Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/221

 WITH every night piercing her like a new wound, and every morning stinging her like salt in that wound, Ruth Dudley's broken engagement had dragged itself out for four long, hideous months. There s so much fever in a woman s sorrow.

At first, to be sure, there had been no special outward and visible sign of heartbreak except the thunderstorm shadows under the girl s blue eyes. Then, gradually, very gradually, those same plucky eyes had dulled and sickened as though every indi- vidual thought in her brain was festering. Later, an occasional loosened finger ring had clattered off into her untouched plate or her reeking strong cup of coffee. At the end of the fourth month the family doctor was quite busy attesting that she had no tubercular trouble of any sort. There never yet was any stethoscope invented that could successfully locate consumption of the affections.

It was about this time that Ruth's Big Brother,