"Why shouldn't you know?" said Mrs. Fielding pettishly through her falling tears. "It's your fault in a way. At least it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't been here--you and that horrid little cad of a schoolmaster." "Oh, don't put it like that!" said Juliet. "It's such a pity to offend everybody at once. You really mustn't cry any more or you'll be ill. I'm sure it isn't worth that." "I don't care if I die!" cried Mrs. Fielding, with a fresh burst of weeping. "I'm miserable--miserable! And nobody cares." She flung herself down upon the pillow in such a paroxysm of hysterical sobbing that Juliet actually was alarmed. She stood beside her, impotent, unable to make herself heard, and wondering what to do. She had never before looked upon such an abandonment of distress as she now beheld, and since Mrs. Fielding was obviously beyond all reasoning or consolation she was powerless to cope with it. She could only stand and wait for the storm to spend itself. It seemed, however, to increase rather than to abate, and she was beginning to contemplate recalling Cox to her assistance when to her astonishment the door suddenly opened, and Fielding himself appeared upon the threshold. She turned sharply, her first impulse to keep him out, for he wore an ugly look. But in a moment she realized that the direction of affairs was not in her control. He came straight forward with a mastery that would brook no interference. "Leave her to me!" he said, as he reached Juliet. But at the first word his wife uttered so wild a shriek of alarm that Juliet turned back to her with the swift instinct to protect. In an instant Mrs. Fielding was clinging to her, clinging desperately, frantically, like a terrified child. "Oh, don't go! Oh, don't leave me!" she gasped. "Juliet! Juliet! Stay--oh, stay!" She could not refuse the appeal. It went straight to her heart. She put her arms about the quivering, convulsed form and held it close. "I can't go!" she said hurriedly to the squire. "Stay then!" he said curtly. Then abruptly he stooped over the trembling, hysterical woman. "Vera," he said, "stop it at once! Do you hear me? Stop it!" He did not raise his voice, but his words had a pitiless distinctness that seemed somehow more forcible than any violence. Vera Fielding shrank closer to Juliet's breast. "Don't leave me! Don't leave me!" she moaned, still shaken from head to foot with great sobs she could not control. "She won't go if you behave yourself," said the squire grimly. "But if you don't, I'm damned if I won't turn her out and deal with you myself." "Don't be brutal!" breathed Juliet. He gave her a swift, fierce look, but she met it unflinching and as swiftly it fell away from her. He took one of his wife's feverish, clutching hands and firmly held it. "Now you listen to me!" he said. "I don't want to bully you but I can't and won't have this sort of thing. It's damnably unfair to everybody. So you pull yourself together and be quick about it!"