“Name of a name!” observed the Marquis, who was unwounded, “but here is another widow to be consoled,—when I had aimed too at his ear! That is the devil of this carousing all night, and then coming to one’s duels with shaken nerves. But how fare our sons of Œdipus?”
The Marquis turned, and what he saw was sufficiently curious.
Florian’s plump face was transfigured, as he knelt before his Melior.
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Florian had winced when hit, thus for an instant spoiling his aim, but he at once lowered his pistol, and he shot this tall man who had nothing to do with his little brother, neatly through the breast. Raoul de Puysange fired wildly with his second pistol, and drew his sword as if to rush upon Florian, who merely shifted the yet loaded pistol to his uncrippled right hand, and waited. But Raoul had not advanced two paces when Raoul fell.
Florian dropped the undischarged pistol, and went to his brother. This thin snow underfoot was like scattered sand, and your treading in it was audible.
“You have done for me, my dear,” declared the Chevalier.
And Florian was perturbed. He wished, for all that his arm was hurting him confoundedly, to reply whatever in the circumstances was the correct thing, but he could think of no exact precedent. So he put aside the wild fancy of responding, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and to this stranger at his feet he said, with a quite admirable tremor wherein anguish blended nicely with a manly self-restraint: “Raoul, you are the happier of us two. Do you forgive me?”
“Yes,” replied the other, “I forgive you.” Raoul gazed up fondly at his brother. Raoul said, with that genius for the obviously appropriate which Florian always envied, “I feel for you as I know you do for me.”