ALONE IN THE COTTAGE.
BREATHLESS with apprehension, which was made half joy by an undeniable sense of happiness, all the more intense because it was gained by so much hazard, Ruth Jessup—for she dared not breathe that new name even to herself as yet—reached that remote gate in the park-wall, and darted like a frightened hare into the thick covert of the trees. There she lingered a while, holding her breath with dread. It was scarcely dark, but to her it seemed impossible that so few hours could have passed since she had stolen from her home. Surely, surely, her father must have returned. She would find him standing in the park, ready to arraign and judge her for the thing she had done; or he might come out to find her wandering among the ferns, so happy, yet so terrified, that she would like to stay there forever, like a bird in sight of its nest, trembling while it watched over its trust of love.
The purple twilight was just veiling the soft, green gloom of the trees with its tender darkness. Now and then a pale flash of gold shot through the leaves, giving signs that the evening had but just closed in. Still the girl hesitated. Almost, for the first time in her life, she feared to meet her father face to face. The taste of forbidden fruit was on her lips, tainted with the faint bitterness of coming ashes.
"I will go home—I must!" she said, rising from a fragment of rock that had given her a seat among the ferns. "There is yet a quiver of crimson in the air. It cannot be ten yet!"
The girl walked slowly and cautiously on until a curve in the path brought her in sight of the cottage. Then her pent-up breath came forth in a glad exclamation.
"It is dark yet! No one has been there in all this time!"
Poor child! It seemed an age since she had left the house, and a miracle that she should have found it so still and solitary. When she entered the porch, the light of a rising moon was trembling down to the honeysuckles that clung to it, and a cloud of dewy fragrance seemed to welcome her home again tenderly, as if she had no deception in her heart, and was not trembling from head to foot with vague apprehensions.
Taking a heavy key from under one of the seats which ran along each side of the porch, she opened the door and went into her home again. The moonlight came flickering through the oriel window, as if a bunch of silver arrows had been shivered against it, half illuminating the room with a soft, beautiful light. Ruth would gladly have sat down in this tranquil gloom, and given herself up to such dreams as follow a full certainty of being beloved, but the hoarse old clock twanged out the hour with a force that absolutely frightened her. She had not self-possession enough to count its strokes, but shuddered to think the night had possibly reached ten o'clock.
She lighted a lamp, looked around to make sure that nothing had been left that could betray her, then ran up-stairs, flung off her sad-colored dress, set all her rich hair free, and came down in the jaunty red over-dress and black skirt that had given her beauty such picturesque effect in the morning. All day she had been pale and feverishly flushed by turns. Now a sense of safety gave her countenance a permanent richness of color that would have been dazzling in a broader light than that lamp could give. She was under shelter in her own familiar garment; could it be that all the rest was a dream? Had she, in fact, been married?
A quick, frightened gasp answered the question. The lamp-light fell on a heavy circlet of new gold, that glittered on her finger.