She read on.  Before she ended Dicky had raised himself to a sitting

posture.  "The whole business was a dirty shame," he declared.
"This Ishmael was his own son, eh?  Then why should he cast out one son
more than another?"

"There's a long explanation in the New Testament," said Ruth.  "It's by
St. Paul; and I dare say that Mr. Hichens too, if he sees anything
difficult in it, will say that Ishmael stands for the bond and Isaac for
the free, and Abraham had to do it, or the teaching wouldn't come
right."

"He can't make out it was fair; nor St. Paul can't neither, not if you
read it to him like you did to me," asserted Dicky.

"But I shall not," answered Ruth after a pause, "and it was rather
clever of you to guess."

"Why not?"

"Because it would shock him.  I used to find the Bible just as dull as
he makes it out: but one day I heard Mr. Langton standing up for it.
Mr. Langton said it was the finest book in the world and the most
fascinating, if only you read it in the proper way; and the proper way,
he said, is to forget all about its being divided into verses and just
take it like any other book.  I tried that, and it makes all the
difference."

"You mean to say you like it?" asked Dicky, incredulous.

"I love it.  I can't get away from the people in it.  They are so
splendid, one moment; and, the next, they are just too mean and petty
for words; and the queer part of it is, they never see.  They tell
falsehoods, and they cheat, and the things they do to get into Palestine
are simply disgusting--even if they had the shadow of a right there,
which they haven't."

"But the land was promised to them."

She had a mind to criticise that promise, but checked her lips.
He was a child, and she would do no violence to the child's mind.

Getting no answer, he considered for a while, and harked back.
"But I don't see," he began, and halted, casting about to express
himself.  "I don't see why, if you read it like that to yourself, you
should read it differently to old Hichens.  That's a sort of pretending,
you know."

She turned her eyes on him, and they were straight and honest, as
always.  "Oh," said she, "you are a man, of course!"

Master Dicky blushed with pleasure.

"Men," she went on, "can go the straight way to get what they wish.
The way is usually hard--it ought to be hard if the man is worth
anything--but it is always quite straight and simple, else it is wrong.
Now women have to win through men; which means that they must go round
about."

"But old Hichens?"

To herself she might have answered, "He only is allowed to me here.
On whom else can I practise to please?  But, alas!  I practise for a
master who never comes!"  Aloud she said, "You are excited to-day,
Dicky.  You have something to tell me."

"I should think I had!"

"What is it?"

"It's about Uncle Harry.  Dad showed me a letter from him to-day, and
he's fought a splendid action down off Grand Bahama.  Oh, you must hear!
It seems he'd been beating about in his frigate for close on three
months--on and off the islands on the look-out for those Spanish fellows
that snap up our fruit-ships.  Well, the water on board was beginning to
smell; so he ran in through the nor'-west entrance of Providence
Channel, anchored just inside, and sent his casks ashore to be refilled.
They'd taken in the fresh stock, and the _Venus_ was weighing for sea
again almost before the last boatload came alongside.--Can't you see
her, the beauty!  One anchor lifted, t'other chain shortened in, tops'ls
and t'gallants'ls cast off, ready to cant her at the right moment--"

"Is that how they do it?"

"Of course it is.  Well just then Uncle Harry spied a boat beating in
through the entrance.  He had passed her outside two days before--one of
those small open craft that dodge about groping for sponges--splendid
naked fellows, the crews are.  She had put about and run back in search
of him, and her news was of a Spanish guarda-costa making down towards
Havana with three prizes.  Think of it!  Uncle Harry was off and after
them like a greyhound, and at sunrise next morning he sighted them in a
bunch.  He had the wind of them and the legs of them; there isn't a
speedier frigate afloat than the _Venus_--although, he says, she was
getting foul with weed: and after being chased for a couple of hours the
Spaniard and two of the prizes hauled up and showed fight.  Now for it!
. . . He ran past the guarda-costa, drawing her fire, but no great harm
done; shot up under the sterns of the two prizes, that were lying not
two hundred yards apart; and raked 'em with half-a-broadside apiece--no
time, you see, to reload between.  It pretty well cleaned every Spaniard
off their decks--Why are you putting your hands to your ears!"

