arily 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