Soon, however, certain shopmen and their apprentices assisted Mr.Beamish to preserve the peace, despite the fury of Caseldy and the provocations--'not easy to withstand,' says the chronicler--offered by him to young Camwell.

The latter said to Mr.
Beamish: 'I knew I should be no match, so I sent for you,' causing his friend astonishment, inasmuch as he was assured of the youth's natural valour.
Mr.Beamish was about to deliver an allocution of reproof to them in equal shares, being entirely unsuspicious of any other reason for the alarum than this palpable outbreak of a rivalry that he would have inclined to attribute to the charms of Chloe, when the house-door swung wide for them to enter, and the landlady of the house, holding clasped hands at full stretch, implored them to run up to the poor lady: 'Oh, she's dead; she's dead, dead!' Caseldy rushed past her.
'How, dead! good woman ?' Mr.Beamish questioned her most incredulously, half-smiling.
She answered among her moans: 'Dead by the neck; off the door--Oh!' Young Camwell pressed his forehead, with a call on his Maker's name.

As they reached the landing upstairs, Caseldy came out of the sitting-room.
'Which ?' said Camwell to the speaking of his face.
'She!' said the other.
'The duchess ?' Mr.Beamish exclaimed.
But Camwell walked into the room.

He had nothing to ask after that reply.
The figure stretched along the floor was covered with a sheet.

The young man fell at his length beside it, and his face was downward.
Mr.Beamish relates: 'To this day, when I write at an interval of fifteen years, I have the tragic ague of that hour in my blood, and I behold the shrouded form of the most admirable of women, whose heart was broken by a faithless man ere she devoted her wreck of life to arrest one weaker than herself on the descent to perdition.