!
With all his intellect, how could he regret that wretched little
Jessica?"

"He was a Jewish father."

"How singularly you say that! Of course he was a Jew; but Jewish hardly
describes him,--at least, according to the modern idea. Are you coming
up?"

"Yes. Go on; I will lower the gas."

"Wouldn't you like something to eat or drink? You look so worn out; let
me get you something."

"Thanks; I have dined. Good-night." The girl passed on to her pretty
white and gold room. Shylock had again fled from her memory, but there
was singing in her heart a deep, grave voice saying,--

"My brave young friend!"

Chapter X

"A humble bard presents his respects to my Lady Marechal Niel, and begs
her to step down to the gate for about two minutes."

The note was handed to Ruth early the next morning as she stood in the
kitchen beating up eggs for an omelette for her mother's breakfast. A
smile of mingled surprise and amusement overspread her face as she
read; instinctively turning the card, she saw, "Herbert Kemp, M. D.," in
simple lithograph.

"Do I look all right, Mary?" she asked hurriedly, placing the bowl on
the table and half turning to the cook as she walked to the door. Mary
deliberately placed both hands on her hips and eyed her sharply.

"And striped flannel dresses and hairs in braids," she began, as she
always did, as if continuing a thought, "being nice, pretty flannel and
nice, pretty braids, Miss Ruth do look sweet-like, which is nothing out
of the common, for she always do!"

The last was almost shouted after Ruth, who had run from the cook's
prolixity.

As she hurried down the walk, she recognized the doctor's carriage,
containing the doctor himself with Bob in state beside him. Two hands
went up to two respective hats as the gate swung behind her, and she
advanced with hand extended to Bob.

"You are looking much better," she exclaimed heartily, shaking the
rather bashfully outstretched hand; "your first outing, is it not?"

"Yes, lady." It had been impossible for her to make him call her by
name.

"He elected to pay his first devoirs to the Queen of Roses, as he
expressed it," spoke up Kemp, with his disengaged hand on the boy's
shoulder, and looking with a puzzled expression at Ruth. Last night she
had been a young woman; this morning she was a young girl; it was
only after he had driven off that he discovered the cause lay in the
arrangement of her hair.

"Thank you, Bob; presently I