"Yes. But look yar, Ridgeway," said McClosky, laying one hand
imploringly on Ridgeway's sleeve, "not a word about her to Jinny. She
thinks her mother's dead--died in Missouri. Eh!"

Ridgeway nearly rolled from the veranda in an excess of rage. "Good God!
Do you mean to say that you have been concealing from her a fact that
any day, any moment, may come to her ears? That you've been letting
her grow up in ignorance of something that by this time she might have
outgrown and forgotten? That you have been, like a besotted old ass,
all these years slowly forging a thunderbolt that any one may crush her
with? That"--but here Ridgeway's cough took possession of his voice,
and even put a moisture into his dark eyes, as he looked at McClosky's
aimless hand feebly employed upon his beard.

"But," said McClosky, "look how she's done! She's held her head as high
as any of 'em. She's to be married in a month to the richest man in the
county; and," he added cunningly, "Jack Ashe ain't the kind o' man to
sit by and hear any thing said of his wife or her relations, you bet!
But hush--that's her foot on the stairs. She's cummin'."

She came. I don't think the French window ever held a finer view than
when she put aside the curtains, and stepped out. She had dressed
herself simply and hurriedly, but with a woman's knowledge of her
best points; so that you got the long curves of her shapely limbs, the
shorter curves of her round waist and shoulders, the long sweep of her
yellow braids, the light of her gray eyes, and even the delicate rose of
her complexion, without knowing how it was delivered to you.

The introduction by Mr. McClosky was brief. When Ridgeway had got over
the fact that it was two o'clock in the morning, and that the cheek of