the circular seat about the great oak in the centre of the lawn - he
was a very different person from the pale, limp creature they had
beheld there some few hours earlier. Loud and offensive was he now
in self-laudation, and so indifferent to all else that he left
unobserved the little smile, half wistful, half scornful, that visited
his sister's lips when he sneeringly told how Mr. Wilding had chosen
that better part of valour which discretion is alleged to be.

It needed Diana, who, blinded by no sisterly affection, saw him exactly
as he was, and despised him accordingly, to enlighten him. It may also
be that in doing so at once she had ends of her own to serve; for Sir
Rowland was still of the company.

"Mr. Wilding afraid?" she cried, her voice so charged with derision
that it inclined to shrillness. "La! Richard, Mr. Wilding was never
afraid of any man."

"Faith!" said Rowland, although his acquaintance with Mr. Wilding
was slight and recent. "It is what I should think. He does not look
like a man familiar with fear."

Richard struck something of an attitude, his fair face flushed, his
pale eyes glittering. "He took a blow," said he, and sneered.

"There may have been reasons," Diana suggested darkly, and Sir
Rowland's eyes narrowed at the hint.

Again he recalled the words Richard had let fall that afternoon.
Wilding and he were fellow workers in some secret business, and
Richard had said that the encounter was treason to that same