Mistress Wilding | Page 2

all
lost in wonder at his unusual patience.
"Mr. Westmacott," said he, "I do think you are wrong to persist in
affronting me. You have done a thing that is beyond forgiveness, and
yet, when I offer you this opportunity of honourably retrieving..." He
shrugged his shoulders, leaving the sentence incomplete.
The company might have spared its deep surprise at so much mildness.
There was but the semblance of it.Wilding proceeded thus of purpose
set, and under the calm mask of his long white face his mind worked
wickedly and deliberately. The temerity of Westmacott, whose nature

was notoriously timid, had surprised him for a moment. But anon,
reading the boy's mind as readily as though it had been a scroll
unfolded for his instruction, he saw that Westmacott, on the strength of
his position as his sister's brother, conceived himself immune. Mr.
Wilding's avowed courtship of the lady, the hopes he still entertained of
winning her, despite the aversion she was at pains to show him, gave
Westmacott assurance that Mr. Wilding would never elect to shatter his
all too slender chances by embroiling himself in a quarrel with her
brother. And - reading him, thus, aright - Mr. Wilding put on that mask
of patience, luring the boy into greater conviction of the security of his
position. And Richard, conceiving himself safe in his entrenchment
behind the bulwarks of his brothership to Ruth Westmacott, and
heartened further by the excess of wine he had consumed, persisted in
insults he would never otherwise have dared to offer.
"Who seeks to retrieve?" he crowed offensively, boldly looking up into
the other's face. "It seems you are yourself reluctant." And he laughed a
trifle stridently, and looked about him for applause, but found none.
"You are overrash," Lord Gervase disapproved him harshly.
"Not the first coward I've seen grow valiant at a table," put in
Trenchard by way of explanation, and might have come to words with
Blake on that same score, but that in that moment Wilding spoke again.
"Reluctant to do what?" he questioned amiably, looking Westmacott so
straightly between the eyes that the boy shifted uneasily on his
high-backed chair.
Nevertheless, still full of confidence in the unassailability of his
position, the mad youth answered, "To cleanse yourself of what I threw
at you."
"Fan me, ye winds!" gasped Nick Trenchard, and looked with
expectancy at his friend Wilding.
Now there was one factor with which, in basing with such craven
shrewdness his calculations upon Mr. Wilding's feelings for his sister,

young Richard had not reckoned. He was not to know that Wilding,
bruised and wounded by Miss Westmacott's scorn of him, had reached
that borderland where love and hate are so merged that they are scarce
to be distinguished. Embittered by the slights she had put upon him -
slights which his sensitive, lover's fancy had magnified a hundredfold -
Anthony Wilding's frame of mind was grown peculiar. Of his love she
would have none; his kindness she seemingly despised. So be it; she
should taste his cruelty. If she scorned his wooing and forbade him to
pursue it, at least it was not hers to deny him the power to hurt; and in
hurting her that would not be loved by him some measure of fierce and
bitter consolation seemed to await him.
He realized, perhaps, not quite all this - and to the unworthiness of it all
he gave no thought. But he realized enough as he toyed, as cat with
mouse, with Richard Westmacott, to know that in striking at her
through the worthless person of this brother whom she cherished - and
who persisted in affording him this opportunity - a wicked vengeance
would be his.
Peace-loving Lord Gervase had heaved himself suddenly to his feet at
Westmacott's last words, still intent upon saving the situation.
"In Heaven's name..." he began, when Mr. Wilding, ever calm and
smiling, though now a trifle sinister, waved him gently into silence. But
that persisting calm of Mr. Wilding's was too much for old Nick
Trenchard. He rose abruptly, drawing all eyes upon himself. It was time,
he thought, he took a hand in this.
In addition to his affection for Wilding and his contempt for
Westmacott, he was filled with a fear that the latter might become
dangerous if not crushed at once. Gifted with a shrewd knowledge of
men, acquired during a chequered life of much sour experience, old
Nick instinctively mistrusted Richard. He had known him for a fool, a
weakling, a babbler, and a bibber of wine. Out of such elements a
villain is soon compounded, and Trenchard had cause to fear the form
of villainy that lay ready to Richard's hand. For it chanced that Mr.
Trenchard was second cousin to that famous John