“I must see you safely back to the main road,” he said, gravely.
Ruth felt that she had struck him deeply, and as they rode along she cast about in her mind for some way to lead up to an explanation. It did not come, however, and at the main road, when her gate was in sight, Captain Allen pulled in his horse and lifted his hat.
“Good-by.”
“Good-evening. I will think of what you said,” she began, meaning what he had said about her riding out alone.
“I would at least like you to think of me as a gentleman.” He bowed gravely, and lifting his hat again, turned and rode slowly away.
Ruth rode home, her mind filled with conflicting emotions. Among them was anger, first with herself and afterward with Captain Allen.
Miss Welch, on her arrival at home that evening, was in a singular frame of mind, and was as nearly at war with everyone as it is possible for a really sweet-tempered girl to be. Dr. Washington Still had called in her absence and proffered his professional services for any of her patients. She broke out against him vehemently, and when her mother, who was in a mollified state of mind toward the young man, undertook to defend him, Ruth attacked the whole Still family—and connections—except Virgy, whom she admitted to be a poor little kind-hearted thing, and shocked her mother by denouncing warmly the stories of the Ku Klux outrages and declaring openly that she did not believe there had ever been any Ku Klux in the County, except on the one occasion when they had disarmed the negro militia—and that she thought they had done exactly right, and just what she would have had them do.
Mrs. Welch was too much shocked to do anything but gasp.
“Oh! Ruth, Ruth,” she groaned. “That ever my daughter should say such things!” But Miss Ruth was too excited for control just then. She launched out yet more warmly and shocked her mother by yet more heretical views, until suddenly, moved by her mother’s real pain, she flung herself into her arms in a passion of remorse and tears, and declared that she did not mean half of what she had said, but was a wicked, bad girl who did not appreciate the best and kindest of mothers.