“The Queen Mama is more than anxious to welcome you with wide-open arms,” continued Pontycroft.
“Ah?” Ruth slightly raised her eyebrows.
“Yes. It's true she kicked a bit,” said Ponty. He got to his feet and with his handkerchief flapped a straw or two from his knee. “But Bertram made a devil of a row; there was no standing it she explained to me with tears in her eyes. The Queen Mama has had to capitulate, and Bertram's counting these very moments as ever are, pining to hear you have accepted him. I'm to go de ce pas to the telegraph office and wire 'yes'—so soon as you've made your haughty little mind up that you'll have him.”
“Ah,” Ruth said. “It is very interesting——”
But suddenly she felt her heart leap into her throat. She trembled, yet she spoke resolutely. “Harry,” she said, “Harry—you've told me something startling and—not very important. But why don't you tell me that the woman who wrote the letter—is dead?”
An unaccountable stillness fell for an instant over the landscape. Ruth left her bench under the oak and walked off, walked away to where the rocks come cropping up along the brow of the hill. The panorama spread before her was one of fresh, palely verdant meadows and woods; the Mantic, turbulent from spring freshets, was bordered with trees in the early paleness of their green leaves; the green frail rondures of the Wigwam foliage in delicate and varied shades,—these were dappled with sunlight and blue sky. A far panoply of purple hills, marking the borderland, shutting away the boisterous outer world as by a charmed circle, enclosed the small, the joyous world of the little inland town, the valley and the seven hills of Oldbridge.
Pontycroft approached mechanically, slowly. He stood by Ruth's side, he looked off with her at this exquisite efflorescence of spring in the new world.
“It's a beautiful view,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, “Europe could scarcely do better.... And so Lucilla told you?” he queried, carelessly. “Put not thy trust in woman. She vowed by her most sacred vows she'd never say a word until I told her to.”
“I dare say I wormed it out of her,” Ruth replied, laughing, and,—it was too apparent,—she was laughing at him.
“I don't quite gather what it is that makes you so merry this morning,” said Pontycroft; “unless it is this heavenly Spring day, and that's enough for twenty hopes and fears to rap and knock and enter in our souls.... But please do recollect that while you loiter, considering the indisputably lovely landscape, there's a chap in Altronde waiting—impatient's no word for it—for a wire. Kindly give your attention to the Royal Incident, the real question of actuality, for a moment, and let me be off as soon as possible to the Post Office.”