"Your servant, Mistress Westmacott," she heard him murmur. "My house is deeply honoured."
She dropped him a half-curtsy, pale and tongue-tied. He turned to deliver hat and whip and gloves to Walters, who had followed him, then closed the door and came forward into the room.
"You will forgive that I present myself thus before you," he said, in apology for his dusty raiment. "But I bethought me you might be in haste, and Walters tells me that already have you waited nigh upon an hour. Will you not sit, madam?" And he advanced a chair. His long white face was set like a mask; but his dark, slanting eyes devoured her. He guessed the reason of her visit. She who had humbled him, who had driven him to the very borders of despair, was now to be humbled and to despair before him. Under the impassive face his soul exulted fiercely.
She disregarded the chair he proffered. "My visit... has no doubt surprised you," she began, tremulous and hesitating.
"I' faith, no," he answered quietly. "The cause, after all, is not very far to seek. You are come on Richard's behalf."
"Not on Richard's," she answered. "On my own." And now that the ice was broken, the suspense of waiting over, she found the tide of her courage flowing fast. "This encounter must not take place, Mr. Wilding," she informed him.
He raised his eyebrows—fine and level as her own—his thin lips smiled never so faintly. "It is, I think," said he, "for Richard to prevent it The chance was his last night. It shall be his again when we meet. If he will express regret..." He left his sentence there. In truth he mocked her, though she guessed it not.
"You mean," said she, "that if he makes apology...?"
"What else? What other way remains?"
She shook her head, and, if pale, her face was resolute, her glance steady.
"That is impossible," she told him. "Last night—as I have the story—he might have done it without shame. To-day it is too late. To tender his apology on the ground would be to proclaim himself a coward."
Mr. Wilding pursed his lips and shifted his position. "It is difficult, perhaps," said he, "but not impossible."
"It is impossible," she insisted firmly.
"I'll not quarrel with you for a word," he answered, mighty agreeable. "Call it impossible, if you will. Admit, however, that it is all I can suggest. You will do me the justice, I am sure, to see that in expressing my willingness to accept your brother's expressions of regret I am proving myself once more your very obedient servant. But that it is you who ask it—and whose desires are my commands—I should let no man go unpunished for an insult such as your brother put upon me."
She winced at his words, at the bow with which he had professed himself once more her servant.
"It is no clemency that you offer him," she said. "You leave him a choice between death and dishonour."
"He has," Wilding reminded her, "the chance of combat."
She flung back her head impatiently. "I think you mock me," said she.
He looked at her keenly. "Will you tell me plainly, madam," he begged, "what you would have me do?"
She flushed under his gaze, and the flush told him what he sought to learn. There was, of course, another way, and she had thought of it; but she lacked—as well she might, all things considered—the courage to propose it. She had come to Mr. Wilding in the vague hope that he himself would choose the heroic part. And he, to punish for her scorn of him this woman whom he loved to hating-point, was resolved that she herself must beg it of him. Whether, having so far compelled her, he would grant her prayer or not was something he could not just then himself have told you. She bowed her head in silence, and Wilding, that faint smile, half friendliness, half mockery, hovering ever on his lips, turned aside and moved softly towards the window. Her eyes, veiled behind the long lashes of their drooping lids, followed him furtively. She felt that she hated him in very truth. She marked the upright elegance of his figure, the easy grace of his movements, the fine aristocratic mould of the aquiline face, which she beheld in profile; and she hated him the more for these outward favours that must commend him to no lack of women. He was too masterful. He made her realize too keenly her own weakness and that of Richard. She felt that just now he controlled the vice that held her fast—her affection for her brother. And because of that she hated him the more. "You see, Mistress Westmacott," said he, his shoulder to her, his tone sweet to the point of sadness, "that there is nothing else." She stood, her eyes following the pattern of the parquetry, her foot unconsciously tracing it; her courage ebbed, and she had no answer for him. After a pause he spoke again, still without turning. "If that was not enough to suit your ends"—and though he spoke in a tone of ever-increasing sadness, there glinted through it the faintest ray of mockery—"I marvel you should have come to Zoyland—to compromise yourself to so little purpose."
She raised a startled face. "Com... compromise myself?" she echoed. "Oh!" It was a cry of indignation.
"What else?" quoth he, and turned abruptly to confront her.
"Mistress Horton was.., was with me," she panted, her voice quivering as on the brink of tears.
"'Tis unfortunate you should have separated," he condoled.
"But.., but, Mr. Wilding, I... I trusted to your honour. I accounted you a gentleman. Surely... surely, sir, you will not let it be known that... I came to you? You will keep my secret?"
"Secret!" said he, his eyebrows raised. "'Tis already the talk of the servants' hall. By to-morrow 'twill be the gossip of Bridgwater."
Air failed her Her blue eyes fixed him in horror out of her stricken face. Not a word had she wherewith to answer him.
The sight of her, thus, affected him oddly. His passion for her surged up, aroused by pity for her plight, and awakened in him a sense of his brutality. A faint flush stirred in his cheeks. He stepped quickly to her, and caught her hand. She let it lie, cold and inert, within his nervous grasp.
"Ruth, Ruth!" he cried, and his voice was for once unsteady. "Give it no thought! I love you, Ruth. If you'll but heed that, no breath of scandal can hurt you."
She swallowed hard. "As how?" she asked mechanically.
He bowed low over her hand—so low that his face was hidden from her.
"If you will do me the honour to become my wife..." he began, but got no further, for she snatched away her hand, her cheeks crimsoning, her eyes aflame with indignation. He stepped back, crimsoning too. She had dashed the gentleness from his mood. He was angered now and tigerish.
"Oh!" she panted. "It is to affront me! Is this the time or place..."
He cropped her flow of indignant speech ere it was well begun. He caught her in his arms, and held her tight, and so sudden was the act, so firm his grip that she had not the thought or force to struggle.
"All time is love's time, all places are love's place," he told her, his face close to her own. "And of all time and places the present ever preferable to the wise—for life is uncertain and short at best. I bring you worship, and you answer me with scorn. But I shall prevail, and you shall come to love me in very spite of your own self."
She threw back her head, away from his as far as the bonds he had cast about her would allow. "Air! Air!" she panted feebly.
"Oh, you shall have air enough anon," he answered with a half-strangled laugh, his passion mounting ever. "Hark you, now—hark you, for Richard's sake, since you'll not listen for my own nor yours. There is another course by which I can save both Richard's life and honour. You know it, and you counted upon my generosity to suggest it. But you overlooked the thing on which you should have counted. You overlooked my love. Count upon that, my Ruth, and Richard shall have naught to fear. Count upon that, and when we meet this evening, Richard and I, it is I who will tender the apology, I who will admit that I was wrong to introduce your name into that company last night, and that what Richard did was a just and well-deserved punishment upon me. This will I do if you'll but count upon my love."