“It is not my fault, though it is my eternal regret that I am not one!” he retorts. It is lucky for him that the fever of her preoccupation prevents Lavinia from hearing this monstrous aspiration. “Did he do anything _violent_?” she asks in a voice made low by dread. “He kept his hands off her, if you mean that!” replies Rupert, showing symptoms of a tendency to relapse into his convulsion of laughter; “but only _just_! If I had not appeared in the nick of time, I would not have answered for her life!” Then, as Lavinia keeps looking at him in smileless tragedy, he goes on, “I was hanging about, waiting for him, as you know he had told me that he should have something to say to me--by-the-by, he has just been saying it, but that is another story--when I heard raised voices, or rather a raised voice. You know that long, dull roar of his that always makes me call on the hills to cover me!” “Well?” “I felt that there was no time to be lost, so I hurried in--only just in time! I saw in his eye that the next moment he would have her by the shoulders, and be thrusting her through the door!” “But he did not! you stopped him?”--breathlessly. “Yes, thank the Lord!” He pauses, and his lips begin to twitch with nervous mirth. “I know what you thought: she was shot into the dining-room like a projectile; but it was not as bad as that. Only _moral_ force propelled her.” Lavinia brings her hands together with a sort of clap, but relief mingles with the indignant animosity of her tone. “What _had_ she said? What _had_ she done?” Rupert shrugs his shoulders. “What is our little Féo _not_ capable of saying and doing?” he asks sarcastically. “But you must remember I came in only for the bouquet of the fireworks.” After a pause, in a key of real feeling, with no tinge of satire, “Poor old fellow! I would have done a good deal to save him from it. I think the last straw was when she began to finger the things--Bill’s poor little possessions--and to imply, if she did not exactly assert, that his death was quite as great a blow to her as to the old man.” “And when we remember what Bill’s estimate of her was!” cries Lavinia, reddening with indignation. “Oh, if we could but tell her of his saying that he should have to put barbed wire round himself whenever he went outside the gate to prevent her getting at him!” They both laugh--the little rueful laugh with which the jests of the departed are recalled. “After they had gone,” pursues Rupert, “when he sent for me, I found him still in a terrible state. I have never seen him in such an ungovernable fury. Not with me--to me he was like a pet lamb.” Again they both laugh a little grimly, conscious of the extreme audacity of the comparison. “You will not believe it,” says Rupert, half humorously, and yet with a quiver of emotion on his sensitive face, “but he actually _thanked_ me for coming to his rescue! _Me_, if you please, _moi qui vous parle_!”