Mistress Wilding
by
Rafael Sabatini





CONTENTS

I.     POT-VALIANCE
II.    SIR ROWLAND TO THE RESCUE
III.   DIANA SCHEMES
IV.    TERMS OF SURRENDER
V.     THE ENCOUNTER
VI.    THE CHAMPION
VII.   THE NUPTIALS of RUTH WESTMACOTT
VIII.  BRIDE AND GROOM
IX.    MR. TRENCHARD'S COUNTERSTROKE
X.     THEIR OWN PETARD
XI.    THE MARPLOT
XII.   AT THE FORD
XIII   "PRO RELIGIONE ET LIBERTATE"
XIV.   HIS GRACE IN COUNSEL
XV.    LYME OF THE KING
XVI.   PLOTS AND PLOTTERS
XVII.  MR. WILDING'S RETURN
XVIII. BETRAYAL
XIX.   THE BANQUET
XX.    THE RECKONING
XXI.   THE SENTENCE
XXII.  THE EXECUTION
XXIII. MR. WILDING'S BOOTS
XXIV.  JUSTICE




CHAPTER I
POT-VALIANCE


Then drink it thus, cried the rash young fool, and splashed the contents
of his cup full into the face of Mr. Wilding even as that gentleman, on
his feet, was proposing to drink to the eyes of the young fool's sister.

The moments that followed were full of interest.  A stillness, a
brooding, expectant stillness, fell upon the company - and it numbered
a round dozen - about Lord Gervase's richly appointed board. In the soft
candlelight the oval table shone like a deep brown pool, in which were
reflected the gleaming silver and sparkling crystal that seemed to float
upon it.

Blake sucked in his nether-lip, his florid face a thought less florid
than its wont, his prominent blue eyes a thought more prominent. Under
its golden periwig old Nick Trenchard's  wizened countenance was darkened
by a scowl, and his fingers, long, swarthy, and gnarled, drummed
fretfully upon the table.  Portly Lord Gervase Scoresby - their host, a
benign and placid man of peace, detesting turbulence -turned crimson now
in wordless rage.  The others gaped and stared - some at young Westmacott,
some at the man he had so grossly affronted - whilst in the shadows of
the hall a couple of lacqueys looked on amazed, all teeth and eyes.

Mr. Wilding stood, very still and outwardly impasive, the wine trickling
from his long face, which, if pale, was no paler than its habit, a
vestige of the smile with which he had proposed the toast still
lingering on his thin lips, though departed from his eyes.  An elegant
gentleman was Mr. Wilding, tall, and seeming even taller by virtue of
his exceeding slenderness. He had the courage to wear his own hair,
which was of a dark brown and very luxuriant; dark brown too were his
sombre eyes, low-lidded and set at a downward slant.  From those odd
eyes of his, his countenance gathered an air of superciliousness
tempered by a gentle melancholy.  For the rest, it was scored by lines
that stamped it with the appearance of an age in excess of his thirty
years.

Thirty guineas' worth of Mechlin at his throat was drenched, empurpled
and ruined beyond redemption, and on the breast of his blue satin coat
a dark patch was spreading like a stain of blood.

Richard Westmacott, short, sturdy, and fair-complexioned to the point
of insipidity, watched him sullenly out of pale eyes, and waited.  It
was Lord Gervase who broke at last the silence - broke it with an
oath, a thing unusual in one whose nature was almost woman-mild.

"As God's my life!" he spluttered wrathfully, glowering at Richard.
"To have this happen in my house!  The young fool shall make apology!"

"With his dying breath," sneered Trenchard, and the old rake's words,
his tone, and the malevolent look he bent upon the boy increased the
company's malaise.

"I think," said Mr. Wilding, with a most singular and excessive
sweetness, "that what Mr. Westmacott has done he has done because
he apprehended me amiss."

"No doubt he'll say so," opined Trenchard with a shrug, and had
caution dug into his ribs by Blake's elbow, whilst Richard made haste
to prove him wrong by saying the contrary.

"I apprehended you exactly, sir," he answered, defiance in his voice
and wine-flushed face.

"Ha!" clucked Trenchard, irrepressible. "He's bent on self-destruction.
Let him have his way, in God's name."

But Wilding seemed intent upon showing how long-suffering he could be.
He gently shook his head.  "Nay, now," said he.  "You thought, Mr.
Westmacott, that in mentioning your sister, I did so lightly. Is it
 not so?"

"You mentioned her, and that is all that matters," cried Westmacott.
"I'll not have her name on your lips at any time or in any place - no,
nor in any manner." His speech was thick from too much wine.

"You are drunk," cried indignant Lord Gervase with finality.

"Pot-valiant," Trenchard elaborated.

Mr. Wilding set down at last the glass which he had continued to hold
until that moment.  He rested his hands upon the table, knuckles
downward, and leaning forward he spoke impressively, his face very
grave; and those present - knowing him as they did - were one and all
lost in wonder at his unusual patience.

"Mr. Westmacott," said he, "I do think you are wrong to persist in
affronting me. You have done a thing that is beyond forgiveness, and
yet, when I offer you this opportunity of honourably retrieving..."
He shrugged his shoulders, leaving the sentence incomplete.

The company might have spared its deep surprise at so much mildness.
There was but the semblance of it. Wilding proceeded thus of purpose
set, and under the calm mask of his long white face his mind worked
wickedly and deliberately.  The temerity of Westmacott, whose nature
was notoriously timid, had surprised him for a moment.  But anon,
reading the boy's mind as readily as though it had been a scroll
unfolded for his instruction, he saw that Westmacott, on the strength
of his position as his sister's brother, conceived himself immune.
Mr. Wilding's avowed courtship of the lady, the hopes he still
entertained of winning her, despite the aversion she was at pains to
show him, gave Westmacott assurance that Mr. Wilding would never
elect to shatter his all too slender chances by embroiling himself
in a quarrel with her brother.  And - reading him, thus, aright - Mr.
Wilding put on that mask of patience, luring the boy into greater
conviction of the security of his position.  And Richard, conceiving
himself safe in his entrenchment behind the bulwarks of his brothership
to Ruth Westmacott, and heartened further by the excess of wine he had
consumed, persisted in insults he would never otherwise have dared to
offer.

"Who seeks to retrieve?" he crowed offensively, boldly looking up into
the other's face.  "It seems you are yourself reluctant."  And he
laughed a trifle stridently, and looked about him for applause, but
found none.

"You are overrash," Lord Gervase disapproved him harshly.

"Not the first coward I've seen grow valiant at a table," put in
Trenchard by way of explanation, and might have come to words with
Blake on that same score, but that in that moment Wilding spoke again.

"Reluctant to do what?" he questioned amiably, looking Westmacott
so straightly between the eyes that the boy shifted uneasily on his
high-backed chair.

Nevertheless, still full of confidence in the unassailability of his
position, the mad youth answered, "To cleanse yourself of what I threw
at you."

"Fan me, ye winds!" gasped Nick Trenchard, and looked with expectancy
 at his friend Wilding.

Now there was one factor with which, in basing with such craven
shrewdness his calculations upon Mr. Wilding's feelings for his sister,
young Richard had not reckoned.  He was not to know that Wilding,
bruised and wounded by Miss Westmacott's scorn of him, had reached
that borderland where love and hate are so merged that they are scarce
to be distinguished.  Embittered by the slights she had put upon
him  - slights which his sensitive, lover's fancy had magnified a
hundredfold  -  Anthony Wilding's frame of mind was grown peculiar.
Of his love she would have none; his kindness she seemingly despised.
So be it; she should taste his cruelty.  If she scorned his wooing
and forbade him to pursue it, at least it was not hers to deny him
the power to hurt; and in hurting her that would not be loved by him
some measure of fierce and bitter consolation seemed to await him.

He realized, perhaps, not quite all this - and to the unworthiness
of it all he gave no thought.  But he realized enough as he toyed, as
cat with mouse, with Richard Westmacott, to know that in striking at her
through the worthless person of this brother whom she cherished - and
who persisted in affording him this opportunity - a wicked vengeance
would be his.

Peace-loving Lord Gervase had heaved himself suddenly to his feet at
Westmacott's last words, still intent upon saving the situation.

"In Heaven's name..." he began, when Mr. Wilding, ever calm and smiling,
though now a trifle sinister, waved him gently into silence.  But that
persisting calm of Mr. Wilding's was too much for old Nick Trenchard.
He rose abruptly, drawing all eyes upon himself.  It was time, he
thought, he took a hand in this.

In addition to his affection for Wilding and his contempt for Westmacott,
he was filled with a fear that the latter might become dangerous if not
crushed at once.  Gifted with a shrewd knowledge of men, acquired during
a chequered life of much sour experience, old Nick instinctively
mistrusted Richard.  He had known him for a fool, a weakling, a babbler,
and a bibber of wine.  Out of such elements a villain is soon compounded,
and Trenchard had cause to fear the form of villainy that lay ready to
Richard's hand. For it chanced that Mr. Trenchard was second cousin to
that famous John Trenchard, so lately tried for treason and acquitted to
the great joy of the sectaries of the West, and still more lately - but
yesterday, in fact - fled the country to escape the rearrest ordered in
consequence of that excessive joy.  Like his more famous cousin, Nick
Trenchard was one of the Duke of Monmouth's most active agents; and
Westmacott, like Wilding, Vallancey, and one or two others at that
board, stood, too, committed to the cause of the Protestant Champion.

Out of his knowledge of the boy Trenchard was led to fear that if he
were leniently dealt with now, tomorrow, when, sober, he came to
realize the grossness of the thing he had done and the unlikelihood
of its being forgiven him, there was no saying but that to protect
himself he might betray Wilding's share in the plot that was being
hatched.  That in itself would be bad enough; but there might be worse,
for he could scarcely betray Wilding without betraying others and - what
mattered most - the Cause itself.  He must be dealt with out of hand,
Trenchard opined, and dealt with ruthlessly.

"I think, Anthony," said he, "that we have had words enough.  Shall
you be disposing of Mr. Westmacott to-morrow, or must I be doing it
for you?"

With a gasp of dismay young Richard twisted in his chair to confront
this fresh and unsuspected antagonist.  What danger was this that he
had overlooked?  Then, even as he turned, Wilding's voice fell on his
ear, and each word of the few he spoke was like a drop of icy water
on Westmacott's overheated brain.

"I protest you are vastly kind, Nick. But I intend, myself, to have
the pleasure of killing Mr. Westmacott." And his smile fell now in
mockery upon the disillusioned lad.

Crushed by that bolt from the blue, Richard sat as if stunned, the
flush receding from his face until his very lips were livid.  The shock
had sobered him, and, sobered, he realized in terror what he had done.
And yet even sober he was amazed to find that the staff upon which with
such security he had leaned should have proved rotten.  True he had put
much strain upon it; but then he had counted that it would stand much
strain.

He would have spoken, but he lacked words, so stricken was he.  And even
had he done so it is odds none would have heard him, for the late calm
was of a sudden turned to garboil.  Every man of that company - with the
sole exception of Richard himself - was on his feet, and all were
speaking at once, in clamouring, excited chorus.

Wilding alone  -  the butt of their expostulations - stood quietly
smiling, and wiped his face at last with a kerchief of finest lawn.
Dominating the others in the Babel rose the voice of Sir Rowland
Blake - impecunious Blake; Blake lately of the Guards, who had sold
his commission as the only thing remaining him upon which he could
raise money; Blake, that other suitor for Miss Westmacott's hand, the
suitor favoured by her brother.

"You shall not do it, Mr. Wilding," he shouted, his face crimson.  "No,
by God! You were shamed forever. He is but a lad, and drunk."

Trenchard eyed the short, powerfully built man beside him, and laughed
unpleasantly.  "You should get yourself bled one of these days, Sir
Rowland," he advised.  "There may be no great danger yet; but a man
can't be too careful when he wears a narrow neckcloth."

Blake - a short, powerfully built man - took no heed of him, but looked
straight at Mr. Wilding, who, smiling ever, calmly returned the gaze of
those prominent blue eyes.

"You will suffer me, Sir Rowland," said he sweetly, "to be the judge
of whom I will and whom I will not meet."

Sir Rowland flushed under that mocking glance and caustic tone.  "But
he is drunk," he repeated feebly.

"I think," said Trenchard, "that he is hearing something that will
make him sober."

Lord Gervase took the lad by the shoulder, and shook him impatiently.
"Well?" quoth he.  "Have you nothing to say?  You did a deal of prating
just now.  I make no doubt but that even at this late hour if you were
to make apology..."

"It would be idle," came Wilding's icy voice to quench the gleam of hope
kindling anew in Richard's breast.  The lad saw that he was lost, and he
is a poor thing, indeed, who cannot face the worst once that worst is
shown to be irrevocable.  He rose with some semblance of dignity.

"It is as I would wish," said he, but his livid face and staring eyes
belied the valour of his words.  He cleared his huskiness from his
throat.  "Sir Rowland," said he, "will you act for me?"

"Not I!" cried Blake with an oath.  "I'll be no party to the butchery
of a boy unfledged."

"Unfledged?" echoed Trenchard.  "Body o' me!  'Tis a matter Wilding
will amend to-morrow.  He'll fledge him, never fear.  He'll wing him
on his flight to heaven."

Of set purpose did Trenchard add this fuel to the blazing fire.  It was
no part of his views that this encounter should be avoided.  If Richard
Westmacott were allowed to live after what had passed, there were too
many tall fellows might go in peril of their lives.

Richard, meanwhile, had turned to the man on his left - young Vallancey,
a notorious partisan of the Duke of Monmouth's, a hair-brained gentleman
who was his own worst enemy.

"May I count on you, Ned?" he asked.

"Aye - to the death," said Vallancey magniloquently.

"Mr. Vallancey," said Trenchard with a wry twist of his sharp features,
"you grow prophetic."



