"Not thus," said he, a frown between his eyes. He took her by the elbows
and gently but very firmly brought her to her feet again. "It is not
fitting you should kneel save at your prayers."

She was standing now, and very close to him, his hands still held her
elbows, though their touch was so light that she scarce felt it.
To release them was easy, and the next second her hands were on his
shoulders, her brave eyes raised to him.

"Mr. Wilding," she implored him, "you'll not let Richard be destroyed?"

He looked down at her with kindling glance, his arms slipped round her
lissom waist. "It is hard to deny you, Ruth," said he. "Yet not my love
of my own life compels me; but my duty, my loyalty to the cause to which
I am pledged. I were a traitor were I now to place myself in peril."

She pressed against him, her face so close to his that her breath fanned
his cheek, whither a faint colour crept in quick response. Despite
herself almost, instinctively, unconsciously, she exerted the weapons of
her sex to bend him to her will.

"You say you love me," she whispered. "Prove it me now, and I will
believe you.

"Ah!" he sighed. "And believing me? What then?"

He had himself grimly in hand, yet feared he should not prove strong
enough to hold himself for long.

"You.., you shall find me your... dutiful wife," she faltered,
crimsoning.

His arms tightened about her; he crushed her to him, he bent his head to
hers and his lips burnt the lips she yielded to him as though they had
been living fire.

Anon, she was to weep in shame--in shame and in astonishment--at that
instant of surrender, but for the moment she had no thought save for her
brother. Exultation filled her. She accounted that she had conquered,
and she gloried in the power her beauty gave her, a power that had
sufficed to melt to water the hard-frozen purposes of this self-willed
man. The next instant, however, she was cold again with dismay and
newborn terror. He unclasped her arms, he drew back, shaking off the
hands she had rested upon his shoulders. His white face--the flush had
faded from it again--smiled a thought disdainfully.

"You bargain with me," he said. "But I have some knowledge of your ways
of trading. They are overshrewd for an honest gentleman."

"You mean," she gasped, her hand pressed to her heart, her face a
deathly white, "you mean that you'll not save him?"

"I mean," said he, "that I will have no further bargains with you."