f being true to herself as to him. It was very
simple. There were no two ways about it in her mind. The idea of
breaking off her engagement was not to be thought of. It would be
dishonorable.

We often think that if we had been placed in the same difficulties which
we see overwhelm others, we could have got out of them. Just so; we
might have squeezed, or wriggled, or crept out of a position from which
another who would not stoop could not have escaped. People are
differently constituted. Most persons with common-sense can sink their
principles temporarily at a pinch; but others there are who go through
life prisoners on parole to their sense of honor or duty. If escape
takes the form of a temptation, they do not escape. And Ruth, walking
with bent head beneath the swaying trees, dreamed of no escape.

She soon reached the little lodge, the rusty gates of which barred the
grass-grown drive to the shuttered, tenantless old house at a little
distance. It was a small gray stone house of many gables, and low lines
of windows, that if inhabited would have possessed but little charm,
but which in its deserted state had a certain pathetic interest. The
place had been to let for years, but no one had taken it; no one was
likely to take it in the disrepair which was now fast sliding into ruin.

The garden-beds were almost grown over with weeds, but blots of
nasturtium color showed here and there among the ragged green, and a
Virginia-creeper had done its gorgeous red-and-yellow best to cheer the
gray stone walls. But the place had a dreary appearance even in the
present sunshine; and after looking at it for a moment, Ruth went
in-doors to see her old nurse. After sitting with her, and reading the
usual favorite chapter in the big Bible, and answering the usual
question of "Any news of Master Raymond?" in the usual way, Ruth got up
to go, and the old woman asked her if she wanted the drawing-block which
she had left with her some time ago with an unfinished sketch on it of
the stables. She got it out, and Ruth looked at it. It was a slight
sketch of an octagonal building with wide arches all round it, roofing
in a paved path, on which, in days gone by, it had evidently been the
pernicious custom to exercise the horses, whose stalls and loose boxes
formed the centre of the building. The stable had a certain quaintness,
and the sketch was at that delightful point when no random stroke has as
yet falsified the promise that a finis