But Ruth only shook her head.
"Why, what then?" he insisted. "Was perhaps the White Woman walking? Ah! for shame, child, on thy foolish fancies!"
"Alack! father, 'twas no fancy," answered she. "It was no White Woman's spirit that haunted yonder room last night; but the black one of an evil, wicked-hearted man."
"Psha!" said Rumbold with an uneasy laugh. "Let us have done with riddles. I understand you now. You heard me and my boys—" He stopped with a confused, shamefaced smile. "That is what the foolish fellows, you know, love to call themselves. You heard, belike, I say, me and my friends—"
"Friends, father!" reproachfully interrupted she.
An anxious question.
A deep flush suffused Rumbold's face, but his tones of assumed careless indifference changed. "How now, mistress?" he demanded with sternly knitted brows. "Was it needful to be craving your leave for them to pay a little visit to the Warder's Room to—to inspect its pictures, and—and—its old oak chest, and—and—what not?" rather lamely concluded Rumbold, darting at the same time a keen sideways glance at her. "But let me tell you, Ruth, I like not these would-be prying ways of yours. 'Tis fortunate that these walls"—and he glanced with infinite satisfaction round the solid-looking wainscot—"were not made in to-day's gimcrack fashion, for the entertainment of every eaves-dropper who pleases to be lending his idle ear to—to concerns that are too high for him. You did hear nothing?" he added with ill-concealed anxiety after a moment's pause.
"Father—dearest, do you love me?" was all her answer. "In truth, do you love me?"
"Ay, ay. What a strange girl you are, Ruth! I love you dearer than life, little one;" and he drew her towards him, and laid her head down gently on his breast. "Far, far dearer than life. But hark you," and then all the wistful tenderness died out of his voice, "that says not that I love your faults. Among which I find this prying, curious habit—that accursed inheritance of which our poor unhappy mother Eve has bequeathed her daughters so large a share of."
"But, father—dearest—"