voice and manner, her mother
questioned her, and elicited the story of her faintness and of Ruth's
having ridden on alone to Mr. Wilding's. So outraged was Lady Horton
that for once in a way this woman, usually so meek and ease-loving,
was roused to an energy and anger with her daughter and her niece that
threatened to remove Diana at once from the pernicious atmosphere of
Lupton House and carry her home to Taunton. Ruth found her still at her
remonstrances, arrived, indeed, in time for her share of them.

"I have been sore mistaken in you, Ruth!" the dame reproached her. "I
can scarce believe it of you. I have held you up as an example to Diana,
for the discretion and wisdom of your conduct, and you do this! You go
alone to Mr. Wilding's house--to Mr. Wilding's, of all men!"

"It was no time for ordinary measures," said Ruth, but she spoke without
any of the heat of one who defends her conduct. She was, the slyly
watchful Diana observed, very white and tired. "It was no time to think
of nice conduct. There was Richard to be saved."

"And was it worth ruining yourself to do that?" quoth Lady Horton, her
colour high.

"Ruining myself?" echoed Ruth, and she smiled never so weary a smile. "I
have, indeed, done that, though not in the way you mean."

Mother and daughter eyed her, mystified. "Your good name is blasted,"
said her aunt, "unless so be that Mr. Wilding is proposing to make you
his wife." It was a sneer the good woman could not, in her indignation,
repress.

"That is what Mr. Wilding has done me the honour to propose," Ruth
answered bitterly, and left them gaping. "We are to be married this day
se'night."

A dead silence followed the calm announcement. Then Diana rose. At the
misery, the anguish that could impress so strange and white a look
on Ruth's winsome face, she was smitten with remorse, her incipient
satisfaction dashed. This was her work; the fruit of her scheming. But
it had gone further than she had foreseen; and for all that no result
could better harmonize with her own ambitions and desires, for the
moment--under the first shock of that announcement--she felt guilty and
grew afraid.

"Ruth!" she cried, her voice a whisper of stupefaction. "Oh, I wish I
had come with you!"

"But you couldn't; you were faint." And then--recalling what had
passed--her mind was filled with sudden concern for Diana, even amid her
own sore troubles. "Are you quite yourself again, Diana?" she inquired.

Diana