‘You’re very hard on Mr. Marston, mother,’ said Ruth; ‘he’s lived in America many years, and you know they do very curious things there.’
‘Very, my dear. Oh, I know that. And I dare say Mr. Marston’s done a good many curious things there. Of course, my dear, I haven’t forgotten what was between you once, but I hope that’ll never happen again.’
Ruth coloured and bit her lip.
Mr. Adrian noticed it, and tried to turn the conversation by talking about the weather, but Mrs. Adrian was not be so easily turned from her course.
‘It’s no good looking at me like that, John,’ she exclaimed. ‘I know what you mean. Isn’t Ruth my daughter as much as she is yours? I say I should like to see her well married; and if I was a young girl Mr. Gurth Egerton shouldn’t ask me twice—there now!’
‘But, my dear Mary,’ urged Mr. Adrian, ‘Egerton hasn’t asked Ruth once yet.’
‘Of course not. But, if I know anything, he will before very long. What do you think he comes here for?—to chatter to you about the Ojibbeways, or to hold my worsted for me? Nonsense! He comes here after Ruth—and you must all be blind if you can’t see it.’
Ruth let her mother finish. It was not quite a revelation to her, this view of Egerton’s continual visits, but it had never come home to her so thoroughly before. Her mother was quite right. She saw it all now. She must act decisively and at once.
‘Mother,’ she said, after a pause, ‘I hope you are not right. Mr. Egerton has been a very kind friend to me, and I like him as a friend and acquaintance very much. I could never look upon him in any other light.’
Ruth gathered up her work and went up to her own room. It was a habit of hers to do so when any little thing put her out.