Marmion have
been good enough to say that they will come. Of course, a dinner party as
it should be is quite impossible to us simple folk, but when a
lieutenant-governor commands, we must do the best we can--with the help
of our friends."
Mrs. Falchion was delighted, she said, and then they talked of trivial
matters, Ruth smoothing out the folds of her riding-dress with her whip
more earnestly, in preoccupation, than the act called for. At last she
said, in the course of the formal talk: "You have travelled much?"
"Yes, that has been my lot," was the reply; and she leaned back in the
gold-trimmed cane chair, her feet still in the belt of sunlight.
"I have often wished that I might travel over the ocean," said Ruth, "but
here I remain--what shall I say?--a rustic in a bandbox, seeing the world
through a pin-hole. That is the way my father puts it. Except, of course,
that I think it very inspiring to live out here among wonderful
mountains, which, as Mr. Roscoe says, are the most aristocratic of
companions."
Some one in the next room was playing the piano idly yet expressively.
The notes of Il Trovatore kept up a continuous accompaniment to their
talk, varying, as if by design, with its meaning and importance, and yet
in singular contrast at times to their thoughts and words.
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