“Don’t stand out in the rain! Oh, please come in! We will go where you like?”
Dr Maclure leapt lightly to his seat, and the coachman whipped up his horses without waiting for instructions. A coachman is only an ordinary man after all, and George had seen how the wind blew for many a long day. He took care not to drive too quickly, nor to choose the shortest routes, satisfied that for once his master was not in a hurry.
Inside the brougham Dr Maclure held Ruth’s shabbily gloved little hand in his, and asked earnestly—
“Can you give me a different answer this time, Ruth? It has been a weary waiting, and I seem to have grown worse instead of better. I fear it is an incurable complaint! Can you give me a glimmer of hope, dear, or is it still quite impossible?”
Ruth shook her head and nodded and smiled, and sighed, and shed a few bright tears, in a whirl of delightful confusion.
“It’s—it’s not impossible at all! I think I am quite sure. I have been growing surer and surer all this time. But am I good enough? You remember that six months ago I fancied myself in love with someone else?”
“I can afford to forget that episode, and even to be thankful for it, if it has shown you your own mind, so that now you are ‘quite sure’! Oh, Ruth, it is too good to be true! Can you really be happy with a dull, old fellow like me? No country seat, you know; no life of ease and luxury, just a comfortable, commonplace house, with a husband who is too hard-worked to have much time for play. I have no fortune to offer you, dear, except love—there’s no end to that wealth!”
Ruth turned her beautiful eyes upon him with a smile of perfect content.
“But that’s everything!” she cried. “I shall be the richest woman in the world!”