So the two lovers knelt.
It was at this point that I who sat and witnessed the tragedy was assailed by a horror entirely new.

Hitherto I had, indeed, seen myself in Squire Philip Cardinnock; but now I began also to possess his soul and feel with his feelings, while at the same time I continued to sit before the glass, a helpless onlooker.

I was two men at once; the man who knelt all unaware of what was coming and the man who waited in the arm-chair, incapable of word or movement, yet gifted with a torturing prescience.

And as I sat this was what I saw:-- The brother, as I knelt there oblivious of all but the wounded man, stepped across the room to the corner where his rapier lay, picked it up softly and as softly stole up behind me.

I tried to shout, to warn myself; but my tongue was tied.