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.

She looked after him for a moment and two hot tears dropped from her
eyes and dashed themselves to pieces on the peach-blossom ribbon.

But the sky was clearing again--she didn't realize it,--but it was.
April skies always make alternate lights and darks. The old curmudgeon
had gone, but the garden gate was again a-swing.

Ruth heard the tread on the porch and drawing back the curtains looked
out. The most brilliant sunbeams were but dull rays compared with what
now flashed from her eyes. Nor did she wait for