"He is getting a horse, I suppose. I have not heard him go."
"Tell him to wait five minutes. This is a serious affair, and we had better act deliberately."
Diana intended to prevent the duel if possible. Marcantonio was willing to humour her, and went out to stop the man. When he came back, she made him sit down beside her.
She explained to him the situation very clearly. Batiscombe had insulted Leonora, had done her a mortal offence. But Batiscombe was not the important person in the case. Leonora was the important person. If matters had been different, if, for instance, a man had run away with another man's wife, then, of course, they must necessarily fight,—and the woman made no difference, since her reputation would be already destroyed. But it would be a terrible injury to a young wife to have her husband fighting a duel about her before they had been married three months. People always say there is not much smoke without a little fire; society, being generally averse to standing up to be shot at, says that a man in Marcantonio's position would not go out unless he had very serious cause. Of course it would say in this case that the cause lay with Leonora, that she should never have allowed a man enough intimacy to give him a chance of insulting her, and so forth, and so on.
Diana would not use the argument of the Church's prohibition of duelling. She knew that Leonora's welfare was the chiefest thing present in her brother's mind, and that if she could show him that, for Leonora's sake, he ought to leave Batiscombe alone, he would assuredly conquer his anger and his pride. He had no sanguine and combative instincts, like Julius; he did not like fighting for the enjoyment of it, and if he could be convinced that his anger was unwise, he would ultimately get the better of it, now that the first sharp moment of wrath was over. To preserve Leonora's spotless fame was a much more important thing than to punish an insolent foreigner for vainly attempting to damage it, and thereby calling the attention of the world to the fact that her reputation was capable of damage.
It was a hard fight, and Diana's patience never wearied through the hours they talked together. More than once she thought it was lost, and that Marcantonio would order the note to be dispatched. Nothing but the real affection and trust that existed between her and her brother made it possible for her to succeed. But at last he was convinced, and silently went out and got the note he had written, and tore it up before his sister. The die was cast, and he did not mention the subject again, but went to see his wife. At her door he was told by her maid that Leonora was asleep, which was not true. But he asked no questions, and retired to his own room to solace himself as he might. He was too deeply distressed to wonder why Diana did not go to Leonora and sit with her.
Leonora had hardly spoken to any one since she and Batiscombe had parted on the previous evening before dinner. At table, as has been seen, she had said little, and no one had seen her since except her husband, who had gone to her in the morning. After his visit she rang for her maid and told her to see that no one disturbed her, as she was going to sleep again and would ring when she wanted anything.
At the moment when her husband was told she was not visible, she was sitting in her dressing-room, just behind the closed blinds of the window, listening to the monotonous, dry hum of the locusts in the garden, and wondering whether anything would ever happen again in the world. She was utterly dishevelled, her rich hair falling to her shoulders and halfway to the ground in wildest disorder; the gay coloured ribbons of her peignoir all untied and ruffled, her bare feet half thrust into her gold-embroidered slippers, her hands lying idly in her lap, as though there were nothing more for them to do. A strange, wild figure, sitting there surrounded by all the gorgeous little properties and knickknacks of a great lady's toilet.
Batiscombe was gone! Her husband had told her that he had been requested to postpone the remainder of his visit indefinitely. Of course he had gone, then. Marcantonio had supposed she would understand and be well satisfied. But she had only turned and hidden her face in the pillow,—as was perhaps natural to a very young woman when her husband mentioned anything that gave her a sense of shame. She must have been very much hurt by the insult, whatever it was, and she could not bear to hear it mentioned. Marcantonio had not told his sister of this, thinking it would be indelicate, and was nobody's business but his own and his wife's.
Batiscombe was gone—when should she see him again? How could he reach her, or she him? What was life to be like without him? And then the dazed, disappointed, terrified look came again to her face, and she stared at nothing, vacantly, and like a woman beside herself.