came to kill me"--

"He went to fight you," she said, looking at him more intently than she
had yet done.

A sardonic smile played for a moment at his lips. He seemed about to
speak through it. Presently, however, his eyes half closed as with a
sudden thought he did not return her gaze, but looked down to where the
graves of monks and abbots, and sinners maybe, were as steps upon the
river bank.

"What does it matter?" he thought. "She hates me." But he said aloud:
"Then, as you say, he came to fight me. I hear that he is dead," he added
in a tone still more softened. He had not the heart to meet her scorn with
scorn. As he said, it didn't matter if she hated him. It would be worth
while remembering, when he had gone, that he had been gentle with her and
had spared her the shame of knowing that she had married not only a
selfish brute, but a coward and a would be assassin as well. He had only
heard rumors of her life since he had last seen her, twelve years before,
but he knew enough to be sure that she was aware of Fairfax Detlor's true
character. She had known less still of his life, for since her marriage
she had never set foot in Louisiana, and her mother, while she lived,
never mentioned his name or told her more than that the Telford plantation
had been sold for a song. When Hagar had told him that Detlor was dead, a
wild kind of hope had leaped up in him that perhaps she might care for him
still and forgive him when he had told all. These last few minutes had
robbed him of that hope. He did not quarrel with the act The game was
lost long ago, and it was foolish to have dreamed for an instant that the
record could be reversed.