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