CHAPTER II
SIR ROWLAND TO THE RESCUE


From Scoresby Hall, near Weston Zoyland, young Westmacott rode home
that Saturday night to his sister's house in Bridgwater, a sobered
man and an anguished.  He had committed a folly which was like to
cost him his life to-morrow.  Other follies had he committed in his
twenty-five years - for he was not quite the babe that Blake had
represented him, although he certainly looked nothing like his age.
But to-night he had contrived to set the crown to all.  He had good
cause to blame himself and to curse the miscalculation that had
emboldened him to launch himself upon a course of insult against this
Wilding, whom he hated with all the currish and resentful hatred of
the worthless for the man of parts.

But there was more than hate in the affront that he had offered; there
was calculation - to an even greater extent than we have seen.  It
happened that through his own fault young Richard was all but
penniless.  The pious, nonconformist soul of Sir Geoffrey Lupton - the
wealthy uncle from whom he had had great expectations - had been so
stirred to anger by Richard's vicious and besotted ways that he had left
every guinea that was his, every perch of land, and every brick of
edifice to Richard's half-sister Ruth. At present things were not so bad
for the worthless boy.  Ruth worshipped him.  He was a sacred charge
to her from their dead father, who, knowing the stoutness of her soul
and the feebleness of Richard's, had in dying imposed on her the care
and guidance of her graceless brother.  But Ruth, in all things strong,
was weak with Richard out of her very fondness for him.  To what she
had he might help himself, and thus it was that things were not so bad
with him at present.  But when Richard's calculating mind came to give
thought to the future he found that this occasioned him some care.
Rich ladies, even when they do not happen to be equipped in addition
with Ruth's winsome beauty and endearing nature, are not wont to go
unmarried.  It would have pleased Richard best to have had her remain
a spinster.  But he well knew that this was a matter in which she might
have a voice of her own, and it behoved him betimes to take wise
measures where possible husbands were concerned.

The first that came in a suitor's obvious panoply was Anthony Wilding,
of Zoyland Chase, and Richard watched his advent with foreboding.
Wilding's was a personality to dazzle any woman, despite - perhaps
even because of - the reputation for wildness that clung to him.  That
he was known as Wild Wilding to the countryside is true; but it were
unfair - as Richard knew - to attach to this too much importance;
for the adoption of so obvious an alliteration the rude country minds
needed but a slight encouragement.

 From the first it looked as if Ruth might favour him, and Richard's
fears assumed more definite shape.  If Wilding married her - and he
was a bold, masterful fellow who usually accomplished what he aimed
at - her fortune and estate must cease to be a pleasant pasture land
for bovine Richard.  The boy thought at first of making terms with
Wilding; the idea was old; it had come to him when first he had
counted the chances of his sister's marrying.  But he found himself
hesitating to lay his proposal before Mr. Wilding.  And whilst he
hesitated Mr. Wilding made obvious headway.  Still Richard dared not
do it.  There was a something in Wilding's eye that cried him
danger.  Thus, in the end, since he could not attempt a compromise with
this fine fellow, the only course remaining was that of direct
antagonism - that is to say, direct as Richard understood directness.
Slander was the weapon he used in that secret duel; the countryside
was well stocked with stories of Mr. Wilding's many indiscretions.
I do not wish to suggest that these were unfounded.  Still, the
countryside, cajoled by its primitive sense of humour into that
alliteration I have mentioned, found that having given this dog its bad
name, it was under the obligation of keeping up his reputation.  So it
exaggerated. Richard, exaggerating those exaggerations in his turn, had
some details, as interesting and unsavoury as they were in the main
untrue, to lay before his sister.

Now established love, it is well known, thrives wondrously on slander.
The robust growth of a maid's feelings for her accepted suitor is but
further strengthened by malign representations of his character. She
seizes with joy the chance of affording proof of her great loyalty,
and defies the world and its evil to convince her that the man to whom
she has given her trust is not most worthy of it.  Not so, however, with
the first timid bud of incipient interest.  Slander nips it like a frost;
in deadliness it is second only to ridicule.

Ruth Westmacott lent an ear to her brother's stories, incredulous only
until she remembered vague hints she had caught from this person and
from that, whose meaning was now made clear by what Richard told her,
which, incidentally, they served to corroborate. Corroboration, too,
did the tale of infamy receive from the friendship that prevailed
between Mr. Wilding and Nick Trenchard, the old ne'er-dowell, who in his
time - as everybody knew - had come so low, despite his gentle birth,
as to have been one of a company of strolling players.  Had Mr. Wilding
been other than she now learnt he was, he would surely not cherish an
attachment for a person so utterly unworthy.  Clearly, they were birds
of a plumage.

And so, her maiden purity outraged at the thought that she had been in
danger of lending a willing ear to the wooing of such a man, she had
crushed this love which she blushed to think was on the point of
throwing out roots to fasten on her soul, and was sedulous thereafter
in manifesting the aversion which she accounted it her duty to foster
for Mr. Wilding.

Richard had watched and smiled in secret, taking pride in the cunning
way he had wrought this change - that cunning which so often is given
to the stupid by way of compensation for the intelligence that has been
withheld them.

And now what time discountenanced, Wilding fumed and fretted all in
vain, Sir Rowland Blake, fresh from London and in full flight from
his creditors, flashed like a comet into the Bridgwater heavens.  He
dazzled the eyes and might have had for the asking the heart and hand
of Diana Horton - Ruth's cousin.  Her heart, indeed, he had without
the asking, for Diana fell straightway in love with him and showed it,
just as he showed that he was not without response to her affection.
There were some tender passages between them; but Blake, for all his
fine exterior, was a beggar, and Diana far from rich, and so he rode
his feelings with a hard grip upon the reins.  And then, in an evil
hour for poor Diana, young Westmacott had taken him to Lupton House,
and Sir Rowland had his first glimpse of Ruth, his first knowledge
of her fortune.  He went down before Ruth's eyes like a man of heart;
he went down more lowly still before her possessions like a man of
greed; and poor Diana might console herself with whom she could.

Her brother watched him, appraised him, and thought that in this broken
gamester he had a man after his own heart; a man who would be ready
enough for such a bargain as Richard had in mind; ready enough to sell
what rags might be left him of his honour so that he came by the
wherewithal to mend his broken fortunes.

The twain made terms.  They haggled like any pair of traders out of
Jewry, but in the end it was settled - by a bond duly engrossed and
sealed - that on the day that Sir Rowland married Ruth he should make
over to her brother certain values that amounted to perhaps a quarter
of her possessions.  There was no cause to think that Ruth would be
greatly opposed to this - not that that consideration would have
weighed with Richard.

But now that all essentials were so satisfactorily determined a vexation
was offered Westmacott by the circumstance that his sister seemed nowise
taken with Sir Rowland.  She suffered him because he was her brother's
friend; on that account she even honoured him with some measure of her
own friendship; but to no greater intimacy did her manner promise to
admit him.  And meanwhile, Mr. Wilding persisted in the face of all
rebuffs.  Under his smiling mask he hid the smart of the wounds she
dealt him, until it almost seemed to him that from loving her he had
come to hate her.

It had been well for Richard had he left things as they were and waited.
Whether Blake prospered or not, leastways it was clear that Wilding
would not prosper, and that, for the season, was all that need have
mattered to young Richard.

But in his cups that night he had thought in some dim way to precipitate
matters by affronting Mr. Wilding, secure, as I have shown, in his
belief that Wilding would perish sooner than raise a finger against
Ruth's brother.  And his drunken astuteness, it seemed, had been to his
mind as a piece of bottle glass to the sight, distorting the image
viewed through it.

With some such bitter reflection rode he home to his sleepless couch.
Some part of those dark hours he spent in bitter reviling of Wilding,
of himself, and even of his sister, whom he blamed for this awful
situation into which he had tumbled; at other times he wept from
self-pity and sheer fright.

Once, indeed, he imagined that he saw light, that he saw a way out
of the peril that hemmed him in.  His mind turned for a moment in
the direction that Trenchard had feared it might.  He bethought him of
his association with the Monmouth Cause - into which he had been
beguiled by the sordid hope of gain - and of Wilding's important
share in that same business.  He was even moved to rise and ride that
very night for Exeter to betray to Albemarle the Cause itself, so that
he might have Wilding laid by the heels.  But if Trenchard had been
right in having little faith in Richard's loyalty, he had, it seems,
in fearing treachery made the mistake of giving Richard credit for
more courage than was his endowment.  For when, sitting up in bed,
fired by his inspiration, young Westmacott came to consider the
questions the Lord-Lieutenant of Devon would be likely to ask him, he
reflected that the answers he must return would so incriminate himself
that he would be risking his own neck in the betrayal.  He flung
himself down again with a curse and a groan, and thought no more of
the salvation that might lie for him that way.

The morning of that last day of May found him pale and limp and all
a-tremble.  He rose betimes and dressed, but stirred not from his
chamber till in the garden under his window he heard his sister's
voice, and that of Diana Horton, joined anon by a man's deeper tones,
which he recognized with a start as Blake's.  What did the baronet
here so early?  Assuredly it must concern the impending duel.  Richard
knew no mawkishness on the score of eavesdropping. He stole to his
window and lent an ear, but the voices were receding, and to his
vexation he caught nothing of what was said.  He wondered how soon
Vallancey would come, and for what hour the encounter had been appointed.
Vallancey had remained behind at Scoresby Hall last night to make the
necessary arrangements with Trenchard, who was to act for Mr. Wilding.

Now it chanced that Trenchard and Wilding had business - business of
Monmouth's - to transact in Taunton that morning; business which
might not be delayed.  There were odd rumours afloat in the West;
persistent rumours which had come fast upon the heels of the news of
Argyle's landing in Scotland; rumours which maintained that Monmouth
himself was coming over from Holland.  These tales Wilding and his
associates had ignored.  The Duke, they knew, was to spend the summer
in retreat in Sweden, with (it was alleged) the Lady Henrietta Wentworth
to bear him company, and in the mean time his trusted agents were to
pave the way for his coming in the following spring.  Of late the lack
of direct news from the Duke had been a source of mystification to
his friends in the West, and now, suddenly, the information went
abroad - it was something more than rumour this time - that a letter
of the greatest importance had been intercepted.  From whom that letter
proceeded or to whom it was addressed, could not yet be discovered.
But it seemed clear that it was connected with the Monmouth Cause, and
it behoved Mr. Wilding to discover what he could.  With this intent he
rode with Trenchard that Sunday morning to Taunton, hoping that at the
Red Lion Inn - that meeting-place of dissenters - he might cull
reliable information.

It was in consequence of this that the meeting with Richard Westmacott
was not to take place until the evening, and therefore Vallancey came
not to Lupton House as early as Richard thought he should expect him.
Blake, however - more no doubt out of a selfish fear of losing a valued
ally in the winning of Ruth's hand than out of any excessive concern
for Richard himself - had risen early and hastened to Lupton House,
in the hope, which he recognized as all but forlorn, of yet being able
to avert the disaster he foresaw for Richard.

Peering over the orchard wall as he rode by, he caught a glimpse,
through an opening between the trees, of Ruth herself and Diana on
the lawn beyond.  There was a wicket gate that stood unlatched, and
availing himself of this Sir Rowland tethered his horse in the lane
and threading his way briskly through the orchard came suddenly upon
the girls.  Their laughter reached him as he advanced, and told him
they could know nothing yet of Richard's danger.

On his abrupt and unexpected apparition, Diana paled and Ruth flushed
slightly, whereupon Sir Rowland might have bethought him, had he been
book-learned, of the axiom, "Amour qui rougit, fleurette; amour qui plit,
drame du coeur."

He doffed his hat and bowed, his fair ringlets tumbling forward till
they hid his face, which was exceeding grave.

Ruth gave him good morning pleasantly.  "You London folk are earlier
risers than we are led to think," she added.

"`Twill be the change of air makes Sir Rowland matutinal," said Diana,
making a gallant recovery from her agitation.

"I vow," said he, "that I had grown matutinal earlier had I known what
here awaited me."

"Awaited you?" quoth Diana, and tossed her head archly disdainful.
"La! Sir Rowland, your modesty will be the death of you."  Archness
became this lady of the sunny hair, tip-tilted nose, and complexion
that outvied the apple-blossoms.  She was shorter by a half-head
than her darker cousin, and made up in sprightliness what she lacked
of Ruth's gentle dignity. The pair were foils, each setting off the
graces of the other.

"I protest I am foolish," answered Blake, a shade discomfited.  "But
I want not for excuse. I have it in the matter that brings me here."
So solemn was his air, so sober his voice, that both girls felt a
premonition of the untoward message that he bore.  It was Ruth who
asked him to explain himself.

"Will you walk, ladies?" said Blake, and waved the hand that still
held his hat riverwards, adown the sloping lawn.  They moved away
together, Sir Rowland pacing between his love of yesterday and his
love of to-day, pressed with questions from both.  He shaded his eyes
to look at the river, dazzling in the morning sunlight that came over
Polden Hill, and, standing thus, he unburdened himself at last.

"My news concerns Richard and - Mr. Wilding." They looked at him. Miss
Westmacott's fine level brows were knit.  He paused to ask, as if
suddenly observing his absence, "Is Richard not yet risen?"

"Not yet," said Ruth, and waited for him to proceed.

"It does credit to his courage that he should sleep late on such a
day," said Blake, and was pleased with the adroitness wherewith he
broke the news.  "He quarrelled last night with Anthony Wilding."

Ruth's hand went to her bosom; fear stared at Blake from out her eyes,
blue as the heavens overhead; a grey shade overcast the usual warm
pallor of her face.

"With Mr. Wilding?" she cried.  "That man!" And though she said no more
her eyes implored him to go on, and tell her what more there might be.
He did so, and he spared not Wilding.  The task, indeed, was one to
which he applied himself with a certain zest; whatever might be the
outcome of the affair, there was no denying that he was by way of
reaping profit from it by the final overthrow of an acknowledged rival.
And when he told her how Richard had flung his wine in Wilding's face
when Wilding stood to toast her, a faint flush crept to her cheeks.

"Richard did well," said she. "I am proud of him."

