"Yes," said Miss Custer, getting up and taking a chair. "Doctor Ebling wished to hear the 'Last Hope.'"
"You haven't come to that in your experience yet, have you, doctor?" laughed Mrs. Tascher, though she was not in the habit of playing upon words.
"No," said the doctor. "It seems to me the 'last hope' is that we feel when we draw our last breath."
The three spent the evening together, and Mrs. Tascher brought into exercise the old charms and graces of manner and conversation that years ago had made her one of the most brilliant and fascinating women society could boast of. She was not old—not more than thirty-five—and when animated she was still beautiful: her face became illuminated and stars shone in her eyes. She so far outdid Miss Custer in the matter of pleasing and entertaining that when the doctor went away he hardly thought of the latter. He said to himself as he went down town, "What a remarkably brilliant woman Mrs. Tascher must have been in her day! And is yet, for that matter. Husband been dead six years: wonder why she never married again?"
Then he wondered with a slight feeling of uneasiness where Ruth had kept herself all the evening. "How affectionately and admiringly Mrs. Tascher always speaks of Ruth!" he said, and added, "Well, she is a noble girl."
There was an indefinable hardness in Ruth's manner the next morning. Her voice was hollow and her smile seemed ironical, though she was unusually gay. Mrs. Tascher, who observed her closely and with some uneasiness, thought her mockingly attentive to Miss Custer. Something was said at the dinner-table again about the doctor's promise to read to Miss Custer, and Ruth exclaimed, "By all means!—Miss Custer, make him stay at home and read you that poem."
The doctor of course fell readily in with the idea, and said he would not go down town this time to see if there were any orders: if anybody wanted him it was generally known that if he was not in his office he was at his boarding-place.
"Why did you do it?" said Mrs. Tascher, putting her handkerchief on her head and going down to the gate with Ruth.
"Because," said Ruth with drawn lips and heaving bosom, "I do not want to get him unfairly. If there is some one else who interests him more than I, he is still at liberty to choose."
"Ruth," said Mrs. Tascher, and her eyes flashed, "do you think she is getting him fairly? You have no conception of the scheming of that woman."