“Your precious friend Sir Rowland has been here,” said he, and it was not clear from his manner which of them he addressed. “Not a doubt but he will have brought you the news.” He seemed to sneer.
Ruth advanced towards him, her face grave, her sweet eyes full of pitying concern. She placed a hand upon his sleeve. “My poor Richard...” she began, but he shook off her kindly touch, laughing angrily—a mere cackle of irritability.
“Odso!” he interrupted her. “It is a thought late for this mock kindliness!”
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.”