“Sit here, Richard,” she bade him. “There is something you have not considered. If you die, if Mr. Wilding kills you...” she paused.
He looked at her, and at the repetition of the fate that would probably await him if he persevered in the course he threatened, his purely emotional courage again began to fail him. A look of fear crept gradually into his face to take the room of the resolution that had been stamped upon it but a moment since.
He swallowed hard. “What then?” he asked, his voice harsh, and, obeying her command and the pressure on his hand, he resumed his seat beside her.
She spoke now at length and very gravely, dwelling upon the circumstance that he was the head of the family, the last Westmacott of his line, pointing out to him the importance of his existence, the insignificance of her own. She was but a girl, a thing of small account where the perpetuation of a family was at issue. After all, she must marry somebody some day, she repeated, and perhaps she had been foolish in attaching too much importance to the tales she had heard of Mr. Wilding. Probably he was no worse than other men, and after all he was a gentleman of wealth and position, such a man as half the women in Somerset might be proud to own for husband.
Her arguments and his weakness—his returning cowardice, which made him lend an ear to those same arguments—prevailed with him; at least they convinced him that he was far too important a person to risk his life in this quarrel upon which he had so rashly entered. He did not say that he was convinced; but he said that he would give the matter thought, hinting that perhaps some other way might present itself of cancelling the bargain she had made. They had a week before them, and in any case he promised readily in answer to her entreaties—for her faith in him was a thing unquenchable—that he would do nothing without taking counsel with her.
Meanwhile Diana had escorted Sir Rowland to the main gates of Lupton House, in front of which Miss Westmacott's groom was walking his horse, awaiting him.
“Sir Rowland,” said she at parting, “your chivalry makes you take this matter too deeply to heart. You overlook the possibility that my cousin may have good reason for not desiring your interference.”
He looked keenly at this little lady to whom a month ago he had been on the point of offering marriage. His coxcombry might readily have suggested to him that she was in love with him, but that his conscience and inclinations urged him to assure himself that this was not the case.
“What shall that mean, madam?” he asked her.
Diana hesitated. “What I have said is plain,” she answered, and it was clear that she held something back.