The words pleased Sir Rowland vastly; but he reckoned without Diana.
Miss Horton's mind was illumined by her knowledge of herself.  In the
light of that she saw precisely what capital this tale-bearer sought
to make.  The occasion might not be without its opportunities for her;
and to begin with, it was no part of her intention that Wilding should
be thus maligned and finally driven from the lists of rivalry with
Blake.  Upon Wilding, indeed, and his notorious masterfulness did she
found what hopes she still entertained of winning back Sir Rowland.

"Surely," said she, "you are a little hard on Mr. Wilding.  You speak
as if he were the first gallant that ever toasted lady's eyes."

"I am no lady of his, Diana," Ruth reminded her, with a faint show of heat.

Diana shrugged her shoulders. "You may not love him, but you can't
ordain that he shall not love you.  You are very harsh, I think.  To me
it rather seems that Richard acted like a boor."

"But, mistress," cried Sir Rowland, half out of countenance, and
stifling his vexation, "in these matters it all depends upon the manner."

"Why, yes," she agreed; "and whatever Mr. Wilding's manner, if I know
him at all, it would be nothing but respectful to the last degree."

"My own conception of respect," said he, "is not to bandy a lady's
name about a company of revellers."

"Bethink you, though, you said just now, it all depended on the manner,"
she rejoined. Sir Rowland shrugged and turned half from her to her
listening cousin.  When all is said, poor Diana appears - despite
her cunning - to have been short-sighted.  Aiming at a defined advantage
in the game she played, she either ignored or held too lightly the
concomitant disadvantage of vexing Blake.

"It were perhaps best to tell us the exact words he used, Sir Rowland,"
she suggested, "that for ourselves we may judge how far he lacked
respect."

"What signify the words!" cried Blake, now almost out of temper.  "I
don't recall them.  It is the air with which he pledged Mistress
Westmacott."

"Ah yes - the manner," quoth Diana irritatingly.  "We'll let that be.
Richard threw his wine in Mr. Wilding's face?  What followed then?  What
said Mr. Wilding?"

Sir Rowland remembered what Mr. Wilding had said, and bethought him that
it were impolitic in him to repeat it.  At the same time, not having
looked for this cross-questioning, he was all unprepared with any likely
answer.  He hesitated, until Ruth echoed Diana's question.

"Tell us, Sir Rowland," she begged him, "what Mr. Wilding said."

Being forced to say something, and being by nature slow-witted and
sluggish of invention, Sir Rowland was compelled, to his unspeakable
chagrin, to fall back upon the truth.

"Is not that proof?" cried Diana in triumph. "Mr. Wilding was reluctant
to quarrel with Richard.  He was even ready to swallow such an affront
as that, thinking it might be offered him under a misconception of his
meaning.  He plainly professed the respect that filled him for Mistress
Westmacott, and yet, and yet, Sir Rowland, you tell us that he lacked
respect!"

"Madam," cried Blake, turning crimson, "that matters nothing.  It was
not the place or time to introduce your cousin s name.

"You think, Sir Rowland," put in Ruth, her air grave, judicial almost,
"that Richard behaved well?"

"As I would like to behave myself, as I would have a son of mine behave
on the like occasion," Blake protested.  "But we waste words," he cried.
"I did not come to defend Richard, nor just to bear you this untoward
news.  I came to consult with you, in the hope that we might find some
way to avert this peril from your brother."

"What way is possible?" asked Ruth, and sighed.  "I would not... I would
not have Richard a coward."

"Would you prefer him dead?" asked Blake, sadly grave.

"Sooner than craven - yes," Ruth answered him, very white.

"There is no question of that," was Blake's rejoinder.  "The question
is that Wilding said last night that he would kill the boy, and what
Wilding says he does.  Out of the affection that I bear Richard is born
my anxiety to save him despite himself.  It is in this that I come to
seek your aid or offer mine.  Allied we might accomplish what singly
neither of us could."

He had at once the reward of his cunning speech.  Ruth held out her
hands.  "You are a good friend, Sir Rowland," she said, with a pale
smile; and pale too was the smile with which Diana watched them.  No
more than Ruth did she suspect the sincerity of Blake's protestations.

"I am proud you should account me that," said the baronet, taking Ruth's
hands and holding them a moment; "and I would that I could prove myself
your friend in this to some good purpose.  Believe me, if Wilding would
consent that I might take your brother's place, I would gladly do so."

It was a safe boast, knowing as he did that Wilding would consent to
no such thing; but it earned him a glance of greater kindliness from
Ruth - who began to think that hitherto perhaps she had done him some
injustice - and a look of greater admiration from Diana, who saw in him
her beau-ideal of the gallant lover.

"I would not have you endanger yourself so," said Ruth.

"It might," said Blake, his blue eyes very fierce, "be no great danger,
after all."  And then dismissing that part of the subject as if, like
a brave man, the notion of being thought boastful were unpleasant, he
passed on to the discussion of ways and means by which the coming duel
might be averted.  But when they came to grips with facts, it seemed
that Sir Rowland had as little idea of what might be done as had the
ladies.  True, he began by making the obvious suggestion that Richard
should tender Wilding a full apology.  That, indeed, was the only door
of escape, and Blake shrewdly suspected that what the boy had been
unwilling to do last night - partly through wine, and partly through
the fear of looking fearful in the eyes of Lord Gervase Scoresby's
guests - he might be willing enough to do to-day, sober and upon
reflection.  For the rest Blake was as far from suspecting Mr. Wilding's
peculiar frame of mind as had Richard been last night.  This his words
showed.

"I am satisfied," said he, "that if Richard were to go to-day to Wilding
and express his regret for a thing done in the heat of wine, Wilding
would be forced to accept it as satisfaction, and none would think that
it did other than reflect credit upon Richard."

"Are you very sure of that?" asked Ruth, her tone dubious, her glance
hopefully anxious.

"What else is to be thought?"

"But," put in Diana shrewdly, "it were an admission of Richard's that he
had done wrong."

"No less," he agreed, and Ruth caught her breath in fresh dismay.

"And yet you have said that he did as you would have a son of yours
do," Diana reminded him.

"And I maintain it," answered Blake; his wits worked slowly ever.
It was for Ruth to reveal the flaw to him.

"Do you not understand, then," she asked him sadly, "that such an
admission on Richard's part would amount to a lie - a lie uttered
to save himself from an encounter, the worst form of lie, a lie of
cowardice?  Surely, Sir Rowland, your kindly anxiety for his life
outruns your anxiety for his honour."

Diana, having accomplished her task, hung her head in silence, pondering.

Sir Rowland was routed utterly.  He glanced from one to the other of
his companions, and grew afraid that he - the town gallant - might come
to look foolish in the eyes of these country ladies.  He protested again
his love for Richard, and increased Ruth's terror by his mention of
Wilding's swordsmanship; but when all was said, he saw that he had best
retreat ere he spoiled the good effect which he hoped his solicitude had
created. And so he spoke of seeking counsel with Lord Gervase Scoresby,
and took his leave, promising to return by noon.



CHAPTER III
DIANA SCHEMES


Notwithstanding the brave face Ruth Westmacott had kept during his
presence, when he departed Sir Rowland left behind him a distress
amounting almost to anguish in her mind.  Yet though she might suffer,
there was no weakness in Ruth's nature.  She knew how to endure.  Diana,
bearing Richard not a tenth of the affection his sister consecrated to
him, was alarmed for him.  Besides, her own interests urged the averting
of this encounter.  And so she held in accents almost tearful that
something must be done to save him.

This, too, appeared to be Richard's own view, when presently - within
a few minutes of Blake's departure - he came to join them.  They watched
his approach in silence, and both noted - though with different eyes and
different feelings - the pallor of his fair face, the dark lines under
his colourless eyes.  His condition was abject, and his manners, never of
the best - for there was much of the spoiled child about Richard - were
clearly suffering from it.

He stood before his sister and his cousin, moving his eyes shiftily from
one to the other, rubbing his hands nervously together.

"Your precious friend Sir Rowland has been here," said he, and it was
not clear from his manner which of them he addressed.  "Not a doubt but
he will have brought you the news." He seemed to sneer.

Ruth advanced towards him, her face grave, her sweet eyes full of
pitying concern.  She placed a hand upon his sleeve.  "My poor
Richard.. ." she began, but he shook off her kindly touch, laughing
angrily - a mere cackle of irritability.

"Odso!" he interrupted her. "It is a thought late for this mock
kindliness!"

Diana, in the background, arched her brows, then with a shrug turned
aside and seated herself on the stone seat by which they had been
standing.  Ruth shrank back as if her brother had struck her.

"Richard!" she cried, and searched his livid face with her eyes.
"Richard!"

He read a question in the interjection, and he answered it.  "Had you
known any real care, any true concern for me, you had not given cause
for this affair," he chid her peevishly.

"What are you saying?" she cried, and it occurred to her at last that
Richard was afraid.  He was a coward! She felt as she would faint.

"I am saying," said he, hunching his shoulders, and shivering as he
spoke, yet, his glance unable to meet hers, "that it is your fault that
I am like to get my throat cut before sunset."

"My fault?" she murmured.  The slope of lawn seemed to wave and swim
about her.  "My fault?"

"The fault of your wanton ways," he accused her harshly.  "You have so
played fast and loose with this fellow Wilding that he makes free of
your name in my very presence, and puts upon me the need to get myself
killed by him to save the family honour."

He would have said more in this strain, but something in her glance gave
him pause.  There fell a silence. From the distance came the melodious
pealing of church bells.  High overhead a lark was pouring out its song;
in the lane at the orchard end rang the beat of trotting hoofs.  It was
Diana who spoke presently.  Just indignation stirred her, and, when
stirred, she knew no pity, set no limits to her speech.

"I think, indeed," said she, her voice crisp and merciless, "that the
family honour will best be saved if Mr. Wilding kills you.  It is in
danger while you live.  You are a coward, Richard."

"Diana!" he thundered - he could be mighty brave with women - whilst
Ruth clutched her arm to restrain her.

But she continued, undeterred: "You are a coward - a pitiful coward,"
she told him.  "Consult your mirror.  It will tell you what a palsied
thing you are.  That you should dare so speak to Ruth..."

"Don't!" Ruth begged her, turning.


"Aye," growled Richard, "she had best be silent."

Diana rose, to battle, her cheeks crimson.  "It asks a braver man than
you to compel my obedience," she told him.  "La!" she fumed, "I'll swear
that had Mr. Wilding overheard what you have said to your sister, you
would have little to fear from his sword.  A cane would be the weapon
he'd use on you."

Richard's pale eyes flamed malevolently; a violent rage possessed him
and flooded out his fear, for nothing can so goad a man as an offensive
truth.  Ruth approached him again; again she took him by the arm,
seeking to soothe his over-troubled spirit; but again he shook her off.
And then to save the situation came a servant from the house.  So lost
in anger was all Richard's sense of decency that the mere supervention
of the man would not have been enough to have silenced him could he
have found adequate words in which to answer Mistress Horton.  But even
as he racked his mind, the footman's voice broke the silence, and the
words the fellow uttered did what his presence alone might not have
sufficed to do.

"Mr. Vallancey is asking for you, sir," he announced.


Richard started.  Vallancey!  He had come at last, and his coming was
connected with the impending duel.  The thought was paralyzing to
young Westmacott.  The flush of anger faded from his face; its leaden
hue returned and he shivered as with cold.  At last he mastered himself
sufficiently to ask:

"Where is he, Jasper?"

"In the library, sir," replied the servant. "Shall I bring him hither?"

"Yes - no," he answered.  "I will come to him."  He turned his back upon
the ladies, paused a moment, still irresolute.  Then, as by an effort,
he followed the servant across the lawn and vanished through the ivied
porch.

As he went Diana flew to her cousin.  Her shallow nature was touched
with transient pity.  "My poor Ruth..."  she murmured soothingly, and
set her arm about the other's waist.  There was a gleam of tears in
the eyes Ruth turned upon her.  Together they came to the granite seat
and sank to it side by side, fronting the placid river.  There Ruth,
her elbows on her knees, cradled her chin in her hands, and with a sigh
of misery stared straight before her.

"It was untrue!" she said at last.  "What Richard said of me was untrue."

"Why, yes," Diana snapped, contemptuous.  "The only truth is that Richard
is afraid."

Ruth shivered. "Ah, no," she pleaded - she knew how true was the
impeachment. "Don't say it, Diana."

"It matters little that I say it," snorted Diana impatiently.  "It is
a truth proclaimed by the first glance at him."

"He is in poor health, perhaps," said Ruth, seeking miserably to excuse
him.

"Aye," said Diana.  "He's suffering from an ague - the result of a lack
of courage.  That he should so have spoken to you!  Give me patience,
Heaven!"

Ruth crimsoned again at the memory of his words; a wave of indignation
swept through her gentle soul, but was gone at once, leaving an ineffable
sadness in its room.  What was to be done?  She turned to Diana for
counsel. But Diana was still whipping up her scorn.

"If he goes out to meet Mr. Wilding, he'll shame himself and every man
and woman that bears the name of Westmacott," said she, and struck a
new fear with that into the heart of Ruth.

"He must not go!" she answered passionately.  "He must not meet him!"

Diana flashed her a sidelong glance.  "And if he doesn't, will things
be mended?" she inquired.  "Will it save his honour to have Mr. Wilding
come and cane him?"

"He'd not do that?" said Ruth.

"Not if you asked him - no," was Diana's sharp retort, and she caught
her breath on the last word of it, for just then the Devil dropped
the seed of a suggestion into the fertile soil of her lovesick soul.

"Diana!" Ruth exclaimed in reproof, turning to confront her cousin.
But Diana's mind started upon its scheming journey was now travelling
fast.  Out of that devil's seed there sprang with amazing rapidity
a tree-like growth, throwing out branches, putting forth leaves,
bearing already - in her fancy - bloom and fruit.

"Why not?" quoth she after a breathing space, and her voice was gentle,
her tone innocent beyond compare.  "Why should you not ask him?" Ruth
frowned, perplexed and thoughtful, and now Diana turned to her with the
lively eye of one into whose mind has leapt a sudden inspiration.
"Ruth!" she exclaimed.  "Why, indeed, should you not ask him to forgo
this duel?"

