And yet with all this there was one corner deep down in Ruth’s heart so overgrown with “wonderings” and “whys,” so thick with tangled doubts and misgivings, that no cheering ray of certainty had yet been able to pierce it.  Nor had any one tried.  Miss Felicia, good as she was and loving as she had been, had done nothing in the pruning way—­that is, nothing which would let in any sunshine radiating from Jack.  She had talked about him, it is true; not to her, we may be sure, but to her father, saying how handsome he had grown and what a fine man he was making of himself.  She had, too, more than once commented—­and this before everybody—­on his good manners and his breeding, especially on the way he had received her the first morning she called, and to his never apologizing for his miserable surroundings, meagre as they were—­just a theodolite, his father’s portrait and half a dozen books alone being visible, the white walls covered with working plans.  But when the poor girl had tried to draw from her some word that was personal to himself, or one that might become personal—­ and she did try even to the verge of betraying herself, which would never have done—­Miss Felicia had always turned the subject at once or had pleaded forgetfulness.  Not a word could she drag out of this very perverse and determined old lady concerning the state of the patient, nothing except that he was “better,” or “doing nicely,” or that the bandage was being shortened, or some other commonplace.  Uncle Peter had been kinder.  He understood—­she saw that in his eyes.  Still even Uncle Peter had not told her all that she wanted to know, and of course she could not ask him.

Soon a certain vague antagonism began to assert itself toward the old lady who knew so much and yet who said so little! who was too old really to understand—­no old person, in fact, could understand—­that is, no old woman.  This proved, too, that this particular person could never have loved any other particular person in her life.  Not that she, Ruth, loved Jack—­by no manner of means—­not in that way, at least.  But she would have liked to know what he said, and how he said it, and whether his eyes had lost that terrible look which they wore when he turned away at the station to go back to his sick bed in the dingy hotel.  All these things her Aunt Felicia knew about and yet she could not drag a word out of her.

What she ought to have done was to go herself that first night, bravely, honestly, fearlessly as any friend had a right to do; go to him in his miserable little hotel and try to cheer him up as Miss Felicia, and perhaps Miss Bolton, had done.  Then she might have found out all about it.  Exactly what it was that she wanted to find out all about—­and this increased her perplexity—­she could not formulate, although she was convinced it would help her to bear the anxiety she was suffering.  Now it was too late; more than a week had passed, and no excuse for going was possible.