friends.

If Ruth was ever in the city he should be happy to place his box at the

disposal of Ruth and her friends. Needless to say that she was delighted

with the offer.

When she told Philip of it, that discreet young fellow only smiled, and

said that he hoped she would be fortunate enough to be in New York some

evening when Harry had not already given the use of his private box to

some other friend.

The Squire pressed the visitors to let him send for their trunks and

urged them to stay at his house, and Alice joined in the invitation, but

Philip had reasons for declining. They staid to supper, however, and in;

the evening Philip had a long talk apart with Ruth, a delightful hour to

him, in which she spoke freely of herself as of old, of her studies at

Philadelphia and of her plans, and she entered into his adventures and

prospects in the West with a genuine and almost sisterly interest; an

interest, however, which did not exactly satisfy Philip--it was too

general and not personal enough to suit him. And with all her freedom in

speaking of her own hopes, Philip could not, detect any reference to

himself in them; whereas he never undertook anything that he did not

think of Ruth in connection with it, he never made a plan that had not

reference to her, and he never thought of anything as complete if she

could not share it. Fortune, reputation these had no value to him except

in Ruth's eyes, and there were times when it seemed to him that if Ruth

236

The Gilded Age