"You! Good heavens! is anything the matter.... Faith?" His mind flew with swift apprehension to his wife.
Peg laughed bitterly.
"Oh, no, she's safe and sound enough. It's you."
"Me!" His eyes went beyond her to where Farrow stood. "Good heavens! What's the meaning of it all?" he demanded angrily. "Farrow, if you've been down to Hampstead frightening my wife...."
He turned on the man threateningly as a shrill warning scream broke from Peg, and the next instant Forrester felt himself seized violently from behind and flung backwards.
The darkness was filled with voices and shouting, and the street seemed suddenly to have grown alive with men.
It all happened so quickly that afterwards Forrester could remember no details, but, above all the din and tumult, he could hear Peg's voice raised in a wild scream of entreaty.
"Ben—Ben—for God's sake!"
The scuffle was all about him as he stood with his back to the locked gates trying to see what was happening, and to free himself of her encumbering body, but her arms were round his neck, and as by main force he tried to unclasp them and throw her aside a terrific blow fell somewhere from out of the darkness—not on him, but on the girl who clung to him so frantically; and suddenly she sagged against him and would have fallen but for his upholding arms.