"Harwin was killed." Archdale felt her hand tighten its grasp. "And Edmonson," he added. Suddenly she drew away from him, and looked at him searchingly, her breath coming unevenly.
"What!" she gasped. "Both! Both of them! Two deaths! How could it be? Tell me what you mean."
"That is what I mean. It is true. Edmonson, you remember, willed, at last, to recover, and he did so rapidly, that is, he was well enough to go about, though not to report for duty. How he and Harwin arranged matters, or met in the lonely spot in which they were found, I can't explain,—nobody can. Evidently, it was a duel, and it appears to have been without seconds, to make the matter more secret. Each must have given the other his death, for they were found—But I need not tell you all this."
"Yes, tell me how you are sure that they both—died in the duel."
"Edmonson must have given the death-wound first, for it seemed as if Harwin, in an expiring agony, had sprung upon him and stabbed him to the heart, as he fell himself." Elizabeth stood motionless, her face turned away and one hand over her eyes. "The news was brought to the General yesterday morning, and he sent me over to investigate," added Archdale after a pause, in which he had studied her with the utmost attention.
Suddenly she turned quite away from him with a low moan. "It is terrible, terrible!" she said under her breath. "And I—I—Oh, take me back to the house!"
As Archdale obeyed, they went on without speaking, she no longer holding his arm, but shrinking into herself as if she would have liked to be invisible altogether.
"I think," she said at last, slowly, "that I ought to have been willing to go to Canso. Perhaps I could have prevented the meeting by having them watched, or in some way. Of course I can't tell. But I ought not to have been selfish, and ask to stay here."
She had almost reached the house as she said this.
"You, selfish!" he cried.