ime she might have
outgrown and forgotten? That you have been, like a besotted old ass,
all these years slowly forging a thunderbolt that any one may crush her
with? That"--but here Ridgeway's cough took possession of his voice,
and even put a moisture into his dark eyes, as he looked at McClosky's
aimless hand feebly employed upon his beard.

"But," said McClosky, "look how she's done! She's held her head as high
as any of 'em. She's to be married in a month to the richest man in the
county; and," he added cunningly, "Jack Ashe ain't the kind o' man to
sit by and hear any thing said of his wife or her relations, you bet!
But hush--that's her foot on the stairs. She's cummin'."

She came. I don't think the French window ever held a finer view than
when she put aside the curtains, and stepped out. She had dressed
herself simply and hurriedly, but with a woman's knowledge of her
best points; so that you got the long curves of her shapely limbs, the
shorter curves of her round waist and shoulders, the long sweep of her
yellow braids, the light of her gray eyes, and even the delicate rose of
her complexion, without knowing how it was delivered to you.

The introduction by Mr. McClosky was brief. When Ridgeway had got over
the fact that it was two o'clock in the morning, and that the cheek of
this Tuolumne goddess nearest him was as dewy and fresh as an infant's,
that she looked like Marguerite, without, probably, ever having heard
of Goethe's heroine, he talked, I dare say, very sensibly. When Miss
Jenny--who from her childhood had been brought up among the sons of
Anak, and who was accustomed to have the supremacy of our noble sex
presented to her as a physical fact--found herself in the presence of a
new and strange power in the slight and elegant figure beside her, she
was at first frightened and cold. But finding that this power, against
which the weapons of her own physical charms were of no avail, was
a kindly one, albeit general, she fell to worshipping it, after the
fashion of woman, and casting before it the fetishes and other idols of
her youth. She even confessed to it. So that, in half an hour, Ridgeway
was in possession of all the facts connected with her life, and a great
many, I fear, of her fancies--except one. When Mr. McClosky found the
young people thus amicably disposed, he calmly went to sleep.

It was a pleasant time to each. To Miss Jenny it had the charm of
novelty; and she abandoned herself to it