"Go on," said Ruth withdrawing them.

"By this, of course, he had lost way and given the guarda-costa the wind
of him.  But she couldn't reach the _Venus_ for twenty minutes and more,
because of the prizes lying helpless right in her way, and in half that
time Uncle Harry had filled sail again and was manoeuvring out of
danger.  Bit by bit he worked around her for the wind'ard berth, got it,
bore down again and hammered her for close upon three hours.  She
fought, he says, like a rat in a sink, and when at last she pulled down
her colours the two prizes had patched up somehow and were well off for
Havana after the third, that had showed no fight from the beginning.
Quick as lightning he gets his prisoners on board, heads off on the new
chase, and by sundown has taken the prizes all three--the third one a
timber-ship, full of mahogany . . . That wasn't the end of his luck,
either; for the captain of the guarda-costa turned out to be a
blackguard that two years ago took a British captain prisoner and cut
off his ears, which accounts for his fighting so hard.  'Didn't want to
meet me if he could help it,' writes Uncle Harry, and says the man
wouldn't haul down the flag till his crew had tied him up with ropes."

"What happened to him?"

"Uncle Harry shipped him off to England.  This was from Carolina, where
he sailed in with all the four vessels in convoy.  And now, guess!
He has refitted there, and is sailing around for Boston, and papa has
promised to ask him to take me for a cruise, to see if he can make a
sailor of me!"

"But that won't be for years."

"Oh yes, it will.  You can join the Navy at any age.  They ship you on
as a cabin-boy, or sometimes as the Captain's servant; and papa says
that for the first cruise Uncle Harry's wife will look after me."

"But"--Ruth opened beautiful eyes of astonishment.  "Your Uncle Harry is
not married?  Why, more than once you have told me that you would never
take a wife when you grew up, but be like your uncle and live only for
sailing a ship and fighting."

"He is, though.  It happened at Carolina, whilst the _Venus_ was
refitting; and I believe her father is Governor there, or something of
the sort, but I didn't read that part of the letter very carefully.
There was a lot of silly talk in it, quite different from the fighting.
I remember, though, he said he was coming around here for his honeymoon;
and I'm glad, on the whole."

"On the whole?  When you've dreamed, all this while, of seeing your
uncle and growing up to be like him!"

"I mean that on the whole I'm glad he is married.  It--it shows the two
things can go together after all; and, Ruth--"

She turned in some wonderment as his voice faltered, and wondered more
at sight of his young face.  It was crimson.

"No, please! I want you not to look," he entreated.  "I want you to turn
your face away and listen . . . Ruth," he blurted, "I love you better
than anybody in the whole world!"

"Dear Dicky!"

"--and I think you're the loveliest person that ever was--besides being
the best."

"It's lovely of you, at any rate, to think so." Ruth, forgetting his
command, turned her eyes again on Dicky, and they were dewy.  For indeed
she loved him and his boyish chivalrous ways.  Had he not been her
friend from the first, taking her in perfect trust, and in the hour that
had branded her and in her dreams seared her yet?  Often, yet, in the
mid-watches of the night she started out of sleep and lay quivering
along her exquisite body from head to heel, while the awful writing
awoke and crawled and ate again, etching itself upon her flesh.

"But--but it made me miserable!" choked Dicky.

"Miserable!  Why?"

"Because I wanted to grow up and marry you," he managed to say
defiantly.  "And the two things didn't seem to fit at all.  I couldn't
make them fit.  But of course," he went on in a cheerfuller voice, the
worst of his confession over, "if Uncle Harry can be married, why
shouldn't we?"

She bent her head low over the book.  Calf-love is absurd, but so
honest, so serious; and like all other sweet natural foolishness should
be sacred to the pure of heart.

