"Oh, is that it?" said Bruce, laughing. "Then the doctor was right. So long as a person takes a controlling interest in his affairs he is safe."
"A person!" thought Miss Custer, and really curled her lip. She gave him her lawyer's address, stated the sum she wanted and told him he might say that she was ill.
"And unable to write," added Bruce. "All right! I shall be as prompt in the execution of your commission as the exigences of the case appear to demand."
He took up his hat and went out cheerily, and Miss Custer turned her face to the wall and cried. For a day or two she was worse: then she grew better, and was finally able to sit up. At the expiration of two weeks Ruth came back. She was very pale and her face had a rigid look. Miss Custer met her sweetly, being still under the subduing influence of invalidism, and Ruth tried to feel kindly to her; which was a great vexation to Mrs. Tascher.
"Let me alone," said Ruth passionately one day. "Don't you see how I hate her? I could almost kill her! I am trying to fight down the demon in me."
The doctor, who had himself grown thin and haggard-looking, welcomed Ruth back with an air of constraint.
One day the young folks of the village got up a picnic and invited Aunt Ruby's boarders. The doctor at first hesitated about giving his permission for Miss Custer to go, but she coaxed, and he finally consented. The evening before the picnic Ruth requested an interview with the doctor, and they walked out into the grove. She told him she wished to release him from his engagement, and it was a painful satisfaction to her to see the agony that was in his face. He accused himself bitterly—said he had broken up her happiness and ruined her life, that he could never forgive himself, and ended by refusing to accept his release, and declaring that he should never avail himself of any of the advantages it offered.
The next morning he went to Bruce with white face and strained eyes, and begged him, for the love he bore him, to take Miss Custer to the picnic and to stay by her.
"So, my boy," said Bruce, not a little affected, "you have got into the ditch and want me to help you out? Well, I will do what I can.—Thank the Lord, his eyes are opened at last!" he muttered as Ebling went away.
The picnic-ground was a wooded hillside that sloped down into a grassy meadow a mile from town. The company all got together at the appointed hour—two in the afternoon—in the street below Aunt Ruby's, and waited for her boarders to come out. Ruth had persuaded Mrs. Tascher to go, and the doctor, with a painful attempt to appear natural, kept beside her and was scrupulously attentive to her comfort. Ruth playfully claimed Hugh as her escort. Bruce, true to agreement, monopolized Miss Custer in a masterly way, much to her surprise. She tried to snub him at first, but he ignored all her efforts in that direction with consummate stupidity, and in the end she submitted with a charming grace that was torture to the doctor.