'"I have so sold myself in a manner, Lisette," said he, passionately, "and I shall have to pay the bitter, bitter penalty in losing you and life, and even more, perhaps, and all for what is called honour."
'"What awful riddle is this?" I moaned.
'His words seemed to me like some dead language, the import of which I failed to understand.
'"Do not, oh, Lisette, when the fatal time comes, deem me a madman," said he, covering my face with kisses—yea, and tears too.
'"What end—oh, what can all this mean?" I cried, repressing with difficulty a desire to shriek aloud, while holding him in my embrace, for he seemed almost to faint; his lips were a violet tint, and his face was deathly pale.
'"I cannot tell you all that is before me, or what I have to do and to suffer, beyond even what I suffer now, lest you should loathe me, scorn me; but oh, pity me, Lisette, pity me when all is over."
'"Oh, God, he is mad!" I whispered in my heart.
'"I dare not tell you," he resumed; "I have an enemy who is merciless, and I have blighted your life and my own by an act of folly, almost baseness, over which I had no control."
'Unutterable, indescribable was my longing, my anxious and affectionate curiosity to know what this secret was, but next day—on the anniversary of our marriage—I knew all.
'By an arrangement of which all the officers of their corps were cognizant, Lucien and my brother, Victor Gabion, who had challenged him, fought what was called an American duel two days before our marriage. Two little balls, a black and a white one, had been placed in a hat, and each of the two principals drew out one, with the understanding "that he who drew the black one must be numbered with the dead within twelve months."