Bellingham discovering that she had winked at the connection
between her son and Ruth. She was quite inclined to encourage
Ruth in her inclination to shrink out of Mrs. Bellingham's
observation, an inclination which arose from no definite
consciousness of having done wrong, but principally from the
representations she had always heard of the lady's awfulness.
Mrs. Bellingham swept into her son's room as if she were
unconscious what poor young creature had lately haunted it; while
Ruth hurried into some unoccupied bedroom, and, alone there, she
felt her self-restraint suddenly give way, and burst into the
saddest, most utterly wretched weeping she had ever known. She
was worn out with watching, and exhausted by passionate crying,
and she lay down on the bed and fell asleep. The day passed on;
she slumbered unnoticed and unregarded; she awoke late in the
evening with a sense of having done wrong in sleeping so long;
the strain upon her responsibility had not yet left her. Twilight
was closing fast around; she waited until it had become night,
and then she stole down to Mrs. Morgan's parlour.

"If you please, may I come in?" asked she.

Jenny Morgan was doing up the hieroglyphics which she called her
accounts; she answered sharp enough, but it was a permission to
enter, and Ruth was thankful for it.

"Will you tell me how he is? Do you think I may go back to him?"

"No, indeed, that you may not. Nest, who has made his room tidy
these many days, is not fit to go in now. Mrs. Bellingham has
brought her own maid, and the family nurse and Mr. Bellingham's