CHAPTER XV.
SELF-ACCUSATIONS
Jack Rotherfield made no reply; indeed the hands of Sir Robert were pressing so tightly on his throat that he could scarcely have spoken if he had wished to do so.
For a few minutes the two men glared each at the other; Sir Robert pale with fierce anger, in deadly earnest, and probably unconscious how strong was his grip. Jack gasping, gurgling, perhaps affecting more inconvenience than he actually experienced, in order to gain time, and to think of an answer to satisfy the incensed husband.
But before the silence was broken, while Jack still lay struggling in the fierce grip of his captor, there was a sound on the terrace, a scream, a flutter of drapery, and Lady Sarah dashed into the room.
“What is it? Oh, what is it? What are you doing? You are killing him!” she cried, as she flew across the room and tried to drag her husband away.
But he shook her off almost roughly, and said, in a tone he had never used to her before:
“Go away. We must settle this between ourselves, he and I.”
But she would not go. Guessing now that some terrible revelation had been made to Sir Robert, and that a crisis had been reached, she came back when she had been repulsed, and throwing herself between the two men, stared up into her husband’s face, and said:
“Tell me what has happened. Tell me, tell me. I must, I will know.”
Sir Robert relaxed his hold on Jack Rotherfield, seized his wife by the shoulders, and looked her full in the face with penetrating, angry eyes.