“You shall not die; you shall not be cold in my arms. Do you want to go back to the husband who is waiting to bully you, perhaps to strike you, away from the man who loves you with all his soul?”
Annie gathered all her strength and gave one ringing cry:
“Harry!”
The bare branches of the shrubbery-trees rustled and cracked as a man sprung into the pathway and tore the trembling woman from the unprepared George. She looked up.
“Thank Heaven! Colonel Richardson!”
George looked at him, too, dumb with surprise. But his eyes saw what Annie’s did not. From the opposite side of the path Lilian’s handsome eyes were flashing in the moonlight in jealous anger at the woman who lay unconscious in Colonel Richardson’s arms.
CHAPTER X.
Careless of herself and her own secret, in the burning desire to be revenged upon Annie, Lilian sped back to the house, not knowing that George had seen her, and found Harry with the rest in the billiard-room, still quarreling hotly about the scene in the drawing-room, of which she had not yet heard. Stephen had been forbidden by her to leave the house that night, and he had been tortured with anxiety on her account ever since he saw Annie go into the conservatory, and then noticed a few minutes later that George had also disappeared.
Lilian beckoned Harry imperiously out of the room.
“I have something important to say to you.”