lay before his sister.

Now established love, it is well known, thrives wondrously on slander.
The robust growth of a maid's feelings for her accepted suitor is but
further strengthened by malign representations of his character. She
seizes with joy the chance of affording proof of her great loyalty, and
defies the world and its evil to convince her that the man to whom she
has given her trust is not most worthy of it. Not so, however, with the
first timid bud of incipient interest. Slander nips it like a frost; in
deadliness it is second only to ridicule.

Ruth Westmacott lent an ear to her brother's stories, incredulous only
until she remembered vague hints she had caught from this person and
from that, whose meaning was now made clear by what Richard told her,
which, incidentally, they served to corroborate. Corroboration, too, did
the tale of infamy receive from the friendship that prevailed between
Mr. Wilding and Nick Trenchard, the old ne'er-dowell, who in his
time--as everybody knew--had come so low, despite his gentle birth, as
to have been one of a company of strolling players. Had Mr. Wilding
been other than she now learnt he was, he would surely not cherish an
attachment for a person so utterly unworthy. Clearly, they were birds of
a plumage.

And so, her maiden purity outraged at the thought that she had been in
danger of lending a willing ear to the wooing of such a man, she
had crushed this love which she blushed to think was on the point of
throwing out roots to fasten on her soul, and was sedulous thereafter in
manifesting the aversion which she accounted it her duty to foster for
Mr. Wilding.

Richard had watched and smiled in secret, taking pride in the cunning
way he had wrought this change--that cunning which so often is given
to the stupid by way of compensation for the intelligence that has been
withheld them.

And now what time discountenanced, Wilding fumed and fretted all in
vain, Sir Rowland Blake, fresh from London and in full flight from his
creditors, flashed like a comet into the Bridgwater heavens. He dazzled
the eyes and might have had for the asking the heart and hand of Diana
Horton--Ruth's cousin. Her heart, indeed, he had without the asking, for
Diana fell straightway in love with him and showed it, just as he showed
that he was not without response to her affection. There were some
tender passages between them; but Blake, for all his fine exterior, was
a beggar, and Diana far