esterly wind that was
waving the long grass in the hay-fields into alternate light and
shade. Jemima went into one of these fields, lying by the side of
the upland road. She was stunned by the shock she had received.
The diver, leaving the green sward, smooth and known, where his
friends stand with their familiar smiling faces, admiring his glad
bravery--the diver, down in an instant in the horrid depths of the
sea, close to some strange, ghastly, lidless-eyed monster, can hardly
more feel his blood curdle at the near terror than did Jemima now.
Two hours ago--but a point of time on her mind's dial--she had never
imagined that she should ever come in contact with any one who had
committed open sin; she had never shaped her conviction into words
and sentences, but still it was _there_, that all the respectable,
all the family and religious circumstances of her life, would hedge
her in, and guard her from ever encountering the great shock of
coming face to face with vice. Without being pharisaical in her
estimation of herself, she had all a Pharisee's dread of publicans
and sinners, and all a child's cowardliness--that cowardliness which
prompts it to shut its eyes against the object of terror, rather
than acknowledge its existence with brave faith. Her father's often
reiterated speeches had not been without their effect. He drew a
clear line of partition, which separated mankind into two great
groups, to one of which, by the grace of God, he and his belonged;
while the other was composed of those whom it was his duty to try and
reform, and bring the whole force of his morality to bear upon, with
lectures, admonitions, and exhortations--a duty to be performed,
because it was a duty--but with very little of that Hope and Faith
which is the Spirit that maketh alive. Jemima had rebelled against
these hard doctrines of her father's, but their frequent repetition
had had its effect, and led her to look upon those who had gone
astray with shrinking, shuddering recoil, instead of with a pity so
Christ-like as to have both wisdom and tenderness in it.

And now she saw among her own familiar associates one, almost her
housefellow, who had been stained with that evil most repugnant to
her womanly modesty, that would fain have ignored its existence
altogether. She loathed the thought of meeting Ruth again. She
wished that she could take her up, and put her down at a distance
somewhere--anywhere--where she might never see or hear of