“You are not going to fight a duel, Le?”
“I shall fight a duel or do a murder! That’s the alternative!”
“Perhaps you may do both.”
“So much the better! But, if you do not want to take my challenge, say so, and you need not do it. I will get some one else.”
“Of course I will, Le! And I will be your second, and will stand by you, through thick and thin! Jove, if ever a man had a just cause, you have! He supplanted you in the affections of your betrothed, and tried to betray her to ruin!”
“Don’t talk about it, or I shall go mad! It was bad enough when I came home expecting to marry my little girl immediately, and to take her right home to our pleasant farmhouse, to find that I had lost her forever! Still, for her dear sake, I bore that. But now, to know that the man who won her from me had a living wife, and deliberately planned her ruin——Oh-h-h! I shall go mad!”
“What has excited you so, Le?”
“The telegram! I have heard the telegram from the Rev. Dr. Minitree read, confirming all that woman told us!”
“But, dear Le, you had heard her story!”
“I never believed it. Heaven knows, I never believed it! It seemed too unlikely, too preposterous, that the man should have married that woman!”