CHAPTER X.

THE MEETING ON THE FOOT-BRIDGE.

Taking a short cut round by the moat, and crossing the stile above the King's Arms, Ruth soon gained the river towing-path.

As the sights and sounds of the new day greeted her, she felt a little cheered. One must have been wretched indeed not to have found an agreeable distraction in the blithe bird chorus overhead, and the buzzing of the insects in the young grass studded with the early summer flowers, whose brilliant hues mirrored themselves in the clear water rippling up into tiny bays to her very feet.

What a bright merry world it was! How hard to think that it had in it any such thing as sorrow, or sin, or cruelty, or--and ere the shadow of the sad word could flit across her thoughts, a butterfly fell at her feet, and fluttering its poor bruised wings for a moment, lay motionless on the flinty path.

It was quite dead; and Ruth bent down, and gently placing it on a fresh young dock-leaf, laid it beneath a whitethorn bush, well hidden from all tread of hob-nailed shoes and ruthless plough-boy fingers; and leaving the soft west wind sweeping low through the sedge, to sigh it a dirge, she pursued her way, till a turn of the path brought her within sound of rushing water, and in a few minutes she reached a rough foot-bridge composed of one plank with a hand-rail of hazel-bough, which was thrown across a little rivulet, thickly screened at its furthermost end by a copse of elder and hazel bushes. Into this cool retreat a posse of old mother sheep had penetrated with their lambs, and lay in soft white heaps down to the water's very brink, not in the least put about at the apparition of Ruth, as she came to a standstill in the middle of the bridge to watch the pranks of the lambs with a half amused, half absent smile.

So absorbed was she, that the touch of a hand laid ever so gently on her shoulder caused her to start with surprise.

"Lawrence!" she exclaimed, for he it was.

"Ay, Lawrence!" he answered; "and good-morrow to you, Ruth! Were you coming to the Hall?"

She nodded.

[Sidenote: Lawrence Lee prevaricates.]

"To be sure then," he went on, "some good angel brought me by the copse, instead of going round by the weir, for in that case I should have missed you."

"And where were you going?" asked she.

"Waltham," he replied, after a momentary hesitation.

"But this is not the way to Waltham."

"Nay, is it not?" he said, with well-assumed carelessness; "all the same, I am right glad I came it, since I have met you upon it, Ruth dear."

"That is fine talking," pouted Ruth; "but you're not telling me the truth, Lawrence. You weren't going to Waltham."

[Sidenote: Sharp words.]

"Wasn't I?" returned the young man, flushing a little. "Well, look here, my dear, people who ask no questions, hear no lies. I doubt I may go where I list, without Mistress Ruth Rumbold's leave," and then he made a pretence of being about to stalk on; but the attempt was a sorry failure, breaking down instantly as he saw the tears brimming up into the eyes so persistently fixed on the silly lambs. "Ruth," he whispered, as in a moment he was beside her again; and taking her chin in his hands, he turned her face up to his, "come, let's kiss and be friends. Eh, shall we? You know I'd not vex you for--for--a king's ransom. Indeed I did not mean to vex you, only--there, it was so plaguy inquisitive of you, don't you know, to--there, never mind; what have you got in this basket?" concluded he, turning the conversation, like the wise diplomatist he thought himself.

"Now who's inquisitive, I wonder?" cried Ruth, folding her arms tight down upon the lid of the basket, and breaking into a saucy smile, which, however, faded in an instant. "Lawrence, where were you going? Tell me, dear."

"If you'll tell me what you've got in that basket, perhaps I may," laughed he. "Come, is it a bargain, Mistress Pry?"

"Yes, Mr. Pry."

"To Hoddesdon, then. There, I hope you're happier for the information."

"Not happier; no, Lawrence," she answered very slowly. "Wait a bit now," she went on, as he laid aggressive hands on the basket. "To Hoddesdon! What for?"

"Oh, come now, that's not in the bond. Why, nothing; nothing, little woman, that you know anything about."

"But I want to know," insisted she, still valiantly protecting the basket's most vulnerable points; "that's just it, I want to know."

"Then want must be your master," he said angrily. "Little girls must not know everything," he added, mending his rude speech, and seizing basket, and Ruth, and all in his arms.

"I'm not a little girl any longer," she cried, struggling to free herself, and digging her pink nails ever so hard into his bronzed wrists, till he decided to loosen his hold.

"No, you're a little wild kitten, with the sharpest claws in the world; that's what you are," he said; "but it won't do, I'm master."

[Sidenote: A bitter secret.]

"'Tis no good you're going to Hoddesdon for," she said bluntly, looking up into his laughing eyes, "or you'd tell me when I ask you, without all this silly nonsense. You never kept a secret from me before, Lawrence."

