done?  You have broken her heart!” He took the portrait from the mantelpiece and thrust it in front of the man at the table.  “That,” he said, and suddenly his voice was quivering, “that was the child you married.  I gave her into your care willingly, though, God knows, I worshipped her.  No, you didn’t cut me out.  I was never in the running.  I never so much as made love to her.  I always knew she was not for me.  When she accepted you, I thought it was the best thing that could possibly happen.  I felt she would be safe with you.  You were the one fellow I would have chosen to guard her.  And she needed guarding.  She was as innocent and as inexperienced as a baby.  She didn’t know the world and its beastly ways.  I thought you were to be trusted to keep her out of the mud; I could have sworn you were.  But you withdrew your protection just when she needed it most.  You practically turned her out, cut her adrift.  She might have gone straight to the bad for all you cared.  And now, like the damned blackguard that you are, you are going to clear out and leave her to break her heart!”

Fiercely the words rushed out.  Jack, the placid, the kindly, the careless, was for the moment electrified by a tornado of feeling that swept him far beyond the bounds of his customary easy bonhomie.  He towered over the man in the chair as if at the first movement he would fell him to the ground.

But Mordaunt remained quite motionless.  He had removed his cigarette, and sat looking straight up at him with steely eyes that never changed.  When Jack ceased to speak, there fell a silence that was in a sense more fraught with conflict than any war of words.

Through it at length came Mordaunt’s voice, measured and distinct and cold.  “It is not particularly wise of you to take that tone, but that is your affair.  I have already warned you that you are wasting your time.  Your championship is quite superfluous, and will do no good to anyone.  I think you will see this for yourself when you have taken time to think it over.  Wouldn’t it be as well to do so before you go any further—­for your own sake, not for mine?”

“I am not thinking of myself at the present moment,” Jack responded sternly, “or of you.  I’m thinking of Chris—­and Chris only.  Man, do you want to kill her?  For you’re going the right way to do it.”

The cigarette between Mordaunt’s fingers slowly doubled and crumpled into shapelessness, but the steely eyes never altered.  They barred the way inflexibly to the man’s inmost soul.  He uttered neither question nor answer.

But Jack was not to be silenced.  “I tell you, she is ill,” he said.  “I saw her myself yesterday.  She was simply broken down.  I never saw such a change in anyone.  I couldn’t have credited it.  Hilda is horribly anxious about her.  She is going to wire to me here as to her condition.”

“Why here?” Very calmly came the question.

Jack explained.  Almost in spite of himself his own heat had died down, cooled by that icy deliberation.  “I went to Kellerton yesterday in search of you, found only Noel there, but had to spend the night as it was late.  I came on by the first train, and wired to Hilda to send her message here in case you may be wanted.  It ought to come through in about an hour.”