Duke's friends."

"Yet were I you, I should not marry just at present."

Wilding smiled. "If you were me, you'd never marry at all."

"Faith, no!" said Trenchard. "I'd as soon play at `hot-cockles,'
or `Parson-has-lost-his-cloak.' `Tis a mort more amusing and the
sooner done with."



CHAPTER V
THE ENCOUNTER


Ruth Wesmacott rode back like one in a dream, with vague and hazy
notions of what she saw or did. So overwrought was she by the interview
from which she came, her mind so obsessed by it, that never a thought
had she for Diana and her indisposition until she arrived home to find
her cousin there before her. Diana was in tears, called up by the
reproaches of her mother, Lady Horton - the relict of that fine soldier
Sir Cholmondeley Horton, of Taunton.

The girl had arrived at Lupton House a half-hour ahead of Miss
Westmacott, and upon her arrival she had expressed surprise, either
feigned or real, at finding Ruth still absent. Detecting the alarm that
Diana was careful to throw into her voice and manner, her mother
questioned her, and elicited the story of her faintness and of Ruth's
having ridden on alone to Mr. Wilding's. So outraged was Lady Horton