"Do I? Ask the Lady Rose, if she ever stoops to speak to you."
"She is a sweet, gracious lady," broke in Ruth, magnanimous in her swift jealousy. "A great lady, who refuses speech or smile to no one."
"Ask her, then, who was out on the terrace this evening, before he came home, robbing the great stone vases of their sweetest flowers for his button-hole!"
Ruth lifted one hand to her bosom, and pressed the golden ring there close to her heart.
Then turning to the young man, who was watching her keenly, she said, with composure:
"Well, why should you or I ask such questions of the young lady? I would no more do that than spy upon her, as you have done!"
Storms looked at her keenly from under his bent brows, and his thin lips closed with a baffled expression.
"Off the scent," he thought. "What is it? She was hot on the chase just now. Has she really doubled on him?"
"It needs no spying to see what goes on up there," he answered, after a moment, waving his head toward the great house. "Grand people like them think we have neither eyes nor ears. They pay us for being without them, and think we earn our wages like dumb cattle. Just as if sharpness went with money. But we do see and hear, when they would be glad to think us blind and dumb!"
The girl made no answer. She longed to question the creature she despised, and had a fierce struggle with her heart, until more honorable feelings put down the swift cravings of jealousy that were wounding her heart, as bees sting a flower while rifling it of honey.