The trembling hand clenched in his grasp. "I hate you!" gasped Mrs.
Fielding furiously. "Oh, how I hate you!"
The man's mouth took an ominous downward curve. "I've heard that before," he said. "Now that's enough. We're not going to have a scene in front of Miss Moore. If you can't control yourself, out she goes."
"She won't go," flashed back Mrs. Fielding. "She's on my side. Ask her if she isn't! She won't leave me to your tender mercies again. She knows what they are like."
"Hush!" Juliet said. "Don't you know there isn't a man living who can stand this? Be quiet, my dear, for heaven's sake! You're making the most hideous mistake of your life."
She spoke with most unwonted force, and again the squire's steely eyes shot upwards, regarding her piercingly. "You're quite right," he said briefly. "I won't stand it. I've stood too much already. Now, Vera, you behave yourself, and stop that crying—at once!"
There was that in his tone that quelled all rebellion. Vera shrank closer to Juliet, but she began to make some feeble efforts to subdue her wild distress. Fielding sat on the edge of the bed, her hand firmly in his, and waited. His expression was one of absolute and implacable determination. He looked so forbidding and so formidable that Juliet wondered a little at her own temerity in remaining. She decided then and there that a serious disagreement with the squire would be too great a tax upon any woman's strength, and she did not wonder that Vera's had broken down under it.
Suddenly he spoke. "Has she had any breakfast?"
"Not yet," said Juliet.
"Oh, don't!" implored Vera, with a shudder.
He got up and went to the untouched tray. Juliet watched him pour out some tea as she smoothed the tumbled hair back from his wife's forehead.