“Right through’ his manful breast darted the pang
That makes a man, in the sweet face of her
That he loves most, lonely and miserable.”
Then, for a week at a time, he would not come to the village; he said he was busy with a murder trial. He was not at their house to-day; it was they who were awaiting his return from the court-house, in his own rooms at the jail, after the most elaborate midday dinner Mrs. Raker could devise. The parlor was less resplendent and far prettier than of yore. Ruth knew that the change had come about through her own suggestions, which the docile Amos was always asking. She knew, too, that she had not looked so young and so dainty for years as she looked in her new brown cloth gown, with the fur trimming near enough a white throat to enhance its soft fairness. Yet she sighed. She wished heartily that they had not come to town. True, they needed the things, and, much to Mother Smith’s discomfiture, she had insisted on going to a modest hotel near the jail, instead of to Amos’s hospitality; but it was out of the question not to spend one day with him. Ruth began to fear it would be a memorable day.
There were his clothes, for instance; why should he make himself so fine for them, when his every-day suit was better than other people’s Sunday best? Ruth took an unconscious delight in Amos’s wardrobe. There was a finish about his care of his person and his fine linen and silk and his freshly pressed clothes which she likened to his gentle manner with women and the leisurely, pleasant cadence of his voice, which to her quite mended any breaks in her admiration made by a reckless and unprotected grammar. Although she could not bring herself to marry him, she considered him a man that any girl might be proud to win. Quite the same, his changing his dress put her in a panic. Which was nonsense, since she didn’t have any reason to suppose—The cold chills were stepping up her spine to the base of her brain; that was his step in the hall!
He opened the door. He was fresh and pressed from the tailor, he was smooth and perfumed from the barber, and his best opal-and-diamond scarf-pin blazed in a new satin scarf. Certainly his presence was calculated to alarm a young woman afraid of love-making.
Nor did his words reassure her. He said, “Ruth, I don’t know if you have noticed that I was worried lately.”
“I thought maybe you were bothered about some business,” lied Ruth, with the first defensive instinct of woman.
“Yes, that’s it; it’s about a man sentenced to death.”
“Oh!” said Ruth.