Diana, in the background, arched her brows, then with a shrug turned aside and seated herself on the stone seat by which they had been standing. Ruth shrank back as if her brother had struck her.
“Richard!” she cried, and searched his livid face with her eyes. “Richard!”
He read a question in the interjection, and he answered it. “Had you known any real care, any true concern for me, you had not given cause for this affair,” he chid her peevishly.
“What are you saying?” she cried, and it occurred to her at last that Richard was afraid. He was a coward! She felt as she would faint.
“I am saying,” said he, hunching his shoulders, and shivering as he spoke, yet, his glance unable to meet hers, “that it is your fault that I am like to get my throat cut before sunset.”
“My fault?” she murmured. The slope of lawn seemed to wave and swim about her. “My fault?”
“The fault of your wanton ways,” he accused her harshly. “You have so played fast and loose with this fellow Wilding that he makes free of your name in my very presence, and puts upon me the need to get myself killed by him to save the family honour.”
He would have said more in this strain, but something in her glance gave him pause. There fell a silence. From the distance came the melodious pealing of church bells. High overhead a lark was pouring out its song; in the lane at the orchard end rang the beat of trotting hoofs. It was Diana who spoke presently. Just indignation stirred her, and, when stirred, she knew no pity, set no limits to her speech.
“I think, indeed,” said she, her voice crisp and merciless, “that the family honour will best be saved if Mr. Wilding kills you. It is in danger while you live. You are a coward, Richard.”
“Diana!” he thundered—he could be mighty brave with women—whilst Ruth clutched her arm to restrain her.
But she continued, undeterred: “You are a coward—a pitiful coward,” she told him. “Consult your mirror. It will tell you what a palsied thing you are. That you should dare so speak to Ruth...”
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