“I can’t bear a word said against him, dear.  And it grieves me to see you making yourself unhappy over such useless brooding.  What does it matter, after all—­our knowing nothing about ourselves, who we are, or where we came from?  We are happy, everybody is kind and good to us.”

They started at the sound of a voice calling her name, and they saw William Pressley come out of the dark shadows beneath the trees, and stand still, waiting for them to approach.

“It is late, my dear, for you to be roaming about the woods like this,” he said, when they were near enough.

He used the term of endearment in the tone of calm, moderate reproof which a justly displeased, but self-controlled husband sometimes uses.  And Ruth felt the resentment that every woman feels at its unconscious mockery.

“Why, there isn’t any danger,” she said.  “We haven’t been out of sight and hearing from Cedar House.”

“I was thinking of seemliness, not of danger,” William Pressley replied coldly.  “And then Mr. Alston is waiting for you.”

Ruth moved nearer, and laid her hand on his arm, smiling rather timidly, with conciliatory, upward glances.  Her first effort, whenever they met, was always to make something right—­often before she could remember what it was that she had done or not done to displease him.  This feeling was the natural attitude of a gentle, loving nature toward a harsh, unloving one, and it was the most natural thing of all that he should mistake her gentleness for weakness; that he should mistake her fear of giving offence for a lack of moral courage.  This is a common mistake often made by those who care little for the feelings of others, about those who care, perhaps, too much.  And as the three young people walked along toward Cedar House, Ruth gave David her left hand, and spoke to him now and then, just as affectionately and freely as she had done while they had been alone.  William Pressley did not speak to the boy at all or notice him in any way.  He did not dislike him, for he never disliked anything that was not of some importance.  He disapproved of his impractical, visionary character, and thought that it might have rather an undesirable influence over Ruth.  For this reason he tacitly discouraged all intimacy between them, but he did not take the trouble to express it and merely ignored the lad.  And David, seeing how it was, felt instantly and strongly, that being overlooked was harder to bear than being misused—­as most of us are apt to feel.

“We have been at the Sisters’ house,” said Ruth, shyly, breaking a strained silence.  “They sent for me—­to see the sewing that Sister Angela has been getting ready for Christmas Eve.”

William Pressley looked down at her uplifted, blushing face, and smiled, as the most self-centred and serious of men must do, when the girl who is to be his wife speaks to him of her wedding clothes.

XIII