"Oh, no, he won't. I've quarrelled with him too." Ruth smiled. "I seem to have quarrelled with everybody. But Breck threatened, and threats never have the least effect on me. He really did want to marry me, in spite of what people said about his marked attentions to this Oliphant girl. He was crazy to marry me. Things got to an awful pitch of excitement and one night three days ago, he said that if I wouldn't run off with him in the dark like some common girl in a newspaper story, and get married by a country parson along the road somewhere, he wasn't going to spend any more of his time waiting around. He said that Gale—that's Miss Oliphant—would marry him, mother or no mother; she had some heart and feeling in her. I told him that I on the other hand wouldn't lower my self-respect one iota, for love, or position, or any other reason. And so . . . well, here I am, with all my bridges burned. By the way," Ruth broke off, "please don't ask me to discuss this matter with Will. He was too intolerant last spring for me to care to talk it over with him now."
"You needn't mention it to him," I assured her.
"You can imagine," said Ruth, "that I'm not feeling very much like talking about it to any one."
"I understand, and we won't refer to it at all. I know how hard it is, Ruth,—but time—"
"Oh, time!" replied my sophisticated sister. "There's no scar on my heart for time to heal. You see now, don't you, how safe it is to keep such affairs strictly in the region of one's head."
Two or three weeks later I received a letter from Mrs. Sewall. I didn't know her writing but I saw
