“You are oddly concerned for that, Ruth.”
“Concerned—not oddly.” She paused an instant, swallowed hard, and then continued. “I am concerned too for your honour, and there is no honour in following his banner. He has crowned himself King, and so proved himself a self-seeker who came dissembled as the champion of a cause that he might delude poor ignorant folk into flocking to his standard and helping him to his ambitious ends.”
“You are wondrously well schooled,” said he. “Whose teachings do you recite me? Sir Rowland Blake's?”
At another time the sneer might have cut her. At the moment she was too intent upon gaining time. The means to it mattered little. The more she talked to no purpose, the more at random was their discourse, the better would her ends be served.
“Sir Rowland Blake?” she cried. “What is he to me?”
“Ah, what? Let me set you the question rather.”
“Less than nothing,” she assured him, and for some moments afterwards it was this Sir Rowland who served them as a topic for their odd interview. On the overmantel the pulse of time beat on from a little wooden clock. His eyes strayed to it; it marked the three-quarters. He bethought him suddenly of his engagement. Trenchard, below-stairs, supremely indifferent whether Wilding went to Newlington's or not, smoked on, entirely unconcerned by the flight of time.
“Mistress,” said Wilding suddenly, “you have not yet told me in what you seek my service. Indeed, we seem to have talked to little purpose. My time is very short.”
“Where are you going?” she asked him, and fearfully she shot a sidelong glance at the timepiece. It was still too soon, by at least five minutes.
He smiled, but his smile was singular. He began to suspect at last that her only purpose—to what end he could not guess—was to detain him.