Roscoe hesitated, but I knew it was
better for him not to walk up the hills and back again immediately after
luncheon; so I accepted for us both; and Ruth gave me a grateful look.
Roscoe seemed almost anxious not to be alone with Ruth--not from any
cowardly feeling, but because he was perplexed by the old sense of coming
catastrophe, which, indeed, poor fellow, he had some cause to feel. He
and Mr. Devlin talked of Phil's funeral and the arrangements that had
been made, and during the general conversation Ruth and I dropped behind.
Quite abruptly she said to me: "Who is Mrs. Falchion?"
"A widow--it is said--rich, unencumbered," I as abruptly answered.
"But I suppose even widows may have pedigrees, and be conjugated in the
past tense," was the cool reply. She drew herself up a little proudly.
I was greatly astonished. Here was a girl living most of her life in
these mountains, having only had a few years of social life in the East,
practising with considerable skill those arts of conversation so much
cultivated in metropolitan drawing-rooms. But I was a very dull fellow
then, and had yet to learn that women may develop in a day to wonderful
things.
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