"Oh yes, indeed I believe I know it all," said Ruth, and hurried away.
In a few days school closed, and Ruth packed her trunk and went up to Merton, a little village about twenty miles distant, to visit her aunt. Almost as soon as she was gone Miss Custer was taken sick. Aunt Ruby insisted upon her occupying the spare bedroom, a cool, spacious apartment opening off the back sitting-room. The professional services of Doctor Ebling were of course engaged at once, and he proved himself very attentive at least.
To save appearances and for Ruth's sake, although she had little hope, Mrs. Tascher took up her position in the sick-room and compelled the doctor to give all his directions to her. He pronounced the malady a low fever brought on by the extreme heat of the season. Mrs. Tascher thought it was the result of exposure to night-dews, carelessness in regard to diet and lack of proper exercise.
Her presence, it must be allowed, put but little constraint upon the extraordinary intimacy of the pair. The doctor was all devotion, and Miss Custer all languor and dependence. She made a beautiful invalid, with her rare complexion and her white, lissome hands lying so restfully and helplessly on the counterpane. One day, after being freshly dressed in an embroidered gown of the finest texture, and instructing Mrs. Tascher how to wind her hair, which was long and abundant, around the top of her head in a coronet that was very becoming to her, she requested to have Mr. Bruce sent in when he came to his dinner. She had some affairs that must be looked into immediately by a legal eye.
"Had you not better just send him a message?" asked Mrs. Tascher.
"No: I prefer to attend to it myself," she returned coldly.
Bruce was therefore sent in, and Mrs. Tascher stepped out into the sitting-room. Miss Custer, who was certainly very white, raised her dusky eyelids, smiled faintly and held out her jewelled hand. Bruce, standing awkwardly enough by the bed-side, took it, but without apparent appreciation of its loveliness.
The invalid had chosen an inopportune moment: despite the subdued light of the chamber, it was high noon and the sun shone burningly outside, and Bruce, who had just eaten a hearty dinner, was utterly devoid of sentiment and indifferent to nice effects. There was a tumbler of dewy roses on a little table beside the bed, and he picked out one, and, sitting down, began eating the leaves one by one. "I hope," said he, thinking it a good plan to rally the sick a little, "you haven't got so discouraged by this indisposition—which the doctor tells me is not at all serious—that you wish to make your will?"
"No," she returned, hardly able to conceal her disgust at the unfeeling wretch: "I merely wish to send to my attorney for some money."