"I ought to tell you something though," he went on gravely and
hesitated.

"Yes, Dicky! What is it?"

"Well, I don't quite know what it means, and I don't like to ask any one
else.  Perhaps you can tell me. . . . I wouldn't ask it if it weren't
that I'd hate to take you in; or if I could find out any other way."

"But what is it, dear?"

"Something against me.  I can't tell what, though I've looked at myself
again and again in the glass, trying."  He met her eyes bravely, with an
effort.  "Ruth, dear--what is a bastard?"

Ruth sat still.  Her palms were folded, one upon another, over the book
on her knees.

"But what is it?" he pleaded.

"It means," she said quietly, "a child whose father and mother are not
married--not properly married."

A pause followed--a long pause--and the tumbling cascade sounded louder
and louder in Ruth's ears, while Dicky considered.

"Do you think," he asked at length "that papa was not properly married
to my mother?"

"No, dear--no.  And even if that were so, what difference could it make
to my loving you?"

"It wouldn't make any!  Sure?"

"Sure."

"But it might make a difference to papa," he persisted, "if ever papa
had another child--like Abraham, you know--"  Here he jumped to his
feet, for she had risen of a sudden.  "Why, what is the matter?"

She held out a hand.  There were many dragon-flies by the fall, and for
the moment he guessed that one of them had stung her.

"Dicky," she said.  "Whatever happens, you and I will be friends
always."

"Always," he echoed, taking her hand and ready to search for the mark of
the sting.  But her eyes were fastened on the water bubbling from the
well head.


A branch creaked aloft, and to the right of the well head the hickory
bushes rustled and parted.

"So here are the truants!" exclaimed a voice.  "Good-morning, Miss
Josselin!"



Chapter II.


MR. SILK.


The Reverend Nahum Silk, B.A., sometime of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford, had
first arrived in America as a missioner seeking a sphere of labour in
General Oglethorpe's new colony of Georgia.  He was then (1733-4) a
young man, newly admitted to priest's orders, and undergoing what he
took to be a crisis of the soul.  Sensual natures, such as his, not
uncommonly suffer in youth a combustion of religious sentiment.
The fervour is short-lived, the flame is expelled by its own blast, and
leaves a house swept and garnished, inviting devils.

For the hard fare of Georgia he soon began to seek consolations, and
early in the second year of his ministry a sufficiently gross scandal
tumbled him out of the little colony.  Lacking the grit to return to
England and face out his relatives' displeasure, he had drifted
northwards to Massachusetts, and there had picked up with a slant of
luck.  A number of godly and well-to-do citizens of Boston had recently
banded themselves into an association for supplying religious
opportunities to the seamen frequenting the port, and to the Committee
Mr. Silk commended himself by a hail-fellow manner and a shrewdness of
speech which, since it showed through a coat of unction, might be
supposed to mean shrewdness in grain.  Cunning indeed the man could be,
for his short ends; but his shrewdness began and ended in a trick of
talking, and in the conduct of life he trimmed sail to his appetites.

His business of missioner (or, as he jocosely put it, Chaplain of the
Fleet) soon brought him to the notice of Captain Vyell, Collector of
Customs, with whom by the same trick of speech (slightly adapted) he
managed to ingratiate himself, scenting the flesh-pots.  For he belonged
to the tribe to whom a patron never comes amiss.  Captain Vyell was
amused by the man; knew him for a sycophant; but tolerated him at table
and promoted him (in Batty Langton's phrase) to be his trencher
chaplain.  He and Langton took an easy malicious delight, over their
wine, in shocking Mr. Silk with their free thought and seeing how
"the dog swallowed it."

The dog swallowed his dirty puddings very cleverly, and with just so
much show of protest as he felt to be due to his Orders.  He had the
accent of an English gentleman and enough of the manner to pass muster.
But the Collector erred when he said that "Silk was only a beast in his
cups," and he erred with a carelessness well-nigh wicked when he made
the man Dicky's tutor.

