“I thank you,” answered Norbert coldly as he lowered the muzzle of his revolver.
The icy frigidity of manner in a period of extreme danger, which is the marked characteristic of a certain type of education, had now vanished from the Marquis’s tone and behavior.
“But that is not all,” he continued; “I, too, have certain conditions to propose.”
“But we agreed—”
“Let me explain; we are going to fight in the dark in your garden without seconds. We are to dig a grave and the survivor is to bury his dead antagonist. Tell me, am I right?”
Norbert bowed.
“But,” went on the Marquis, “how can you be certain that all will end here, and that the earth will be content to retain our secret? You do not know, and you do not seem to care, that if one day the secret will be disclosed and the survivor accused of being the murderer of the other, arrested, dragged before a tribunal, condemned, and sent to a life-long prison——”
“There is a chance of that, of course.”
“And do you think that I will consent to run such a risk as that?”
“There is such a risk, of course,” answered Norbert phlegmatically; “but that will be an incentive for you to conceal my death as I should conceal yours.”