Ruby's Reward — page 201: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

She arose, and laid her own within it, and as she did so, giving him another quick, shy elance, that apoke volumes to him and sent the blood bounding through his veins to the glad pulsations of bis heart. He hesitated a moment, then bent and touched her forehead lightly with his lips, released her hand with a lingering pressure, and then went away, knowing that he had won the heart of the beautiful girl who had been like a poem and an inspiration to him ever since he first met her on that bright summer day more than two years before; knowing, too, that when he should come to her again Ruby Gordon would tell him that some time, when he should feel it right to claim her, she would be his wife. CHAPTER XXY. THE PLIGHTED TROTH, Walter waited three days before going to Ruby again, curbing his love and impatience as beat he could, and leaving her to the rest and quiet which she so much needed. But on New Year’s Eve he presented himself again before the door of that little house in which his heart was centered, nha showed him into the parlor, a wise look on her. good-natured face, and then went to call her young mistress. Ruby soon came to him, still looking pale, and wan, and very sad in her black robes; but, as she laid her small hand in her lover’s outstretched palm, and bis fingers closed over it witha touch und air of might and ownership, the rich color swept in a crimson tide to the golden rings of hair lying lightly upon her brow. He had come determined to settle their relations at once, bo remove - aren bar soy aa still holding her hand, he bent toward her and sai was tremulous from very tenderness: Wa ABRStRAN