The sound of his wife's voice had a wonderful effect upon Sir Hilton for
the moment, and, turning sharply, he rushed out of the drawing-room and
down the passage leading to the servants' portion of the house.
"Here, Sam," cried Syd, "come on and stop him. He's going into another
fit."
The boy dashed after his uncle, closely followed by the trainer, and
they overtook him in the pale light of the kitchen, whose window faced
the east, standing, panting hard, with his hand upon the table, where he
was collared by one on each side.
"What are you doing that for?" he cried.
"Never you mind, Sir Hilton. You've got to stop here."
"That's right, uncle. Come, steady! No larks."
"Larks, sir? Let go. I insist. Let go, I tell you. I'm going to meet
your aunt, Syd. I must have some explanation with her about all this."
"Well, if you come to that, Sir Hilton, that's what I want too about my
gal. If it's all the same, I'll go back first."
"That you don't," cried Syd, shifting his hold from uncle to
father-in-law. "There'll be row enough without having that in the mess.
Hark! Can't you hear talking?" he whispered. "Aunt's having it over
with Molly. Let them settle it before we go in."
"Look here, don't you talk like that, my boy, to one old enough to be
your grandfather," protested the trainer. "You're not standing up for
my gal's rights as you should do, and if you don't I must."
"But one thing at a time, old man. Let's get uncle quieted down first."
"Quieted down?" cried Sir Hilton. "What do you mean? Here, Syd, my
throat's on fire. Fill that jug at the tap."
"Won't hurt him, will it?" whispered Syd.
"I d'know, my lad; I'd charnsh it now."
The jug was filled at the tap over the sink and handed to Sir Hilton,
who drank long and deeply, setting it down with a loud "Ha!" just as a
familiar voice rang out loudly--
"Hilton! Hilton! Are you there?"
For as the pair dashed out after Sir Hilton the door through which they
passed closed with a dull, jarring thud, which seemed to bring down
another flower-pot in the conservatory; but this was not heard by Lady
Lisle, who entered the drawing-room excitedly, closely followed by Lady
Tilborough and the doctor, all looking pallid and all-nightish in the
yellow light of the candles mingled with the pale grey dawn stealing in.
"Now, pray listen to me, my dear Lady Lisle," said Lady Tilborough, in a
soothing voice. "Do be reasonable."
"I will not listen to you, madam," cried Lady Lisle, passionately.
"Pray do now. For your own sake as well as your husband's."
"He is no husband of mine," cried Lady Lisle, excitedly.
"Be reasonable. Come, think, my dear madam. You cannot wish to have a
scandal. Your servants are in the hall. You cannot want them to hear."
"They must hear--the whole world will hear. Oh, it is dreadful,
dreadful!"
"Say a word to her, for heaven's sake, Jack!" whispered Lady Tilborough;
and the doctor stepped forward.
"Yes, Lady Lisle," he said firmly, "I am bound to speak--as,
temporarily, your medical attendant."
"Wretched man, why did you not let me die?" cried Lady Lisle, pacing up
and down and wringing her hands.
"Because I wished to save an estimable lady for a reconciliation with an
old friend; for really, my dear madam, when you calm down, you will see
that you have been most unreasonable."
"Unreasonable? Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the unhappy woman, hysterically.
"Yes, my dear madam; most unreasonable. First in insisting upon leaving
Oakleigh at this extremely early hour in the morning, after you had been
suffering from a congeries of hysterical fits. Recollect what you
promised me."
"I recollect nothing but my wrongs," cried Lady Lisle.
"Then as your medical attendant, called in upon this emergency by my
friend, Lady Tilborough, it is my duty to tell you that you gave me your
word that you would be calm if I allowed you to return."
"Yes," said the suffering woman, bitterly. "I promised because I could
not bear to stay longer in that hateful woman's house."
"It seemed to me, madam, that the lady whom you so wrong, behaved in a
very loving and sisterly way to you in an emergency."
"Yes; brought about by her machinations."
"Oh, dear!" sighed Lady Tilborough. "What an unreasonable darling it
is! Machinations! Why, I only asked a dear old friend to help me and
save me from ruin, and he responded nobly."
"Ruin? You helped to ruin him by luring him back to the diabolical
horrors of the Turf."
"There, there, my dear; I won't argue with you, certainly not quarrel.
