He came back to the door of the carriage in a few minutes. "Let us go
home, Maltravers," said he, "this man is not in a state to meet you."

"Ha!" cried Maltravers, frowning darkly, and all his long-smothered
indignation rushing like fire through every vein of his body; "would he
shrink from the atonement?" He pushed Danvers impatiently aside, leapt
from the carriage, and rushed up-stairs.

Danvers followed.

Heated, wrought-up, furious, Ernest Maltravers burst into a small and
squalid chamber; from the closed doors of which, through many chinks,
had gleamed the light that told him Cesarini was within. And Cesarini's
eyes, blazing with horrible fire, were the first object that met his
gaze. Maltravers stood still, as if frozen into stone.

"Ha! ha!" laughed a shrill and shrieking voice, which contrasted dreadly
with the accents of the soft Tuscan, in which the wild words were
strung--"who comes here with garments dyed in blood? You cannot accuse
me--for my blow drew no blood, it went straight to the heart--it tore no
flesh by the way; we Italians poison our victims! Where art thou--where
art thou, Maltravers? I am ready. Coward, you do not come! Oh, yes, yes,
here you are; the pistols--I will not fight so. I am a wild beast. Let
us rend each other with our teeth and talons!"

Huddled up like a heap of confused and jointless limbs in the furthest
corner of the room, lay the wretch, a raving maniac;--two men keeping
their firm gripe on him, which, ever and anon, with the mighty strength
of madness, he shook off, to fall back senseless and exhausted; his
strained and bloodshot eyes starting from their sockets, the slaver
gathering round his lips, his raven hair standing on end, his delicate
and symmetrical features distorted into a hideous and Gorgon aspect. It
was, indeed, an appalling and sublime spectacle, full of an awful moral,
the meeting of the foes! Here stood Maltravers, strong beyond the common
strength of men, in health, power, conscious superiority, premeditated
vengeance--wise, gifted; all his faculties ripe, developed, at his
command;--the complete and all-armed man, prepared for defence and
offence against every foe--a man who, once roused in a righteous
quarrel, would not have quailed before an army; and there and thus was
his dark and fierce purpose dashed from his soul, shivered into atoms
at his feet. He felt the nothingness of man and man's wrath--in the
presence of the ma