"How, how could I?" faltered Ruth.

"He'd not deny you; you know he'd not."

"I do not know it," answered Ruth.  "But if I did, how could I ask it?"

"Were I Richard's sister, and had I his life and honour at heart as you
have, I'd not ask how. If Richard goes to that encounter he loses both,
remember - unless between this and then he undergoes some change.  Were
I in your place, I'd straight to Wilding."

"To him?" mused Ruth, sitting up. "How could I go to him?"

"Go to him, yes," Diana insisted.  "Go to him at once - while there is
yet time."

Ruth rose and moved away a step or two towards the water, deep in
thought.  Diana watched her furtively and slyly, the rapid rise and
fall of her maiden breast betraying the agitation that filled her
as she waited - like a gamester - for the turn of the card that would
show her whether she had won or lost.  For she saw clearly how Ruth
might be so compromised that there was something more than a chance
that Diana would no longer have cause to account her cousin a barrier
between herself and Blake.

"I could not go alone," said Ruth, and her tone was that of one still
battling with a notion that is repugnant.

"Why, if that is all," said Diana, "then I'll go with you."

"I can't! I can't! Consider the humiliation."

"Consider Richard rather," the fair temptress made answer eagerly. "Be
sure that Mr. Wilding will save you all humiliation.  He'll not deny
you.  At a word from you, I know what answer he will make.  He will
refuse to push the matter forward - acknowledge himself in the wrong,
do whatever you may ask him.  He can do it.  None will question his
courage.  It has been proved too often."  She rose and came to Ruth.
She set her arm about her waist again, and poured shrewd persuasion
over her cousin s indecision.  "To-night you'll thank me for this
thought," she assured her.  "Why do you pause? Are you so selfish as
to think more of the little humiliation that may await you than of
Richard's life and honour?"

"No, no," Ruth protested feebly.

"What, then?  Is Richard to go out and slay his honour by a show of fear
before he is slain, himself, by the man he has insulted?"

"I'll go," said Ruth.  Now that the resolve was taken, she was brisk,
impatient.  "Come, Diana. Let Jerry saddle for us.  We'll ride to
Zoyland Chase at once."

They went without a word to Richard who was still closeted with
Vallancey, and riding forth they crossed the river and took the road
that, skirting Sedgemoor, runs south to Weston Zoyland.  They rode
with little said until they came to the point where the road branches
on the left, throwing out an arm across the moor towards Chedzoy, a mile
or so short of Zoyland Chase.  Here Diana reined in with a sharp gasp
of pain.  Ruth checked, and cried to know what ailed her.

"It is the sun, I think," muttered Diana, her hand to her brow.  "I am
sick and giddy."  And she slipped a thought heavily to the ground.  In
an instant Ruth had dismounted and was beside her.  Diana was pale,
which lent colour to her complaint, for Ruth was not to know that the
pallor sprang from her agitation in wondering whether the ruse she
attempted would succeed or not.

A short stone's-throw from where they had halted stood a cottage back
from the road in a little plot of ground, the property of a kindly old
woman known to both.  There Diana expressed the wish to rest awhile,
and thither they took their way, Ruth leading both horses and supporting
her faltering cousin.  The dame was all solicitude.  Diana was led into
her parlour, and what could be done was done.  Her corsage was loosened,
water drawn from the well and brought her to drink and bathe her brow.

She sat back languidly, her head lolling sideways against one of the
wings of the great chair, and languidly assured them she would be better
soon if she were but allowed to rest awhile.  Ruth drew up a stool to
sit beside her, for all that her soul fretted at this delay.  What if
in consequence she should reach Zoyland Chase too late - to find tha
Mr. Wilding had gone forth already?  But even as she was about to sit,
it seemed that the same thought had of a sudden come to Diana.  The girl
leaned forward, thrusting - as if by an effort - some of her faintness
from her.

"Do not wait for me, Ruth," she begged.

"I must, child."

"You must not;" the other insisted.  "Think what it may mean - Richard's
life, perhaps.  No, no, Ruth, dear.  Go on; go on to Zoyland.  I'll
follow you in a few minutes."

"I'll wait for you," said Ruth with firmness.

At that Diana rose, and in rising staggered.  "Then we'll push on at
once," she gasped, as if speech itself were an excruciating effort.

"But you are in no case to stand!" said Ruth.  "Sit, Diana, sit."

"Either you go on alone or I go with you, but go at once you must.  At
any moment Mr. Wilding may go forth, and your chance is lost.  I'll not
have Richard's blood upon my head."

Ruth wrung her hands in her dismay, confronted by a parlous choice.
Consent to Diana's accompanying her in this condition she could not;
ride on alone to Mr. Wilding's house was hardly to be thought of, and
yet if she delayed she was endangering Richard's life.  By the very
strength of her nature she was caught in the mesh of Diana's scheme.
She saw that her hesitation was unworthy.  This was no ordinary cause,
no ordinary occasion.  It was a time for heroic measures.  She must
ride on, nor could she consent to take Diana.

And so in the end she went, having seen her cousin settled again in
the high chair, and took with her Diana's feeble assurances that she
would follow her in a few moments, as soon as her faintness passed.



CHAPTER IV
TERMS OF SURRENDER


"MR. WILDING rode at dawn with Mr. Trenchard, madam," announced old
Walters, the butler at Zoyland Chase.  Old and familiar servant though
he was, he kept from his countenance all manifestation of the deep
surprise occasioned him by the advent of Mistress Westmacott, unescorted.

"He rode... at dawn?" faltered Ruth, and for a moment she stood
irresolute, afraid and pondering in the shade of the great pillared
porch.  Then she took heart again.  If he rode at dawn, it was not in
quest of Richard that he went, since it had been near eleven o'clock
when she had left Bridgwater.  He must have gone on other business first,
and, doubtless, before he went to the encounter he would be returning
home.  "Said he at what hour he would return?" she asked.

"He bade us expect him by noon, madam."

This gave confirmation to her thoughts.  It wanted more than half an
hour to noon already.  "Then he may return at any moment?" said she.

"At any moment, madam," was the grave reply.

She took her resolve.  "I will wait," she announced, to the man's
increasing if undisplayed astonishment. "Let my horse be seen to."

He bowed his obedience, and she followed him - a slender, graceful
figure in her dove-coloured riding- habit laced with silver - across
the stone-flagged vestibule, through the cool gloom of the great hall,
into the spacious library of which he held the door.

"Mistress Horton is following me," she informed the butler.  "Will you
bring her to me when she comes?"

Bowing again in silent acquiescence, the white-haired servant closed
the door and left her.  She stood in the centre of the great room,
drawing off her riding-gloves, perturbed and frightened beyond all
reason at finding herself for the first time under Mr. Wilding's roof.
He was most handsomely housed.  His grandfather, who had travelled in
Italy, had built the Chase upon the severe and noble lines which there
he had learnt to admire, and he had embellished its interior, too,
with many treasures of art which with that intent he had there collected.

She dropped her whip and gloves on to a table, and sank into a chair to
wait, her heart fluttering in her throat.  Time passed, and in the
silence of the great house her anxiety was gradually quieted, until at
last through the long window that stood open came faintly wafted to her
on the soft breeze of that June morning the sound of a church clock at
Weston Zoyland chiming twelve.  She rose with a start, bethinking her
suddenly of Diana, and wondering why she had not yet arrived.  Was the
child's indisposition graver than she had led Ruth to suppose?  She
crossed to the windows and stood there drumming impatiently upon the
pane, her eyes straying idly over the sweep of elm-fringed lawns towards
the river gleaming silvery here and there between the trees in the
distance.

Suddenly she caught a sound of hoofs.  Was this Diana?  She sped to the
other window, the one that stood open, and now she heard the crunch of
gravel and the champ of bits and the sound of more than two pairs of
hoofs.  She caught a glimpse of Mr. Wilding and Mr. Trenchard.

She felt the colour flying from her cheeks; again her heart fluttered
in her throat, and it was in vain that with her hand she sought to
repress the heaving of her breast.  She was afraid; her every instinct
bade her slip through the window at which she stood and run from Zoyland
Chase.  And then she thought of Richard and his danger, and she seemed
to gather courage from the reflection of her purpose in this house.

Men's voices reached her - a laugh, the harsh cawing of Nick Trenchard.

"A lady!" she heard him cry.  "`Od's heart, Tony!  Is this a time for
trafficking with doxies?"  She crimsoned an instant at the coarse word
and set her teeth, only to pale again the next.  The voices were lowered
so that she heard not what was said; one sharp exclamation she
recognized to be in Wilding's voice, but caught not the word he uttered.
There followed a pause, and she stirred uneasily, waiting.  Then came
swift steps and jangling spurs across the hall, the door opened suddenly,
and Mr. Wilding, in a scarlet riding-coat, his boots white with dust,
stood bowing to her from the threshold.

"Your servant, Mistress Westmacott," she heard him murmur.  "My house
is deeply honoured."

She dropped him a half-curtsy, pale and tongue-tied.  He turned to
deliver hat and whip and gloves to Walters, who had followed him, then
closed the door and came forward into the room.

"You will forgive that I present myself thus before you," he said, in
apology for his dusty raiment.  "But I bethought me you might be in
haste, and Walters tells me that already have you waited nigh upon an
hour.  Will you not sit, madam?"  And he advanced a chair.  His long
white face was set like a mask; but his dark, slanting eyes devoured
her.  He guessed the reason of her visit.  She who had humbled him,
who had driven him to the very borders of despair, was now to be humbled
and to despair before him.  Under the impassive face his soul exulted
fiercely.

She disregarded the chair he proffered.  "My visit ... has no doubt
surprised you," she began, tremulous and hesitating.

"I' faith, no," he answered quietly.  "The cause, after all, is not
very far to seek.  You are come on Richard's behalf."

"Not on Richard's," she answered.  "On my own."  And now that the ice
was broken, the suspense of waiting over, she found the tide of her
courage flowing fast.  "This encounter must not take place, Mr.
Wilding," she informed him.

He raised his eyebrows  -  fine and level as her own  -  his thin lips
smiled never so faintly.  "It is, I think," said he, "for Richard to
prevent it  The chance was his last night.  It shall be his again when
we meet.  If he will express regret . . ."  He left his sentence there.
In truth he mocked her, though she guessed it not.

"You mean," said she, "that if he makes apology...?"

"What else? What other way remains?"

She shook her head, and, if pale, her face was resolute, her glance
steady.

"That is impossible," she told him.  "Last night - as I have the
story - he might have done it without shame.  To-day it is too late.
To tender his apology on the ground would be to proclaim himself a
coward."

Mr. Wilding pursed his lips and shifted his position.  "It is difficult,
perhaps," said he, "but not impossible."

"It is impossible," she insisted firmly.

"I'll not quarrel with you for a word," he answered, mighty agreeable.
"Call it impossible, if you will.  Admit, however, that it is all I can
suggest.  You will do me the justice, I am sure, to see that in
expressing my willingness to accept your brother's expressions of regret
I am proving myself once more your very obedient servant.  But that it
is you who ask it -  and whose desires are my commands -  I should let
no man go unpunished for an insult such as your brother put upon me."

She winced at his words, at the bow with which he had professed himself
once more her servant.

"It is no clemency that you offer him," she said.  "You leave him a
choice between death and dishonour."

"He has," Wilding reminded her, "the chance of combat."

She flung back her head impatiently. "I think you mock me," said she.

He looked at her keenly.  "Will you tell me plainly, madam," he begged,
"what you would have me do?"

She flushed under his gaze, and the flush told him what he sought to
learn.  There was, of course, another way, and she had thought of it;
but she lacked -  as well she might, all things considered - the courage
to propose it.  She had come to Mr. Wilding in the vague hope that he
himself would choose the heroic part.  And he, to punish for her scorn
of him this woman whom he loved to hating-point, was resolved that she
herself must beg it of him.  Whether, having so far compelled her, he
would grant her prayer or not was something he could not just then
himself have told you.  She bowed her head in silence, and Wilding,
that faint smile, half friendliness, half mockery, hovering ever on his
lips, turned aside and moved softly towards the window.  Her eyes,
veiled behind the long lashes of their drooping lids, followed him
furtively.  She felt that she hated him in very truth.  She marked the
upright elegance of his figure, the easy grace of his movements, the
fine aristocratic mould of the aquiline face, which she beheld in
profile; and she hated him the more for these outward favours that must
commend him to no lack of women.  He was too masterful.  He made her
realize too keenly her own weakness and that of Richard.  She felt that
just now he controlled the vice that held her fast - her affection for
her brother.  And because of that she hated him the more.  "You see,
Mistress Westmacott," said he, his shoulder to her, his tone sweet to
the point of sadness, "that there is nothing else." She stood, her eyes
following the pattern of the parquetry, her foot unconsciously tracing
it; her courage ebbed, and she had no answer for him.  After a pause
he spoke again, still without turning.  "If that was not enough to suit
your ends" - and though he spoke in a tone of ever-increasing sadness,
there glinted through it the faintest ray of mockery - "I marvel you
should have come to Zoyland - to compromise yourself to so little
purpose."

She raised a startled face.  "Com ... compromise myself?" she echoed.
"Oh!" It was a cry of indignation.

"What else?" quoth he, and turned abruptly to confront her.

"Mistress Horton was.., was with me," she panted, her voice quivering as
on the brink of tears.

"`Tis unfortunate you should have separated," he condoled.

"But.., but, Mr. Wilding, I ... I trusted to your honour.  I accounted
you a gentleman.  Surely... surely, sir, you will not let it be known
that... I came to you?  You will keep my secret?"

"Secret!" said he, his eyebrows raised. "`Tis already the talk of the
servants' hall.  By to-morrow `twill be the gossip of Bridgwater."

Air failed her  Her blue eyes fixed him in horror out of her stricken
face.  Not a word had she wherewith to answer him.