Pray, pray try and calm yourself, or you'll be having another of those
terrible hysterical fits."
"Yes," said Granton, "and worse than the last."
"I am glad. It will be my last. Infamous woman, why did you drag me to
your house?"
"Because, my dear, I didn't like to see a lady in your position ill and
suffering in such a place as the Tilborough Arms."
"And because, my dear madam, when I found how bad you were I begged Lady
Tilborough to save you from a long hour's drive home when your coachman
was not to be found."
"But you lured my husband away, woman."
"Well, I have confessed to that, my dear madam, and I am sorry that you
should look upon it with different eyes from mine. I don't think I have
been such a terrible sinner, do you, doctor?" she added, with a look
which made the gentleman addressed flutter as regarded his nerves.
But he had the medical man's command over self, and he said quietly: "I
think when Lady Lisle has grown calmer she will look a little more
leniently upon her neighbour's actions. Now, pray, my dear madam, let
me beg of you to--Ah! that's better. Don't try to restrain your tears.
They are the greatest anodyne for an overwrought mind. Now, remember
your promise. Let me ring for your maid. A cup of tea and a good long
sleep, and the racing escapade will wear a different aspect by the light
of noon."
"Oh, doctor, doctor!" sobbed the poor woman, passionately, as she
yielded to Granton's pressure, and sank into a lounge; "you do not
know--you do not know!"
"Yes, yes, yes, I know; but pray think. I grant that racing is
gambling, but I really believe my dear old friend Hilton Lisle will for
the future yield to your wishes and fight shy--I beg your pardon--
religiously abstain from attending Turf meetings."
"Oh, oh, oh, doctor!" sobbed the patient, who was at her weakest in the
weakest hour of the twenty-four. "You do not know all. I could have
forgiven that; but when I discovered the base disloyalty of the man in
whom I had always the most perfect faith--"
"Dear me! Ahem!" coughed the doctor. "I--" and he glanced at Lady
Tilborough.
"Oh, hang it, no!" cried the latter, firing up. "Surely, madam, you
don't think that! Oh, absurd! Poor old Hilton! Oh, nonsense,
nonsense! Why, the woman is jealous of me!"
"No, no, no!" cried Lady Lisle, excitedly. "I did not think--Oh, no,
Lady Tilborough, I do not think that."
"Ha! That's some comfort," sighed the lady addressed; but she frowned
angrily, and the look she darted at the doctor was by no means like the
last, though his was of the most abject, imploring kind.
"I can't explain--I can't explain," sobbed Lady Lisle in her
handkerchief. "I would sooner die, for it is all over now."
The others exchanged looks and a whisper or two, as they drew aside from
the weeping woman.
"Oh, I don't believe it of poor old Hilt," said Lady Tilborough.
"Neither do I," cried the doctor.
"There is no one," said Lady Tilborough. "Unless--" she added, as a
sudden thought struck her. "No, no, no; he's too loyal to go running
after a pretty little commonplace doll like that, Jack."
"I hope so," said the doctor, shaking his head. "Well, here he is to
answer for himself," he added quickly, for the farther door was opened,
and, clad in slippers and dressing-gown, and carrying a flat
candlestick, whose light was not wanted, and looking quite himself
mentally, but ghastly pale, Sir Hilton briskly entered the room.
"What's the meaning of this?" he cried, stopping short, and looking from
one to the other.
"Oh-h-h-h!" exclaimed Lady Lisle, in a long-drawn utterance expressive
of her anger and disgust.
"Why, Hilt, old fellow," cried Granton, "I thought you were ill in bed?"
"What brings you here, sir?" cried Sir Hilton. "But stop; I'll talk to
you afterwards," he added fiercely. "Now, madam, will you have the
goodness to explain what this means?"
"Oh-h-h-h!" ejaculated Lady Lisle again, in tones more long-drawn and
suggestive of the rage boiling up within, her darting and flashing eyes
telling their own tale of the storm about to burst.
"Oh, indeed, madam!" cried Sir Hilton, mockingly. "Really, I am very
sorry to have to make a display of the soiled laundry of our
establishment before our visitors, but I must demand an explanation.
Here am I, called suddenly away upon very important business respecting
monetary matters, and I return home late, to find that you have taken
advantage of my absence to--to--to--to--there, I will not give utterance
to my thoughts, but ask you, madam, to explain why I find you away, even
at midnight, and not putting in an appearance till nearly four in the
morning--four in the morning, and in a state that--Good heavens, madam!
have you looked at yourself in the glass?"
