What followed was a matter of a minute or two. He entered the room quickly, his coming having been unheard; and Cousin Thompson, who was speaking earnestly to the two gentlemen from town, started quickly away and then said hastily: "Ah, North! Why, you seem better. Let me get you a chair. You want no introductions, and I'll leave you together." He approached North with a chair, and the latter took it, gazing keenly at the visitors the while; but as Thompson was passing he caught him by the collar and checked him, holding him fast, as he threw the chair from him with a crash. Thompson turned white as so much curd, and tried for a moment to extricate himself, but his cousin's grasp was like iron, and he turned a pitiable face to the two visitors, the taller of whom advanced quickly. "My dear Dr North," he said, "pray be calm. Another seat, my dear sir; pray sit down." North seemed as if he had not heard him. He had searchingly gazed from one to the other, and then his eyes appeared to blaze as his left hand joined his right at Thompson's throat. "You cursed, treacherous, cowardly hound!" he literally yelled, and dashing him backward, so that he fell with a crash against a table, which was overturned, North strode from the room without another word, and made the house echo with the bang he gave the door. Thompson did not attempt to rise till the visitors held out their hands to assist him to a couch. "My dear sir, are you hurt?" asked the first man. "Hurt!" cried Thompson savagely. "Could you be half strangled and then thrown down without being hurt? But you see now. You doubted before: you see now." "Yes, perfectly," said the second visitor calmly. "Oh, yes, I think that we are quite satisfied now. What do you say?" "Perfectly," said the first slowly; and as soon as the lawyer had satisfied himself that he was not seriously hurt, they adjourned to the library, where Mrs Milt was summoned to provide sherry and biscuits; and soon after the two visitors re-entered their carriage, and were driven back to King's Hampton in time to catch the first train back to town. Volume 3, Chapter XIII. MRS MILT TAKES UP LUNCH. "The last hope gone!" cried North, as he rushed upstairs and entered his room, to close and lock the door, overcome, as it were, with a despairing dread. "I might have known it," he panted excitedly. "The cruel, treacherous hound! I might have known that he had some hidden meaning in what he was doing. Friend from town--no faith in any one but me, forsooth! And I such a miserable, easily deceived child that I was ready to believe it all." Without thinking of what he did, he seated himself at the dressing-table, rested his elbows thereon, and gazed straight before him in the glass, but without seeing his distorted, haggard face. "And it has come to that!" he groaned.