estroy the innocent faith of this high-minded,
unsuspecting girl. She gave Ruth a chair, and Ruth begged her to read
something: Mrs. Tascher's reading was sweeter than music to her. She
complied readily, because it gave her pleasure to do anything Ruth
asked. "Here is a poem by Whittier, just out," she said, taking up a
magazine, the leaves of which she had cut only that afternoon. She began
it, and Ruth leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes the better to
see the images that passed in her mind. Mrs. Tascher read on until the
light grew so dim that she could not see the lines, and then she got up
and went to the window to finish. She glanced out as she did so, and
stood silent. At last she said, "Come here, Ruth."

Ruth got up and went and looked out.

Away down at the farther end of the lawn stood Miss Custer and the
doctor with their elbows resting upon the fence, evidently very deeply
absorbed in each other. The spot was very lonely and still, hemmed in by
trees, and would not have been visible from below--perhaps from hardly
any other point but this window.

"Doesn't it strike you, Ruth, that a couple of young people must be
rather sentimental to stray away like that?" asked Mrs. Tascher.

Ruth laughed, but not very joyously, and immediately turned away from
the window, as though the sight hurt her.

Mrs. Tascher did so too, and struck a match to light her lamp. "If I
were you, Ruth," she said as she settled the shade over it, "I would go
down to the croquet-ground, from where you can see those people, and
call to them."

"Oh no," said Ruth with a shiver.

"Why, you see," continued Mrs. Tascher, "it doesn't look well. Miss
Custer ought to know better, but she is so vain of her influence over
gentlemen that she exercises it upon every occasion that offers. It
doesn't appear to make any difference who the gentleman is: it would be
all the same to her now if it were Hugh instead of the doctor. I believe
she does care something for Bruce, and he is her lawful prey; but she
knows the doctor is not in the market."

Ruth threw back her head proudly. "He _can_ be in the market," she said
hoarsely.

"No, no, my dear," said Mrs. Tascher, shaking her head. "I don't want
you to get reckless: I want to see you play this game with Miss Custer
with a cool hand and come out ahead. You can do it, and you will be
stronger and safer in the end."

Ruth pretty soon went out. She entered her room with her hand upon her