The sight of her, thus, affected him oddly.  His passion for her surged
up, aroused by pity for her plight, and awakened in him a sense of his
brutality.  A faint flush stirred in his cheeks.  He stepped quickly to
her, and caught her hand.  She let it lie, cold and inert, within his
nervous grasp.

"Ruth, Ruth!" he cried, and his voice was for once unsteady.  "Give it
no thought!  I love you, Ruth.  If you'll but heed that, no breath of
scandal can hurt you."

She swallowed hard.  "As how?" she asked mechanically.

He bowed low over her hand - so low that his face was hidden from her.

"If you will do me the honour to become my wife ..." he began, but got
no further, for she snatched away her hand, her cheeks crimsoning, her
eyes aflame with indignation.  He stepped back, crimsoning too.  She had
dashed the gentleness from his mood.  He was angered now and tigerish.

"Oh!" she panted.  "It is to affront me!  Is thisthe time or place..."

He cropped her flow of indignant speech ere it was well begun.  He
caught her in his arms, and held her tight, and so sudden was the act,
so firm his grip that she had not the thought or force to struggle.

"All time is love's time, all places are love's place," he told her,
his face close to her own.  "And of all time and places the present
ever preferable to the wise - for life is uncertain and short at best.
I bring you worship, and you answer me with scorn.  But I shall prevail,
and you shall come to love me in very spite of your own self."

She threw back her head, away from his as far as the bonds he had cast
about her would allow.  "Air! Air!" she panted feebly.

"Oh, you shall have air enough anon," he answered with a half-strangled
laugh, his passion mounting ever.  "Hark you, now - hark you, for
Richard's sake, since you'll not listen for my own nor yours. There is
another course by which I can save both Richard's life and honour.  You
know it, and you counted upon my generosity to suggest it.  But you
overlooked the thing on which you should have counted.  You overlooked
my love.  Count upon that, my Ruth, and Richard shall have naught to
fear.  Count upon that, and when we meet this evening, Richard and I,
it is I who will tender the apology, I who will admit that I was wrong
to introduce your name into that company last night, and that what
Richard did was a just and well-deserved punishment upon me.  This will
I do if you'll but count upon my love."

She looked up at him fearfully, yet with flutterings of hope.  "What
is't you mean?"  she asked him faintly.

"That if you'll promise to be my wife..."

"Your wife!" she interrupted him.  She struggled to free herself,
released one arm and struck him in the face.  "Let me go, you coward!"

He was answered.  His arms melted from her.  He fell back a pace, very
white and even trembling, the fire all gone from his eye, which was now
turned dull and deadly.

"So be it," he said, and strode to the bell-rope. "I'll not offend again.
I had not offended now" - he continued, in the voice of one offering
an explanation cold and formal - "but that when first I came into your
life you seemed to bid me welcome."  His fingers closed upon the crimson
bell-cord. She guessed his purpose.

"Wait!" she gasped, and put forth her hand.  He paused, the rope in his,
his eye kindling anew.  "You ... you mean to kill Richard now?"  she
asked him.

A swift lifting of his brows was his only answer.  He tugged the cord.
From the distance the peal of the bell reached them faintly.

"Oh, wait, wait!" she begged, her hands pressed against her cheeks.  He
stood impassible - hatefully impassible. "....... if I were to consent
to... this ... how... how soon...?" He understood the unfinished
question.  Interest warmed his face again.  He took a step towards her,
but by a gesture she seemed to beg him come no nearer.

"If you will promise to marry me within the week, Richard shall have no
cause to fear either for his life or his honour at my hands."

She seemed now to be recovering her calm.  "Very well," she said, her
voice singularly steady.  "Let that be a bargain between us.  Spare
Richard's life and honour - both, remember! - and on Sunday next ..."
For all her courage her voice quavered and faltered.  She dared add no
more, lest it should break altogether.

Mr. Wilding drew a deep breath.  Again he would have advanced.  "Ruth!"
he cried, and some repentance smote him, some shame shook him in his
purpose.  At that moment it was in his mind to capitulate
unconditionally; to tell her that Richard should have naught to fear
from him, and yet that she should go free as the winds.  Her gesture
checked him.  It was so eloquent of aversion.  He paused in his advance,
stifled his better feelings, and turned once more, relentless.  The door
opened and old Walters stood awaiting his commands.

"Mistress Westmacott is leaving," he informed his servant, and bowed
low and formally in farewell before her.  She passed out without another
word, the old butler following, and presently through the door that
remained open came Trenchard, in quest of Mr. Wilding who stood bemused.

Nick sauntered in, his left eye almost hidden by the rakish cock of his
hat, one hand tucked away under the skirts of his plum-coloured coat,
the other supporting the stem of a long clay pipe, at which he was
pulling thoughtfully.  The pipe and he were all but inseparable; indeed,
the year before in London he had given appalling scandal by appearing
with it in the Mall, and had there remained him any character to lose,
he must assuredly have lost it then.

He observed his friend through narrowing eyes - he had small eyes, very
blue and very bright, in which there usually abode a roguish gleam.

"My sight, Anthony," said he, "reminds me that I am growing old.  I
wonder did it mislead me on the score of your visitor?"

"The lady who left," said Wilding with a touch of severity, "will be
Mistress Wilding by this day se'night."

Trenchard took the pipe from his lips, audibly blew out a cloud of
smoke and stared at his friend.  "Body o' me!" quoth he.  "Is this a
time for marrying? - with these rumours of Monmouth's coming over."

Wilding made an impatient gesture.  "I thought to have convinced you
they are idle," said he, and flung himself into a chair at his
writing-table.

Nick came over and perched himself upon the table's edge, one leg
swinging in the air.  "And what of this matter of the intercepted
letter from London to our Taunton friends?"

"I can't tell you.  But of this I am sure, His Grace is incapable of
anything so rash.  Certain is it that he'll not stir until Battiscomb
returns to Holland, and Battiscomb is still in Cheshire sounding the
Duke's friends."

"Yet were I you, I should not marry just at present."

Wilding smiled. "If you were me, you'd never marry at all."

"Faith, no!" said Trenchard.  "I'd as soon play at `hot-cockles,'
or `Parson-has-lost-his-cloak.'  `Tis a mort more amusing and the
sooner done with."



CHAPTER V
THE ENCOUNTER


Ruth Wesmacott rode back like one in a dream, with vague and hazy
notions of what she saw or did.  So overwrought was she by the interview
from which she came, her mind so obsessed by it, that never a thought
had she for Diana and her indisposition until she arrived home to find
her cousin there before her.  Diana was in tears, called up by the
reproaches of her mother, Lady Horton - the relict of that fine soldier
Sir Cholmondeley Horton, of Taunton.

The girl had arrived at Lupton House a half-hour ahead of Miss
Westmacott, and upon her arrival she had expressed surprise, either
feigned or real, at finding Ruth still absent.  Detecting the alarm that
Diana was careful to throw into her voice and manner, her mother
questioned her, and elicited the story of her faintness and of Ruth's
having ridden on alone to Mr. Wilding's.  So outraged was Lady Horton
that for once in a way this woman, usually so meek and ease-loving, was
roused to an energy and anger with her daughter and her niece that
threatened to remove Diana at once from the pernicious atmosphere of
Lupton House and carry her home to Taunton.  Ruth found her still at her
remonstrances, arrived, indeed, in time for her share of them.

"I have been sore mistaken in you, Ruth!" the dame reproached her.  "I
can scarce believe it of you.  I have held you up as an example to
Diana, for the discretion and wisdom of your conduct, and you do this!
You go alone to Mr. Wilding's house - to Mr. Wilding's, of all men!"

"It was no time for ordinary measures," said Ruth, but she spoke without
any of the heat of one who defends her conduct.  She was, the slyly
watchful Diana observed, very white and tired.  "It was no time to think
of nice conduct.  There was Richard to be saved."

"And was it worth ruining yourself to do that?" quoth Lady Horton, her
colour high.

"Ruining myself?" echoed Ruth, and she smiled never so weary a smile.
"I have, indeed, done that, though not in the way you mean."

Mother and daughter eyed her, mystified. "Your good name is blasted,"
said her aunt, "unless so be that Mr. Wilding is proposing to make you
his wife."  It was a sneer the good woman could not, in her indignation,
repress.

"That is what Mr. Wilding has done me the honour to propose," Ruth
answered bitterly, and left them gaping.  "We are to be married this
day se'night."

A dead silence followed the calm announcement.  Then Diana rose.  At the
misery, the anguish that could impress so strange and white a look on
Ruth's winsome face, she was smitten with remorse, her incipient
satisfaction dashed.  This was her work; the fruit of her scheming.  But
it had gone further than she had foreseen; and for all that no result
could better harmonize with her own ambitions and desires, for the
moment - under the first shock of that announcement - she felt guilty
and grew afraid.

"Ruth!" she cried, her voice a whisper of stupefaction.  "Oh, I wish I
had come with you!"

"But you couldn't; you were faint."  And then - recalling what had
passed - her mind was filled with sudden concern for Diana, even amid
her own sore troubles.  "Are you quite yourself again, Diana?" she
inquired.

Diana answered almost fiercely, "I am quite well." And then, with a
change to wistfulness, she added, "Oh, I would I had come with you!"

"Matters had been no different," Ruth assured her. "It was a bargain
Mr. Wilding drove.  It was the price I had to pay for Richard's life and
honour."  She swallowed hard, and let her hands fall limply to her
sides.  "Where is Richard?" she inquired.

It was her aunt who answered her.  "He went forth half an hour agone
with Mr. Vallancey and Sir Rowland."

"Sir Rowland had returned, then?" She looked up quickly.

"Yes," answered Diana.  "But he had achieved nothing by his visit to
Lord Gervase.  His lordship would not intervene; he swore he hoped the
cub would be flayed alive by Wilding.  Those were his lordship's words,
as Sir Rowland repeated them.  Sir Rowland is in sore distress for
Richard.  He has gone with them to the meeting."

"At least, he has no longer cause for his distress," said Miss
Westmacott with her bitter smile, and sank as one exhausted to a chair.
Lady Horton moved to comfort her, her motherliness all aroused for this
motherless girl, usually so wise and strong, and seemingly wiser and
stronger than ever in this thing that Lady Horton had deemed a weakness
and a folly.

Meanwhile, Richard and his two friends were on their way to the moors
across the river to the encounter with Mr. Wilding.  But before they
had got him to ride forth, Vallancey had had occasion to regret that
he stood committed to a share in this quarrel, for he came to know
Richard as he really was.  He had found him in an abject state, white
and trembling, his coward's fancy anticipating a hundred times a minute
the death he was anon to die.

Vallancey had hailed him cheerily.

"The day is yours, Dick," he had cried, when Richard entered the library
where he awaited him.  "Wild Wilding has ridden to Taunton this morning
and is to be back by noon.  Odsbud, Dick! - twenty miles and more in the
saddle before coming on the ground.  Heard you ever of the like madness?
He'll be stiff as a broom-handle - an easy victim."

Richard listened, stared, and, finding Vallancey's eyes fixed steadily
upon him, attempted a smile and achieved a horrible grimace.

"What ails you, man?" cried his second, and caught him by the wrist.
He felt the quiver of the other's limb.  "Stab me!" quoth he, "you are
in no case to fight.  What the plague ails you?"

"I am none so well this morning," answered Richard feebly.  "Lord
Gervase's claret," he added, passing a hand across his brow.

"Lord Gervase's claret?" echoed Vallancey in horror, as at some
outrageous blasphemy.  "Frontignac at ten shillings the bottle!" he
exclaimed.

"Still, claret never does lie easy on my stomach," Richard explained,
intent upon blaming Lord Gervase s wine - since he could think of nothing
else - for his condition.

Vallancey looked at him shrewdly.  "My cock," said he, "if you're to
fight we'll have to mend your temper."  He took it upon himself to ring
the bell, and to order up two bottles of Canary and one of brandy. If
he was to get his man to the ground at all - and young Vallancey had a
due sense of his responsibilities in that connection - it would be well
to supply Richard with something to replace the courage that had oozed
out overnight.  Young Richard, never loath to fortify himself, proved
amenable enough to the stiffly laced Canary that his friend set before
him.  Then, to divert his mind, Vallancey, with that rash freedom that
had made the whole of Somerset know him for a rebel, set himself to
talk of the Protestant Duke and his right to the crown of England.

He was still at his talk, Richard listening moodily what time he was
slowly but surely befuddling himself, when Sir Rowland - returning from
Scoresby Hall - came to bring the news of his lack of success.  Richard
hailed him noisily, and bade him ring for another glass, adding, with a
burst of oaths, some appalling threats of how anon he should serve
Anthony Wilding.  His wits drowned in the stiff liquor Vallancey had
pressed upon him, he seemed of a sudden to have grown as fierce and
bloodthirsty as any scourer that ever terrorized the watch.

Blake listened to him and grunted.  "Body o' me!" swore the town gallant.
"If that's the humour you're going out to fight in, I'll trouble you for
the eight guineas I won from you at Primero yesterday before you start."

Richard reared himself, by the help of the table, and stood a thought
unsteadily, his glance laboriously striving to engage Blake's.

"Damn me!" quoth he.  "Your want of faith dishgraces me - and `t
`shgraces you.  Shalt ha' the guineas when we're back - and not before."

"Hum!" quoth Blake, to whom eight guineas were a consideration in these
bankrupt days.  "And if you don't come back at all upon whom am I to
draw?"

The suggestion sank through Dick's half-fuddled senses, and the scare it
gave him was reflected on his face.

"Damn you, Blake!" swore Vallancey between his teeth.  "Is that a decent
way to talk to a man who is going out?  Never heed him, Dick!  Let him
wait for his dirty guineas till we return."

"Thirty guineas?" hiccoughed Richard.  "It was only eight.  Anyhow - wait'll
I've sli' the gullet of's Mr. Wilding."  He checked on a thought that
suddenly occurred to him.  He turned to Vallancey with a ludicrous
solemnity.  "`Sbud!" he swore. "`S a scurvy trick I'm playing the Duke.
`S treason to him - treason no less."  And he smote the table with his
open hand.

