“They say I am like her,” she whispered to herself.

Then she turned to the other picture in her lap.  It was a cheap photograph with an ornate border.  Posed stiffly in a photographer’s chair, against a background which represented a frightful storm at sea, sat Sandy Kilday.  His feet were sadly out of focus, and his head was held at an impossible angle by the iron rest which stood like a half-concealed skeleton behind him.  He wore cheap store-clothes, and a turn-down collar which rested upon a ready-made tie of enormous proportions.  It was a picture he had had taken in his first new clothes soon after coming to Clayton.  Ruth had found it in an old book of Annette’s.

How crude and ludicrous the awkward boy looked beside the elegant figures on the walls about her!  She leaned nearer the fire to get the light on the face, then she smiled with a sudden rush of tenderness.

The photographer had done his worst for the figure, but even an unskilled hand and a poor camera had not wholly obliterated the fineness of the face.  Spirit, honor, and strength were all there.  The eyes that met hers were as fine and fearless as her own, and the honest smile that hovered on his lips seemed to be in frank amusement at his own sorry self.

Ruth turned to see that the door was closed, then she put the picture to her cheek, which was crimson in the firelight, and with hesitating shyness gradually drew it to her lips and held it there.

A noise of wheels in the avenue brought her to her feet with a little start of joy.  He had come, and she was possessed of a sudden desire to run away.  But she waited, with glad little tremors thrilling her and her heart beating high.  She was sure she heard wheels.  She went to the window, and, shading her eyes, looked out.  A buggy was standing at the gate, but no one got out.

A sudden apprehension seized her, and she hurried into the hail and opened the front door.

“Carter,” she called softly out into the night—­“Carter, is it you?”

There was no answer, and she came back into the hall and closed the door.  On each side of the door was a panel of leaded glass, and she pressed her face to one of the little square panes, and peered anxiously out.  The light from the newel-post behind her emphasized the darkness, so that she could distinguish only the dim outline of the buggy.

Twice she touched the knob before she turned it again; then she resolutely gathered her long white dress in her hand, and passed down the broad stone steps.  The wind blew sharply against her, and the pavement was cold to her slippered feet.

“Carter,” she called again and again—­“Carter, is it you?”

At the gate her scant supply of courage failed.  Some one was in the buggy, half lying, half sitting, with his face turned from her.  She looked back to the light in the cabin, where the servants would hear if she called.  Then the thought of any one else seeing Carter as she had seen him before drove the fear back, and she resolutely opened the gate and went forward.