This step had coincided with the relegation of Ruth and Miss Quiney to
Sabines; but whether by chance or of purpose no one but the Collector
could tell.  Of his intentions toward the girl he said nothing, even to
Batty Langton.  Very likely they were not clear to himself.  He knew
well enough how fast and far gossip travelled in New England; and
doubted not at all that his adventure at Port Nassau had within a few
days been whispered and canvassed throughout Boston.  His own grooms, no
doubt, had talked.  But he could take a scornful amusement in baffling
speculation while he made up his own mind.  In one particular only he
had been prompt--in propitiating Miss Quiney.  On reaching home, some
hours ahead of the girl, he had summoned Miss Quiney to his library and
told her the whole story.  The interview on her part had been
exclamatory and tearful; but the good lady, with all her absurdities,
was a Christian.  She was a woman too, and delighted to serve an
overmastering will.  She had left him with a promise to lay her
conscience in prayer before the Lord; and, next morning, Ruth's beauty
had done the rest.


"Good-morning, Miss Josselin!"  Ruth started and glanced up the slope
with a shiver.  The voice of Mr. Silk always curdled her flesh.

"La! la!" went on Mr. Silk, nodding down admiration.  "What a group to
startle!--Cupid extracting a thorn from the hand of Venus--or (shall we
say?) the Love god, having wounded his mother in sport, kisses the
scratch to make it well.  Ha, ha!"

"Shall I continue, sir?" said Ruth, recovering herself.  "The pair are
surprised by a satyr who crept down to the spring to bathe his aching
head--"

"Hard on me, as usual!" Mr. Silk protested, climbing down the slope.
"But 'tis the privilege of beauty to be cruel.  As it happens, I drank
moderately last night, and I come with a message from the Diana of these
groves.  Miss Quiney wishes to communicate to you some news I have had
the honour to bring in a letter from Captain Vyell--or, as we must now
call him, Sir Oliver."

"Sir Oliver?" echoed Ruth, not understanding at all.

"The _Fish-hawk_ arrived in harbour this morning with the English
mail-bags; and the Collector has letters informing him that his uncle,
Sir Thomas Vyell, is dead after a short illness--the cause, jail fever,
contracted while serving at Launceston, in Cornwall, on the Grand Jury."

"Captain Vyell succeeds?"

"To the title and, I believe, to very considerable estates.  His uncle
leaves no male child."

"Dicky had not told me of this."

"--Because," explained the boy, "I didn't know what it meant, and I
don't know now.  Papa told me this morning that his uncle was dead, home
in England; but I'd never heard of him, and it slipped out of my mind.
Can titles, as you call them, be passed on like that?  And if papa died,
should I get one?  Or would it go to Uncle Harry?"

"It would go to your uncle," said Mr. Silk.  "Now run along to the house
and tell Miss Quiney that I have found the pair of you.  She was getting
anxious."

Dicky hesitated.  He knew that Ruth had a horror of his tutor.

"Yes, run," she commanded, reading his glance.  "We follow at once."

The boy scrambled up the slope.  Mr. Silk looked after him and chuckled.

"Dicky don't know yet that there are two sides to a blanket."

Getting no answer--for she had turned and was stooping to pick up her
book--he went on, "Vyell had a letter, among others, from the widow,
Lady Caroline; and that, between ourselves, is the cause of my errand.
She writes that she is taking a trip across here, to restore her nerves,
and is bringing her daughter for company.  The daughter, so near as I
gather, is of an age near-about Vyell's.  See?"

"I am afraid I do not."  Ruth had recovered her book and her composure.
A rose-flush showed yet on either cheek, but it lay not within Mr.
Silk's competence to read so delicate a signal.  "Will you explain?"

"Well"--he leered--"it did occur to me there might be some cleverness in
the lady's search after consolation.  Her daughter and our Collector
being cousins--eh?  At any rate, that's her first thought; to bring the
girl--woman, if you prefer it--over and renew acquaintance with the
heir.  Must be excused if I misjudge her.  Set it down to zeal for you,
Miss Josselin."

"Willingly, Mr. Silk--if your zeal for me did not outrun my
understanding."

"Yet you're clever.  But you won't persuade me you don't see the
difficulty. . . . Er--how shall I put it?  The Collector--we'll have to
get used to calling him Sir Oliver--is as cool under fire as any man
this side of the Atlantic; fire of criticism, I mean.  There's a limit
though.  He despises Colonial opinion--that's his pose; takes pride in
despising it, encouraged by Langton.  But England? his family?--that's
another matter.  An aunt--and that aunt an earl's daughter--If you'll
believe me, Miss Josselin, I'm a man of family and know the sort.
They're incredible.  And the younger lady, if I may remind you, called
Diana; which--er--may warn us that she, too, is particular about these
things."  Here Mr. Silk, having at length found his retort upon her
similitude of the satyr, licked his lips.

Ruth drew up and stood tapping her foot.  "May I beg to be told exactly
what has happened, sir?"

"What has happened?  What has happened is that Vyell is placing Sabines
at the disposal of his aunt and cousin for so long as they may honour
Boston with their presence.  He sends the Quiney word to pack and hold
herself in readiness for a flitting.  Whither?  I cannot say; nor can he
yet have found the temporary nest for you.  But doubtless you will hear
in due course.  May I offer you my arm?"

"I thank you, no.  Indeed we will part here, unless you have further
business in the house--and I gather that your errand there is
discharged. . . . One question--Captain Vyell sent his message by a
letter, which Miss Quiney no doubt will show to me.  Did he further
commission you with a verbal one?  You had better," she added quietly,
"be particular about telling me the truth; for I may question him, and
for a discovered falsehood he is capable of beating you."

"What I have said," stammered the clergyman, "was--er--entirely on my
own responsibility.  I--I conceived you would find it sympathetic--
helpful perhaps.  Believe me, Miss Josselin, I have considerable
feeling for you and your--er--position."

"I thank you." She dismissed him with a gentle curtsy.  "I feel almost
sure you have been doing your best."



Chapter III.



MR. HICHENS.


She turned and walked slowly back to the house.  Once within the front
door and out of his sight, she was tempted to rush across the hall and
up the stairs to her own room.  She was indeed gathering up her skirts
for the run, when in the hall she almost collided with the Reverend
Malachi Hichens, who stood there with his nose buried in a vase of
roses, while behind his back his hands interwove themselves and pulled
each at the other's bony knuckles.

"Ah!"  He faced about with a stiff bow, and a glance up at the tall
clock.  "You are late this morning, Miss Josselin.  But I dare say my
good brother Silk has been detaining you in talk?"

"On the contrary," answered Ruth, "his talk has rather hastened me than
not."

They entered the library.  "Miss Quiney tells me," he said, "that our
studies are to suffer a brief interruption; that you are about to take a
country holiday.  You anticipate it with delight, I doubt not?"

"Have I been, then, so listless a scholar?" she asked, smiling.

"No," he answered.  "I have never looked on you as eager for praise, or
I should have told you that your progress--in Greek particularly--has
been exceptional; for a young lady, I might almost say, abnormal."

"I am grateful to you at any rate for saying it now.  It happens that
just now I wanted something to give me back a little self-respect."

"But I do not suppose you so abnormal as, at your age, to undervalue a
holiday," he continued.  "It is only we elders who live haunted by the
words 'Work while ye have the light.'  If youth extract any moral from
the brevity of life it is rather the pagan warning, _Collige rosas_."

Her eyes rested on him, still smiling, but behind her smile she was
wondering.  Did he--this dry, sallow old man, with the knock-knees and
ungainly frame, the soiled bands, the black suit, threadbare, hideous in
cut, hideous in itself (Ruth had a child's horror of black)--did he
speak thus out of knowledge, or was he but using phrases of convention?
Ruth feared and distrusted all religious folk--clergymen above all; yet
instinct had told her at the first that Mr. Hichens was honest, even
good in an unlovely fashion; and by many small daily tests she had
proved this.  Was it possible that Mr. Hichens had ever gathered roses
in his youth?  Was it possible that, expecting Heaven and professing a
spiritual joy in redemption, a man could symbolise his soul's state by
wearing these dingy weeds?  Had he no sense of congruity, or was all
religion so false in grain that it perverted not only the believer's
judgment but his very senses, turning white into black for him, and
making beauty and ugliness change places?

"For my part," said Mr. Hichens wistfully, "I regret the interruption;
for I had even played with the thought of teaching you some Hebrew."
He paused and sighed.  "But doubtless the Almighty denies us these small
pleasures for our good. . . . Shall we begin with our repetition?
I forget the number of the Psalm?"

"The forty-fifth," said Ruth, finding the place and handing him the
book.  "_My heart is inditing of a good matter: I speak of the things
which I have made unto the king_." . . . She recited the opening lines
very quietly, but her voice lifted at the third verse.  Beautiful words
always affected her poignantly, but the language of the Bible more
poignantly than any other, because her own unforgettable injury had been
derived from it and sanctioned by it, and because at the base of things
our enemies in this world are dearer to us than friends.  They cling
closer.

Yet,--and paradox though it be--the Bible was the more alive to her
because, on Mr. Langton's hint, she had taken it like any other book,
ignoring the Genevan division of verses and the sophisticated chapter
headings.  Thus studied, it had revenged itself by taking possession of
her.  It held all the fascination of the East, and little by little
unlocked it--Abraham at his tent door, Rebekah by the fountain, her own
namesake Ruth in the dim threshing-floor of Boaz, King Saul wrestling
with his dark hour, the last loathly years of David, Jezebel at the
window, Job on his dung-heap, Athaliah murdering the seed royal, and
again Athaliah dragged forth by the stable-way and calling _Treason!
Treason!_ . . . Bedouins with strings of camels, scent of camels by the
city gate, clashing of distant cymbals, hush of fear--plot and
counterplot in the apartments of the women--outcries, lusts, hates--
blood on the temple steps--blood oozing, welling across the gold--blood
caking in spots upon illimitable desert sands--watchmen by the wall--in
the dark streets a woman with bleeding back and feet seeking and
calling, "_I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my
beloved_--"

"_Hearken, O daughter, and consider, incline thine ear_"--Ruth's voice
swelled up on a full note: "_forget also thine own people and thy
father's house._"

"_So shall the King have pleasure in thy beauty: for he is thy lord, and
worship thou him_."

"Excuse me--'for he is thy Lord God,'" corrected Mr. Hichens. . . .
"We are taking the Prayer Book's version."

"I changed to the Bible version on purpose," Ruth confessed;
"and 'lord' ought to have a small 'l'.  The Prayer Book makes nonsense
of it.  They are bringing in the bride, the princess, to her lord.
_She is all glorious within, her clothing is of wrought gold.  She shall
be brought unto the King in raiment of needlework: the virgins that be
her fellows shall bear her company_--"

"The Hebrew," said Mr. Hichens, blinking over his own text which he had
hastily consulted, "would seem to bear you out, or at least to leave the
question open.  But, after all, it matters little, since, as the chapter
heading explains in the Authorized Version, the supposed bride is the
Church, and the bridegroom, therefore, necessarily Our Lord."

"Do you think that, or anything like that, was in the mind of the man
who wrote it?" asked Ruth, rebellious.  "The title says, 'To the Chief
Musician upon Shoshannim'--whatever that may mean."

"It means that it was to be sung to a tune called Shoshannim or Lilies--
doubtless a well-known one."

