“You've made one trifling mistake,” interrupted Ruth; “there's something I have not told you, an element you must omit from the equation of that Castle in Altronde you are building for me. I'm not rich.... The Town of Wyoming, let me tell you, is no more. My millions, and a good thing too—have collapsed. They've shrunken to the few thousands you invested, ages ago, do you remember? in British Consols? On them I shall run this dear old place,—I shall dress, modestly——”
“Ruth, Ruth, Ruth!” interrupted Pontycroft, aghast.
“Yes, it all occurred about a week ago while you were at sea, and that, I suppose, is why you didn't hear of it. These accidents, here in America, happen so often. Marconi didn't find the item of sufficient importance, I dare say, to give it a place.”
“Well.... Here's a kettle of fish! Whew!” whistled Pontycroft. “You young limb of mischief, why didn't you tell me? Ouf” cried he, with a great pant of relief. “Ouf,—poor Bertram! He has no luck.” They had been sauntering, backwards and forward, over a grassy road which runs up hill and down dale through the green-sward planted with apple trees. Pontycroft leaned, now, against a tree. He gazed at Ruth without a word. A rosy-tipped cluster of apple blossoms nodded just above his head. He reached up, plucked it; and offered it to the lady with the crimson sunshade who stood in the sunlight before him.
“'Oh, Fairy Godmother! Feel my heart,'” Ruth whispered, under her breath. “I should like to show you my Riviera,” she said hastily, reddening under his gaze, and she stuck the apple blossoms into her belt.
Ruth skirted the grey rocks which crop above the brow of the hill to the left. She led Pontycroft down a green bank to a patch of brighter green nestling for quite a distance under the shelter of the overhanging cliffs. Here were eglantine, here were violets in profusion; Solomon's seal, red and purple columbine; and the purple liverwort, and a shower of those frail white wind-flowers called anemones, although in no wise do they resemble their European cousins. Young ferns, pale green fronds, sprang vigorously from the clefts in the rocks, juniper and barberry bushes and a savin lent here and there a hardy note and an added shelter to the scattering of spring blossoms.
“It's so exclusive here,” laughed Ruth, taking a lichen-covered seat formed in the grey stone. “These canny flowers have discovered the place for themselves after the habit of the land.... Sit down,” she invited him. She crossed her hands in her lap, she looked towards him; a mischievous light glanced bewitchingly in her dark eyes.
“Dear child,” Pontycroft began—he was trying, very hard, to resume his paternal air.
“Please don't 'dear child' me any more—I haven't brought you here for that,” petulantly cried Ruth. “I won't have you for a father and I've already got an uncle, and I don't think you'd make, for me, a satisfactory brother.”
“Miss Adgate,” said Pontycroft, he possessed himself of one of her hands, and examining it carefully (it was, as we know a very white hand with slim and rosy fingers), “Miss Adgate, I have a proposition to make to you. Since my schemes, since all my weary plottings and plannings for a Royal End for you, do, it seems, gang aft agley,—though, and mark my words, Bertram is no stickler for lucre; but since they've been knocked flat on the head by a blow of chance, let me suggest that we make a fresh start, let us consider a new alliance for you.