"What's that?" quoth Blake so sharply, his eyes so suddenly alert that
Vallancey made haste to cover up his fellow rebel's indiscretion.

"It's  the brandy-and-Canary makes him dream," said he with a laugh,
and rising as he spoke he announced that it was high time they should
set out.  Thus he brought about a bustle that drove the Duke's business
from Richard's mind, and left Blake without a pretext to pursue his
quest for information.  But the mischief was done, and Blake's
suspicions were awake.  He bethought him now of dark hints that Richard
had let fall to Vallancey in the past few days, and of hints less dark
with which Vallancey - who was a careless fellow at ordinary times - had
answered.  And now this mention of the Duke and of treason to him - to
what Duke could it refer but Monmouth?

Blake was well aware of the wild tales that were going round, and he
began to wonder now was aught really afoot, and was his good friend
Westmacott in it?

If there was, he bethought him that the knowledge might be of value,
and it might help to float once more his shipwrecked fortunes.  The
haste with which Vallancey had proffered a frivolous explanation of
Richard's words, the bustle with which upon the instant he swept Richard
and Sir Rowland from the house to get to horse and ride out to
Bridgwater were in themselves circumstances that went to heighten those
suspicions of Sir Rowland's.  But lacking all opportunity for
investigation at the moment, he deemed it wisest to say no more just
then lest he should betray his watchfulness.

They were the first to arrive upon the ground - an open space on the
borders of Sedgemoor, in the shelter of Polden Hill.  But they had not
long to wait before Wilding and Trenchard rode up, attended by a groom.
Their arrival had an oddly sobering effect upon young Westmacott, for
which Mr. Vallancey was thankful.  For during their ride he had begun
to fear that he had carried too far the business of equipping his
principal with artificial valour.

Trenchard came forward to offer Vallancey the courteous suggestion
that Mr. Wilding's servant should charge himself with the care of the
horses of Mr. Westmacott's party, if this would be a convenience to
them.  Vallancey thanked him and accepted the offer, and thus the
groom - instructed by Trenchard - led the five horses some distance
from the spot.

It now became a matter of making preparation, and leaving Richard to
divest himself of such garments as he might deem cumbrous, Vallancey
went forward to consult with Trenchard upon the choice of ground. At
that same moment Mr. Wilding lounged forward, flicking the grass with
his whip in an absent manner.

 "Mr. Vallancey," he began, when Trenchard turned to interrupt him.

"You can leave it safely to me, Tony," he growled.  "But there is
something I wish to say, Nick," answered Mr. Wilding, his manner mild.
"By your leave, then."  And he turned again to Valiancey.  "Will you be
so good as to call Mr. Westmacott hither?"

Vallancey stared. "For what purpose, sir?" he asked.

"For my purpose," answered Mr. Wilding sweetly.  "It is no longer my
wish to engage with Mr. Westmacott.

"Anthony!" cried Trenchard, and in his amazement forgot to swear.

"I propose," added Mr. Wilding, "to relieve Mr. Westmacott of the
necessity of fighting."

Vallancey in his heart thought this might be pleasant news for his
principal.  Still, he did not quite see how the end was to be attained,
and said so.

"You shall be enlightened if you will do as I request," Wilding
insisted, and Vallancey, with a lift of the brows, a snort, and a
shrug, turned away to comply.

"Do you mean," quoth Trenchard, bursting with indignation, "that you
will let live a man who has struck you?"

Wilding took his friend affectionately by the arm.  "It is a whim of
mine," said he.  "Do you think, Nick, that it is more than I can afford
to indulge?"

"I say not so," was the ready answer; "but .. ."

"I thought you'd not," said Mr. Wilding, interrupting.  "And if any
does - why, I shall be glad to prove it upon him that he lies."  He
laughed, and Trenchard, vexed though he was, was forced to laugh with
him.  Then Nick set himself to urge the thing that last night had
plagued his mind: that this Richard might prove a danger to the Cause;
that in the Duke's interest, if not to safeguard his own person from
some vindictive betrayal, Wilding would be better advised in imposing
a reliable silence upon him.

"But why vindictive?" Mr. Wilding remonstrated.  "Rather must he have
cause for gratitude."

Mr. Trenchard laughed short and contemptuously.  "There is," said he,
"no rancour more bitter than that of the mean man who has offended
you and whom you have spared.  I beg you'll ponder it."  He lowered
his voice as he ended his admonition, for Vallancey and Westmacott
were coming up, followed by Sir Rowland Blake.

Richard, although his courage had been sinking lower and lower in a
measure as he had grown more and more sober with the approach of the
moment for engaging, came forward now with a firm step and an arrogant
mien; for Vallancey had given him more than a hint of what was toward.
His heart had leapt, not only at the deliverance that was promised him,
but out of satisfaction at the reflection of how accurately last night
he had gauged what Mr. Wilding would endure.  It had dismayed him then,
as we have seen, that this man who, he thought, must stomach any
affront from him out of consideration for his sister, should have ended
by calling him to account.  He concluded now that upon reflection
Wilding had seen his error, and was prepared to make amends that he
might extricate himself from an impossible situation, and Richard blamed
himself for having overlooked this inevitable solution and given way
to idle panic.

Vallancey and Blake watching him, and the sudden metamorphosis that was
wrought in him, despised him heartily, and yet were glad - for the sake
of their association with him - that things were as they were.

"Mr. Westmacott," said Wilding quietly, his eyes steadily set upon
Richard's own arrogant gaze, his lips smiling a little, "I am here not
to fight, but to apologize."

Richard's sneer was audible to all.  Oh, he was gathering courage fast
now that there no longer was the need for it.  It urged him to lengths
of daring possible only to a fool.

"If you can take a blow, Mr. Wilding," said he offensively, "that is
your own affair."

And his friends gasped at his temerity and trembled for him, not knowing
what grounds he had for counting himself unassailable.

"Just so," said Mr. Wilding, as meek and humble as a nun, and
Trenchard, who had expected something very different from him, swore
aloud and with some circumstance of oaths.  "The fact is," continued
Mr. Wilding, "that what I did last night, I did in the heat of wine,
and I am sorry for it.  I recognize that this quarrel is of my
provoking; that it was unwarrantable in me to introduce the name of
Mistress Westmacott, no matter how respectfully; and that in doing
so I gave Mr. Westmacott ample grounds for offence.  For that I beg
his pardon, and I venture to hope that this matter need go no further."

Vallancey and Blake were speechless in astonishment; Trenchard livid
with fury.  Westmacott moved a step or two forward, a swagger
unmistakable in his gait, his nether-lip thrust out in a sneer.

"Why," said he, his voice mighty disdainful, "if Mr. Wilding apologizes,
the matter hardly can go further."  He conveyed such a suggestion of
regret at this that Trenchard bounded forward, stung to speech.

"But if Mr. Westmacott's disappointment threatens to overwhelm him,"
he snapped, very tartly, "I am his humble servant, and he may call
upon me to see that he's not robbed of the exercise he came to take."

Mr. Wilding set a restraining hand upon Trenchard's arm.

Westmacott turned to him, the sneer, however, gone from his face.

"I have no quarrel with you, sir," said he, with an uneasy assumption
of dignity.

"It's a want that may be soon supplied," answered Trenchard briskly,
and, as he afterwards confessed, had not Wilding checked him at that
moment, he had thrown his hat in Richard's face.

It was Vallancey who saved the situation, cursing in his heart the
bearing of his principal.

"Mr. Wilding," said he, "this is very handsome in you.  You are of the
happy few who may tender such an apology without reflection upon your
courage."

Mr. Wilding made him a leg very elegantly.  "You are vastly kind, sir,"
said he.

"You have given Mr. Westmacott the fullest satisfaction, and it is
with an increased respect for you - if that were possible - that I
acknowledge it on my friend's behalf."

"You are, sir, a very mirror of the elegancies," said Mr. Wilding, and
Vallancey wondered was he being laughed at.  Whether he was or not, he
conceived that he had done the only seemly thing.  He had made handsome
acknowledgment of a handsome apology, stung to it by the currishness
of Richard.

And there the matter ended, despite Trenchard's burning eagerness to
carry it himself to a different consummation.  Wilding prevailed upon
him, and withdrew him from the field.  But as they rode back to Zoyland
Chase the old rake was bitter in his inveighings against Wilding's
folly and weakness.

"I pray Heaven," he kept repeating, "that it may not come to cost you
dear."

"Have done," said Mr. Wilding, a trifle out of patience.  "Could I wed
the sister having slain the brother?"

And Trenchard, understanding at last, accounted himself a numskull that
he had not understood before. But he none the less deemed it a pity
Richardhad been spared.



CHAPTER VI
THE CHAMPION


As vainglorious was Richard Westmacott's retreat from the field of
unstricken battle as his advance upon it had been inglorious.  He
spoke with confidence now of the narrow escape that Wilding had had
at his hands, of the things he would have done to Wilding had not that
gentleman grown wise in time.  Sir Rowland, who had seen little of
Richard's earlier stricken condition, was in a measure imposed upon
by his blustering tone and manner; not so Vallancey, who remembered
the steps he had been forced to take to bolster up the young man's
courage sufficiently to admit of his being brought to the encounter.
Richard so disgusted him that he felt if he did not quit his company
soon, he would be quarrelling with him himself.  So, congratulating
him, in a caustic manner that Richard did not relish, upon the happy
termination of the affair, Vallancey took his leave of him and Blake
at the cross-roads, pleading business with Lord Gervase, and left them
to proceed without him to Bridgwater.

Blake, whose suspicions of some secret matter to which Vallancey and
Richard were wedded, had been earlier excited by Westmacott's
indiscretions, was full of sly questions now touching the business
which might be taking Vallancey to Scoresby.  But Richard was too full
of the subject of the fear he had instilled into Wilding to afford his
companion much satisfaction on any other score.  Thus they came to
Lupton House, and as Richard swaggered down the lawn into the presence
of the ladies - Ruth and her aunt were occupying the stone bench, Diana
the circular seat about the great oak in the centre of the lawn - he
was a very different person from the pale, limp creature they had
beheld there some few hours earlier.  Loud and offensive was he now
in self-laudation, and so indifferent to all else that he left
unobserved the little smile, half wistful, half scornful, that visited
his sister's lips when he sneeringly told how Mr. Wilding had chosen
that better part of valour which discretion is alleged to be.

It needed Diana, who, blinded by no sisterly affection, saw him exactly
as he was, and despised him accordingly, to enlighten him.  It may also
be that in doing so at once she had ends of her own to serve; for Sir
Rowland was still of the company.

"Mr. Wilding afraid?" she cried, her voice so charged with derision
that it inclined to shrillness.  "La! Richard, Mr. Wilding was never
afraid of any man."

"Faith!" said Rowland, although his acquaintance with Mr. Wilding
was slight and recent.  "It is what I should think.  He does not look
like a man familiar with fear."

Richard struck something of an attitude, his fair face flushed, his
pale eyes glittering.  "He took a blow," said he, and sneered.

"There may have been reasons," Diana suggested darkly, and Sir
Rowland's eyes narrowed at the hint.

Again he recalled the words Richard had let fall that afternoon.
Wilding and he were fellow workers in some secret business, and
Richard had said that the encounter was treason to that same
business, whatever it might be.  And of what it might be Sir Rowland
had grounds upon which to found at least a guess.  Had perhaps
Wilding acted upon some similar feelings in avoiding the duel?  He
wondered; and when Richard dismissed Diana's challenge with a fatuous
laugh, it was Blake who took it up.

     "You speak, ma'am," said he, "as if you knew that there were
reasons, and knew, too, what those reasons might be."

Diana looked at Ruth, as if for guidance before replying.  But Ruth sat
calm and seemingly impassive, looking straight before her.  She was,
indeed, indifferent  how much Diana said, for in any case the matter
could not remain a secret long.  Lady Horton, silent too and listening,
looked a question at her daughter.

And so, after a pause: "I know both," said Diana, her eyes straying
again to Ruth; and a subtler man than Blake would have read that
glance and understood that this same reason which he sought so
diligently sat there before him.

Richard, indeed, catching that sly look of his cousin's, checked his
assurance, and stood frowning, cogitating.  Then, quite suddenly,
his voice harsh:

"What do you mean, Diana?" he inquired.

Diana shrugged and turned her shoulder to him. "You had best ask Ruth,"
said she, which was an answer more or less plain to both the men.

They stood at gaze, Richard looking a thought foolish.  Blake, frowning,
his heavy lip caught in his strong, white teeth.

Ruth turned to her brother with an almost piteous attempt at a smile.
She sought to spare him pain by excluding from her manner all suggestion
that things were other than she desired.

"I am betrothed to Mr. Wilding," said she.

Sir Rowland made a sudden forward movement, drew a deep breath, and
as suddenly stood still.  Richard looked at his sister as she were mad
and raving.  Then he laughed, between unbelief and derision.

"It is a jest," said he, but his accents lacked conviction.

"It is the truth," Ruth assured him quietly.

 "The truth?" His brow darkened ominously - stupendously for one so
fair. "The truth, you baggage...?"  He began and stopped in very fury.

She saw that she must tell him all.

"I promised to wed Mr. Wilding this day se'night so that he saved your
life and honour," she told him calmly, and added, "It was a bargain
that we drove."  Richard continued to stare at her.  The thing she
told him was too big to be swallowed at a mouthful; he was absorbing
it by slow degrees.

"So now," said Diana, "you know the sacrifice your sister has made to
save you, and when you speak of the apology Mr. Wilding tendered you,
perhaps you'll speak of it in a tone less loud."

But the sarcasm was no longer needed.  Already poor Richard was very
humble, his make-believe spirit all snuffed out.  He observed at last
how pale and set was his sister's face, and he realized something of
the sacrifice she had made.  Never in all his life was Richard so near
to lapsing from the love of himself; never so near to forgetting his
own interests, and  preferring those of Ruth.  Lady Horton sat silent,
her heart fluttering with dismay and perplexity.  Heaven had not
equipped her with a spirit capable of dealing with a situation such as
this. Blake stood in makebelieve stolidity dissembling his infinite
chagrin and the stormy emotions warring within him, for some signs of
which Diana watched his countenance in vain.

