"That which I see," said she, "I do not believe, and as I would not wrong you by any foolish imaginings, I would have you plain with me."
Yet the egregious fool went on. "And why should you not believe your senses?" he asked her, between anger and entreaty. "Is it wonderful that I should love you? Is it...?"
"Stop!" She drew back a pace from him. There was a moment's silence, during which it seemed she gathered her forces to destroy him, and, in the spirit, he bowed his head before the coming storm. Then, with a sudden relaxing of the stiffness her lissom figure had assumed, "I think you had better leave me, Sir Rowland," she advised him. She half turned and moved a step away; he followed with lowering glance, his upper lip lifting and laying bare his powerful teeth. In a stride he was beside her.
"Do you hate me, Ruth?" he asked her hoarsely.
"Why should I hate you?" she counter-questioned, sadly. "I do not even dislike you," she continued in a more friendly tone, adding, as if by way of explaining this phenomenon, "You are my brother's friend. But I am disappointed in you, Sir Rowland. You had, I know, no intention of offering me disrespect; and yet it is what you have done."
"As how?" he asked.
"Knowing me another's wife..."
He broke in tempestuously. "A mock marriage! If it is but that scruple stands between us..."
"I think there is more," she answered him. "You compel me to hurt you; I do so as the surgeon does--that I may heal you."
"Why, thanks for nothing," he made answer, unable to repress a sneer. Then, checking himself, and resuming the hero-martyr posture, "I go, mistress," he told her sadly, "and if I lose my life to-night, or to-morrow, in this affair..."
"I shall pray for you," said she; for she had found him out at last, perceived the nature of the bow he sought to draw across her heart-strings, and, having perceived it, contempt awoke in her. He had attempted to move her by unfair, insidious means.
He fell back, crimson from chin to brow. He stifled the wrath that welled up, threatening to choke him. He was a short-necked man, of the sort--as Trenchard had once reminded him--that falls a prey to apoplexy, and surely he was never nearer it than at that moment. He made her a profound bow, bending himself almost in two before her in a very irony of deference; then, drawing himself up again, he turned and left her.
The plot which with some pride he had hatched and the reward he looked to cull from it, were now to his soul as ashes to his lips. What could it profit him to destroy Monmouth so that Anthony Wilding lived? For whether she loved Wilding or not, she was Wilding's wife. Wilding, nominally, at least, was master of that which Sir Rowland coveted; not her heart, indeed, but her ample fortune. Wilding had been a stumbling-block to him since he had come to Bridgwater; but for Wilding he might have run a smooth course; he was still fool enough to hug that dear illusion to his soul. Somewhere in England--if not dead already--this Wilding lurked, an outlaw, whom any might shoot down at sight. Sir Rowland swore he would not rest until he knew that Anthony Wilding cumbered the earth no more--leastways, not the surface of it.