lled forth at the moment by
an instinct that he would proceed to extreme measures unless
peremptorily checked.

"I am so sorry," she said, involuntarily.

Poor Dare, who had recovered a certain amount of self-possession, now
that he was on his feet again, took up his gloves and riding-whip in
silence. All his jaunty self-assurance had left him. He seemed quite
stunned. His face under his brown skin was very pale.

"I am so sorry," said Ruth again, feeling horribly guilty.

"It is I who am sorry," he said, humbly. "I have made a great mistake,
for which I ask pardon;" and, after looking at her for a moment, in
blank incertitude as to whether she could really be the same person whom
he had come to seek in such happy confidence half an hour before, he
raised his hat, his new light gray hat, and was gone.

Ruth watched him go, and when he had disappeared, she sat down again
mechanically in the chair from which she had risen a few moments before,
and pressed her hands tightly together. She ought not to have allowed
such a thing to happen, she said to herself. Somehow it had never
presented itself to her in its serious aspect before. It is difficult to
take a vain man seriously. Poor Mr. Dare! She had not known he was
capable of caring so much about anything. He had never appeared to such
advantage in her eyes as he had done when he had left her the moment
before, grave and silent. She felt she had misjudged him. He was not so
frivolous, after all. And now that her influence was at an end, who
would keep him up to the mark about the various duties which she knew
now he had begun to fulfil only to please her? Oh, who would help and
encourage him in that most difficult of positions, a land-owner without
means sufficient for doing the best by land and tenantry? She
instinctively felt that he could not be relied upon for continuous
exertion by himself.

"I wish I could have liked him," said Ruth to herself. "I wish, I wish,
I could!"

CHAPTER XII.

During the whole of the following week Dare appeared no more at
Slumberleigh. Mrs. Alwynn, whose time was much occupied as a rule in
commenting on the smallest doings of her neighbors, and in wondering why
they left undone certain actions which she herself would have performed
in their place, Mrs. Alwynn would infallibly have remarked upon his
absence many times during every hour of the day, had not her attention
been distracted for the time being by a one-horse fly w