Her life, as I came to know, had been one of great devotion and self-denial.

Before her father had made his fortune, she had nursed a frail-bodied, faint-hearted mother, and had cared for, and been a mother to, her younger sisters.

With wealth and ease came a brighter bloom to her cheek, but it had a touch of care which would never quite disappear, though it became in time a beautiful wistfulness rather than anxiety.

Had this responsibility come to her in a city, it might have spoiled her beauty and robbed her of her youth altogether; but in the sustaining virtue of a life in the mountains, warm hues remained on her cheek and a wonderful freshness in her nature.

Her family worshipped her--as she deserved.
That evening Roscoe confided to me that he had not asked Ruth Devlin to be his wife, nor had he, indeed, given her definite tokens of his love.
But the thing was in his mind as a happy possibility of the future.