understood--she saw that in his eyes. Still even Uncle Peter had not told her all that she wanted to know, and of course she could not ask him. Soon a certain vague antagonism began to assert itself toward the old lady who knew so much and yet who said so little! who was too old really to understand--no old person, in fact, could understand--that is, no old woman. This proved, too, that this particular person could never have loved any other particular person in her life. Not that she, Ruth, loved Jack--by no manner of means--not in that way, at least. But she would have liked to know what he said, and how he said it, and whether his eyes had lost that terrible look which they wore when he turned away at the station to go back to his sick bed in the dingy hotel. All these things her Aunt Felicia knew about and yet she could not drag a word out of her. What she ought to have done was to go herself that first night, bravely, honestly, fearlessly as any friend had a right to do; go to him in his miserable little hotel and try to cheer him up as Miss Felicia, and perhaps Miss Bolton, had done. Then she might have found out all about it. Exactly what it was that she wanted to find out all about--and this increased her perplexity--she could not formulate, although she was convinced it would help her to bear the anxiety she was suffering. Now it was too late; more than a week had passed, and no excuse for going was possible. It was not until the morning after Peter's departure,--she, sitting alone, sad and silent in her chair at the head of her father's breakfast table (Miss Felicia, as was her custom, had her coffee in her room), that the first ray of light had crept into her troubled brain. It had only shone a brief moment,--and had then gone out in darkness, but it held a certain promise for better days, and on this she had built her hopes. “I am going to send for Breen to-morrow, Ruth,” her father had said as he kissed her good-night. “There are some things I want to talk over with him, and then I want to thank him for what he did for me. He's a man, every inch of him; I haven't told him so yet,--not to his face,--but I will to-morrow. Fine fellow is Breen; blood will always tell in the end, my daughter, and he's got the best in the country in his veins. Looks more like his father every day he lives.” She had hardly slept all night, thinking of the pleasure in store for her. She had dressed herself, too, in her most becoming breakfast gown--one she had worn when Jack first arrived at Corklesville, and which he said reminded him of a picture he had seen as a boy. There were pink rosebuds woven in its soft texture, and the wide peach-blossom ribbon that bound her dainty waist contrasted so delightfully, as he had timidly hinted, with the tones of her hair and cheeks. It was the puffy, bespectacled little doctor who shut out the light.