Her neck and shoulders
alone remained, as ever, dazzlingly beautiful.
They reached a quiet corner at last. Lady Ruth sank with a little
gesture of relief into an easy chair. Wingrave stood before her.
"You are tired tonight," he remarked.
"I am always tired," she answered wearily. "I begin to think that I
always shall be."
He said nothing. Lady Ruth closed her eyes for a moment as though from
sheer fatigue. Suddenly she opened them again and looked him full in
the face.
"Who was she?" she asked.
"I do not understand," he replied.
"The child you were with--the ingenue, you know--with the pink cheeks
and the wonderful eyes! Is she from one of the theaters, or a genuine
article?"
"The young lady to whom you refer," he answered, "is the daughter of
an old friend of mine. I am practically her guardian. She is in London
studying painting."
"You are her guardian?" Lady Ruth repeated. "I am sorry for her."
"You need not be," he answered. "I trust that I shall be able to
fulfill my duties in a perfectly satisfactory manner."
"Oh! I have no doubt of it," she answered. "Yet I am sorry for her."
"You are certainly," he remarked, "not in an amiable mood."
"I am in rather a desperate one if that is anything," she said,
looking at him with something of the old light in her tired eyes.
"You made a little error, perhaps, in those calculations?" he
suggested. "It can be amended.
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