After a time she started up, and flung back the heavy masses 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 brass 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 passed. 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 snatched 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, God 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.