This rumour of a duel--a mere word dropped carelessly in conversation by a thoughtless acquaintance--called up to her sudden visions of evil to come.

Surely, howsoever she might struggle against love and beat it roughly to silence in her breast, it was not wrong to fear danger for Giovanni,--it could not be a sin to dread the issue of peril when it was all so very near to her.

It might perhaps not be true, for people in the world are willing to amuse their empty minds with empty tales, acknowledging the emptiness.

It could not be true; she had seen Giovanni but a moment before--he would have given some hint, some sign.
Why--after all?
Was it not the boast of such men that they could face the world and wear an indifferent look, at times of the greatest anxiety and danger?
But, again, if Giovanni had been involved in a quarrel so serious as to require the arbitrament of blood, some rumour of it would have reached her.

She had talked with many men that night, and with some women--gossips all, whose tongues wagged merrily over the troubles of friend, or foe, and who would have battened upon anything so novel as a society duel, as a herd of jackals upon the dead body of one of their fellows, to make their feast off it with a light heart.