In answer to her cry of "You have eluded them!" he waved a hand towards the rising ground and the road to Bridgwater.
"They passed that way but a few moments since," said he, "and by the rate at which they were travelling they should be nearing Newton by now. In their great haste to catch me they could not pause to look for me so close at hand," he added with a smile, "and for that I am thankful."
She sat her horse and answered nothing, which threw her cousin out of all patience with her. "Come, Jerry," Diana called to the groom. "We will walk our horses up the hill."
"You are very good, madam," said Mr. Wilding, and he bowed to the withers of his roan.
Ruth said nothing; expressed neither approval nor disapproval of Diana's withdrawal, and the latter, with a word of greeting to Wilding, went ahead followed by Jerry, who had regained control by now of the beast he bestrode. Wilding watched them until they turned the corner, then he walked his mare slowly forward until he was alongside Ruth.
"Before I go," said he, "there is something I should like to say." His dark eyes were sombre, his manner betrayed some hesitation.
The diffidence of his tone proved startling to her by virtue of its unusualness. What might it portend, she wondered, and sought with grave eyes to read his baffling countenance; and then a wild alarm swept into her and shook her spirit in its grip; there was something of which until this moment she had not thought--something connected with the fateful matter of that letter. It had stood as a barrier between them, her buckler, her sole defence against him. It had been to her what its sting is to the bee--a thing which if once used in self-defence is self-destructive. Not, indeed, that she had used it as her sting; it had been forced from her by the machinations of Trenchard; but used it had been, and was done with; she had it no longer that with it she might hold him in defiance, and it did not occur to her that he was no longer in case to invoke the law.
Her face grew stony, a dry glitter came to her blue eyes; she cast a glance over her shoulder at Diana and her servant. Wilding observed it and read what was passing in her mind; indeed, it was not to be mistaken, no more than what is passing in the mind of the recruit who looks behind him in the act of charging. His lips half smiled.