nt, I believe," said Ethel
Thompson. "I heard Miss Elgin telling Miss Lee that she thought Ruth
deserved it for 'her steady and conscientious work.'"

"Well, there is no doubt that she has worked hard," said one of her
companions.

"Come in," said Miss Elgin, in response to Ruth's tap at the library
door. "Sit down, dear; I want to ask you a question."

The governess was seated in her study chair, looking over the piles of
examination papers heaped upon the table, and entering the numbers of
marks in a small red book.

"I want to ask you a question," she repeated. "Did any one help you with
your French paper?"

Ruth was taken aback. She did not wish to tell a falsehood, and yet she
felt that she could not, _could_ not confess now. Her face grew crimson,
and a crowd of thoughts surged through her brain. The form in which the
question was put tempted her, and she argued with herself, "No one
helped me. How could Julia help me without knowing? I helped myself."
And after a moment's pause, in which she seemed to be listening for her
own reply, her lips moved and repeated the expression of her thoughts,
"No--no one helped me."

"Excuse my asking you, but your paper was so remarkably good that I
could hardly understand your having so few faults, especially in the
translation, which was really difficult. I suppose," she added with a
smile, "that you have already concluded that your steady application and
diligent work will meet with their deserved reward. That will do. You
may go now."

She returned to the schoolroom in silence, her mind full of two ideas:
the first, that she had obtained the prize; the second, that she had
deceived Miss Elgin.

"But I have not told an untruth," she argued with her conscience. "I was
asked if any one helped me. Julia did not help me. I only saw and read
her paper accidentally."

It was very trying work, arguing with conscience when a number of
chattering girls were buzzing about, laughing and asking questions, and
Ruth gave several sharp and pettish replies to their inquiries, and was
rallied upon her silence and her grave face.

How often it happens that our hardest battles have to be fought in the
midst of a crowd, that our moments of sharpest agony and keenest remorse
come at a time when we long for solitude, but cannot obtain it, but must
go on speaking and acting as if our minds were quite at ease, and full
of nothing but the trifling affairs of the moment.

Ruth's conscien