One look she gave him from out of that face so white and pitiful, then with a shudder turned from him and fled his presence. He sprang after her as the door closed, then checked and stood in thought, very grim for one who professed to bestow no seriousness on the affairs of life. Then he returned slowly to his writing-table, and rummaged there among the papers with which it was encumbered, seeking something of which he now had need. Through the open window he heard the retreating beat of her horse's hoofs. He sighed and sat down heavily, to take his long square chin in his hand and stare before him at the sunlight on the lawn outside.
And whilst he sat thus, Ruth made all haste back to Lupton House to tell of the failure that had attended her. There was nothing left her now but to embark upon the forlorn hope of following Richard to Taunton, to offer her evidence of how the incriminating letter had come to be locked in the drawer in which the constable had discovered it. Diana met her with a face as white as her own and infinitely more startled. She had just learnt that Sir Rowland Blake had been arrested also and that he had been carried to Taunton together with Richard, and, as a consequence, she was as eager now that Ruth should repair to Albemarle as she had erstwhile been earnest in urging her to seek out Mr. Wilding; indeed, Diana went so far as to offer to accompany her, an offer that Ruth gladly, gratefully accepted.
Within an hour Ruth and Diana—in spite of all that poor, docile Lady Horton had said to stay them—were riding to Taunton, attended by the same groom who had so lately accompanied his mistress to Zoyland Chase.
CHAPTER X. THEIR OWN PETARD
In a lofty, spacious room of the town hall at Taunton sat Sir Edward Phelips and Colonel Luttrell to dispense justice, and with them, flanked by one of them on either side of him, sat Christopher Monk, Duke of Albemarle, Lord-Lieutenant of Devonshire, who had been summoned in all haste from Exeter that he might be present at an examination which promised to be of so vast importance. The three sat at a long table at the room's end, attended by two secretaries.
Before them, guarded by constable and tything-men, weaponless, their hands pinioned behind them—Blake's arm was healed by now—stood Mr. Westmacott and his friend Sir Rowland to answer this grave charge.
Richard, not knowing who might have betrayed him and to what extent, was very fearful—having through his connection with the Cause every reason so to be. Blake, on the other hand, conscious of his innocence of any plotting, was impatient of his position, and a thought contemptuous. It was he who, upon being ushered by the constable and his men into the august presence of the Lord-Lieutenant, clamoured to know precisely of what he was accused that he might straightway clear himself.
Albemarle reared his great massive head, smothered in a mighty black peruke, and scowled upon the florid London beau. A black-visaged gentleman was Christopher Monk. His pendulous cheeks, it is true, were of a sallow pallor, but what with his black wig, black eyebrows, dark eyes, and the blue-black tint of shaven beard on his great jaw and upper lip, he presented an appearance sombrely sinister. His netherlip was thick and very prominent; deep creases ran from the corners of his mouth adown his heavy chin; his eyes were dull and lack-lustre, with great pouches under them. In the main, the air of this son of the great Parliamentarian general was stupid, dull, unprepossessing.
The creases of his mouth deepened as Blake protested against what he termed this outrage that had been done him; he sneered ponderously, thrusting further forward his heavily undershot jowl.