Read Online Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini - Free Book Online

pity Richard had 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