“He is very strong,” she observed pensively. She lay back in her chair for a few minutes as if dreaming. Suddenly she started up.
“What thoughtless people we are! Let us go back to the drawing-room, or they will think something dreadful has happened.”
“No, Mamma; I do not feel at all like going back. Stay here with Father while I get our wraps.”
Before Mrs. Levice could demur, Ruth had left the room. As she turned in the direction of the stairs, she was rather startled by a hand laid upon her shoulder.
“Oh, you, Louis! I am going for our wraps.”
“She is quite herself again. Thanks for the wraps. Will you call up the carriage, Louis? We shall go immediately, but do not think of coming yourself.”
“Nonsense! Tell your mother you have made your adieux to Mrs. Merrill,--she understands; the carriage is waiting.”
A few minutes later the Levices and Louis Arnold quietly stole away. Mrs. Levice has had an attack of hysteria. “Nothing at all,” the world said, and dismissed it as carelessly as most of the quiet turning-points in a life-history are dismissed.
The Levices’ house stood well back upon its grounds, almost with an air of reserve in comparison with the rows of stately, bay-windowed houses that faced it and hedged it in on both sides. But the broad, sweeping lawns, the confusion of exquisite roses and heliotropes, the open path to the veranda, whereon stood an hospitable garden settee and chair, the long French windows open this summer’s morning to sun and air, told an inviting tale.
As Dr. Kemp ascended the few steps leading to the front door, he looked around approvingly.
“Not a bad berth for the grave little bookworm,” he mused as he rang the bell.
It was immediately answered by the “grave little bookworm” in person.
“I’ve been on the lookout for you for the past hour,” he explained, leading him into the library and turning the key of the door as they entered.
It was a cosey room, not small or low, as the word would suggest, but large and airy; the cosiness was supplied by comfortable easy-chairs, a lounge or two, a woman’s low rocker, an open piano, a few soft engravings on the walls, and books in cases, books on tables, books on stands, books everywhere. Two long lace-draped windows let in a flood of searching sunlight that brought to light not an atom of dust in the remotest corner. It is the prerogative of every respectable Jewess to keep her house as clean as if at any moment a search-warrant for dirt might be served upon her.