an feels at its unconscious
mockery.

"Why, there isn't any danger," she said. "We haven't been out of sight
and hearing from Cedar House."

"I was thinking of seemliness, not of danger," William Pressley replied
coldly. "And then Mr. Alston is waiting for you."

Ruth moved nearer, and laid her hand on his arm, smiling rather timidly,
with conciliatory, upward glances. Her first effort, whenever they met,
was always to make something right--often before she could remember what
it was that she had done or not done to displease him. This feeling was
the natural attitude of a gentle, loving nature toward a harsh, unloving
one, and it was the most natural thing of all that he should mistake her
gentleness for weakness; that he should mistake her fear of giving
offence for a lack of moral courage. This is a common mistake often made
by those who care little for the feelings of others, about those who
care, perhaps, too much. And as the three young people walked along
toward Cedar House, Ruth gave David her left hand, and spoke to him now
and then, just as affectionately and freely as she had done while they
had been alone. William Pressley did not speak to the boy at all or
notice him in any way. He did not dislike him, for he never disliked
anything that was not of some importance. He disapproved of his
impractical, visionary character, and thought that it might have rather
an undesirable influence over Ruth. For this reason he tacitly
discouraged all intimacy between them, but he did not take the trouble
to express it and merely ignored the lad. And David, seeing how it was,
felt instantly and strongly, that being overlooked was harder to bear
than being misused--as most of us are apt to feel.

"We have been at the Sisters' house," said Ruth, shyly, breaking a
strained silence. "They sent for me--to see the sewing that Sister
Angela has been getting ready for Christmas Eve."

William Pressley looked down at her uplifted, blushing face, and smiled,
as the most self-centred and serious of men must do, when the girl who
is to be his wife speaks to him of her wedding clothes.

XIII

SEEING WITH DIFFERENT EYES

It was on the boy's account that they had their first and last serious
quarrel a few hours later. This was by no means the first time that they
had openly disagreed, and had come to rather sharp words. Their views of
many things were too far apart for that to have been the case, but there
had never befo