Her other admirers--and there had been many in her Maryland home--had never behaved like this. Was it because they liked her better than she liked them? The fact was--and she might as well admit it once for all--that Jack did not like her at all, he really DISliked her, and only his loyalty to her father and that inborn courtesy which made him polite to every woman he met--young or old--prevented his betraying himself. She tried to suggest something like this to Miss Felicia, but that good woman had only said: “Men are queer, my dear, and these Southerners are the queerest of them all. They are so chivalrous that at times they get tiresome. Breen is no better than the rest of them.” This had ended it with Miss Felicia. Nor would she ever mention his name to her again. Jack was not tiresome; on the contrary, he was the soul of honor and as brave as he could be--a conclusion quite as illogical as that of her would-be adviser.
If she could only have seen Peter, the poor child thought,--Peter understood--just as some women not as old as her aunt would have understood. Dear Uncle Peter! He had told her once what Jack had said about her--how beautiful he thought her and how he loved her devotion to her father. Jack MUST have said it, for Uncle Peter never spoke anything but the exact truth. Then why had Jack, and everything else, changed so cruelly? she would say--talking to herself, sometimes aloud. For the ring had gone from his voice and the tenderness from his touch. Not that he ever was tender, not that she wanted him to be, for that matter; and then she would shut her door and throw herself on her bed in an agony of tears--pleading a headache or fatigue that she might escape her father's inquiry, and often his anxious glance.
The only ray of light that had pierced her troubled heart--and this only flashed for a brief moment--was the glimpse she had had of Jack's mind when he and her father first met. The boy had called to inquire after his Chief's health and for any instructions he might wish to give, when MacFarlane, hearing the young hero's voice in the hall below, hurried down to greet him. Ruth was leaning over the banister at the time and saw all that passed. Once within reach MacFarlane strode up to Jack, and with the look on his face of a man who had at last found the son he had been hunting for all his life, laid his hand on the lad's shoulder.