It was not until Jane had left and Renee was in her bedroom looking at the clock tick away the seconds that she saw the full extent of her mistake. She became terrified. She wished she could contact Thomas and tell him not to show up, but there was no way to do so as her servants had already left the house to spend a nice evening at the wedding and she knew no other way of communicating with him. She regretted the rash promise that she had given in a moment of weakness.

  Then suddenly something occurred to her. There was one more way to prevent the meeting. She could hurry downstairs and lock the garden door. She stood up quickly, it was too late. There was no mistake as a sound echoed through the cold night. It was the sound of Thomas St. Ives’s palms striking one on the other. They resounded in her ears like the gloomy tolling of a funereal bell. Panic overwhelmed her. She tried to grasp the door knob, but her hand trembled so that she could hardly grip it. She had not answered Thomas’s signal, but she knew his passion would not allow him to leave without seeing her. The more, because Jane had informed him that all the domestics of the Swaffham household would be attending a wedding and that consequently the mansion would be deserted and the chance of being discovered was just not there. Thomas knew from his circle of friends that the lord was away. He, therefore, opened the door in the garden wall and walked boldly to the house and went inside. When Renee came down the stairway she found herself face to face with Thomas St. Ives, whose eyes were beaming with emotion and whose body was trembling with excitement.

  At the sight of the man she loved she staggered backwards with a low cry of anguish and despair.

  “No!” she said. “We will both be lost!”

  He didn’t seem to hear her as he slowly walked up the staircase. Renee slowly, step by step, moved back through the open door of her bedroom, across the carpeted floor, until she reached the wall and could go no further.

  Thomas followed her slowly, desperately. He closed the door of the bedroom as he entered it. This sufficed to restore Renee to the full possession of her senses.

  “I cannot permit him to speak,” she thought. “He will see that my love for him is still as strong as ever.”

  Thomas was now very close too her. She could hear him breathing.

  “You must leave now! I was mad, when I said what I said yesterday. You love me too much not to listen to me, when I tell you that the moment of madness is over and that I can now think clearly again, so let my openness convince you of the truth of what I say. Thomas St. Ives, I love you.”

  The young man gasped with delight on hearing these words coming out of her mouth.

  “It is true,” continued Renee, “and I would give half the years remaining to me on this earth to be your wife. Thomas, I love you, but the voice of my wedding vows speaks louder than the whispers of my heart. I may die of sadness, but there will be no stain on my marriage. There will be no remorse eating out my heart. Farewell, Thomas!”

  But the baron wouldn’t consent to this immediate dismissal and seemed to wish to say something.

  “Go!” said the young woman, with an air of exasperation. “Leave now!”

  He didn’t obey her.

  She went on, “I’m Lady Swaffham and I will keep my father’s name and the name that has been entrusted to me pure and unsullied. If you really love me, let my honor be as dear to you as your own and never try to see me again.”

  Thomas seemed unable to answer for a moment.

  “I do love you,” he whispered. “I despise anyone, who betrays a wedding vow, but I respect and honor any woman, who risks everything to follow a man she loves. Renee, please forget your name, title and fortune. Run away with me.”

  “I love you too much, Thomas,” she answered, overwhelmed by the depth of his feelings for her, “to allow you to ruin your future. Your love is all-consuming now, but the day will come, that you will regret your decision.”

  Thomas St. Ives shook his head slowly as if he didn’t understand her thoroughly.

  “You don’t trust me,” he said, “but yet you love me. Flee with me to America and we will live happily under whatever name you choose.”

  “I must not listen to you,” she screamed anxiously. “It’s impossible what you want of me.”

  “Impossible? Why? You love me and I love you. I beg you.”

  “Ah, Thomas,” she sobbed, “if only I was stronger and had stood up to my father...”

  He moved forward and placed his arm around her waist. His face moved closer to hers to kiss her, when all of a sudden he felt Renee shiver in his arms. She looked at the door. It had opened silently during their conversation. On the threshold stood Lord Philip Swaffham, furious and threatening.

  The baron knew immediately the terrible position his selfishness had placed the woman he loved in.

  “Stay where you are,” he said, addressing Philip. “Don’t come any nearer.”

  A dismissive laugh from the husband made him realize the folly of his demand. He felt the young woman’s strength leave her body. He caught her and carefully supported her to a sofa and seated her on it. She regained her consciousness and as she opened her eyes and looked in his, Thomas read in them the endless love she felt for him. She forgave him for ruining her honor and her life. Her eyes and the message they conveyed, restored Thomas’s composure and coolness. He turned towards Philip.

  “However compromising this may seem, I’m the only one, who deserves punishment. Renee has nothing to do with it. I came here without her knowledge and without any encouragement from her. I entered this house, because I knew that the servants were absent.”

  Philip maintained his angry silence. He too needed to think. As he had ascended the stairs he knew that he would find his wife with a lover, but he had never suspected her lover was Thomas St. Ives, a man whom he loathed and hated more than anyone he was forced to meet in high society. When he recognized Thomas, only with the utmost difficulty was he able to restrain himself from attacking him and strangling him with his bare hands. He knew the cad had gained Jane’s confidence, but now here he found him the lover of his wife.

