As the weeks rolled by, two questions constantly rose in Ruth's mind: Why had he not wanted her to thank him ?--and what had he meant by--"And is that all ?" Her other admirers--and there had been many in her Maryland home--had never behaved like this.

Was it because they liked her better than she liked them?
The fact was--and she might as well admit it once for all--that Jack did not like her at all, he really DISliked her, and only his loyalty to her father and that inborn courtesy which made him polite to every woman he met--young or old--prevented his betraying himself.
She tried to suggest something like this to Miss Felicia, but that good woman had only said: "Men are queer, my dear, and these Southerners are the queerest of them all.

They are so chivalrous that at times they get tiresome.

Breen is no better than the rest of them." This had ended it with Miss Felicia.

Nor would she ever mention his name to her again.
Jack was not tiresome; on the contrary, he was the soul of honor and as brave as he could be--a conclusion quite as illogical as that of her would-be adviser.
If she could only have seen Peter, the poor child thought,--Peter understood--just as some women not as old as her aunt would have understood.