"It has a beautiful name, then; and he calls it too 'Maschil, A song of
Loves.'"

"Historically no doubt you are right," agreed Mr. Hichens.  "The song is
undoubtedly later than David, and was written as a Prothalamion for a
royal bride.  It is, as you say, exceedingly beautiful; but perhaps we
had best confine our attention to its allegorical side.  You probably do
not guess who the bride was?"

"No," Ruth admitted.  "Who was she?"

"It is generally admitted, I believe, to have been written as a bridal
hymn for Queen Jezebel."

"O--oh!" Ruth bit her lip, but had to laugh in spite of herself.



Chapter IV.


VASHTI.


The first bad suggestion almost certainly came from Mr. Silk.
Two or three of the company afterwards put their heads together and,
comparing recollections, agreed that either Silk or Manley had started
it.  Beyond the alternative they could not trace it.

But the whole table, they admitted, had been to blame, and pretty
damnably.  To be sure they were drunk, every man Jack of them, the
Collector included.  The Collector, indolent by nature but capable of
long stretches of work at a pinch, had been at his desk since six
o'clock in the morning.  The news brought by the _Fish-hawk_ had reached
him at five; and after bathing, dressing, and drinking his chocolate, he
had started to write, and had been writing letters all day.  The most of
these were lengthy, addressed to England, to his relatives, his London
lawyers, the steward at Carwithiel. . . . The Surveyor and
Deputy-Collector could deal--as they usually did--with the official
correspondence of the Custom House; his own Secretary had the light task
of penning a score of invitations to dinner; but these letters of
condolence and private business must be written by his own hand, as also
a note to Governor Shirley formally announcing his accession and new
title.

The Collector dined at five.  He laid down his pen at four, having
written for ten hours almost at a stretch, declining all food--for he
hated to mix up work with eating and drinking.  Before dressing for
dinner he refreshed himself with another bath; but he came to table with
a jaded brain and a stomach fasting beyond appetite for food; and the
wine was champagne.


Miss Quiney and Ruth Josselin, seated that evening in the drawing-room
at Sabines, were startled at eight o'clock or thereabouts by a
knocking on the front door.  Miss Quiney looked up from her
tambour-work, with hand and needle suspended in mid-air, and gazed
across at Ruth, who, seated at the harpsichord, had been singing
softly--murmuring rather--the notes of Ben Jonson's _Charis her
Triumph_--

"Have you seen but a bright Lillie grow
Before rude hands have touch'd it?"--

--but desisted at the noise and slewed her body half around, letting her
fingers rest on the keys.

"Who in the world--at this hour?" demanded Miss Quiney.

A serving-maid ushered in Manasseh.

The tall black halted a little within the doorway, saluted and stood
grinning respectfully, his white teeth gleaming in the candle-light.

"Yo' pardon, ladies.  His Honah sends to say he entertainin' to-night.
Plenty people drink his Honah's health an' long life to Sir Olivah
Vyell.  He wish pertick'ly Mis' Josselin drink it.  He tol' me run, get
out sedan-chair an' fetch Mis' Josselin along; fetch her back soon as
she likes.  Chairmen at de door dis moment, waitin'.  I mak' 'em run."

Ruth stood up.  Her hand went to the edge of her bodice open below the
throat.

"Must I?" she asked, turning from Manasseh to Miss Quiney.  Her voice
was tense.

"I--I think so, dear," Miss Quiney answered after a pause.  "It is a
command, almost; and to-night naturally Captain Vyell--Sir Oliver--has a
claim on our congratulations."

"You tell me to go? . . . Oh! but let me be sure you know what you are
advising."  She faced the negro again.  "What guests is Sir Oliver
entertaining?"

Manasseh enumerated a dozen.

"All gentlemen!  So, you see!"

"Captain--Sir Oliver (bless me, how I forget! ) has an aversion from
ladies' society--Boston ladies. . . . It is not for me to criticise, but
the distaste is well known."