CHAPTER XLVIII.
WATCHING HER RIVAL.
ON the same night that Ruth had taken a desperate resolve to see her husband, Richard Storms was waiting in the lake house for the coming of Judith Hart, who had promised to meet him there. The presence of this girl in the neighborhood had at first been a great annoyance to him; but now he both feared and hated her, so, coward-like, cajoled and deceived her by forced professions of love, while, with the same false tongue, he could not refrain from such hints of another as drove the poor creature half mad with jealous rage.
Though her presence was hateful to him, he dared not offend her beyond a certain point, and had no power to drive her back into her former isolated life; or in revenge she might, as she had often threatened, find out Ruth Jessup, and give both her and the father a good reason for forbidding him the house forever. He knew well enough, that in her reckless daring, she would not hesitate to accuse herself of any offence so long as the odium reached him also.
Thus shackled in his desire to free himself from the girl altogether, it mattered not to him how roughly, Storms waited for her at the lake house that night, lying at full length on the bench which ran along one end of the crazy old building.
Judith came in, at length, full of turbulent excitement. She had been walking rapidly, and swept through the long grass like a rush of wind.
"Ah, you are here!" she said, seating herself on one end of the bench as Storms swung his feet to the floor; "I thought you would be waiting, but it isn't you that oftenest gets here first, but I have seen some one you'll like to hear about."
"Seen some one? Of course, one of the gamekeepers."
"No. I have seen that girl, Ruth Jessup."
"Ruth Jessup in the park at this time of night? You cannot make me believe that."