The young girl laughed in merry surprise.
“Why, Jennie, you forgot that Mamma has been used all her life to going out without me; it is only within the last few months that I have been her companion.”
“I know,” replied her visitor, leaning back with a grim expression of disapproval, “and I think it the queerest arrangement I ever heard of. The idea of a father having the sole care of a daughter up to her twenty-first birthday, and then delivering her, like a piece of joint property, over to her mother! Oh, I know that according to their lights it did not seem absurd, but the very idea of it is contrary to nature. Of course we all know that your father was peculiarly fitted to undertake your training, and in this way your mother could more easily indulge her love of society; but as it is, no wonder she is as jealous of your success in her realm as your father was in his; no wonder she overdoes things to make up for lost time. How do you like it, Ruth?”
“What?” softly inquired her cousin, slowly waving the dainty fan, while a smile lighted up the gravity of her face at this onslaught.
“Going out continually night after night.”
“Mamma likes it.”
“Cela va sans dire. But, Ruth,—stop fanning a minute, please,—I want to know, candidly and seriously, would you mind giving it up?”
“Candidly and seriously, I would do so to-day forever.”
“Ye-es; your father’s daughter,” said Mrs. Lewis, speaking more slowly, her bright eyes noting the perfect repose of the young girl’s person; “and yet you are having some quiet little conquests,—the golden apples of your mother’s Utopia. But to come to the point, do you realize that your mother is very ill?”
“Ill—my mother?” The sudden look of consternation that scattered the soft tranquillity of her face must have fully repaid Mrs. Lewis if she was aiming at a sensation.
“There, sit down. Don’t be alarmed; you know she is out and apparently well.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Aunt Esther is
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