Hurst took his hat, and glancing down at his dinner dress, remembered that he would be missed from the drawing-room. Once more he enfolded the girl in his arms, called her by the new endearing name that was so sweet to them both, and finally left her smiling through all her fears.
Ruth stole to the little oriel window, and watched her husband as he turned from the moonlight and entered the shadows of the park. Then she went back to the kitchen and busied herself about the fire.
CHAPTER XVIII.
AN ENCOUNTER.
WHEN Richard Storms left the gardener's cottage, he dashed like a wild beast into the densest thickets of the forest, and tore his way through toward his own home. It gave him a sort of tigerish pleasure to tear at the thickets with his fierce hands, and trample the forest turf beneath his iron-shod heels, for the rage within him was brutal in its thirst for destruction. All at once he stopped short, seemed to remember something and turned back, plunging along at a heavy but swift pace, now through the shadows, now in the moonlight, unconscious of the quiet beauty of either.
It took him but a brief time to reach the cottage, around which he pondered a while, stealing in and out of the tangled vines which hung in thick draperies around the building. At last Ruth saw his face at the kitchen window, and gave a sharp cry that drove him away, more fiercely wrathful than ever, for he had seen the creature he worshipped after a rude fashion giving caresses to another, that he would have gone on his grovelling knees to have secured to himself.
"Jessup promised my father that I should wed her, and it has come to this," he grumbled fiercely, as if tearing the words between his teeth. "On the night I had set aside to win an answer for myself, the young master hustles me out of the door like a dog, and takes the kennel himself. He thinks I am not man enough to bark back when he kicks me, does he? He shall see! He shall see! Bark! Nay, my fine fellow, it shall be biting this time. A growl and a snap isn't enough for kicks and blows."
The wrath of this man was less fiery now, but it had taken a stern, solid strength, more dangerous than the first outburst of passion. He sought no particular path as he left the house, but stamped forward with heavy feet, as if he were trampling down something that he hated viciously, now and then gesticulating in the moonlight, till his very shadow seemed to be fighting its way along the turf.
All at once he came upon another man, who had left the great chestnut avenue, and turned into a side path, which led to the gardener's passage. The two men stopped, and one spoke cheerfully.