He looked so fierce and determined that Jill felt frightened. She was nervous and unstrung with the excitement of the afternoon, and she trembled slightly as she clung tenaciously to his arm. "Let him alone," she cried quickly. "I will not have my name dragged into any dispute. We have done with him; that is enough. The matter must end there." "That is all very well," he retorted, "but do you suppose I am going to stand quietly by and allow any cad to make love to my wife?" "If you had not stood quietly by it might never have happened," she answered. "I don't quite know what it is we have been quarrelling about, but I do know that lately we have drifted apart, and he noticed it--he said so. He thought that I had found out that our marriage had been a mistake." She looked up to meet St. John's gaze riveted upon her face, with an expression in his eyes that puzzled her, it was so unlike anything she had seen in them before. He looked as a man might look when someone he has loved and trusted deals him a blow on the face, so stern and white and miserable, and so full of an unspeakable shame. "Jack," she half-whispered, "what is it? What is the matter, dear?" "Forgive me," he cried brokenly, "If I have misjudged you; but I thought--as Markham thinks. And, my God, I think so still." Jill drew away from him, wounded into silence by what she heard. For a few moments she stood irresolute, struck motionless with an anguish too deep for words; then with a half articulate cry she tottered forward, and fell, a forlorn little bundle, at his feet St. John stooped swiftly, and gathering her up, laid her tenderly upon the bed, and, bending over her with a face even whiter than her own, stared down, awed and humbled, at the motionless, unconscious form. He was almost too stunned at first to realise that there was anything serious the matter; but it gradually dawned upon him that she ought not to be allowed to lie there as she was without calling in some assistance, and so, not pausing to put on his coat, he ran out of the bedroom on to the landing, and stood there in his shirt sleeves, in terrified and breathless anxiety. "Thompkins!" he cried excitedly. "Thompkins!" "Hallo!" answered a voice from the bottom of the stairs, a voice of calm and unruffled serenity. "For God's sake run for the doctor," St. John called back. There was silence for a few seconds; then the street door was opened and banged to again, and St. John returned to the room to watch by his wife and wait. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.