"For the love of God! be calm, mother. Heed him not," my husband cried.
But, instead, she heeded not her son and again continued, though as she spoke she wiped her lips with her handkerchief, and all saw that it had blood upon it when she had done so.
"Retract, I say! Retract, I say! What! Shall a woman cherish above all other things her honour only to have it fouled and maligned by any crawling villain who chooses to speak the word? Am I--are all women--at the mercy of such base things as you?"
She gazed at him a moment and again she reiterated:
"Retract! Retract! Retract, I say!"
Still his lips quivered but uttered no sound; once he gazed round the room as though seeking to escape; the perspiration stood in beads upon his brow; his knees shook under him. And then, unhappy wretch! he whispered: "I--I cannot; I dare not."
They were the last he ever uttered. Swift as lightning darting from the clouds, the right arm that had been so long paralysed was thrust forth; in an instant her hand had seized the sword that hung by his side and had torn it from its sheath; in another it had passed through his body, the hilt striking against his breast. There was a piercing scream from him, a thud as the body fell to the floor a moment after; a clang of steel as she, after drawing forth the weapon from him, let it fall from her now nerveless hand and, with a gasp, sunk into her son's arms.
"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she moaned, while from her lips there oozed a thin red stream! "Oh, my dear one, at last I have repaid his attempt upon our honour and now 'tis finished. My sweet, this is the end. I have not five minutes' life left to me. Farewell."
Once, as Gerald held her in his arms, she tried to put her own around his neck, he helping her to do so, and then, opening her eyes wide, she whispered, "Thrust a sword through a man's body, Gerald; through a man's body," and so passed away.
How shall I write further, how continue an account of that which I no longer witnessed? The room swam before my eyes; I heard a terrible cry escape from the white lips of Robert St. Amande; in a mist I saw the horror-stricken faces of the assembled guests and of the Marquis. I knew that Sir Robert Walpole called loudly for a physician and a chirurgeon to be fetched; I saw the dead man lying at my feet, the dead woman in her son's arms, and then I swooned and knew no more.