Bannister was indifferently equipped with the paternal instinct. He was absorbed, body and soul, in the business of the firm. He lived practically a hermit life in the great house on Fifth Avenue; and, if it had not been for Bailey, so Bailey considered, Ruth would have been allowed to do just whatever she pleased. There were those who said that this was precisely what she did, despite Brother Bailey. 

 It is a hard world for a conscientious young man of twenty-seven. 

 Bailey paid the cab and went into the house. It was deliciously cool in the hall, and for a moment peace descended on him. But the distant sound of a piano in the upper regions ejected it again by reminding him of his mission. He bounded up the stairs and knocked at the door of his sister’s private den. 

 The piano stopped as he entered, and the girl on the music-stool glanced over her shoulder. 

 “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 feet. One and all, they had been compelled to pick them up and take them elsewhere. She was generally kind on these occasions, but always very firm. 

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