"Yes! I was tired. I am tired. Those sands--oh! those sands, those
weary, dreadful sands! But that is all over now. Only my heart aches
still. Feel how it flutters and beats," said she, taking Elizabeth's
hand, and holding it to her side. "I am quite well, though," she
continued, reading pity in the child's looks, as she felt the
trembling, quivering beat. "We will go straight to the dressing-room,
and read a chapter; that will still my heart; and then I'll go to
bed, and Mr Bradshaw will excuse me, I know, this one night. I only
ask for one night. Put on your right frocks, dears, and do all you
ought to do. But I know you will," said she, bending down to kiss
Elizabeth, and then, before she had done so, raising her head
abruptly. "You are good and dear girls--God keep you so!"

By a strong effort at self-command, she went onwards at an even pace,
neither rushing nor pausing to sob and think. The very regularity of
motion calmed her. The front and back doors of the house were on two
sides, at right angles with each other. They all shrunk a little
from the idea of going in at the front door, now that the strange
gentlemen were about, and, accordingly, they went through the quiet
farm-yard right into the bright, ruddy kitchen, where the servants
were dashing about with the dinner things. It was a contrast in
more than colour to the lonely, dusky field, which even the little
girls perceived; and the noise, the warmth, the very bustle of the
servants, were a positive relief to Ruth, and for the time lifted
off the heavy press of pent-up passion. A silent house, with moonlit
rooms, or with a faint gloom brooding over the apartments, would have
been more to be dreaded. Then, she must have given way, and cried
out. As it was, she went up the old awkward back stairs, and into the
room they were to sit in. There was no candle. Mary volunteered to go
down for one; and when she returned she was full of the wonders of
preparation in the drawing-room, and ready and eager to dress, so as
to take her place there before the gentlemen had finished dinner. But
she was struck by the strange paleness of Ruth's face, now that the
light fell upon it.

"Stay up here, dear Mrs Denbigh! We'll tell papa you are tired, and
are gone to bed."

Another time Ruth would have dreaded Mr Bradshaw's displeasure; for
it was an understood thing that no one was to be ill or tired in his
household without leave asked, and cause given and assigned. But