for his kindness in taking her home by this beautiful way, but
his look of admiration at her glowing, animated face, made her
suddenly silent; and, hardly wishing him good-bye, she quickly
entered the house with a beating, happy, agitated heart.

"How strange it is," she thought that evening, "that I should
feel as if this charming afternoon's walk were, somehow, not
exactly wrong, but yet as if it were not right. Why can it be? I
am not defrauding Mrs. Mason of any of her time; that I know
would be wrong; I am left to go where I like on Sundays. I have
been to church, so it can't be because I have missed doing my
duty. If I had gone this walk with Jenny, I wonder whether I
should have felt as I do now. There must be something wrong in
me, myself, to feel so guilty when I have done nothing which is
not right; and yet I can thank God for the happiness I have had
in this charming spring walk, which dear mamma used to say was a
sign when pleasures were innocent and good for us."

She was not conscious, as yet, that Mr. Bellingham's presence had
added any charm to the ramble; and when she might have become
aware of this, as, week after week, Sunday after Sunday,
loitering ramble after loitering ramble succeeded each other, she
was too much absorbed with one set of thoughts to have much
inclination for self-questioning.

"Tell me everything, Ruth, as you would to a brother; let me help
you, if I can, in your difficulties," he said to her one
afternoon. And he really did try to understand, and to realise,
how an insignificant and paltry person like Mason the dressmaker
could be an object of dread, and regarded as a person having