"Perhaps I never had one to keep."

"But now?"

"Hang it! you'd try a saint's temper," growled he, wrinkling his brows into a most unsanctified frown, and letting her go with such a sudden abruptness that she stumbled a little, and in the effort to maintain her footing on the narrow plank the basket slipped from her arm, and would have fallen into the water had not Lee caught it, with a dexterous turn of his wrist.

"See now, Ruth," he said, as he restored it to her, his eye grown radiant again in his pride at his clever legerdemain, "if you're not at my mercy after all. Might I not have been revenged for your refusal, and helped myself to a peep into this mighty particular basket, if I wasn't honour bright from top to toe?"

[Sidenote: The mysterious basket.]

"But you are, Lawrence, aren't you?" challenged she, with a strange earnestness, that sent his eyes, which were gazing into hers, back to the basket; "and evil be to him who evil thinks," she went on. "And--"

"Oh, plague take it!" he interrupted impatiently; "what are you driving at? Now for the basket. Come."

"You really care to see inside it?"

"Not a straw, my dear child," he said loftily. "'Tis full of emptiness, I daresay. That's just what delights you girls more than anything; teasing and tantalizing a fellow all about nothing."

"Ay, but there is something in it. Something I was bringing to the Hall on purpose to show you, and--and to ask your opinion about. And yet--and yet--" she went on wistfully, "I hope you won't be able to--to give me one."

"Why, my dear girl," rejoined he with a superior smile, "how mighty mysterious we are, to be sure!"

"'Tis a fearful-looking thing, let me tell you," she said, gingerly raising one corner of her basket lid.

"Some queer fish, is it?--out of the river?" he asked eagerly, for he was a mighty fisherman.

"Out of the river," nodded she.

"A pike of some sort perhaps."

"Yes, I should say, of some sort."

"You dear, splendid, diamond of a girl," ecstatically cried Lawrence, "as I live 'tis a pike! can't I see it gleaming?" and he clutched at the concealing hay--"a big silver pike!"

"No, a steel one," she said, as the weapon lay exposed in all its nakedness, and steadily she lifted her eyes to his face.

[Sidenote: Found out.]

It had grown ashen white, and he staggered back for support against the bridge rail. "Ruth!" he gasped, as the handful of hay dropped from his powerless fingers and floated away on the swirl of the stream, "what is the meaning of this?"

"That you must tell me, Lawrence."

"Where did you find it?" he went on.

"In the river. The river Lea. Close by the water steps in Mistress Sheppard's garden. And when? Last night, while you were in the King's Arms, talking to those men. The men," she went on in steady tones, though he was biting his lip, and his pale face flushed painfully, "who were there; instead of going straight home, as you ought to have done--"

"Ought!" angrily interrupted he; "and who made you spy over me?"

"I wasn't spying. I was only--taking a peep, just a little peep at--at the boat."

"Boat?"

"The _Queen Ruth_," Lawrence dear.

"And since you set such store by honour bright and 'oughts,' and all that sort of thing all at once, what business had you to be abroad all in the dark when your father had bidden you go indoors?"

She coloured a little. "I did go in," she answered after a moment's silence. "Only--only--"

"Only you came out again, that's all," he said with a low mocking laugh. "Ruth, Ruth! what possessed you to do such a thing?"

[Sidenote: Changed indeed.]

"I was ill at ease, Lawrence," she said, colouring deeper still. "I feared--nay, I do not know what I feared. But I could not stay in the house. Its air stifled me. I could not breathe. I thought--I fancied--nay, something has seemed so amiss with everything--with father and you, Lawrence, with you for these long, long weeks past. I have fancied--"

"Psha! Fancies indeed!" he cried with an impatient twitch of his lips, and turning from her, he stood and gazed with lack-lustre eyes into the water.

"And you're not a bit like the old Lawrence. And all day yesterday you--never mind. Lawrence, what do those dreadful men want here?"

[Sidenote: The bayonet.]

He turned his face and gazed broodingly into hers, following the direction of her eyes as they fell again on the contents of the basket. "Bringing their horrid--what is the thing called?"

"A bayonet," he answered curtly.

"Their horrid bayonets here; and dropping them all over the place?"

"Well," he said with a faint smile, "they didn't do that purposely, be sure. 'Twas an accident. A stupid, infernal--"

"Oh, Lawrence! Fie, now! For shame, sir!" and Ruth's little hand shut up his lips.

"An awkward little mistake, then," he went on, "of that clod-hopping--never mind names, Ruth."

"Rumsey," said Ruth; "I heard father call him so--Colonel Rumsey."