She looked at him in anger almost at what seemed a callousness. “Would he believe me, think you?”
“Belike he would not,” said Mr. Wilding. “You can but try.”
“If I told them it was addressed to you,” she said, eyeing him sternly, “does it not occur to you that they would send for you to question you, and that if they did so, as you are a gentleman you could not lie away my brother's life.”
“Why, yes,” said he quite calmly, “it does occur to me. But does it not occur to you that by the time they came here they would find me gone?” He laughed at her dismay. “I thank you, madam, for this warning,” he added. “I think I'll bid them saddle for me without delay. Too long already have I tarried.”
“And must Richard hang?” she asked him fiercely.
Mr. Wilding produced a snuffbox of tortoise shell and gold. He opened it deliberately. “If he does, you'll admit that he will hang on the gallows that he has built himself—although intended for another. I'faith! He's not the first booby to be caught in his own springe. There is in this a measure of poetic justice. Poetry and justice! Do you know, Ruth, they are two things I have ever loved?” And he took a pinch of choice Bergamot.
“Will you be serious?” she demanded.
“Trenchard would tell you that it were to make an exception from the rule of my life,” he assured her, smiling. “Yet even that might I do at your bidding.”
“But this is a serious matter,” she told him angrily.
“For Richard,” he acknowledged, closing his snuffbox with a snap. “Tell me, what would you have me do?”