to cull great credit in Ruth's eyes.

He had been thinking constantly of the incautious words that Richard
had let fall, thinking of them in conjunction with the startling rumours
that were now the talk of the whole countryside. He laid two and two
together, and the four he found them make afforded him some hope. Then
he realized - as he might have realized before had he been shrewder -
that Richard's mood was one that made him ripe for any villainy. He
thought that he was much in error if a treachery existed so black that
Richard would quail before it, if it but afforded him the means of
ridding himself and the world of Mr. Wilding. He was considering how
best to approach the subject, when it happened that one night when
Richard sat at play with him in his own lodging, the boy grew talkative
through excess of wine. It happened naturally enough that Richard
sought an ally in Blake, just as Blake sought an ally in Richard.
Indeed, their fortunes - so far as Ruth was concerned - were bound
up together. The baronet saw that Richard, half-fuddled, was ripe for
any confidences that might aim at the destruction of his enemy. He
questioned him adroitly, and drew from him the story of the rising
that was being planned, and of the share that Mr. Wilding - one of the
Duke of Monmouth's chief movement-men - bore in the business that was
toward.

When, towards midnight, Richard Westmacott went home, he left in Sir
Rowland's hands an instrument which the latter accounted potential not
only for the destruction of Anthony Wilding, but perhaps also for laying
the foundations to the building of his own fortunes anew.