eleven at night
But the officer , as he was sullenly departing , said -- that , if he were killed , -LRB- as he thought he _ should _ be , -RRB- his death would lie at Kate 's door . I do not take _ his _ view of the case , and am not moved by his rhetoric or his logic . Kate _ was _ , and relented . The duel was fixed for eleven at night , under the walls of a monastery . Unhappily the night proved unusually dark , so that the two principals had to tie white handkerchiefs round their elbows , in order to descry each other . In the confusion they wounded each other mortally . Upon that , according to a usage not peculiar to Spaniards , but extending -LRB- as doubtless the reader knows -RRB- for a century longer to our own countrymen , the two seconds were obliged in honor to do something towards avenging their principals .