“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.”