“I think I should have got on better at home if I had been.”
She spoke humbly enough, but there was utter discouragement in every line of her face and figure.
“Nonsense!” said Ruth briskly. “Nobody would get on, in your sense, at Elderthwaite. I don’t think you ought to stay there. You know it is quite in your power to arrange differently. You might make them long visits and—come fresh to every one.”
“I’ll never have it said that I could not live there,” said Virginia, colouring deeply. “And if I was away—I could not.—I would not—”
“Go back into the neighbourhood? Well, at any rate you are going to have a holiday now, and see something besides moors and mud.”
The change of scene could not fail to do Virginia good, though there might be something in the courtship of Ruth and Rupert to remind her, with a difference, of her own. It was sometimes breezy, for Rupert loved to tease his betrothed, and having got his will, was a free-and-easy and contented lover, not much liking to be put out of his way, and not quite coming up to Ruth’s requirements.
Ruth, though very kind to her cousin, believed that she had lost her lover in great measure through a feminine scrupulosity and desire to bring him up to her own standard. Ruth would never be so narrow and unsympathetic, she would be prepared to understand all the story of her hero’s life; and being young, and much more simple than she believed herself to be, thought that her indiscriminate reading of somewhat free-spoken novels, gave her the necessary experience. But Rupert took quite another view. He was not aware of having any particular story to tell, and had no intention whatever of telling it. He did not in the least desire Ruth’s sympathy with his past, which was quite commonplace. He was not in a state of repentance, desirous of making a confession; nor had his heart ever been withered up by any frightful experiences. No doubt he could remember much that was not particularly creditable, and which he rightly thought unfit for discussion with his betrothed. Moreover, he did not care at all for poetry, and very little for novels, and at last actually told her that one she mentioned was unfit for her to read.
Ruth was very angry, and had a sense of being put aside. Had Rupert—like herself—a secret, or was she going to be “only a little dearer than his horse?” as she expressed it to herself, and with tears to him. Rupert laughed, and then grew a little angry, and then they made it up again; but he teased her for her romance, laughed at her most muscular and strong-souled heroes, and never would put himself in a heroic attitude. Ruth quarrelled with him, made it up with him, was vexed by him, and sometimes was vexatious; but all the while she never told him about Cheriton.