“I am much better. Let me go, George, please. Won’t you do what I ask you? I am tired; I want to go in--to bed. Oh, George, if you are really sorry for me, let me go in, or I shall die out here in the cold!” “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.” Her wide, glistening eyes, panting bosom, and resolutely subdued manner, checked his oaths at this interruption. He followed her into the hall. “George and Colonel Richardson are in the garden, in the copse at the bottom, quarreling over your wife. I am sorry if I have startled you; but I thought you had better know.” “She is the blight of my life,” hissed out Harry, with a bitter imprecation, trying to steady himself. “Hadn’t you better do something more than stand here and abuse her?” asked Lilian, dryly. She turned in disgust from the infuriated lad, and went into the drawing-room. He was on the point of following her, when Annie came into the hall from the garden by another door. There was not a trace of color in her face; she crept slowly, and it seemed to her drunken husband guiltily, toward the staircase. “Stop!” growled Harry. “You have something to say to me now. Where have you been?” “In the garden.” “Whom were you with?” “With George.” “And Colonel Richardson?” “Yes.” She spoke wearily, all spirit seemed to have been taken out of her by the scenes she had gone through since Harry’s first bullying that afternoon. “What were you doing there? Tell me at once.”