These affecting
apostrophes he seemed, in the silence of the night, to hear almost with
bodily ears. Silent reproaches seemed written upon their sleeping
features; and once, when his wife suddenly awakened under the glare of
the lamp which he carried, he felt the strongest impulse to fly from the
room; but he faltered, and stood rooted to the spot. She looked at him
smilingly, and asked why he was so long in coming to bed. He pleaded an
excuse, which she easily admitted, of some law case to study against the
morning, or some law paper to draw. She was satisfied; and fell asleep
again. He, however, fearing, above all things, that he might miss the
time for his appointment, resolutely abided by his plan of not going to
bed; for the meeting was to take place at Chalk Farm, and by half-past
five in the morning: that is, about one hour after sunrise. One hour and
a half before this time, in the gray dawn, just when the silence of
Nature and of mighty London was most absolute, he crept stealthily, and
like a guilty thing, to the bedside of his sleeping wife and child;
took, what he believed might be his final look of them: kissed them
softly; and, according to his own quotation from Coleridge's _Remorse_,

In agony that could not be remembered;

and a conflict with himself that defied all rehearsal, he quitted his
peaceful cottage at Chelsea in order to seek for the friend who had
undertaken to act as his second. He had good reason, from what he had
heard on the night before, to believe his antagonist an excellent shot;
and, having no sort of expectation that any interruption could offer to
the regular progress of the duel, he, as the challenger, would have to
stand the first fire; at any rate, conceiving this to be the fair
privilege of the party challenged, he did not mean to avail himself of
any proposal for drawing lots upon the occasion, even if such a proposal
should happen to be made. Thus far the affair had travelled through the
regular stages of expectation and suspense; but the interest of the case
as a story was marred and brought to an abrupt conclusion by the conduct
of the commissioner. He was a man of known courage, but he also, was a
man of conscientious scruples; and, amongst other instances of courage,
had the courage to own himself in the wrong. He felt that his conduct
hitherto had not been wise or temperate, and that he would be sadly
aggravating his original error by persisting in aiming at a man's life,