she has given him for the following day.

Mildred tacitly owns her guilt, and invokes any punishment her brother
may adjudge to it; but she will not betray her lover by confessing his
name, and she will not forbid Mertoun to come. The Earl's mind does not
connect the two. No extenuating circumstance suggests itself. He has
loved his young sister with a chivalrous admiration and trust; and he is
one of those men to whom a blot in the 'scutcheon is only less terrible
than the knowledge that such trust has been misplaced. He is stung to
madness by what seems this crowning proof of his sister's depravity; and
by the thought of him who has thus corrupted her. He surprises Mertoun
on the way to the last stolen visit to his love; and, before there has
been time for an explanation, challenges and kills him.

The reaction of feeling begins when he perceives that Mertoun has
allowed himself to be killed. Remorse and sorrow deepen into despair as
the dying youth gasps out the story of his constant love, of his boyish
error--of his manly desire of reparation; above all, as he reminds his
hearer of the sister whose happiness he has slain; and asks if he has
done right to set his "thoughtless foot" upon them both, and say as they
perish--

"... Had I thought,
'All had gone otherwise'...."
(vol iv. p. 59.)

Mildred is waiting for her lover. The usual signal has been made: the
lighted purple pane of a painted window sends forth its beckoning gleam.
But Mertoun does not appear; and as the moments pass, a despairing
apathy steals over her, which is only the completed certainty of her