“Why, pray?”
“Why, Ruth, dear, he is not a Christian?”
It would be impossible to describe to you the consternation in Susan’s face and voice, and the astonishment in Ruth’s.
“Well,” she said again, “it is surely not the first time you were conscious of that fact. He will be in no more danger in that respect with me for a wife. At least I trust he will not.”
Susan had no answer to make to this strange sentence. She stood, brush in hand, gazing bewilderingly at Ruth’s face for a moment. Then, recollecting herself, turned toward the mirror again, with the simple repeatal:
“I beg your pardon. I did not mean to hurt your feelings.”
As for Ruth, it would have been difficult for her to analyze her feelings. Were they hurt? Was she angry? If so, at what or whom? Her heart felt in a tumult.
Now, I want you to understand that, strange as it may appear, this was a new question to her. That Judge Burnham was not a Christian man she knew, and regretted. But, that it should affect her answer to his question was a thought which had not once presented itself. She turned and went out from that room without another word, and feeling that she never wanted to say any more words to that girl.
“It is no use,” she said, aloud and angrily. “We can never be anything to each other, and it is folly to try. We are set in different molds. I no sooner try to make a friend and confidant of her than some of her tiresome notions crop out and destroy it all.”
She knew that all this was nonsense. She knew it was the working of conscience on her own heart that was at this moment making her angry; and yet she found the same relief which possibly you and I have felt in blaming somebody for something, aloud, even while our hearts gainsayed our words.