To the average man, woman is a riddle. Her ways are past finding out.
Without doubt, the noble deeds of women are not always those which are blazoned forth to the public eye in books and pamphlets, or by means of the press.
The quiet, unobtrusive host of duties they perform in the midst of unheard-of difficulties; their patient endurance of suffering; the privations they are willing to undergo for those they love; the obscurity and loneliness in which much of their lives are passed, yet the unmurmuring and ungrudging way in which devoted service is given: all this is known to the few, and has yet to be revealed.
It was probably due to one or more of these phases or traits of character, which the illness of Fellows had developed in Jessie Russell, that had caused the feeling of friendship he imagined he entertained for her to reveal itself to him as that of a much warmer and tenderer attachment, which might more properly be attributed to one of those well-directed shafts from Cupid's artillery which the little god, with so much precision, is so well able and so ready to discharge.
Fellows was in love with Jessie Russell. He had to admit that to himself, and he was longing to confess it to her.
But whenever the occasion presented itself—and opportunities occurred in abundance—remorse restrained him and kept him silent. Dare he link her future with one whose past was a record of shame and crime? If she cared for him—as he sometimes flattered himself she did—need he trouble her with that which could not possibly do her any good, and might do much harm?
Whatever may have been the follies and sins of his past life, his moral perceptions were still keen enough to see that such a course of conduct would be most dishonouring and dishonourable to the woman he professed to have a supreme regard for.
Thoughts such as these naturally cast a shadow over his life; he avoided the society of his fellows, or, when circumstances compelled him to associate with them, he was moody, taciturn, and reserved, so that in the house or in the field his converse or communications were of the briefest, and marked by no feature to lead to its continuance.
His habits and general demeanour had not escaped the notice of Mrs. Ranger, and, with that womanly intuitiveness so characteristic of the sex, she had not been long in divining the cause.
Taking advantage of an opportunity one evening when alone together, and the work of the day was over, she mentioned the subject to her husband.