第69章

"No - yes?" he echoed, and he had drawn himself erect again. "What is't you mean, Ruth?""I mean that it was that, yet not quite only that.""Ah!" Disappointment vibrated faintly in his clamation. "What else?""I would have you abandon Monmouth's following," she told him.

He stared a moment, moved away and round where he could confront her.

The flush had now faded from her face. This he observed and the heave of her bosom in its low bodice. He knit his brows, perplexed. Here was surely more than at first might seem.

"Why so?" he asked.

"For your own safety's sake," she answered him.

"You are oddly concerned for that, Ruth.""Concerned - not oddly." She paused an instant, swallowed hard, and then continued. "I am concerned too for your honour, and there is no honour in following his banner. He has crowned himself King, and so proved himself a self-seeker who came dissembled as the champion of a cause that he might delude poor ignorant folk into flocking to his standard and helping him to his ambitious ends.""You are wondrously well schooled," said he. "Whose teachings do you recite me? Sir Rowland Blake's?"At another time the sneer might have cut her. At the moment she was too intent upon gaining time. The means to it mattered little. The more she talked to no purpose, the more at random was their discourse, the better would her ends be served.

"Sir Rowland Blake?" she cried. "What is he to me?""Ah, what? Let me set you the question rather.""Less than nothing," she assured him, and for some moments afterwards it was this Sir Rowland who served them as a topic for their odd interview.

On the overmantel the pulse of time beat on from a little wooden clock.

His eyes strayed to it; it marked the three-quarters. He bethought him suddenly of his engagement. Trenchard, below-stairs, supremely indifferent whether Wilding went to Newlington's or not, smoked on, entirely unconcerned by the flight of time.

"Mistress," said Wilding suddenly, "you have not yet told me in what you seek my service. Indeed, we seem to have talked to little purpose. My time is very short.""Where are you going?" she asked him, and fearfully she shot a sidelong glance at the timepiece. It was still too soon, by at least five minutes.

He smiled, but his smile was singular. He began to suspect at last that her only purpose - to what end he could not guess - was to detain him.

"`Tis a singularly sudden interest in my doings, this," said he quietly.

"What is't you seek of me?" He reached for the hat he had cast upon the table when they had entered. "Tell me briefly. I may stay no longer."She rose, her agitation suddenly increasing, afraid that after all he would escape her. "Where are you going?" she asked. "Answer me that, and I will tell you why I came.""I am to sup at Mr. Newlington's in His Majesty's company.

"His Majesty's?"

"King Monmouth's," he explained impatiently. "Come, Ruth. Already I am late.""If I were to ask you not to go," she said slowly, and she held out her hands to him, her glance most piteous - and that was not acting - as she raised it to meet his own, "would you not stay to pleasure me?"He considered her from under frowning eyes. "Ruth," he said, and he took her hands, "there is here something that I do not understand.

What is't you mean?"

"Promise me that you will not go to Newlington's, and I will tell you.""But what has Newlington to do with... ? Nay, I am pledged already to go."She drew closer to him, her hands upon his shoulders. "Yet if I ask you - I, your wife?" she pleaded, and almost won him to her will.

But suddenly he remembered another occasion on which, for purposes of her own, she had so pleaded. He laughed softly, mockingly.

"Do you woo me, Ruth, who, when I wooed you, would have none of me?"She drew back from him, crimsoning. "I think I had better go," said she. "You have nothing but mockery for me. It was ever so. Who knows?" she sighed as she took up her mantle. "Had you but observed more gentle ways, you... you..." She paused, needing to say no more.

"Good-night!" she ended, and made shift to leave. He watched her, deeply mystified. She had gained the door when suddenly he moved.