“Take care!” cried out Gwinnan sharply. He drew up his horse with an effort, and looked down at her in amazement as she still clung to the bridle.
The next moment he recognized her.
XXVI.
Under the strong pull on the curb, the young horse stood quivering in every limb beneath the blossoming peach boughs that overhung the grassy margin of the road. There seemed a reflection of their delicate roseate tints in Alethea’s upturned face, as with one hand she still grasped the bridle. Her old brown bonnet, falling back, showed her golden hair in its dusky tunnel. The straight blooming wands of the volunteer peach sprouts, that had sprung up outside the zigzag barriers of the rail fence, clustered about the folds of her homespun dress, as she stood in their midst.
All at once she was trembling violently. Her luminous brown eyes suddenly faltered. In her every consideration she herself was always so secondary—not with a sedulous effort of subordination, but yielding with a fine and generous instinct to the interest of others—that until this moment she had had no self-consciousness in regard to the jealousy which had resulted in Gwinnan’s injuries. For this he had been struck down and brought near to death. Some sense of a reciprocal consciousness, an overwhelming deprecation of Mink’s folly in fancying him a rival, a vague wonderment as to the effect of the idea upon Gwinnan, seized upon her for the first time now in his presence, as if she had had no leisure hitherto to think of these things. She could not speak. She could not meet his serious, intent, expectant eye.
“Did you have something to say to me?” he asked, taking the initiative.
It was the same tone that had given her sympathetic encouragement in the court-room, charged with a personal interest, a grave solicitude, all unlike the superficial, unmeaning courtesy of the lawyers. She spoke impetuously now as then, and with instant reliance upon him.
“I hearn, jedge,” she cried, looking up radiantly at him, “ez how ye hev gin out ez ye never wanted Reuben Lorey ter be prosecuted fur tryin’ ter kill ye, an’ axed fur him ter be let off, an’ I ’lowed ye hold no gredge agin him. ’Pears ter me like ye war powerful good ’bout’n it.”
“But he was prosecuted,” the judge said quickly, fancying that she was under a delusion.