me handwriting, Dare's large vague
handwriting, that ran from one end of the envelope to the other, and
partly hid itself under the stamp.

She looked at them, but did not open them. A feeling of intense
lassitude and fatigue had succeeded to the unconscious excitement of the
morning. She could not read them now. They must wait with the others.
Presently she could feel an interest in them; not now.

She leaned her head upon her hand, and a rush of pity swept away every
other feeling as she recalled that last look at Stoke Moreton, and how
Charles had turned so slowly and wearily to go in-doors. There was an
ache at her heart as she thought of him, a sense of regret and loss. And
he had loved her all the time!

"If I had only known!" she said to herself, pressing her hands against
her forehead. "But how could I tell--how could I tell?"

She raised her head with a sudden movement, and began with nervous
fingers to open Dare's letters, and read them carefully.

CHAPTER XIX.

In the long evening that followed Ruth's departure from Stoke Moreton,
Charles was alone for once in his own home. He was leaving again early
on the morrow, but for the time he was alone, and heavy at heart. He sat
for hours without stirring, looking into the fire. He had no power or
will to control his thoughts. They wandered hither and thither, and up
and down, never for a moment easing the dull miserable pain that lay
beneath them all.

Fool! fool that he had been!

To have found her after all these years, and to have lost her without a
stroke! To have let another take her, and such a man as Dare! To have
such a fool's manner that he was thought to be in earnest when he was
least so; that now, when his whole future hung in the balance,
retribution had overtaken him, and with bitter irony had mocked at his
earnestness and made it of none effect. She had thought it was his
natural manner to all! His cursed folly had lost her to him. If she had
known, surely it would have been, it must have been different. At heart
Charles was a very humble man, though it was not to be expected many
would think so; but nevertheless he had a deep, ever-deepening
consciousness (common to the experience of the humblest once in a
lifetime) that between him and Ruth that mysterious link of mutual
understanding and sympathy existed which cannot be accounted for, which
eludes analysis, which yet makes, when the sex happens to be identical,
the indissoluble f