He looked at her a moment with hungry eyes, and she found his glance almost more than she could bear, so strong was its appeal. Besides, it may be that she was a thought beglamoured by the danger in which he stood, which seemed to invest him with a certain heroic dignity.
“Ruth,” he said at length, “it may well be that that which you desire may speedily come to pass; it may well be that in the course of this rebellion that is hatching you may be widowed. But at least I know that if my head falls it will not be my wife who has betrayed me to the axe. For that much, believe me, I am supremely grateful.”
He advanced. He took her unresisting hand again and bore it to his lips, bowing low before her. Then erect and graceful he turned on his heel and left her.
CHAPTER IX. MR. TRENCHARD'S COUNTERSTROKE
Now, however much it might satisfy Mr. Wilding to have Ruth's word for it that so long as he left her in peace neither he nor the Cause had any betrayal to fear from her, Mr. Trenchard was of a very different mind.
He fumed and swore and worked himself into a very passion. “Zoons, man!” he cried, “it would mean utter ruin to you if that letter reached Whitehall.”
“I realize it; but my mind is easy. I have her promise.”
“A woman's promise!” snorted Trenchard, and proceeded with great circumstance of expletives to damn “everything that daggled a petticoat.”
“Your fears are idle,” Wilding assured him. “What she says, she will do.”