"You tremble--you turn pale. Is it because you cannot love me, Ruth?"

"Love you--love you?" repeated the girl, in wild bewilderment. "Oh, G.o.d! forgive me--forgive me! I do, I do!"

Her face was one flame of scarlet now, and she covered it with her hands--shame, terror, and a great ecstasy of joy seized upon her.

"Let me go, let me go, I cannot bear it," she pleaded, at length. "I dare not meet my father after this."

"But I dare take your hand in mine and say to him, as one honorable man should say to another: 'I love this girl, and some day she shall become my wife.'"

"Your wife!"

"I did not know till now the sweetness that lies in a single word.

Yes, Ruth, when a Hurst speaks of love he speaks also of marriage."

"No, no, that can never be--Sir Noel, Lady Rose, my father--you forget them all!"

"No, I forget nothing. Sir Noel is generous, and he loves me. You have always been a favorite with Lady Rose. As for your father--"

"He would die rather than drag down the old family like that. My father, in his way, is proud as Sir Noel. Besides--besides--"

"Well, what besides?"

"He has promised. He and John Storms arranged it long ago."

"Arranged what, Ruth?"

"That--that I should some day be mistress of the farm."

"Mistress of the farm--and you?"

"Oh, Mr. Hurst! it breaks my heart to think of it, but father's promise was given when I did not care so much, and I let it go on without rebelling."

Ruth held out her hands, imploringly, as she said this, but Hurst turned away from her, and began to pace up and down the little parlor, while she shrunk into the recess of the window, and watched him timidly through her tears. At last he came up to her, blaming his own anger.

"This must never be, Ruth!"

"You do not know what a promise is to my father," said the girl, with piteous helplessness.

"Yes, I do know; but this is one he shall not keep."

Once more the young man took the hands she dared not offer him again, and pressed them to his lips. Then he went away full of anger and perplexity.

Ruth watched him through the window till his tall figure was lost in the windings of the path; then she ran up to her own little room, and throwing herself on the bed, wept until tears melted away her trouble, and became an exquisite pleasure. The ivy about the window shed a lovely twilight around her, and the shadows of its trembling leaves tinted the snowy whiteness of the pillow on which her cheek rested, with fairy-like embroidery. The place was like heaven to her. Here this young girl lay, thrilled heart and soul by the first pa.s.sion of her womanhood. This feeling that burned on her cheek, and swelled in her bosom, was a delicious insanity. There was no hope in it--no chance for reason, but Hurst loved her, and that one thought filled the moment with joy.

With her hands clasped over her bosom, and her eyes closed in the languor of subsiding emotion, she lay as in a dream, save that her lips moved, as red rose-leaves stir when the rain falls on them, but all that they uttered was, "He loves me--he loves me."

If a thought of her father or of Richard Storms came to mar her happiness, she thrust it away, still murmuring, "He loves me. He loves me."

After a time she began to reason, to wonder that this one man, to whom the giving of her childish admiration had seemed an unpardonable liberty, could have thought of her at all, except as he might give a moment's attention to the birds and b.u.t.terflies that helped to make the old place pleasant. How could he--so handsome, so much above all other gentlemen of his own cla.s.s--think of her while Lady Rose was near in all the splendor of her beauty and the grace of a high position!

"Was it that she was also beautiful?"

When this question arose in her mind, Ruth turned upon her pillow, and, half ashamed of the movement, looked into a small mirror that hung on the opposite wall. What she saw there brought a smile to her mouth and the flash of diamonds to the blackness of her eyes.

"Not like the Lady Rose," she thought, "not fair and white like her; but he loves me! He loves me!"

CHAPTER VII.

JUDITH.

Ruth Jessup was indeed more deeply pledged to Richard Storms than she was herself aware of. The old farmer and Jessup had been fast friends for years when these young people were born, and almost from the first it had become an understanding between them that their families should be united in these children. The two fathers had saved money in their hard-working and frugal lives, which was to lift the young people into a better social cla.s.s than the parents had any wish to occupy, and each had managed to give to his child a degree of education befitting the advancement looked forward to in their future.

