He had imagined that already Mr.Wilding would be in full flight.

Was the fellow mad?
"He is following me," said Diana, and, indeed, a step could be heard in the passage.
"The letter!" growled Richard in a frenzy, between fear and anger now.
"Give it me! Give it me do you hear ?" "Sh! You'll betray yourself," she cried.

"He is here." And at that same moment Mr.Wilding's tall figure, still arrayed in his bridegroom's finery of sky-blue satin, loomed in the doorway.

He was serene and calm as ever.

Neither the discovery of the plot by the abstraction of the messenger's letter, nor Ruth's strange conduct--of which he had heard from Lord Gervase--had sufficed to ruffle, outwardly at least, the inscrutable serenity of his air and manner.