It was morning. It was nine of the clock. Miss Adgate walked, alone, through a path that penetrated to the Wigwam. Almost hidden by a thicket of sweet fern, juniper, barberry and briar which grew at either side, which clung too affectionately to her skirts and from which she had difficulty in disengaging herself, the path, she thought, might have led her to the Palace of The Sleeping Beauty.
It was morning, as I have said, and it was the morning of her first day, and early abroad, Miss Adgate strolled in a pleasant sort of reverie,—thinking of nothing, perhaps, or thinking of a number of things. The Indian summer sunshine filtered upon her through half-bare branches not quite denuded of their yellow and purple and scarlet leafage; and every now and then a leaf came fluttering down in the light breeze. A squirrel, now and then, darted out along a branch, paused—and like an Italian lizard, all a-gleam and a-whisk, gleamed, whisked, and disappeared. But Ruth knew two little black beadlike eyes still watched her, as she went, from behind the lattice-screen of twigs.
Every now and then she passed a formidable, a monumental boulder; moss-grown; covered with grey lichen; dropped there by some glacier, æons since, unless Heaven, it occurred to her, had placed it where it stood, and why not? for picturesque intent?... Every now and then a tardy bluejay flitted by, lighted upon a branch and sent forth his imperious cha, cha, cha!... Or a woodpecker, in the distance, made his tapping noise as he sounded the trees for his meal. A dry twig would break, suddenly,—come tumbling head foremost down, down through a rustle of leaves, and all these sounds struck upon Miss Adgate's ears in her reverie, gave her exquisite pleasure. She enjoyed the romance and the solitude of this wild wood; she delighted in the knowledge that she was walking safely through her own preserves; and treve de compliments, her uncle had left her upon a brief good-bye after an early breakfast. Ruth burned to discover alone, he knew, her domain—General Adgate had divined it without a hint.
“You'll want to take a walk this morning through your woods, Ruth,” said he. “Cross the hill,—you'll find a road to the right leading by a brook,—follow the road,—it takes you over the brook by a bridge and soon becomes a path. No one will molest you, it's yours.”
“What, the brook as well?” queried she, feeling, somehow, like a very little girl in his presence.
“Yes, and the brook as well. You can't get away from your preserves,—they stretch on for miles.”
So it was that Miss Adgate, abroad at nine o'clock, happened to be off for a matutinal stroll through paths wet and dewy, glad of her freedom, glad to be alone in a new world, surrender herself to the romance of a new train of thought.
She came, presently, to a clearing in the wood. The path ended, abruptly, at a flat bed of rock which descended for some hundred feet to another opening in the wood. There were bayberry and barberry and fern along the way, slashed scarlet by the frosts; there were fifty plants she promised to herself to learn the names of, which gave forth strong, sweet scents in the hot sun. Ruth sat down. A swish, through the dry leaves, a stir of the brown grass, told of the frightened escape of some little living thing, and set her heart to palpitating unaccountably with love for it.
Her mood had become a trifle exalted, her perceptions quickened by her promenade. Each insect, bird, bush she came upon began to assume a personality; claimed the privilege to live upon her land. She was the suzerain of their little lives; she could have held a court of justice; she could have dispensed favours, played their games, ruled them, thrown herself into their griefs and joys, with heart and soul. Seated here, in the warm sun, on the warm stone checked with patches of green and brown club-moss, she inhaled the crisp fragrance of the bushes under the sun's kisses; she looked afar, on to the trees below and over their heads at the vivid sky, and upon faraway violet hills, and upon green and orange, brown and guileless meadows. The world seemed good and wonderful, and she felt exceedingly content.
“The Ruth Adgate who spent twenty years of her life in Europe is no more,” she thought, lightly. “The young person who has tasted most of the sweets of European civilisation, walked in marble halls, refused a Duke, run away from the outrage offered her dignity by the offer of a morganatic marriage with a Crown Prince,—the lovesick girl who wandered through the moonlight at the Lido, floated upon the silent lagoons of Venice, discoursed with wits in lovely gardens in Florence, and herself the cause of wit in others, hung upon their discourse—that was quite another person! That was but an early incarnation, never the real Miss Adgate. This is the real Miss Adgate! In spite of every influence to the contrary,—the product of her native land.”