Ruth made no reply. She smiled to herself--the comment of the younger generation upon the older. Sin it might have been; but, worse than that, it was a stupidity--to let a man make a fool of her. Lorella must have been a poor weak-minded creature. By dinner time Ruth had completely soothed and smoothed her vanity. Sam had been caught by Susan simply because he had seen Susan before he saw her. All that would be necessary was a good chance at him, and he would never look at Susan again. He had been in the East, where the admired type was her own--refined, ladylike, the woman of the dainty appearance and manners and tastes. A brief undisturbed exposure to her charms and Susan would seem coarse and countrified to him. There was no denying that Susan had style, but it was fully effective only when applied to a sunny fairy-like beauty such as hers. But at midday, when Susan came in with Warham, Ruth's jealousy opened all her inward-bleeding wounds again. Susan's merry eyes, her laughing mouth, her funny way of saying even commonplace things--how could quiet, unobtrusive, ladylike charms such as Ruth's have a chance if Susan were about? She waited, silent and anxious, while her mother was having the talk with her father in the sitting-room. Warham, mere man, was amused by his wife's scheming. "Don't put yourself out, Fanny," said he. "If the boy wants Ruth and she wants him, why, well and good. But you'll only make a mess interfering. Let the young people alone." "I'm surprised, George Warham," cried Fanny, "that you can show so little sense and heart." "To hear you talk, I'd think marriage was a business, like groceries." Mrs. Warham thought it was, in a sense. But she would never have dared say so aloud, even to her husband--or, rather, especially to her husband. In matters of men and women he was thoroughly innocent, with the simplicity of the old-time man of the small town and the country; he fancied that, while in grocery matters and the like the world was full of guile, in matters of the heart it was idyllic, Arcadian, with never a thought of duplicity, except among a few obviously wicked and designing people. "I guess we both want to see Ruth married well," was all she could venture. "I'd rather the girls stayed with us," declared Warham. "I'd hate to give them up." "Of course," hastily agreed Fanny. "Still--it's the regular order of nature." "Oh, Ruth'll marry--only too soon," said Warham. "And marry well. I'm not so sure, though, that marrying any of old Wright's breed would be marrying what ought to be called well. Money isn't everything--not by a long sight--though, of course, it's comfortable." "I never heard anything against Sam," protested Mrs. Warham. "You've heard what I've heard--that he's wild and loose. But then you women like that in a man." "We've got to put up with it, you mean," cried Fanny, indignant.