Lady Tyrrell gazed at him for a moment as if utterly confounded and bewildered by astonishment and horror. She knew by sad experience that there were few points of malignity to which passion would not carry Sir Francis Tyrrell in his more violent moods; but, pure as light in every word, and thought, and action, she had not believed that even human malignity itself would have dared to risk an insinuation against her honour. She gazed upon her husband, therefore--upon him to whom that honour should have been most dear and sacred, while he made an insinuation only the more terrible, because it was not direct--with feelings that defy all description; while he, glaring at her from under his heavy eyebrows, saw, and saw with satisfaction, that he had succeeded in cutting her to the soul. The moment after, however, she turned deadly pale, and, without replying a word to the base speech he had just uttered, she fell fainting on the floor before him. For a moment Sir Francis Tyrrell fancied she was dead, and he felt some degree of apprehension, if not remorse; but the next instant he perceived he had but cast her into a swoon, and thinking that but a light punishment for the offence of resisting his will, he merely rang the bell for Lady Tyrrell's maid, and told her to take care of her mistress, for she had fainted. "Poor thing!" said the woman when she saw her; and those words, with the plaintive tone in which they were uttered, made Sir Francis Tyrrell feel that he was generally hated, and acted, therefore, as some retribution for the sufferings he inflicted. But such retribution had only a tendency to harden, not to mitigate, his feelings. To know that he was hated, made him seek to deserve hatred; and turning round to the woman, he said, "You have warning to go!" The woman had been with Lady Tyrrell for many years past; and, of a naturally fearless disposition, she lost all awe when she lost respect. "I am my lady's servant, not yours, sir," she replied, "and take no warning from you. I shall stay with her till she bids me go, and do my best to comfort her, which you do not." "We shall see, madam, we shall see," said Sir Francis Tyrrell, shaking his finger at her, and left the room. CHAPTER XIV. We must now turn for a time to Charles Tyrrell, and give some farther details of the events which had befallen him between his return to Oxford and his recall to Harbury Park, which we have hitherto purposely omitted.