ght have come to words with Blake
on that same score, but that in that moment Wilding spoke again.

"Reluctant to do what?" he questioned amiably, looking Westmacott
so straightly between the eyes that the boy shifted uneasily on his
high-backed chair.

Nevertheless, still full of confidence in the unassailability of his
position, the mad youth answered, "To cleanse yourself of what I threw
at you."

"Fan me, ye winds!" gasped Nick Trenchard, and looked with expectancy at
his friend Wilding.

Now there was one factor with which, in basing with such craven
shrewdness his calculations upon Mr. Wilding's feelings for his sister,
young Richard had not reckoned. He was not to know that Wilding,
bruised and wounded by Miss Westmacott's scorn of him, had reached that
borderland where love and hate are so merged that they are scarce to be
distinguished. Embittered by the slights she had put upon him--slights
which his sensitive, lover's fancy had magnified a hundredfold--Anthony
Wilding's frame of mind was grown peculiar. Of his love she would have
none; his kindness she seemingly despised. So be it; she should taste
his cruelty. If she scorned his wooing and forbade him to pursue it, at
least it was not hers to deny him the power to hurt; and in hurting
her that would not be loved by him some measure of fierce and bitter
consolation seemed to await him.

He realized, perhaps, not quite all this--and to the unworthiness of it
all he gave no thought. But he realized enough as he toyed, as cat with
mouse, with Richard Westmacott, to know that in striking at her through
the worthless person of this brother whom she cherished--and who
persisted in affording him this opportunity--a wicked vengeance would be
his.

Peace-loving Lord Gervase had heaved himself suddenly to his feet at
Westmacott's last words, still intent upon saving the situation.

"In Heaven's name..." he began, when Mr. Wilding, ever calm and smiling,
though now a trifle sinister, waved him gently into silence. But that
persisting calm of Mr. Wilding's was too much for old Nick Trenchard. He
rose abruptly, drawing all eyes upon himself. It was time, he thought,
he took a hand in this.

In addition to his affection for Wilding and his contempt for
Westmacott, he was filled with a fear that the latter might become
dangerous if not crushed at once. Gifted with a shrewd knowledge of
men, acquired during a chequered life of much sour experience, old
Nick instin