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.
It was not until the morning after Peter's departure,--she, sitting alone, sad and silent in her chair at the head of her father's breakfast table (Miss Felicia, as was her custom, had her coffee in her room), that the first ray of light had crept into her troubled brain. It had only shone a brief moment,--and had then gone out in darkness, but it held a certain promise for better days, and on this she had built her hopes.
“I am going to send for Breen to-morrow, Ruth,” her father had said as he kissed her good-night. “There are some things I want to talk over with him, and then I want to thank him for what he did for me. He's a man, every inch of him; I haven't told him so yet,--not to his face,--but I will to-morrow. Fine fellow is Breen; blood will always tell in the end, my daughter, and he's got the best in the country in his veins. Looks more like his father every day he lives.”
She had hardly slept all night, thinking of the pleasure in store for her. She had dressed herself, too, in her most becoming breakfast gown--one she had worn when Jack first arrived at Corklesville, and which he said reminded him of a picture he had seen as a boy. There were pink rosebuds woven in its soft texture, and the wide peach-blossom ribbon that bound her dainty waist contrasted so delightfully, as he had timidly hinted, with the tones of her hair and cheeks.
It was the puffy, bespectacled little doctor who shut out the light.
“No, your father has still one degree of fever,” he grumbled, with a wise shake of his bushy head. “No--nobody, Miss MacFarlane,--do you understand? He can see NOBODY--or I won't be responsible,” and with this the crabbed old fellow climbed into his gig and drove away.