First, however, he went down town—going part of the way with Ruth—to make sure that no orders were awaiting him at his office, intending to come back immediately.
Miss Custer stepped across the hall from the dining-room into the sitting-room, made cool by having the blinds closed, and struck a few chords on the piano. Herbert Bruce, a young attorney of some wealth and some renown, and bosom friend of Doctor Ebling, followed her, and stood, hat in hand, with his shoulder against the door-jamb. "So you have never read The Gypsy?" he remarked.
Miss Custer turned quickly and came a step toward him. "Oh yes, I have read it," she returned. "Or, rather, a good many people have read it to me. But one can stand hearing a poem a good many times, you know."
"By Jove! that's a cooler!" thought Bruce. "No doubt she has been bored to death by that wretched Gypsy, and now Ebling is going to martyrize her again, and make a fool of himself into the bargain."
"Won't you be seated?" Miss Custer asked, "and let me play you something?"
In the shaded room, with her languid eyes intensified, she was a decided brunette, and a very brilliant and beautiful one. Mr. Bruce, pleading business, although he knew there was not a soul stirring down street, and nothing more to be done in his office than in that of Mortimer Lightwood, Esq., declined rather ungraciously and stalked off.
"A born coquette!" he muttered with his hat pulled over his eyes. "Ebling's a fool: Ruth Stanley is worth a dozen of her."
Miss Custer went up stairs and made her afternoon toilette, then got out her embroidery and came down to her accustomed rustic arm-chair, smilingly conscious of the perfection of all that pertained to herself, from the soft ringlets on her broad forehead, so different from the stiff, frowsy crimps of the country-girls, to the small Newport ties with their cardinal-red bows, the only bright color about her. She was just beginning to wonder what kept the doctor so long, when, raising her eyes from a reverie which had been almost a nap, she saw him driving by at a fast trot, with a farm-boy galloping on horseback beside him. He waved his hand to her.
Just then Hugh, son and heir of Aunt Ruby, mistress of this Westbrook boarding-establishment, who had been sent down town after dinner to do some marketing, came in at the gate with a basket on his arm, eating an apple. He paused when he came up, and rested himself by putting one foot on the lower step and settling his weight upon the other. "There's a man out east bin awfully cut up in a mowin'-machine," said he, glancing up at Miss Custer sideways from under his broad-brimmed straw hat, sure that she would appreciate the news, he being the first to tell it; for he had a boyish conceit that Miss Custer had a very high opinion of him, and even indulged the fancy that if he were a man—say twenty-one—instead of a youth of seventeen, he could cut out all them downtown fellers that hung round her.