Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/136

 The train pulled into Poitiers—Poitiers of the battle of the Black Prince in her Green's English History! It ran on to Tours! Now the names of even the little towns, as they neared Paris, were familiarly full of legend and romance.

Hubert Lennon "looked by" in the evening, as he often had during the day; and, as Milicent was visiting elsewhere just then, he sat down beside Ruth.

She observed at once that something was troubling him—not a matter which had affected him suddenly, but rather an uncertainty which seemed to have been progressing for some time. He remained beside her silent for several minutes while they looked out at the lights of the little French hamlets. Finally he asked her in quite an ordinary tone, so that the French women could not suspect any challenge:

"You remember motoring down this way to Blois and Tours, and then that run down the valley of the Loire?"

Ruth startled a little straighter and gazed out at the darkness without answering. If Gerry Hull had asked her such a question she would have bluffed the answer boldly; but Hubert had interrogated her for a purpose; and he knew something of what Cynthia Gail had done and had not done. Suddenly it dawned upon Ruth that that time, nine years earlier, when Hubert had last seen Cynthia Gail, was not in Chicago, as she had supposed, but here in France.

"Yes, I remember," she replied weakly and without looking about.

"Your father and mother were with you, and my father—he was alive then—and I; and who else was along?"