“I esteem him,” said Paolina, “I think he is a good man. He has saved up two thousand dollars. He has a nice house across the river which he lets out, and of which he reserves for himself one room. I think my own mother would be pleased with the match, if you approve, Signorina.”
“But do you realise,” said Ruth, “that if you marry Jobias you cannot see your mother again? It costs a deal of money to cross the ocean. Jobias could not take you—he would have his work to do.”
“Oh, Signorina, but you would take us! I would not leave you, Jobias said I need not. But when you marry (Jobias says you will surely marry, before long)”—Paolina nodded her head several times sagaciously—“then your husband will want a valet, and Jobias says he will be glad to put himself at your excellencies' services. And then, you will go abroad for the wedding tour, and you will want to take us. I can then go to my mother and receive her blessing.”
Ruth caught her breath. “Thus are our lives arranged for us,” she thought, smiling, “and by whom?” For half an instant she was silent. Somewhere, among the recesses of memory, Ruth tried to recall such a conversation. She remembered—she had read it,—why,—it was in one of Corvo's witty tales.... So does history repeat itself. What the romancer invents women and men enact.
But just then, crisis of Paolina's life, the knocker at the front door went rat-tat.
“Good gracious, and I'm not dressed yet. Put my dress on quickly, Paolina,—we'll finish our talk at some other time,” Ruth exclaimed.
Paolina ran to the bed, lifted the pale blue chiffon gown inlaid with yellow lace—passed it dexterously, delicately, over Ruth's head, and began with her adroit, rapid fingers to lace the bodice. Martha knocked at the door: “Master Jack Enderfield is in the drawing-room, Miss,” she said in her precise voice. Ruth glanced at the clock—the hands pointed to ten.
“Tell Master Jack Enderfield I'll be down directly,” she said. Ruth, standing before the cheval glass, gave a light pat here to her gown, a touch there to her coiffure—Martha lingered a minute to take the vision in.
“Yes, Miss,” she said, closed the door, and was gone.
Then Ruth descended the stairs in a froufrou of skirts, wafting an odour of violets as she went along; and she greeted Master Jack Enderfield at the drawing-room door with that radiant grace the young man seemed so well able to appreciate.