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