"It is as false as hell!" His eyes blazed like coals of fire. "My wife is as pure as the angels, and any one who dares doubt that purity, even though it be the mother who bore me, is my enemy to the death!"
He dashed out of the house, mounted Sir Galahad, and rode away as if
Satan and his hosts were after him.
"Mamma! mamma!" Mildred cried, in unutterable reproach, "what have you done?"
"Told him the truth, child. It is better he should know it, although that knowledge parts us forever."
Like a man gone mad the young baronet galloped home. The sickly glimmer of the fitful moon shone on a face that would never be more ghastly in his coffin—on strained eyes and compressed lips. It seemed to him but an instant from the time he quitted The Grange until he dashed up the avenue at Kingsland, leaped off his foaming bay, and strode into the house. Straight to his wife's room he went, fierce, invincible determination in every line of his rigid face.
"She shall tell me all—she shall, by Heaven!" he cried.
He entered her dressing-room—she was, not there; her boudoir—she was not there; her bedroom—it too was empty. He seized the bell and nearly tore it down. Claudine, the maid, looked in with a startled face.
"Where is your mistress?"
The girl gazed round with a bewildered air.
"Is my lady not here, sir? She sent me away over an hour ago. She was lying down in her dressing-room; she said she was ill."