ere isn't Mr. Alwynn and Dr. Brown riding up
the street now in Dr. Brown's gig! Well, I never! and Mr. Alwynn
a-getting out, and a-talking as grave as can be to Dr. Brown. Poor Mr.
Dare! Poor dear young gentleman!"

Ruth was conscious that she beat rather a hurried retreat from Mrs.
Eccles's cottage, and that her voice was not quite so steady as usual
when she asked the doctor if it were true that Mr. Dare had been hurt.

"All the village will have it that he is killed; but he is all right, I
assure you, Miss Deyncourt," said the kind old doctor, so soothingly and
reassuringly that Ruth grew pink with annoyance at the tone. "Not a
scratch. He was out with his keepers last night, and they had a brush
with poachers; and Martin, the head keeper was shot in the leg. Bled a
good deal, so they sent for me; but no danger. I picked up your uncle
here on his way to see him, and so I gave him a lift there and back.
That is all, I assure you."

And Dr. Brown and Mrs. Eccles, straining over her geraniums, both came
to the same conclusion, namely, that, as Mrs. Eccles elegantly expressed
it, "Miss Ruth wanted Mr. Dare."

"And he'll have her, too, I'm thinking, one of these days," Mrs. Eccles
would remark to the circle of her acquaintance.

Indeed, the match was discussed on numerous ladders, with almost as much
interest as the unfailing theme of the damsons themselves.

And Dare rode over to the rectory as often as he used to do before a
certain day in August, when he had found Ruth under the
chestnut-tree--the very day before Mrs. Alwynn started on her screen,
now the completed glory of the drawing-room.

And was Ruth beginning to like him?

As it had not occurred to her to ask herself that question, I suppose
she was _not_.

Dare had grown very quiet and silent of late, and showed a growing
tendency to dark hats. His refusal had been so unexpected that the blow,
when it came, fell with all the more crushing force. His self-love and
self-esteem had been wounded; but so had something else. Under the
velvet corduroy waistcoat, which he wore in imitation of Ralph, he had a
heart. Whether it was one of the very best of its kind or warranted to
wear well is not for us to judge; but, at any rate, it was large enough
to take in a very real affection, and to feel a very sharp pang. Dare's
manner to Ruth was now as diffident as it had formerly been assured. To
some minds there is nothing more touching than a sudden access of
humi