So, congratulating him, in a caustic manner that Richard did not relish, upon the happy termination of the affair, Vallancey took his leave of him and Blake at the cross-roads, pleading business with Lord Gervase, and left them to proceed without him to Bridgwater.
Blake, whose suspicions of some secret matter to which Vallancey and Richard were wedded, had been earlier excited by Westmacott's indiscretions, was full of sly questions now touching the business which might be taking Vallancey to Scoresby.

But Richard was too full of the subject of the fear he had instilled into Wilding to afford his companion much satisfaction on any other score.

Thus they came to Lupton House, and as Richard swaggered down the lawn into the presence of the ladies--Ruth and her aunt were occupying the stone bench, Diana 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.