Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/91

Ruth's preparations were few, and rapidly made. The quickness of her movements betokened habitual activity. The elasticity of her very step was suggestive of mental energy. Her figure was petite but wonderfully supple, and under the influence of any elevating emotion, seemed to heighten suddenly. Her face, constantly glowing with animation, often warmed into beauty without possessing a single perfect feature.

In a few moments she was seated in Mr. Willington's splendid barouche, and drawn rapidly through the streets of Charleston by a pair of horses which were the envy of all connoisseurs of the noble animal.

Mr. Willington was an opulent planter of South Carolina. The aristocracy of Charleston is perhaps the most exclusive in the United States; and his birth, education, courtly manners, and remarkably fine person, rendered him one of its chief ornaments.

He was a strict observer of the laws of etiquette, and of all social conventionalities and proprieties. His high breeding was especially evinced in his deportment to the gentler sex. There was a sort of chivalric protection, a polite forbearance, a patronizing tenderness in his demeanor towards them, which distinctly proclaimed his own sense of superiority, through the very fact of his manhood, and his conviction that these "dear helpless creatures" were not designed to rise out of the sphere of pet-