"Well, Bailey," she said, "you look warm."

"I _am_ warm," said Bailey in an aggrieved tone. He sat down
solemnly.

"I want to speak to you, Ruth."

Ruth shut the piano and caused the music-stool to revolve till she
faced him.

"Well?" she said.

Ruth Bannister was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, "a daughter of
the gods, divinely tall, and most divinely fair." From her mother she
had inherited the dark eyes and ivory complexion which went so well
with her mass of dark hair; from her father a chin of peculiar
determination and perfect teeth. Her body was strong and supple. She
radiated health.

To her friends Ruth was a source of perplexity. It was difficult to
understand her. In the set in which she moved girls married young; yet
season followed season, and Ruth remained single, and this so obviously
of her own free will that the usual explanation of such a state of
things broke down as soon as it was tested.

In shoals during her first two seasons, and lately with less unanimity,
men of every condition, from a prince--somewhat battered, but still a
prince--to the Bannisters' English butler--a good man, but at the
moment under the influence of tawny port, had laid their hearts at her