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!