Lady Lisle had not looked at herself in the glass, and her husband's
words came so aptly, rousing such a feeling of wonder in her that she
involuntarily turned sharply to glance in one of the long mirrors and
see a reflection in the crossed light of the artificial and the real
coming from candle and break of day, that she felt horrified, and once
more ejaculated "Oh!"
"Yes. Oh, indeed!" cried Sir Hilton, grasping at his advantage. "Pray,
madam, will you be good enough to explain."
Lady Tilborough, who had drawn back behind the couch to give the
principals in this domestic scene room to develop their quarrel,
exchanged mirthful glances with the doctor.
"Taking the bull by the horns," whispered Granton.
"Cow!" whispered back Lady Tilborough, correctively, and she laid her
hands upon the piled-up Polar bear skin to support herself, but snatched
them away with a look of alarm at the doctor, one which changed to a
glance full of inquiry, his answer from a yard or so away being a
gesture with the hands which, being interpreted, meant, Haven't the
least idea. But he moved a little nearer, touched the skin, and then
whispered the one word: "Dog!"
Lady Tilborough felt comforted, nodded her head and turned her eyes from
the doctor to watch the domestic scene, and then felt uncomfortable, for
she found that Lady Lisle's attention had been drawn to what was going
on between her and the doctor concerning the strangely piled-up hill of
white fur, and her dark eyes were now fixed upon her uninvited visitor
with a furious look of suspiciously jealous rage.
Lady Lisle saw in all this a means of making a counter attack upon her
husband's desperate assault, and she seized upon the weapon proffered by
fate at once.
"Don't add insult to injury before these friends of yours, sir," she
cried, fully equipped now for the counter attack; "and pray do not
imagine that you have blinded me by this contemptible dust you are
trying to throw in my eyes."
"Dust, madam?" cried Sir Hilton, some what staggered by the reaction
that had taken place.
"Yes, sir--dust. You forget that I was a witness to your appearance in
that den of infamy."
"Den of infamy, madam?"
"Yes, sir; den of infamy--disgracefully inebriated."
"Oh, poor old Hilton!" whispered Granton. "I must--"
"Silence!" cried Lady Lisle, turning upon the speaker, in the tones and
with the air of a tragedy queen, her eyes flashing again as she saw a
peculiar movement beneath the Polar bear skin, from the bottom of which
there was the sudden protrusion of a very prettily-booted little foot.
"Yes, Sir Hilton," continued Lady Lisle, pressing her hands upon her
heaving bosom to keep down the seething passion. "I repeat,
disgracefully inebriated, dressed in the low, flaunting guise of a
jockey."
"Oh, dear," groaned Sir Hilton, completely taken aback.
"And forgetting the wife who rescued you from ruin--home--position--even
yourself, as a man bearing an honoured title in the country, stooping to
toy and play with that--abandoned creature."
"What!"
"Whom you have had the audacity to bring with you into this--my house."
"My dear madam!" cried Lady Tilborough, indignantly.
"Silence, woman!" shouted the furious wife. "Do you think me blind?
Did I not see you and your confederate plotting together just now to try
and hide his shame?"
"No," cried Granton; "nothing of the kind."
"Laura!" roared Sir Hilton. "You must be mad!"
"Mad? Ha, ha!" cried Lady Lisle, hysterically, and covering three yards
in a gliding rush that would have been a triumph upon the stage she
seized the Polar bear skin with both hands, whisked it off, and
displayed the sleeping figure of poor little Molly, flushed,
dishevelled, not to say touzled, by the heavy covering from which she
had been freed, and just aroused sufficiently to open a pair of pretty
red lips and say drowsily--
"Kiss me, dear."
"Ha!" ejaculated Lady Lisle, with her eyes darting daggers, and her
fingers playing instinctively the part of a savage barbarian-woman face
to face with the rival who has supplanted her with the man she loved--
they crooked themselves into claws.
"Well, I am blowed!" exclaimed Sir Hilton, with a puzzled look of horror
and despair so wildly comical, aided as it was by his making a drag with
both hands at his already too thin hair.
"Now, sir," cried Lady Lisle, "what have you to say to that?"
_Crash_!