And so Ruth played the Valse Lente from the Fifth Tschaikowsky Symphony and the famous Rachmaninoff which, I believe, everybody plays, and finished at last with the Fourth Fugue of the immortal Bach.
“There!” she exclaimed, “I'm tired.”
“And so am I,” said the transcriber, laying down the pen.
IX
Young Rutherford bounded from his chair. The tall clock in the hall, as though loth to mark the passage of Time,—Time,—who had been its friend for something more than a hundred and fifty years,—the steadfast old clock began to mark three very slow, slow notes.
“Miss Adgate, forgive me! I suppose I ought to go, you should be left to rest!” he held out his hand. “I've never known any pleasure comparable to this afternoon's. May I come again? The whole of Oldbridge shall envy me to-day,—I'm too vain not to tell them where I've lunched. Good-bye, goodbye,” he repeated. He gave Ruth a furtive glance and flushed, very red.
“Good-bye, Rutherford,” said General Adgate. He smiled indulgence to the young man who still malingered. “We'll see you to-night,” he reassured him, with a nod. “Ruth, you're to make yourself splendid tonight. I'm to take you to dine at the Wetherbys. They are giving a dinner party in your honour, for knowing you were not ridden yet with engagements I accepted for you. There will be some sort of a reception afterwards—you'd call it At Home wouldn't you? Everyone's coming. Everybody wants to meet Miss Adgate.” He laughed, as though well pleased.
“I believe he's proud of me,” thought Miss Adgate, gratefully.
The door at last closed on Rutherford. Niece and uncle stood together in the hall, where the voice of the family time-piece, its brass face marking the phases of the sun and moon, underlined the pervading stillness of the house with an austere, admonitative, solemn “tick-tack!”
“Ruth,” said her uncle abruptly, “why did you come to America?”