"You shall not do it!" cried Richard suddenly.  He came forward and
laid his hand on his sister's shoulder.  His voice was almost gentle.
"Ruth, you shall not do this for me. You must not."

"By Heaven, no!" snapped Blake before she could reply.  "You are right,
Richard.  Mistress Westmacott must not be the scapegoat.  She shall not
play the part of Iphigenia."

     But Ruth smiled wistfully as she answered him with a question,
"Where is the help for it?"

Richard knew where the help for it lay, and for once - for just a
moment - he contemplated danger and even death with equanimity.

"I can take up this quarrel again," he announced.  "I can compel Mr.
Wilding to meet me."

Ruth's eyes, looking up at him, kindled with pride and admiration.
It warmed her heart to hear him speak thus, to have this assurance
that he was anything but the coward she had been so disloyal as to
deem him; no doubt she had been right in saying that it was his health
was the cause of the palsy he had displayed that morning; he was a
little wild, she knew; inclined to sit over-late at the bottle; with
advancing manhood, she had no doubt, he would overcome this boyish
failing.  Meanwhile it was this foolish habit - nothing more - that
undermined the inherent firmness of his nature.  And it comforted her
generous soul to have this proof that he was full worthy of the
sacrifice she was making for him.  Diana watched him in some surprise,
and never doubted but that his offer was impulsive, and that he would
regret it when his ardour had had time to cool.

"It were idle," said Ruth at last - not that she quite believed it,
but that it was all-important to her that Richard should not be
imperilled. "Mr. Wilding will prefer the bargain he has made."

     "No doubt," growled Blake, "but he shall be forced to unmake it."
He advanced and bowed low before her.  "Madam," said he, "will you grant
me leave to champion your cause and remove this troublesome Mr. Wilding
from your path?"

Diana's eyes narrowed; her cheeks paled, partly from fear for Blake,
partly from vexation at the promptness of an offer that afforded a fresh
and so eloquent proof of the trend of his affections.

Ruth smiled at him in a very friendly manner, but gently shook her head.

"I thank you, sir," said she.  "But it were more than I could permit.
This has become a family affair."

There was in her tone something which, despite its friendliness, gave
Sir Rowland his dismissal.  He was not at best a man of keen
sensibilities; yet even so, he could not mistake the request to
withdraw that was implicit in her tone and manner.  He took his leave,
registering, however, in his heart a vow that he would have his way
with Wilding.  Thus must he - through her gratitude - assuredly come
 to have his way with Ruth.

Diana rose and turned to her mother.  "Come," she said, "we'll speed
Sir Rowland.  Ruth and Richard would perhaps prefer to remain alone."

     Ruth thanked her with her eyes.  Richard, standing beside his
sister with bent head and moody gaze, did not appear to have heard.
Thus he remained until he and his half-sister were alone together,
then he flung himself wearily into the seat beside her, and took her
hand.

"Ruth," he faltered, "Ruth!"

She stroked his hand, her honest, intelligent eyes bent upon him in a
look of pity - and to indulge this pity for him, she forgot how much
herself she needed pity.

"Take it not so to heart," she urged him, her voice low and crooning
 - as that of a mother to her babe.  "Take it not so to heart, Richard.
I should have married some day, and, after all, it may well be that
Mr. Wilding will make me as good a husband as another.  I do believe,"
she added, her only intent to comfort Richard; "that he loves me; and
if he loves me, surely he will prove kind."

He flung himself back with an exclamation of angry pain.  He was white
to the lips, his eyes bloodshot.  "It must not be - it shall not be -
I'll not endure it!" he cried hoarsely.

"Richard, dear.. ." she began, recapturing the hand he had snatched
from hers in his gust of emotion.

     He rose abruptly, interrupting her. "I'll go to Wilding now," he
cried, his voice resolute.  "He shall cancel this bargain he had no
right to make.  He shall take up his quarrel with me where it stood
before you went to him."

"No, no, Richard, you must not!" she urged him, frightened, rising too,
and clinging to his arm.

"I will," he answered. "At the worst he can but kill me.  But at least
you shall not be sacrificed."

"Sit here, Richard," she bade him.  "There is something you have not
considered.  If you die, if Mr. Wilding kills you.. ." she paused.

He looked at her, and at the repetition of the fate that would probably
await him if he persevered in the course he threatened, his purely
emotional courage again began to fail him.  A look of fear crept
gradually into his face to take the room of the resolution that had
been stamped upon it but a moment since.

He swallowed hard.  "What then?" he asked, his voice harsh, and,
obeying her command and the pressure on his hand, he resumed his
seat beside her.

She spoke now at length and very gravely, dwelling upon the
circumstance that he was the head of the family, the last Westmacott
of his line, pointing out to him the importance of his existence,
the insignificance of her own.  She was but a girl, a thing of small
account where the perpetuation of a family was at issue.  After all,
she must marry somebody some day, she repeated, and perhaps she had
been foolish in attaching too much importance to the tales she had
heard of Mr. Wilding.  Probably he was no worse than other men, and
after all he was a gentleman of wealth and position, such a man as
half the women in Somerset might be proud to own for husband.

Her arguments and his weakness - his returning cowardice, which made
him lend an ear to those same arguments - prevailed with him; at
least they convinced him that he was far too important a person to
risk his life in this quarrel upon which he had so rashly entered.
He did not say that he was convinced; but he said that he would give
the matter thought, hinting that perhaps some other way might present
itself of cancelling the bargain she had made.  They had a week
before them, and in any case he promised readily in answer to her
entreaties - for her faith in him was a thing unquenchable - that he
would do nothing without taking counsel with her.

Meanwhile Diana had escorted Sir Rowland to the main gates of Lupton
House, in front of which Miss Westmacott's groom was walking his horse,
awaiting him.

"Sir Rowland," said she at parting, "your chivalry makes you take this
matter too deeply to heart. You overlook the possibility that my cousin
may have good reason for not desiring your interference."

He looked keenly at this little lady to whom a month ago he had been
on the point of offering marriage.  His coxcombry might readily have
suggested to him that she was in love with him, but that his conscience
and inclinations urged him to assure himself that this was not the case.

"What shall that mean, madam?" he asked her.

Diana hesitated.  "What I have said is plain," she answered, and it was
clear that she held something back.

Sir Rowland flattered himself upon the shrewdnesswith which he read her,
never dreaming that he had but read just what she intended he should.

He stood squarely before her, shaking his greathead.  "Not plain enough
for me," he said.  Then his tone softened to one of prayer.  "Tell me,"
he besought her.

"I can't! I can't!" she cried in feigned distress. "It were too disloyal."

He frowned. He caught her arm and pressed it, his heart sick with
jealous alarm. "What do you mean? Tell me, tell me, Mistress Horton."

Diana lowered her eyes. "You'll not betray me?" she stipulated.

 "Why, no. Tell me."

She flushed delicately. "I am disloyal to Ruth," she said, "and yet I
am loath to see you cozened."

"Cozened?" quoth he hoarsely, his egregious vanity in arms.  "Cozened?"

Diana explained. "Ruth was at his house to-day," said she, "closeted
alone with him for an hour or more."

"Impossible!" he cried.

"Where else was the bargain made?" she asked, and shattered his last
doubt.  "You know that Mr. Wilding has not been here."

Yet Blake struggled heroically against conviction.

"She went to intercede for Richard," he protested. Miss Horton looked up
at him, and under her glance Sir Rowland felt that he was a man of
unfathomable ignorance.  Then she turned aside her eyes and shrugged
her shoulders `very eloquently.  "You are a man of the world, Sir
Rowland.  You cannot seriously suppose that any maid would so imperil
her good name in any cause?"

Darker grew his florid countenance; his bulging eyes looked troubled
and perplexed.

"You mean that she loves him?" he said, between question and assertion.

Diana pursed her lips.  "You shall draw your own inference," quoth she.

He breathed heavily, and squared his broad shoulders, as one who braces
himself for battle against an element stronger than himself.

"But her talk of sacrifice?" he cried.

Diana laughed, and again he was stung by her contempt of his
perceptions.  "Her brother is set against her marrying him," said she.
"Here was her chance. Is it not very plain?"

Doubt stared from his eyes.  "Why do you tell me this?"

"Because I esteem you, Sir Rowland," she answered very gently. "I would
not have you meddle in a matter you cannot mend."

"Which I am not desired to mend, say rather," he replied with heavy
sarcasm.  "She would not have my interference!"  He laughed angrily.
"I think you are right, Mistress Diana," he said, "and I think that
more than ever is there the need to kill this Mr. Wilding."

He took his departure abruptly, leaving her scared at the mischief
she had made for him in seeking to save him from it, and that very
night he sought out Wilding.

But Wilding was from home again.  Under its placid surface the West
Country was in a ferment. And if hitherto Mr. Wilding had disdained
the insistent rumours of Monmouth's coming, his assurance was shaken
now by proof that the Government, itself, was stirring; for four
companies of foot and a troop of horse had been that day ordered
to Taunton by the Deputy-Lieutenant.  Wilding was gone with Trenchard
to White Lackington in a vain hope that there he might find news to
confirm his persisting unbelief in any such rashness as was alleged
on Monmouth's part.

So Blake was forced to wait, but his purpose suffered nothing by delay.

Returning on the morrow, he found Mr. Wilding at table with Nick
Trenchard, and he cut short the greetings of both men.  He flung his
hat - a black castor trimmed with a black feather - rudely among the
dishes on the board.

"I have come to ask you, Mr. Wilding," said he, "to be so good as to
tell me the colour of that hat."

Mr. Wilding raised one eyebrow and looked aslant at Trenchard, whose
weather-beaten face was suddenly agrin with stupefaction.

"I could not," said Mr. Wilding, "deny an answer to a question set
so courteously."  He looked up into Blake's flushed and scowling face
with the sweetest and most innocent of smiles.  "You'll no doubt disagree
with me," said he, "but I love to meet a man halfway.  Your hat, sir,
is as white as virgin snow."

Blake's slow wits were disconcerted for a moment. Then he smiled
viciously.  "You mistake, Mr. Wilding," said he.  "My hat is black."

Mr. Wilding looked more attentively at the object in dispute.  He was
in a trifling mood, and the stupidity of this runagate debtor afforded
him opportunities to indulge it.  "Why, true," said he, "now that I
come to look, I perceive that it is indeed black."

And again was Sir Rowland disconcerted.  Still he pursued the lesson
he had taught himself.

"You are mistaken again," said he, "that hat is green."

"Indeed?" quoth Mr. Wilding, like one surprised and he turned to
Trenchard, who was enjoying himself.  "What is your own opinion of
it, Nick?"

Thus appealed to, Trenchard's reply was prompt.  "Why, since you ask
me," said he, "my opinion is that it's a noisome thing not meet for
a gentleman's table."  And he took it up, and threw it through the
window.

Sir Rowland was entirely put out of countenance.  Here was a deliberate
shifting of the quarrel he had come to pick, which left him all at sea.
It was his duty to himself to take offence at Mr. Trenchard's action.
But that was not the business on which he had come.  He became angry.

"Blister me!" he cried. "Must I sweep the cloth from the table before
you'll understand me?"

"If you were to do anything so unmannerly I should have you flung out
of the house," said Mr. Wilding, "and it would distress me so to treat
a person of your station and quality.  The hat shall serve your purpose,
although Mr. Trenchard's concern for my table has removed it.  Our
memories will supply its absence.  What colour did you say it was?"

"I said it was green," answered Blake, quite ready to keep to the point.

"Nay, I am sure you were wrong," said Wilding with a grave air.
"Although I admit that since it is your own hat, you should be the best
judge of its colour, I am, nevertheless, of opinion that it is black."

"And if I were to say that it is white?" asked Blake, feeling mighty
ridiculous.

"Why, in that case you would be confirming my first impression of it,"
answered Wilding, and Trenchard let fly a burst of laughter at sight
of the baronet's furious and bewildered countenance.  "And since
we are agreed on that," continued Mr. Wilding, imperturbable, "I hope
you'll join us at supper."

"I'll be damned," roared Blake, "if ever I sit at table of yours, sir."

"Ah!" said Mr. Wilding regretfully.  "Now you become offensive."

"I mean to be," said Blake.

"You astonish me!"

"You lie! I don't," Sir Rowland answered him in triumph.  He had got it
out at last.

Mr. Wilding sat back in his chair, and looked at him, his face
inexpressibly shocked.

"Will you of your own accord deprive us of your company, Sir Rowland,"
he wondered, "or shall Mr. Trenchard throw you after your hat?"

"Do you mean.. ." gasped the other, "that you'll ask no satisfaction
of me?"

"Not so. Mr. Trenchard shall wait upon your friends to-morrow, and I
hope you'll afford us then as felicitous entertainment as you do now."

Sir Rowland snorted, and, turning on his heel, made for the door.

"Give you a good night, Sir Rowland," Mr. Wilding called after him.
"Walters, you rascal, light Sir Rowland to the door."

Poor Blake went home deeply vexed; but it was no more than the beginning
of his humiliation at Mr. Wilding's hands - for what can be more
humiliating to a quarrel - seeking man than to have his enemy refuse
to treat him seriously?  He and Mr. Wilding met next morning, and before
noon the tale of it had run through Bridgwater that Wild Wilding was at
his tricks again.  It made a pretty story how twice he had disarmed and
each time spared the London beau, who still insisted - each time more
furiously -upon renewing the encounter, till Mr. Wilding had been
forced to run him through the sword-arm and thus put him out of all case
of continuing.  It was a story that heaped ridicule upon Sir Rowland
and did credit to Mr. Wilding.

Richard heard it, and trembled, enraged and impotent.  Ruth heard it,
and was stirred despite herself to a feeling of gratitude towards
Wilding for the patience and toleration he had displayed.

