declaration now, and he felt it to be clumsy beyond expression, and
inadequate alike to his sense of Ruth's perfections and his own poor
deserts. No man can quite know, until he has tried it, how severe an
ordeal it is to sit at table with the lady of his heart, while that lady
has his declaration, as yet unread, in her pocket.

Ruth was so self-possessed and tranquil that it was evident to her
lover's masculine understanding that she was ignorant of the nature
of his missive, and probably indifferent to it. Reuben's anxiety and
preoccupation were in themselves a gladness to the girl, for they bore
out the delightful prophecy of her own heart. She had always thought
Reuben, even when she was a school-girl, the handsomest and manliest and
cleverest of men. If it were unmaidenly to have thought so, and to allow
her heart to be captured by a man who had never spoken a word of open
love to her, she must be called unmaidenly. But there was never a purer
heart in the world, and the sophistications of experience, vicarious
or otherwise, had not touched her. It came natural to love Reuben, and
perhaps the young man's eyes had made more of an excuse for her than
would readily be fancied by those who have never experimented.

It may be, if the truth were known, that the maiden found the situation
almost as trying as her lover, for there was a most tantalizing element
of uncertainty in it, and uncertainty is especially grievous to the
feminine heart. But at last her duty as hostess no longer severely
holding her, she left the room, ostensibly to assist in clearing away
the tea-things, and was no sooner out of sight than she skimmed like a
swallow to her own chamber and there read Reuben's letter. When she came
back again Reuben knew that she had read it, and knew, too, that she
had read it with favor and acceptance. There was a subtle, shy, inward
happiness in Ruth's heart which diffused itself for her lover's delight
as if it had been a perfume. Not another creature but himself and her
knew of it, and yet to him it was real, and as evident as anything he
saw or touched.

Once or twice she looked at him so sweetly, so shyly, so tenderly, and
yet withal so frankly, that his heart ached with the desire he felt to
rise and clasp her in his arms and claim her for his own before them
all. Aunt Rachel looked at him once or twice also, as if she stabbed him
with an icicle, but he glanced back with a smile sunny enough to have
thawed th