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It was two o'clock when Sir Henry Wilding's motor turned its back upon the outskirts of London, and it was a quarter past seven when it whirled up to the stables of Wilding Hall, and the baronet and his grey-headed, bespectacled and white-spatted companion alighted, having taken five hours and a quarter to make a journey which the trains which run daily between Liverpool Street and Darsham make in four.
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.
Bert told them at home about the club, but somehow omitted to mention the prominent part Dick Wilding played in it. In fact, he never mentioned his name at all, nor that it was his father's field in which the club met. This was the first step in a path of wrong, the taking of which was soon to lead to serious consequences. His reason for suppressing Dick Wilding's name was plain enough.
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, perspiring, excited, and dust-stained from head to foot.
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.
But the next instant he caught his breath again, for a ringing voice was heard without demanding to see His Grace of Albemarle at once, and the voice was the voice of Anthony Wilding. Mr. Wilding's appearance produced as many different emotions as there were individuals present.
"The letter!" growled Richard in a frenzy, between fear and anger now. "Give it me! Give it me do you hear?" "Sh! You'll betray yourself," she cried. "He is here." And at that same moment Mr. Wilding's tall figure, still arrayed in his bridegroom's finery of sky-blue satin, loomed in the doorway. He was serene and calm as ever.
He made just an exclamatory protest, such as he might have made had a woman applied the term to him. Grey turned from him slowly to Monmouth. "It might be well," said he, in his turn controlling himself at last, "to place Mr. Wilding under arrest." Mr. Wilding's manner quickened on the instant from passive to active anger. "Upon what charge, sir?" he demanded sharply.
He must kill this man. "Come," said he. "I'll see to your fine friend Wilding afterwards." "Excellent," said Trenchard, and led the way through the shrubbery to the orchard. Ruth, reviving, looked up. Her glance met Mr. Wilding's; it quickened into understanding, and she stirred. "Is it true? Is it really true?" she cried. "I am being tortured by this dream again!"
What had the authorities been about that they had permitted Monmouth to come ashore, or had Vallancey's information been wrong in the matter of the numbers that accompanied the Protestant Champion? Wilding's red coat attracted some attention. In the dusk its colour was almost all that could be discerned of it.
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