  His face was outwardly calm and cold as marble, but the flames of hate and fury were raging in his heart and mind and it was this overheating of senses that prevented his legs and hands to obey his will to kill.

  St. Ives folded his arms and continued, “I have only just now arrived here at the house. I wish you were here to listen to all that passed between us. I really wish that! Then you would understand the nobility of your wife’s soul. I admit to my fault and I’m at your service and prepared to give you the satisfaction, which you will demand.”

  “I presume,” answered Philip slowly, “that you are talking about a duel. Tonight you caused my dishonor and tomorrow you wish to kill me. No, sir, in a game between men, you played with your life and it is you, who lost.”

  St. Ives bowed.

  “I’m a dead man,” he thought as he glanced towards Renee and the mist slowly lifted from his mind and he imagined seeing a hidden hand in the dark, “and not even because of you, but on account of another woman.”

  Philip had regained his composure and knew he was in the right, at least the one which would count later, when the dust had time to settle.

  “Why should I risk my life in a duel? I come to my own home and find you with my wife. I will blow out your brains and the law will applaud me.”

  He drew the revolver from his pocket and levelled it at Thomas. St. Ives didn’t show any signs of emotion. Philip didn’t pull the trigger and the suspense became more than he could bear.

  “Shoot!” cried Thomas. “Why don’t you just end it all?”

  “Patience,” answered Philip coldly. “Let me think. Your dead body would inconvenience me enormously.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “I will kill you,” answered Philip in such a ferocious voice that Thomas shuddered in spite of his great courage, “but it will not be with a pistol shot. They say that blood will wash away any stain, but that is not true. Even if I shed all yours, it will not remove the stain from my honor. I can not remain alive, when you are also alive. One of us must disappear from the face of the earth.”

  “Show me how this is to be done.”

  Philip answered, “If only I was certain that no human being was aware of your presence here tonight.”

  “No one knows.”

  “In that case,” answered the lord, “instead of taking advantage of the laws of this nation and shooting you down like a mad dog, I agree to give you a chance to live.”

  Thomas breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I’m ready for whatever you decide,” he replied, calmly.

  “This will not be an ordinary duel in the light of day with seconds to regulate our behavior.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I name swords as the weapons, the garden as the location and now as the hour of our duel.”

  The young baron cast a glance at the window.

  “You’re probably thinking,” said Philip, seeing his look, “that the night is too dark to fight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t fear the Grim Reaper as yet. You still have a chance,” said Philip. “It’s never too dark to die, because you understand that one of us must die and never be heard of again.”

  “I understand. Let’s get it over with.”

  Philip shook his head.

  “You’re in too great a hurry,” he said. “There is more. We need to plan this out, so the survivor does not end up on the gallows.” He looked at his wife and smiled sarcastically. “For her sake.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “At the end of the garden there is a small plot of land surrounded by trees. No one can see us there. You must follow me there. We will each take a spade and dig a grave for the body of the one, who loses. When this grave is dug, we will take to our swords and fight to the death. The one, who keeps his feet, must promise to finish the other, drag his body to the hole and fill the grave with earth.”

  “Barbarous!” exclaimed Baron Thomas St. Ives. “I will never agree to such uncivilized terms.”

  “Please yourself,” answered Philip. “In that case I will kill you here and now. That is my right as the aggrieved husband. The clock points to five minutes to eleven. You have till eleven to accept my terms or I will fire.”

  The barrel of the revolver was just a few inches from Thomas St. Ives’s heart and the finger of his enemy was curved dangerously around the trigger. He, however, did not think of this danger. He thought of the woman, sitting silently, almost unconsciously on the sofa. Her eyes were wide and full of fear, but also hope that he would be victorious. Thomas also thought of the past few months and he could hardly believe that they had led him to this point in his life.

  “You have one minute left,” said the lord.

  St. Ives awoke. His mind was far away from the terrible present. He glanced once more at the clock, then at the other man and the revolver in his hand and lastly at Renee, who from her ashen complexion might have been regarded as dead, save for the hysterical sobs, which shook her body now that the hour of decision had arrived. His heart was breaking as he saw her tears and he felt that it was impossible to leave her in such a condition without helping her, but he saw well that any show of pity on his part could mean more punishment for her, if the other man won.

  “Heaven have mercy on her,” he mumbled. “For her sake I must kill this man or her life will be one of endless torture. I must kill him.”

  He took his handkerchief and turning away from Philip, he handed it to the woman he loved. She gave him such a look of love as she took it and touched her face with it that it shattered his heart in a thousand pieces.

  “I accept your terms,” he said almost defiantly.

  He spoke at the first stroke of the clock announcing eleven o’clock.

  “Good man,” answered Philip coldly as he lowered his gun.

  The coolness of mind in a time of extreme danger, which was the marked characteristic of an Etonian education, had seemed to vanish from the baron’s voice and behavior. He now had her to consider.

