Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise | Page 9

had been reading about the wonderful him--in Robert
Chambers' latest story--and she had spent full fifteen minutes of blissful
reverie over the accompanying Fisher illustration. Now she was issuing
hopefully forth, as hopefully as if adventure were the rule and order of
life in Sutherland, instead of a desperate monotony made the harder to
bear by the glory of its scenery.
She had got only far enough from the house to be visible to the
second-story windows when a young voice called:
"Ruthie! Aren't you going to wait for me?"
Ruth halted; an expression anything but harmonious with the pretty
blue costume stormed across her face. "I won't have her along!" she
muttered. "I simply won't!" She turned slowly and, as she turned,
effaced every trace of temper with a dexterity which might have given
an onlooker a poorer opinion of her character than perhaps the facts as
to human nature justify. The countenance she presently revealed to
those upper windows was sunny and sweet. No one was visible; but the
horizontal slats in one of the only closed pair of shutters and a vague
suggestion of movement rather than form behind them gave the
impression that a woman, not far enough dressed to risk being seen
from the street, was hidden there. Evidently Ruth knew, for it was
toward this window that she directed her gaze and the remark: "Can't
wait, dear. I'm in a great hurry. Mamma wants the silk right away and
I've got to match it."
"But I'll be only a minute," pleaded the voice--a much more interesting,
more musical voice than Ruth's rather shrill and thin high soprano.
"No--I'll meet you up at papa's store."
"All right."
Ruth resumed her journey. She smiled to herself. "That means," said
she, half aloud, "I'll steer clear of the store this morning."
But as she was leaving the gate into the wide, shady, sleepy street, who

should come driving past in a village cart but Lottie Wright! And Lottie
reined her pony in to the sidewalk and in the shade of a symmetrical
walnut tree proceeded to invite Ruth to a dance--a long story, as Lottie
had to tell all about it, the decorations, the favors, the food, who would
be there, what she was going to wear, and so on and on. Ruth was
intensely interested but kept remembering something that caused her to
glance uneasily from time to time up the tanbark walk under the
arching boughs toward the house. Even if she had not been interested,
she would hardly have ventured to break off; Lottie Wright was the
only daughter of the richest man in Sutherland and, therefore, social
arbiter to the younger set.
Lottie stopped abruptly, said: "Well, I really must get on. And there's
your cousin coming down the walk. I know you've been waiting for
her."
Ruth tried to keep in countenance, but a blush of shame and a frown of
irritation came in spite of her.
"I'm sorry I can't ask Susie, too," pursued Lottie, in a voice of
hypocritical regret. "But there are to be exactly eighteen couples--and I
couldn't."
"Of course not," said Ruth heartily. "Susan'll understand."
"I wouldn't for the world do anything to hurt her feelings," continued
Lottie with the self-complacent righteousness of a deacon telling the
congregation how good "grace" has made him. Her prominent
commonplace brown eyes were gazing up the walk, an expression
distressingly like envious anger in them. She had a thick, pudgy face,
an oily skin, an outcropping of dull red pimples on the chin. Many
women can indulge their passion for sweets at meals and sweets
between meals without serious injury--to complexion; Lottie Wright,
unluckily, couldn't.
"I feel sorry for Susie," she went on, in the ludicrous patronizing tone
that needs no describing to anyone acquainted with any fashionable set
anywhere from China to Peru. "And I think the way you all treat her is

simply beautiful. But, then, everybody feels sorry for her and tries to be
kind. She knows--about herself, I mean--doesn't she, Ruthie?"
"I guess so," replied Ruth, almost hanging her head in her mortification.
"She's very good and sweet."
"Indeed, she is," said Lottie. "And father says she's far and away the
prettiest girl in town."
With this parting shot, which struck precisely where she had aimed,
Lottie gathered up the reins and drove on, calling out a friendly "Hello,
Susie dearie," to Susan Lenox, who, on her purposely lagging way from
the house, had nearly reached the gate.
"What a nasty thing Lottie Wright is!" exclaimed Ruth to her cousin.
"She has a mean tongue," admitted Susan, tall and slim and straight,
with glorious dark hair and a skin healthily pallid and as smooth as
clear. "But she's got a good heart. She gives a lot away to