He must have uttered some sound, or moved, or the door latch clicked as he closed it. She started, saw him, and hastily concealed the locket in her bosom, rising in some confusion to greet him. The arrow of suspicion first driven into his mind when he had seen that stranger at their door and Ruth had seemed so frightened, was barbed. Now that he sought to cast it out of his thought, it rankled. What! was he of a low, suspicious, jealous nature? Was he the kind of cur to make himself and his wife miserable by a jealousy that was insulting to them both? This woman and he had known each other but a short time before their hasty marriage, but Ryder flattered himself that he had drawn from her a rather full and connected story of her life up to the day she had stepped aboard the _Minnequago_. There had been nothing in her story, he was positive, of which she needed to be ashamed. There had been no man but him. She had told him that frankly. She might possess some keepsake; but only such as an honorable wife might have. He knew it--he would stake his life upon it! Perhaps it was some dear reminder of the mother she had scarcely known. He had carried his mother's wedding ring all these years until he had given it to the clergyman to slip on Ruth's finger. He saw the glint of that ring now as she advanced to meet him with hands outstretched and the same light in her eyes that he had seen just now while she bent above the locket. "I am a fool!" bethought. "A wicked fool." He hurried down the room and clasped her yielding body within the circle of his arms. There was a passion in his embrace which he had scarcely expressed before, and she seemed to feel it. "Dearest!" she whispered. "I am glad you have come back, I was getting lonesome again," and she gave him her lips of her own accord. The heart of John Ryder beat higher. He remembered what he had told her aboard ship: "I'll never bring tears to your eyes, but always laughter to your heart!" "And a villain I'd be to break my word. Now is not the time to ask an explanation of such a simple act. It might show her how mean and vile a thought I had," was his thought. "I sent a message up to you a while ago, but the boy seemed unable to find you," he said. "Why, I never saw such stupid boys as they have at this hotel! Another knocked on our door while Mrs. Judson was here and asked for somebody else." "Oh, the guests are all around, visiting in each other's rooms, I presume," he observed. "The whole household is upset. And you never saw such a lot of cranks as there are here in your life. A circus sideshow has no more freaks, I guess, than a hotel like this Pinewood Inn." Ryder, laughing, told of old Mr. Cudger and his picture, and sketched the character of Colonel Aurelius Brack. Incidentally he told her something of what had been done, though in an impersonal way, to make the guests comfortable and to keep the employees of the hotel on their jobs.