The captain’s departure, just when she hoped to put the copestone on her little edifice was a severe blow, for it compelled her to shut up her hopes and fears in her own breast, and, being of a sympathetic nature, that was difficult. But Ruth was a wise little woman as well as sympathetic. She had sense enough to know that it might be a tremendous disappointment to Captain Bream, if, after having had his hopes raised, it were discovered that Mrs Bright was not his sister. Ruth had therefore made up her mind not to give the slightest hint to him, or to any one else, about her hopes, until the matter could be settled by bringing the two together, when, of course, they would at once recognise each other.
Although damped somewhat by this unlooked-for interruption to her little schemes, she did not allow her efforts to flag.
“I see,” she said one day, on entering the theological library, where Jessie, having laid down a worsted cuff which she had been knitting, was deep in Leslie’s Short and Easy method with the Deists, and Kate, having dropped a worsted comforter, had lost herself in Chalmers’s Astronomical Discourses. “I see you are both busy, so I won’t disturb you. I only looked in to say that I’m going out for an hour or two.”
“We are never too busy, darling,” said Jessie, “to count your visits an interruption. Would you like us to walk with you?”
“N–no. Not just now. The fact is, I am going out on a little private expedition,” said Ruth, pursing her mouth till it resembled a cherry.
“Oh! about that little plot?” asked Jessie, laughing. Ruth nodded and joined in the laugh, but would not commit herself in words.
“Now, don’t work too hard, Kate,” she cried with an arch look as she turned to leave.
“It is harder work than you suppose, Miss Impudence,” said Kate; “what with cuffs and contradictions, comforters and confusion, worsted helmets and worse theology, my brain seems to be getting into what the captain calls a sort of semi-theological lop-scowse that quite unfits me for anything. Go away, you naughty girl, and carry out your dark plots, whatever they are.”
Ruth ran off laughing, and soon found herself at the door of Mrs Bright’s humble dwelling.
Now, Mrs Bright, although very fond of her fair young visitor, had begun, as we have seen, to grow rather puzzled and suspicious as to her frequent inquiries into her past history.