"Lucy," he said, "Lucy, I insist upon your telling me what and who has distressed you. I insist upon it. Whoever has annoyed you shall answer to me for your grief. Come, my love, tell me directly what it is."
He seated himself and bent over the drooping figure at his feet, calming his own agitation in his desire to soothe his wife's distress.
"Tell me what it is, my dear," he whispered, tenderly.
The sharp paroxysm had passed away, and my lady looked up. A glittering light shone through the tears in her eyes, and the lines about her pretty rosy mouth, those hard and cruel lines which Robert Audley had observed in the pre-Raphaelite portrait, were plainly visible in the firelight.
"I am very silly," she said; "but really he has made me quite hysterical."
"Who—who has made you hysterical?"
"Your nephew—Mr. Robert Audley."
"Robert," cried the baronet. "Lucy, what do you mean?"
"I told you that Mr. Audley insisted upon my going into the lime-walk, dear," said my lady. "He wanted to talk to me, he said, and I went, and he said such horrible things that—"
"What horrible things, Lucy?"