There for a while the matter rested, and the days passed slowly.  But
Sir Rowland's nature - mean at bottom - was spurred to find him some
other way of wiping out the score that lay `twixt him and Mr. Wilding,
a score mightily increased by the shame that Mr. Wilding had put upon
him in that encounter from which - whatever the issue - he had looked
to cull great credit in Ruth's eyes.

He had been thinking constantly of the incautious words that Richard
had let fall, thinking of them in conjunction with the startling rumours
that were now the talk of the whole countryside.  He laid two and two
together, and the four he found them make afforded him some hope.  Then
he realized - as he might have realized before had he been shrewder -
that Richard's mood was one that made him ripe for any villainy.  He
thought that he was much in error if a treachery existed so black that
Richard would quail before it, if it but afforded him the means of
ridding himself and the world of Mr. Wilding.  He was considering how
best to approach the subject, when it happened that one night when
Richard sat at play with him in his own lodging, the boy grew talkative
through excess of wine.  It happened naturally enough that Richard
sought an ally in Blake, just as Blake sought an ally in Richard.
Indeed, their fortunes - so far as Ruth was concerned - were bound
up together.  The baronet saw that Richard, half-fuddled, was ripe for
any confidences that might aim at the destruction of his enemy.  He
questioned him adroitly, and drew from him the story of the rising
that was being planned, and of the share that Mr. Wilding - one of the
Duke of Monmouth's chief movement-men - bore in the business that was
toward.

When, towards midnight, Richard Westmacott went home, he left in Sir
Rowland's hands an instrument which the latter accounted potential not
only for the destruction of Anthony Wilding, but perhaps also for laying
the foundations to the building of his own fortunes anew.



CHAPTER VII
THE NUPTIALS OF RUTH WESTMACOTT


Here was Sir Rowland Blake in high fettle at knowing himself armed with
a portentous weapon for the destruction of Anthony Wilding.  Upon closer
inspection of it, however, he came to realize - as Richard had realized
earlier - that it was double-edged, and that the wielding of it must be
fraught with as much danger for Richard as for their common enemy.  For
to betray Mr. Wilding and the plot would scarce be possible without
betraying young Westmacott, and that was unthinkable, since to ruin
Richard - a thing he would have done with a light heart so far as
Richard was himself concerned - would be to ruin his own hopes of
winning Ruth.

Therefore, during the days that followed, Sir Rowland was forced to
fret in idleness what time his wound was healing; but if his arm was
invalided, his eyes and ears were sound, and he remained watchful for
an opportunity to apply the knowledge he had gained.  Richard
mentioned the subject no more, so that Blake almost came to wonder
whether the boy remembered what in his cups he had betrayed.

Meanwhile Mr. Wilding moved serene and smiling on his way.  Daily
there were great armfuls of flowers deposited at Lupton House - his
lover's offering to his mistress - and no day went by but that some
richer gift accompanied them.  Now it was a collar of brilliants,
anon a rope of pearls, again a priceless ring that had been Mr.
Wilding's mother's.  Ruth received with reluctance these pledges
of his undesired affection.  It were idle to reject them, considering
that she was to marry him; yet it hurt her sorely to retain them.
On her side she made no dispositions for the marriage, but went about
her daily tasks as though she were to remain a maid at Lupton House
for a time as yet indefinite.

In Diana, Wilding had - though he was far from guessing it - an
entirely exceptional ally.  Lady Horton, too, was favourably disposed
towards him.  A foolish, worldly woman, who never probed beneath life's
surface, nor indeed dreamed that anything existed in life beyond that
to which her five senses testified, she was content placidly to
contemplate the advantages that must accrue to her niece from this
alliance.

And so mother and daughter in Mr. Wilding's absence pleaded his cause
with his refractory bride-elect.  But they pleaded it to little real
purpose.  Something perhaps they achieved in that Ruth grew more or
less resigned to the fate that awaited her.  By repeating to herself
the arguments she had employed to Richard - that she must wed some
day, and that Mr. Wilding would prove no doubt as good a husband as
another - she came in a measure to believe them.

Richard meanwhile appeared to avoid her.  Lacking the courage to adopt
the heroic measures which at first he had promised, yet had he grace
enough to take shame at his inaction.  But if he was idle so far as
Mr. Wilding was concerned, there was no lack of work for him in other
connections.  The clouds of war were gathering in that summer sky, and
about to loose the storm gestating in them upon that fair country of
the West, and young Westmacott, committed as he stood to the Duke of
Monmouth's party, was forced to take his share in the surreptitious
bustle that was toward.  He was away two days in that week, having been
summoned to a meeting of the leading gentlemen of the party at White
Lackington, where he was forced into the unwelcome company of his
future brother-in-law, to meet with courteous, deferential treatment
from that imperturbable gentleman.

Wilding, indeed, seemed to have forgotten that any quarrel had ever
existed between them.  For the rest, he came and went, supremely calm,
as if he were, and knew himself to be, most welcome at Lupton House.
Thrice in the course of that week of waiting he rode over from Zoyland
Chase to pay his duty to Mistress Westmacott, and Ruth was persuaded
on each occasion by her aunt and cousin to receive him.  Indeed, how
could she well refuse?

His manner was ever all that could be desired.  Gallant, affectionate,
deferential.  He was in word and look and tone Ruth's most obedient
servant.  Had she been less prejudiced she must have admired the
admirable restraint with which he kept all exultation from his manner,
for, after all, it is difficult to force a victory as he had forced
his, and not to triumph.

     It is to be feared that during that week he neglected a good deal
of his duty to the Duke, leaving Trenchard to supply his place and
undertake tasks of a seditious nature that should have been his own.

At heart, however, in spite of the stories current and the militia at
Taunton, Wilding remained convinced - as did most of the other leading
partisans of the Protestant Cause - that no such madness as this
premature landing could be in contemplation by the Duke.  Besides,
were it so, they must unfailingly have definite word of it; and they
had none.

Trenchard was less assured, but Wilding laughed at the old rake's
forebodings, and serenely went about the business of his marriage.

On the eve of the wedding he paid Ruth his last visit in the quality
of a lover, and was received by her in the garden.  He found her
looking paler than her wont, and there was a cloud of sadness on her
brow, a haunting sadness in her eyes.  It touched him to the soul,
and for a moment he wavered in his purpose.  He stood beside her - she
seated on the old lichened seat - and a silence fell between them,
during which Mr. Wilding's conscience wrestled with his stronger
passion.  It was his habit to be glib, talking incessantly what time
he was in her company, and seeing to it that his talk was shallow
and touched at nothing belonging to the deeps of human life.  Thus
was it, perhaps, that this sudden and enduring silence affected her
most oddly; it was as if she had absorbed some notion of what was
passing in his mind.  She looked up suddenly into his face, so white
and so composed.  Their eyes met, and he stooped to her suddenly, his
long brown ringlets tumbling forward.  She feared his kiss, yet never
moved, staring up with fixed, dilated eyes as if fascinated by his
dark, brooding gaze.  He paused, hovering above her upturned face as
hovers the hawk above the dove.

"Child," he said at last, and his voice was soft and winning from very
sadness, "child, why do you fear me?"

The truth of it went home to her.  She feared him; she feared the
strength that lay behind that calm; she feared the masterfulness
of his wild but inscrutably hidden nature; she was afraid to surrender
to such a man as this, afraid that in the hot crucible of his love
her own nature would be dissolved, transmuted, and rendered part of
his.  Yet, though the truth was now made plain to her, she thrust it
from her.

"I do not fear you," said she, and her voice at least rang fearlessly.

"Do you hate me, then?" he asked.  Her glance grew troubled and fell
away from his; it sought the calm of the river, gleaming golden in
the sunset.  There was a pause.  Wilding sighed heavily, and
straightened himself from his bending posture.

"You should not have sought thus to compel me, she said presently.

"I own it," he answered a thought bitterly.  "I own it.  Yet what hope
had I but in compulsion?" She returned him no answer.  "You see," he
said, with increasing bitterness, "you see, that had I not seized the
chance that was mine to win you by compulsion I had not won you at all."

"It might," said she, "have been better so for both of us."

"Better for neither," he replied.  "Ah, think it not!  In time, I
swear, you shall not think it.  For you shall come to love me, Ruth,"
he added with a note of such assurance that she turned to meet again
his gaze.  He answered the wordless question of her eyes.  "There is,"
said he, "no love of man for woman, so that the man be not wholly
unworthy, so that his passion be sincere and strong, that can fail
in time to arouse response." She smiled a little pitiful smile of
unbelief. "Were I a boy," he rejoined, his earnestness vibrating now
in a voice that was usually so calm and level, "offering you
protestations of a callow worship, you might have cause to doubt me.
But I am a man, Ruth - a tried, and haply a sinful man, alas! - a
man who needs you, and who will have you at all costs."

"At all costs?" she echoed, and her lip took on a curl.  "And you call
this egotism by the name of love! No doubt you are right," she continued
with an irony that stung him, "for love it is - love of yourself."

"And is not all love of another founded upon the love of self?" he asked
her, startling her with a question that revealed to her clear-sighted
mind a truth undreamed of.  "When some day - please Heaven - I come to
find favour in your eyes, and you come to love me, what will it mean
but that you have come to find me necessary to yourself and to your
happiness?  Would you deny me now your love if you felt that you had
need of mine?  I love you because I love myself, you say.  I grant it
you.  But you'll confess that if you do not love me yet, it is for the
same reason, and that when you do come to love me the reason will be
still the same."

"You are very sure that I shall come to love you, said she, shifting
woman-like the ground of argument now that she found insecure the place
on which at first she had taken her stand.

"Were I not, think you I should compel you to the church to-morrow?"

She trembled at his calm assurance.  It was as if she almost feared
that what he said might come to pass.

"Since you bear such faith in your heart," said she, "were it not
nobler, more generous, that you should set yourself to win me first
and wed me afterwards?"

"It is the course I should, myself, prefer," he answered quietly. "But
it is a course denied me. I was viewed here with disfavour, almost
denied your house.  What chance had I whilst I might not come near you,
whilst your mind was poisoned against me by the idle, vicious prattle
that goes round and round the countryside, increasing ever in bulk from
constant repetition?"

"Do you say that these tales are groundless?" she asked, with a sudden
lifting of the eyes, a sudden keen eagerness that did not escape him.

"I would to God I could," he cried, "since from your manner I see that
would improve me in your sight.  But there is just sufficient truth
in them to forbid me, as I am, I hope, a gentleman, from giving them
a full denial.  Yet in what am I worse than my fellows?  Are you of
those who think a husband should come to them as one whose youth has
been the youth of cloistered nun?  Heaven knows, I am not one to draw
parallels `twixt myself and any other, yet you compel me.  Whilst you
deny me, you receive this fellow Blake - a London night-scourer, a
broken gamester who has given his creditors leg-bail, and who woos
you that with your fortune he may close the doors of the debtor's
gaol that's open to receive him."

"This is unworthy in you," she exclaimed, her tone indignant - so
indignant that he experienced his first pang of jealousy.

"It would be were I his rival," he answered quietly. "But I am not.
I have saved you from becoming the prey of such as he by forcing
you to marry me."

"That I may become the prey of such as you, instead," was her retort.

He looked at her a moment, smiling sadly.  Then, with pardonable
self-esteem when we think of what manner of man it was with whom
he now compared himself, "Surely," said he, "it is better to become
the prey of the lion than the jackal."

"To the victim it can matter little," she answered, and he saw the
tears gathering in her eyes.

Compassion moved him. It rose in arms to batter down his will, and
in a weaker man had triumphed.  Mr. Wilding bent his knee and went
down beside her.

"I swear," he said impassionedly, "that as my wife you shall never
count yourself a victim.  You shall be honoured by all men, but by
none more deeply than by him who will ever strive to be worthy of the
proud title of your husband."  He took her hand and kissed it
reverentially.  He rose and looked at her.  "To-morrow," he said, and
bowing low before her went his way, leaving her with emotions that
found their vent in tears, but defied her maiden mind to understand them.

The morrow came her wedding-day - a sunny day of early June, and Ruth -
assisted by Diana and Lady Horton - made preparation for her marriage
as spirited women have made preparation for the scaffold, determined
to show the world a brave, serene exterior.  The sacrifice was necessary
for Richard's sake.  That was a thing long since determined.  Yet it
would have been some comfort to her to have had Richard at her side;
it would have lent her strength to have had his kiss of thanks for the
holocaust which for him she was making of all that a woman holds most
dear and sacred.  But Richard was away - he had been absent since
yesterday, and none could tell her where he tarried.

With Lady Horton and Diana she took her way to Saint Mary's Church at
noon, and there she found Mr. Wilding - very fine in a suit of sky-blue
satin, laced with silver - awaiting her.  And with him was old Lord
Gervase Scoresby, his friend and cousin, the very incarnation of
benignity and ruddy health.

For a wonder Nick Trenchard was not at Mr. Wilding's side.  But Nick
had definitely refused to be of the party, emphasizing his refusal
by certain choice reflections wholly unflattering to the married
state.

Some idlers of the town were the only witnesses - and little did they
guess the extent of the tragedy they were witnessing.  There was no
music, and the ceremony was brief and soon at an end.  The only
touch of joy, of festiveness, was that afforded by the choice blooms
with which Mr. Wilding had smothered nave and choir and altar-rails.
Their perfume hung heavy as incense in the temple.

"Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" droned the parson's
voice, and Wilding smiled defiantly a smile which seemed to answer him,
"No man.  I have taken her for myself."

Lord Gervase stood forward as her sponsor, and as in a dream Ruth felt
her hand lying in Mr. Wilding's cool, firm grasp.

The ecclesiastic's voice droned on, his voice hanging like the hum of
some great Insect upon the scented air.  It was accomplished, and they
were welded each to the other until death should part them.

Down the festooned nave she came on his arm, her step unfaltering, her
face calm; black misery in her heart.  Behind followed her aunt and
cousin and Lord Gervase.  On Mr. Wilding's aquiline face a pale smile
glimmered, like a beam of moonlight upon tranquil waters, and it abode
there until they reached the porch and were suddenly confronted by
Nick Trenchard, red of face for once, perspiri