  “I, too, have certain conditions to propose,” he said.

  “But we agreed already…”

  “Let me explain. We’re going to fight in your garden in the middle of the night without witnesses. We will dig a grave and the survivor is to bury the other in it. Tell me, am I right?”

  Philip nodded.

  “But,” continued the baron, “how can we be sure that all will end here and that the earth will swallow our secret?”

  “We don’t know, of course.”

  St. Ives was fully decided to win his point.

  “You say we,” he continued, “but our chances are not equal. If I die, who would dream of searching here for me? You’re in your own house. You can take every precaution to protect yourself, but suppose that I kill you. Who will help me? Renee? The finger of suspicion will point at her first. And how will she help me? By saying to your gardener, as everyone in London is searching for you, “Mind that you don’t meddle with the piece of land between the trees at the end of the garden.”

  The thought of the anonymous letter flashed red in Philip’s mind and he remembered that the writer knew about Thomas St. Ives going to his house.

  “What do you suggest we do?” he asked.

  “We should each of us, without stating the reason of our argument, write a letter to be posted from a foreign country by the survivor stating that we have left England to never return and sign our names.”

  Philip thought for a moment.

  “That will not fail to stop any police investigation. I accept.”

  The two men sat down at Renee’s desk and wrote two letters, dated from a foreign country at a time in the future. After he had signed his letter, Philip sprang to his feet.

  “Now let us go down to the garden.”

  Thomas looked at Renee one more time. Then they left the room together. Philip stepped aside so St. Ives would descend the stairs first. He felt his coat pulled and turning around. He saw that his wife, who was too weak to rise to her feet, had crawled to him on her knees.

  “Have mercy, Philip! Have mercy! You never loved me. Why should you fight for me? I promise you that I will disappear tomorrow and all my money will be yours to keep. I swear to you that I will never come back and all will think me dead, even my own father. Please have pity!”

  “Pray to the Good Lord, Lady Swaffham, that it may be your lover’s sword, which pierces my heart. It’s your only hope to see the sun rise.”

  He pushed her away from him with brutal violence and the unhappy woman fell to the floor with a cry as he turned and followed his nemesis down the stairs.

  Several times Philip Swaffham’s anger had been about to explode, but he restrained himself, because of pride. Now that his adulterous wife was no longer in view, he showed a savage determination and a deadly will. As he followed St. Ives down the stairs, he kept saying to himself, “Quick! Time is dear.”

  Any moment the servants would begin to return home from the wedding celebration. He led Thomas to the hunting room. It was filled with weapons and trophies of all kinds.

  “Here,” he said, turning on the light. “Choose your weapon.”

  Thomas was as anxious as Philip to bring the horrible encounter to a close. The last despairing glance of the young woman had pierced his heart like a dagger and when he saw Philip push his trembling wife aside with such brutality, only his honor as a gentleman had caused him to refrain from attacking him there and then. He didn’t wish to waste time choosing a weapon. He grasped the nearest sword to him, which was mounted on the wall.

  “One will do as well as another.”

  “Good,” said Philip, grabbing a sword from above the fire place. “We cannot fight in this darkness, but I know how to remedy that. Come with me.”

  They went into the kitchens, where he took up a large lantern.

  “This,” he said, “will allow us to finish the job.”

  “I hope the neighbors won’t see it as a light in the garden at this hour will surely attract attention,” observed Thomas.

  “The spot I’ve chosen can not be seen from anywhere.”

  They entered the garden and walked to a shed. Philip went inside alone and came back with two spades. Then they walked to the trees and bushes at the far side of the garden. Philip lit the lantern and hung it on the branch of a tree. He was right. The clearing between the trees and the shrubs was well hidden.

  “We will dig the grave over there,” he pointed at a tall tree.

  He threw off his coat and handing a spade to St. Ives, he said, “Let’s get to work!”

  St. Ives would have needed all night to dig the grave by himself. The lord’s muscles, however, were hardened by his former life as a farmer and in thirty minutes it was ready to receive and hide its secret.

  “That will do,” said Philip.

  He threw his spade on the ground and picked up his sword.

  “En garde.”

  St. Ives didn’t immediately obey. Impressed by the task at hand, he felt a cold shiver run through his body. The dark night, the tall trees, the flickering lantern and the grave affected his nerves.

  “Are you ready?” asked Philip impatiently.

  “Let me speak,” cried St. Ives, driven to desperation. “One of us will be lying dead right here in a few minutes. When facing death a man’s words should be believed. Listen to me. I swear to you on my honor that Lady Swaffham carries no guilt.”

  “You have said that before.”

  “It’s my duty to repeat it, because I’m thinking of her. If I die, it will be my irrational emotions that have caused the ruin of one of the purest women in the world. I beg you to believe that she has nothing to be ashamed of. See, I’m not ashamed to beg for mercy for her. Let my death, if you kill me, be the end of it all. Be gentle with her, if you survive me.”