Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/48

 to hear whether the man returned. But she heard only a rapping at a door farther on; the man's voice saying, "I, Adele;" then a woman's and a child's voices.

"Nerves!" Ruth reproached herself. "You have to begin better than this."

She was in a large and well-furnished bedroom; the bed and bureau and dressing table were set in a sort of alcove, half partitioned off from the end of the room where was a lounge with a lamp and a writing desk. These were hotel furniture, of course; the other articles—the pretty, dainty toilet things upon the dressing table, the dresses and the suit upon the hangers in the closet, the nightdress and kimono upon the hooks, the boots on the rack, the waists, stockings, undergarments, and all the other girl's things laid in the drawers—were now, of necessity, Ruth's. There was a new steamer trunk upon a low stand beyond the bed; the trunk had been closed after being unpacked and the key had been left in it. A small, brown traveling bag—also new—stood on the floor beside it. Upon the table, beside a couple of books and magazines, was a pile of department-store packages—evidently Cynthia Gail's purchases which she had listed in her letter to her mother. The articles, having been bought on Saturday, had been delivered on Monday and therefore had merely been placed in the room.

Ruth could give these no present concern; she could waste no time upon examination of the clothes in the closet or in the drawers. She bent at once before the mirror of the dressing table where Cynthia Gail had stuck in two kodak pictures and two cards at the edge of the glass. The pictures were both of the same young man—a tall,