“One night—I shall never forget it—I had a terrible attack of neuralgia, during the worst storm I have ever known. I didn't even know that I put the light in the window—I was so beside myself with pain—but she came, at two o'clock in the morning, and stayed with me until I was all right again. She was so gentle and so tender—I shall always love her for that.”
The sweet voice vibrated with feeling, and Ruth's thoughts flew to the light in the attic window, but, no—it could not be seen from Miss Ainslie's. “What does Aunt Jane look like?” she asked, after a pause.
“I haven't a picture, except one that was taken a long time ago, but I'll get that.” She went upstairs and returned, presently, putting an old-fashioned ambrotype into Ruth's hand.
The velvet-lined case enshrined Aunt Jane in the bloom of her youth. It was a young woman of twenty or twenty-five, seated in a straight-backed chair, with her hands encased in black lace mitts and folded in the lap of her striped silk gown. The forehead was high, protruding slightly, the eyes rather small, and very dark, the nose straight, and the little chin exceedingly firm and determined. There was an expression of maidenly wistfulness somewhere, which Ruth could not definitely locate, but there was no hint of it in the chin.
“Poor little Aunt Jane,” said Ruth. “Life never would be easy for her.”
“No,” returned Miss Ainslie, “but she would not let anyone know.”
Ruth strolled over to the window, thinking that she must be going, and Miss Ainslie still held the picture in her hand. “She had a lover, didn't she?” asked Ruth, idly.
“I-I-think so,” answered the other, unwillingly. “You remember we quarrelled.”
A young man stopped in the middle of the road, looked at Miss Ainslie's house, and then at the brown one across the hill. From her position in the window, Ruth saw him plainly. He hesitated a moment, then went toward the brown house. She noted that he was a stranger—there was no such topcoat in the village.
“Was his name Winfield?” she asked suddenly, then instantly hated herself for the question.