Long they lingered drinking and dallying, and the watchers might have thought no danger need be apprehended. Suddenly a word of the woman’s, like a match to petroleum, set the whole man ablaze. He rushed from the room with a loud oath, the woman after him, apparently in alarm. The movement her friends made outside in gaining the other window caused Augusta to raise her beautiful head, and at that moment her husband stood before her, brandishing his cavalry sabre, and with his eyeballs glaring, fiercely vociferating, “I’ll teach you madam, to set my servants to insult _me_!” he made a fearful slash at her. As she sprang aside with a terrified shriek, the old woodwork of the glass-door gave way, and before the tipsy madman could recover his guard to strike a fresh blow, his sabre was wrenched from him, and himself struggling in the grasp of three powerful men, his own gardener being one. Poor Mr. Ashton’s care was his stricken child, whose white shoulders, bathed in blood, were washed by a father’s tears. Thankful then was Jabez to have been at hand, and on the alert, with so powerful an ally as Travis; thankful to have saved Augusta’s life at any sacrifice of personal feeling; and only himself could tell what his presence under that roof cost him. Even Laurence had no inkling of it; the marriage of Jabez had closed his jealous eyes. But now, finding in his old opponent an unseen watcher over his wife—her defender when he had least expected—his baffled rage was something terrible to look upon. He fought, struggled, vociferated, threatened, and foamed at the mouth; and Mr. Aspinall, coming thither in his dressing-gown, aroused by the uproar, could barely master his indignation and disgust as he ordered the men-servants, crowding in half-dressed, to “help to bind that murderous maniac down!” It was well, too, that Mrs. Ashton and Ellen were close at hand, and a vehicle ready to despatch for a surgeon, for Augusta needed all their care. Before three days were over there was a little coffin in the house, holding a still-born child, and there was a young mother, with a plaistered shoulder, lying, white as her pillow, in a state of coma. Dr. Windsor having exercised his best skill, as was his wont left nature to do the rest, and youth and nature, between them, did their work effectually. Fain would Mr. Ashton have removed his child once and for all. He offered to set up a carriage for her, if she would but leave her husband, and seek a legal separation, insisting that she owed a duty to herself, as well as to her husband. Mr. Aspinall himself begged that she would take up her abode with him, at Ardwick, if only for her own security. He had ceased to find excuses for his son, and his son’s charming wife stood high in his esteem.