Maud Muriel followed them to the door. "I should like to do your head, Ruth."
"No; you are to do Mr. Chase's," Dolly called back from the phaeton. "She has been in love with your husband from the first," she went on to her sister, as she turned her pony's head towards the Swannanoa. And then Ruth laughed a third time.
But though Dolly thus made sport, in her heart there was a pang. She knew—no one better—that her sister's face had changed greatly during the past three months. Now that his wife was well again, Chase himself noticed nothing. And to the little circle of North Carolina friends Ruth was dear; they were very slow to observe anything that was unfavorable to those they cared for. To-day, however, Maud Muriel's unerring scent for ugliness had put her (though unconsciously) upon the track, and, for the first time in all their acquaintance, she had asked Ruth to sit to her. It was but a scent as yet; Ruth was still lovely. But the elder sister could see, as in a vision, that with several years more, under the blight of hidden suffering, her beauty might disappear entirely; her divine blue eyes alone could not save her if her color should fade, if the sweet expression of her mouth should alter to confirmed unhappiness, if her face should grow so thin that its irregular outlines would become apparent.
Two hours later there was a tap at Miss Billy Breeze's door, at the Old North Hotel.
"Come in," said Miss Billy. "Oh, is it you, Lilian? I am glad to see you. I haven't been out this afternoon, as it seemed a little coolish!"
Mrs. Kip looked excited. "Coolish, Billy?" she repeated, standing still in the centre of the room. "Ish? Ish? And I, too, have said it; I don't pretend to deny it. But it is over at last, and I am free! I have been—been different for some time. But I did not know how different until this very afternoon. I met him at Maud Muriel's barn, soon after two. And I sat there, and looked at him and looked at him. And suddenly it came across me that perhaps after all I didn't care quite so much for him. I was so nervous that I could scarcely speak, but I did manage to ask him to take a little stroll with me. For you see I wanted to be perfectly sure. And as he walked along beside me, putting down his feet in that precise sort of way he does, and every now and then saying 'ish'—like a great light in the dark, like a falling off of chains, I knew that it was at last at an end—that he had ceased to be all the world to me. And it was such an enormous relief that when I came back, if there had been a circus or a menagerie in town, I give you my word I should certainly have gone to it—as a celebration! And then, Billy, I thought of you. And I made up my mind that I would come right straight over here and ask you—Is he worth it? What has Achilles Larue ever done for either of us, Billy, but just snub, snub, snub? and crush, crush, crush? If you could only feel what a joy it is to have that tiresome old ache gone! And to just know that he is hateful!" And Lilian, much agitated, took Billy's hand in hers.
But Billy, dim and pale, drew herself away. "You do him great injustice, Lilian. But he has never expected the ordinary mind to comprehend him. Your intentions, of course, are good, and I am obliged to you for them. But I am not like you; to me it is a pleasure, and always will be, as well as a constant education, to go on admiring the greatest man I have ever known!"
"Whether he looks at you or not?" demanded Lilian.
"Whether he looks at me or not," answered Billy, firmly.
"If you had ever been married, Wilhelmina, you would know that you could not go on forever living on shadows!" declared the widow as she took leave. "Shadows may be all very well. But we are human, after all, and we need realities." Having decided upon a new reality, her step was so joyous that Horace Chase, coming home from his long ride to Crumb's, hardly recognized her, as he passed her in the twilight. At L'Hommedieu he found no one in the sitting-room but Dolly. "Ruth is resting after our drive," explained the elder sister. "I took her first to the barn to see Maud Muriel's torso, and that made her laugh tremendously. Well, is The Lodge in order?"