Her family, without understanding it, noted the difference in their different ways. Mrs. Levice saw with a thrill of delight that she was growing more softly beautiful. Her father, holding his hands a few inches from her shoulders, said, one morning, with a drolly puzzled look, “I am afraid to touch you; sparks might fly.”
Arnold surprised her standing in the gloaming by a window, her hands clasped over her head, a smile parting her lips, her eyes haunting in the witchery of their expression. By some occult power her glance fell unconsciously on him; and he beheld, with mingled amazement and speculation, a rosy hue overspread her face and throat; her hands went swiftly to her face as if she would hide something it might reveal, and she passed quickly from the room. Arnold sat down to solve this problem of an unknown quantity.
Ruth’s birthday came in its course, a few days after her meeting with Rose Delano.
The family celebrated it in their usual simple way, which consisted only in making the day pass pleasantly for the one whose day of days it was,--a graceful way of showing that the birth has been a happy one for all concerned.
On this evening of her twenty-second birthday, Ruth seemed to be in her element. She had donned, in a spirit of mischief, a gown she had worn five years before on the occasion of some festivity. The girlish fashion of the white frock, with its straight, full skirt to her ankles, the round baby waist, and short puffs on her shoulders made a very child of her.
“Who can imagine me seventeen?” she asked gayly as she entered the library, softly lighted by many wax candles. Her mother, who was again enjoying the freedom of the house, and who was now snugly ensconced in her own particular chair, looked up at her.
“That little frock makes me long to take you in my lap,” said she, brightly.
“And it makes me long to be there,” answered Ruth, throwing herself into her mother’s arms and twining her arms about her neck.
“How now, Mr. Arnold, you can’t scare me tonight with your sarcastic disapproval!” she laughed, glancing provokingly over at her cousin seated in a deep blue-cushioned chair.
“I have no desire to scare you, little one,” he answered pleasantly. “I only do that to children or grown-up people.”