oubled her hearer more than any heat or violence could have
done. But the old man's face and figure were before her with a wonderful
vivid clearness. The stoop was that of fatigue, and yet it had a
merciful mild courtesy in it too, and the gray face was eloquent of
goodness.

"I can't believe it!" cried the girl, warmly. "Dear aunt, there must
have been some terrible mistake. I am sure he is a good man. You have
only to look at him to know that he is a good man."

"A whited sepulchre," said Aunt Rachel, walking on again. She had kept
her mittened hand upon the girl's arm throughout the pause in their
walk, and her very touch told her that Ruth was wounded and indignant.
"What I say, I say of my own knowledge. He is a deliberate and a cruel
villain."

The girl contained herself and was silent. In a little while she began
to think with an almost tragic sense of pity of the withered and lonely
old maid who walked beside her. She could pity thus profoundly because
she could image herself in the like case; and though the figure she saw
was far from being clear, her own terror of it and revolt from it told
her how terrible it was. If she and Reuben should part as her aunt and
Ezra had parted--if she should ever come to think of Reuben as Aunt
Rachel thought of Ezra! The thought touched her with an arctic sense of
cold and desolation. She drew away from it with an inward shudder, and
in that instant of realization she saw the little old maid's personality
really and truly standing in the middle of that bleak and frost-bound
barrenness which she had dreamed as a possibility for herself. For the
first time she saw and understood, and anger and bewilderment were alike
swept away in the warm rush of sympathetic pity.

The road was lonely, and Ruth, with both eyes brimming over, placed her
arm about her aunt's neck, and, stooping, kissed her on the cheek. Two
or three of the girl's tears fell warm on Rachel's face, and the
old maid started away from her with a sudden anger, which was less
unreasonable than it seemed. She had of late years had an inclination to
linger in talk about the theme of woman's trust and man's perfidy. For
Ruth, and for Ruth only, she had identified this theory of hers with a
living man who was known to both, but she had never intended herself to
be pitied. She had never asked for pity in insisting that a righteous
judgment should be dealt out to Ezra Gold. She had cried in Ruth's
presence after her meet