"Shame on you, daughter! Such suspicions are unbecoming!"

"I cannot help them, father; the very thought of this man is hateful to me."

"Well, well," said the father, soothingly, but not the less firm in his purpose; "the young man must plead his own cause. I have no fear that he will find my child unreasonable."

The hara.s.sed young creature grew desperate; she followed her father to the door of an inner room.

"Father, come back, come back! It is cruel to put me off so!"

Ruth drew her father into the room again, and renewed her protest with the pa.s.sionate entreaties that had been so ineffectual. In her desperation she spoke with unusual energy, while now and then her sentences were broken up with sobs.

"Oh, father, do not insist--do not force this marriage upon me! It will be my death, my destruction! I detest the man!"

Jessup turned away from her. That sweet appealing face made his heart ache.

Ruth saw this look of relenting, and would not give up her cause. She approached close to her father, and, clinging to his arm, implored him, with bitter sobs, to believe her when she said that this marriage would be worse than death to her.

"Hush, girl!" said the old man. "Hush, now, or I may believe some hints that the young man has thrown out of another person. No girl in these parts would refuse a young fellow so well-to-do and so good-looking, if she hadn't got some one else in her mind."

This speech was rendered more significant by a look of suspicion, which brought a rush of scarlet into the daughter's face.

"Oh, father, you are cruel!" cried the tortured young creature, struggling, as it were, for her life.

The old man turned away from this pathetic pleading; nothing but a stern sense of honor, which is so strong in some men of his cla.s.s, could have nerved him against the anguish of this appeal.

"We have given our word, child; we have given our word," he said.

"Neither you nor your father can go beyond that."

The gardener's voice faltered and he broke away from the trembling hands with which Ruth in her desperation sought to hold him. For the first time in his life he had found strength to resist her entreaties.

CHAPTER XII.

THE HEART STRUGGLE.

Humble as Jessup's little dwelling was, there hovered about it a spirit of beauty which would have made even an uncouth object beautiful to an imaginative person. The very wild things about the park seemed to understand this: for the sweetest-toned birds haunted its eaves, and the most timid hares would creep through the tangled flower-beds and commit petty depredations in the little vegetable-garden with a sense of perfect security.

As the dawn brightened into sunrise one fair June morning a slight noise was heard in the house. The door opened, and the gardener, in the strength of his middle age, stout, fair-faced, and genial, came through, carrying a carpet-bag in his hand. Directly behind him, in the jasmine porch, stood his daughter, who seemed to shrink and tremble when her father turned back, and, taking her in his arms, kissed her twice upon the forehead with great tenderness.

"Take good care of yourself, child," he said, with a look of kindly admonition, "and do not go too freely into the park while I am away, if you would not wish to meet any guest from the house."

The girl grew pale rather than crimson, and tried to cover her agitation by throwing both arms about her father's neck, and kissing him with a pa.s.sion of tenderness.

"There! there!" said the man, patting her head, and drawing his hand down the shining braids of her hair, with a farewell caress. "I will be home again before bedtime; or, if not, leave a lamp burning, and a bit of bread-and-cheese on the table, with a sup of ale; for I shall be sore and hungry! One does not eat London fare with a home relish."

"But you will surely come?" said the girl, with strange anxiety.

"Surely, child. I never sleep well under any roof but this."

"But, perhaps--It--it may be that you will come in an earlier train."

"No, no! There will be none coming this way. So do not expect me before ten of the night."

A strange, half-frightened light came into the girl's eyes, and she stood upon the porch watching the traveller's receding figure as long as she could see him through her blinding tears. Then she went into the house, cast herself on a chair, and, throwing both arms across a table, burst into a wild pa.s.sion of distress.

After a time she started up, and flung back the heavy ma.s.ses of hair that had fallen over her arms.

"I cannot--I dare not!" she said, flinging her hands apart, with desperate action. "He will never, never forgive me!"

For a time she sat drearily in her chair, with tears still on her cheek, and hanging heavily on the curling blackness of her eye-lashes.

Very sad, and almost penitent she looked as she sat thus, with her eyes bent on the floor, and her hands loosely clasped. The rustic dress, in which a peculiar red color predominated, had all the picturesque effect of an antique painting; but the face was young, fresh, and deeply tinted with a bright gipsy-like richness of beauty, altogether at variance with her father's form or features. Still she was not really unlike him. Her voice had the same sweet, mellow tones, and her smile was even more softly winning.

But she was not smiling now; far from it! A quiver of absolute distress stirred her red lips, and the shadow of many a painful thought swept her face as she sat there battling with her own heart.

All at once the old bra.s.s clock struck with the clangor of a bell.

This aroused the girl; she started up, in a panic, and began to clear the table, from which her father had eaten his early breakfast, in quick haste. One by one, she put away the pieces of old blue china into an oaken cupboard, and set the furniture in order about the room, trembling all the time, and pausing now and then to listen, as if she expected to be disturbed.

When all was in order, and the little room swept clean, the girl looked around in breathless bewilderment. She searched the face of the clock, yet never gathered from it how the minutes pa.s.sed. She saw the sunshine coming into the window, bathing the white jasmine-bells with a golden light, and shrunk from it like a guilty thing.

"I--I have time yet. He must not come here. I dare not wait."

The girl s.n.a.t.c.hed up a little straw-hat, garlanded with scarlet poppies, and hastily tied it on her head. In the midst of her distress she cast a look into the small mirror which hung upon the wall, and dashed one hand across her eyes, angry with the tears that flushed them.

"If he sees that I can weep, he will understand how weak I am, and all will go for nothing," she said. "Oh, G.o.d help me, here he is!"

Sure enough, through the overhanging trees Ruth saw young Hurst walking down along a path which ran along the high banks of the ravine. He saw the gleam of her garments through the leaves, and came toward her with both hands extended.

"Ready so soon, my darling?" he exclaimed, with animation. "I saw your father safe on the highway, and came at once; but--but what does this mean? Surely, Ruth, you cannot go in that dress?"

"No, I cannot. Oh, Mr. Walton, I dare not so disobey my father! He would never, never forgive me!"

The young man drew back, and a flash of angry surprise darkened his face.

"Is it that you will disappoint me, Ruth? Have I deserved this?"

"No, no; but he trusts me!"

"Have I not trusted you?"

"But my father--my father?"

"It is your father who drives us to this. He is unrelenting, or that presumptuous wretch would not be permitted to enter his dwelling. Has he dared to present himself again?"

"Yes, last night; but for that I might have lost all courage, all power of resistance."

"And you saw him? You spoke with him?"