The young man got down, but might yet have hesitated had not Wilding caught him by the arm and whirled him up the steps, through the open door, past the two soldiers who kept it, and who were too surprised to stay him, straight into the long, low-ceilinged chamber where Feversham, attended by a captain of horse, was listening to Blake's angry narrative of that night's failure.
Mr.Wilding's entrance was decidedly sensational.

He stepped quickly forward, and, taking Blake who was still talking, all unconscious of those behind him, by the collar of his coat, he interrupted him in the middle of an impassioned period, wrenched him backwards off his feet, and dashed him with a force almost incredible into a heap in a corner of the room.

There for some moments the baronet lay half dazed by the shock of his fall.
A long table, which seemed to divide the chamber in two, stood between Lord Feversham and his officer and Mr.Wilding and Ruth--by whose side he had now come to stand in Blake's room.
There was an exclamation, half anger, half amazement, at Mr.Wilding's outrage upon Sir Rowland, and the captain of horse sprang forward.
But Wilding raised his hand, his face so composed and calm that it was impossible to think him conceiving any violence, as indeed he protested at that moment.
"Be assured, gentlemen," he said, "that I have no further rudeness to offer any so that this lady is suffered to withdraw with me." And he took in his own a hand that Ruth, amazed and unresisting, yielded up to him.

That touch of his seemed to drive out her fears and to restore her confidence; the mortal terror in which she had been until his coming dropped from her now.

She was no longer alone and abandoned to the vindictiveness of rude and violent men.