ost you
dear."

"Have done," said Mr. Wilding, a trifle out of patience. "Could I wed
the sister having slain the brother?"

And Trenchard, understanding at last, accounted himself a numskull that
he had not understood before. But he none the less deemed it a 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