"And forgetting the wife who rescued you from ruin--home--position--even yourself, as a man bearing an honoured title in the country, stooping to toy and play with that--abandoned creature." "What!" "Whom you have had the audacity to bring with you into this--my house." "My dear madam!" cried Lady Tilborough, indignantly. "Silence, woman!" shouted the furious wife. "Do you think me blind? Did I not see you and your confederate plotting together just now to try and hide his shame?" "No," cried Granton; "nothing of the kind." "Laura!" roared Sir Hilton. "You must be mad!" "Mad? Ha, ha!" cried Lady Lisle, hysterically, and covering three yards in a gliding rush that would have been a triumph upon the stage she seized the Polar bear skin with both hands, whisked it off, and displayed the sleeping figure of poor little Molly, flushed, dishevelled, not to say touzled, by the heavy covering from which she had been freed, and just aroused sufficiently to open a pair of pretty red lips and say drowsily-- "Kiss me, dear." "Ha!" ejaculated Lady Lisle, with her eyes darting daggers, and her fingers playing instinctively the part of a savage barbarian-woman face to face with the rival who has supplanted her with the man she loved-- they crooked themselves into claws. "Well, I am blowed!" exclaimed Sir Hilton, with a puzzled look of horror and despair so wildly comical, aided as it was by his making a drag with both hands at his already too thin hair. "Now, sir," cried Lady Lisle, "what have you to say to that?" _Crash_! CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. THE TOUT'S FINAL. That crash was not a human utterance proceeding from the lips of Sir Hilton Lisle, but a sudden shivering of glass, followed closely by the falling of big flower-pots in the conservatory, amidst the breaking of woodwork and rustling twigs and leaves. But a human utterance followed in an angry, raucous voice which shouted-- "Oh, murder! I've done it now; I've broke my blooming leg." While faintly heard from somewhere outside there was the yelping, barking, howling whine of a dog. The effect was magical. The ladies shrieked, the sleeper awakened, and sat up, frightened and wondering, rubbing her eyes, and, as the two gentlemen rushed into the conservatory, the two doors of the drawing-room were thrown open, for Mark and Jane to enter by one, Syd and Sam Simpkins by the other. "Oh, Syd!" sobbed Molly, holding out her arms. "Oh, dear!" sighed the boy, after a glance at the great skin upon the floor; "the cat's out of the bag now." "Yes, reg'lar," growled the trainer. "There, don't you squeal, my gal. There's enough to do the high strikes without you, and I'm going to see as you have your rights." "Syd, my darling, come here," cried Lady Lisle. "What does all this mean?"