"It's more important," I heard Ruth reply, "to make your mother care for me. You see, Breck, if we hope to get married in October you had better tell her your news as soon as possible. Why not to-night when you go back to the hotel? She has been here now three days with you and if she wants me to call I can go to-morrow, or the next day, before I go home. You say she came on so as to make arrangements to open Grassmere this year. Certainly the engagement must be announced immediately, so that I shall be received by your mother properly this summer."
"You seem to care more about my mother than about me," objected Ruth's lover.
Ruth laughed prettily.
"Poor abused creature!" she mocked. "Poor sulky boy! If I showed my feelings for you, Breck, all the time, you wouldn't care for me half so much. I understand men. You call me a little fish and that's what I am—always slipping out of your fingers, always evading capture, for I know that once a man gets his fish and puts it in his little basket, the cat can eat it then for all he cares."
"You're a clever little piece," said Breck admiringly. "Half the time I don't know what you're driving at."
Just here I saw Ruth walk over to the table and pick up Breck's gold cigarette box. I don't remember that I have ever been so shocked in my life as when, staring like a cat out of my dark corner, I saw my sister—my own little sister Ruth, over whose bed hung the pure, clean-cut profile of my mother, in whose heart must dwell the memory of the best, the noblest, the finest father a girl ever had—select a cigarette, light it, and actually place it between her lovely lips! I wanted to call out, "Ruth Chenery Vars, what are you doing? Have you lost your mind? Are you crazy?" I saw her sit down on the corner of the sofa that Breck had left empty and lean her head back in much the same luxurious fashion. I saw her blow a fine little ribbon of smoke up to the ceiling. I waited until I saw Breck cross the room to her side, and then, too sick to endure the awful spectacle another instant, I turned and groped my way upstairs to bed.
I couldn't sleep for hours and hours. I turned over at intervals of four to eight minutes, until it began to grow light. I may have dropped off into semi-consciousness. I don't know. Anyhow my dreams were one continuous nightmare of my waking vision. Had it been Ruth whom I had seen with my own eyes smoking a cigarette in my living-room? Had it been my own little sister? Had she done it before? Did she do it often? If I had been anxious to save Ruth from Breck before my horrible discovery, now I was determined. She shouldn't share such a life as his. She shouldn't! She shouldn't! I waited impatiently for the morning light. I was eager to be about my undertaking. I had a disagreeable task before me, and haunted by the dread of it, very much as we are visited by the fear of an operation that must be undergone, I wanted to get it over with and out of the way as soon as possible.
After Will had left for the university and I, as usual, had carried the breakfast-tray to Ruth (lying as sweet and fresh as a carnation in her white sheets—you would never have dreamed she had ever tasted a cigarette) I went upstairs to my room, put on my best eighty-five-dollar Boston tailor-made suit, and grimly set out for town.
It was ten-thirty when I sent up my name to Mrs. F. Rockridge Sewall at the Hotel St. Mary, where I knew Breck had been stopping since his arrival in town. The clerk behind the yellow onyx counter that enclosed the office of this exclusive hotel, had informed me that Mrs. Sewall had just breakfasted and therefore could assure me that she was in. He asked for my card and summoned a bell-boy. I withdrew to the rose-brocade writing-room at the left, and five minutes later into the envelope in which I placed my card I slipped a note that read something like this: