Her admiration, then, was swelled by gratitude, and it was a compound of these that had urged her to hinder the tything-men from winning past her until he and Trenchard should have got well away.
Afterwards, when with Diana and her groom--on a horse which Sir Edward Phelips insisted upon lending them--she rode homeward from Taunton, there was Diana to keep alive the spark of kindness that glowed at last for Wilding in Ruth's breast.

Miss Horton extolled his bravery, his chivalry, his nobility, and ended by expressing her envy of Ruth that she should have won such a man amongst men for her husband, and wondered what it might be that kept Ruth from claiming him for her own as was her right.

Ruth had answered little, but she had ridden very thoughtful; there was that in the past she found it hard to forgive Wilding.

And yet she would now have welcomed an opportunity of thanking him for what he had done, of expressing to him something of the respect he had won in her eyes by his act of selfdenunciation to save her brother.

This chance, it seemed, was given her, for there he stood, with head bared before her; and already she thought no longer of seizing the chance, vexed as she was at having been surprised into a betrayal of feelings whose warmth she had until that moment scarce estimated.
In answer to her cry of "You have eluded them!" he waved a hand towards the rising ground and the road to Bridgwater.
"They passed that way but a few moments since," said he, "and by the rate at which they were travelling they should be nearing Newton by now.
In their great haste to catch me they could not pause to look for me so close at hand," he added with a smile, "and for that I am thankful." She sat her horse and answered nothing, which threw her cousin out of all patience with her.