Young Richard had accepted this arrangement with alacrity when he was old enough to comprehend its advantages, for, of all the maidens in that neighborhood, Ruth Jessup was the most beautiful; and what was equally important to him, even in his boyhood, the most richly endowed. As for the girl herself, the importance of this arrangement had never been a subject of serious consideration.

Bright, gay, and happy in her nest-like home, she accepted this lad as a special playmate in her childhood, and had no repugnance to his society after that, so long as more serious things lay in the distance. Brought up with those habits of strict obedience so commendable in the children of English parents, she accepted without question the future that had seemed most desirable to her father, who loved her, as she well knew, better than anything on earth.

Indeed, there had been a time in her immature youth when the presence of young Storms filled all the girlish requirements of her life. Nay, as will sometimes happen, the very dash and insolence of his character had the charm of power for her; but since then the evil of his nature had developed into action, while her judgment, refined and strengthened, began to revolt from the traits that had seemed so bold and manly in the boy.

Jessup had himself been somewhat displeased by the idle habits of the young man, and had expostulated with the father on the subject so directly that Richard was put on a sort of probation after his escapade at the hunt, and found his presence at the gardener's cottage less welcome than it had been, much to his own disgust.

"I have given up the dogs and nursed that lame brute as if I had been his grandmother--what more can any reasonable man want?" he said one day when Jessup had looked coldly on him.

"If you would win favor with daughter Ruth, my lad, go less with that gang at 'The Two Ravens,' and turn a hand to help the old father. When that is done there will always be a welcome for you; but my la.s.s has no mother to guide her, and I must take extra care that she does not match herself illy. Wait a while, and let us see the upshot of things."

"Is it that you take back your word?" questioned Richard, anxiously.

"Take back my word! Am I a man to ask that question of? No, no; I was glad about the terriers, and shall not be sorry to see you on the back of the horse when he is well, for he is a fair hunter and worth money; but daughter Ruth has heard of these things, and it'll be well to keep away for a bit till they have time to get out of her mind."

"I'll be sure to remember what you say, and do nothing to anger any one," said Storms, with more concession than Jessup expected, and the young man rode away burning with resentment.

"So I am to be put in a corner with a finger in my mouth till this pretty sweetheart of mine thinks fit to call me out of punishment. As if there were no other inn but 'The Two Ravens,' and no other la.s.s worth making love to but her! Now, that the hunter is on his feet again, I'll take care that she'll know little of what I am doing."

This conversation happened a few days after the hunt. Since that time Storms had never been heard of at the "Two Ravens," and his name had begun to be mentioned with respect in the village, much to Jessup's satisfaction.

Occasionally, however, the young man was seen mounted on the hunter, and dressed like a gentleman, riding off into the country on business for his father. The people who met him believed this, and they gave him credit for the change that a few weeks had wrought.

Was it instinct in the animal, or premeditation in his rider that turned the hunter upon the old track the first time he was taken from the stable? Certain it is that Richard Storms rode him leisurely up the long hill and by the lane which led to the dilapidated house he had visited on the day of his misfortune, but without calling at the house.

After he had pursued this course a week or more, riding slowly in full view of the porch, until he was certain that one of its inmates had seen him, he turned from the road one day, left his horse under a chestnut tree that grew in the lane, and sauntered down the weedy path toward the house.

Looking eagerly forward, he saw Judith Hart in the porch. She was standing on a small wooden bench, with both arms uplifted and bare to the shoulders. Evidently the unpruned vines had broken loose, and she was tying them up again.

As she heard the sound of hoofs the girl stooped down and looked through the vines with eager curiosity.

She jumped down from the bench as she recognized the young man, a vivid flush of color coming into her face and a sparkle of gladness in her eyes. If he had forgotten that day when the first cup of milk was given, she had not.