"If I had a chance, I'd sell out and move away."
"Where?" said his wife. "Where would people accept—her?"
Warham became suddenly angry again. "I don't believe it!" he cried, his look and tone contradicting his words. "You've been making a mountain out of a molehill."
And he strode from the room, flung on his hat and went for a walk. As Mrs. Warham came from the dining-room a few minutes later, Ruth appeared in the side veranda doorway. "I think I'll telephone Arthur to come tomorrow evening instead," said she. "He'd not like it, with Sam here too."
"That would be better," assented her mother. "Yes, I'd telephone him if I were you."
Thus it came about that Susan, descending the stairs to the library to get a book, heard Ruth say into the telephone in her sweetest voice, "Yes—tomorrow evening, Arthur. Some others are coming—the Wrights. You'd have to talk to Lottie . . . I don't blame you. . . . Tomorrow evening, then. So sorry. Good-by."
The girl on the stairway stopped short, shrank against the wall. A moment, and she hastily reascended, entered her room, closed the door. Love had awakened the woman; and the woman was not so unsuspecting, so easily deceived as the child had been. She understood what her cousin and her aunt were about; they were trying to take her lover from her! She understood her aunt's looks and tones, her cousin's temper and hysteria. She sat down upon the floor and cried with a breaking heart. The injustice of it! The meanness of it! The wickedness of a world where even her sweet cousin, even her loving aunt were wicked! She sat there on the floor a long time, abandoned to the misery of a first shattered illusion, a misery the more cruel because never before had either cousin or aunt said or done anything to cause her real pain. The sound of voices coming through the open window from below made her start up and go out on the balcony. She leaned over the rail. She could not see the veranda for the masses of creeper, but the voices were now quite plain in the stillness. Ruth's voice gay and incessant. Presently a man's voice his—and laughing! Then his voice speaking—then the two voices mingled—both talking at once, so eager were they! Her lover—and Ruth was stealing him from her! Oh, the baseness, the treachery! And her aunt was helping!. . . Sore of heart, utterly forlorn, she sat in the balcony hammock, aching with love and jealousy. Every now and then she ran in and looked at the clock. He was staying on and on, though he must have learned she was not coming down. She heard her uncle and aunt come up to bed. Now the piano in the parlor was going. First it was Ruth singing one of her pretty love songs in that clear small voice of hers. Then Sam played and sang—how his voice thrilled her! Again it was Ruthie singing—"Sweet Dream Faces"—Susan began to sob afresh. She could see Ruth at the piano, how beautiful she looked—and that song—it would be impossible for him not to be impressed. She felt the jealousy of despair. . . . Ten o'clock—half-past—eleven o'clock! She heard them at the edge of the veranda—so, at last he was going. She was able to hear their words now:
"You'll be up for the tennis in the morning?" he was saying.
"At ten," replied Ruth.
"Of course Susie's asked, too," he said—and his voice sounded careless, not at all earnest.