aspiration, and consequently the more
thoughtful and introspective nature will sometimes fall just where a
commonplace one would have passed in safety. Ruth had acted for the
best. When for the first time in her life she had been brought into
close contact with a life spent for others, its beauty had appealed to
her with irresistible force, and she had willingly sacrificed herself to
an ideal life of devotion to others.

"But we are punished for our purest deeds,
And chasten'd for our holiest thoughts."

And she saw now that if she had obeyed that simple law of human nature
which forbids a marriage in which love is not the primary consideration,
if she had followed that simple humble path, she would never have
reached the arid wilderness towards which her own guidance had led her.

For her wilful self-sacrifice had suddenly paled and dwindled down
before her eyes into a hideous mistake--a mistake which yet had its
roots so firmly knit into the past that it was hopeless to think of
pulling it up now. To abide by a mistake is sometimes all that an
impetuous youth leaves an honorable middle age to do. Poor middle age,
with its clear vision, that might do and be so much if it were not for
the heavy burdens, grievous to be borne, which youth has bound upon its
shoulders.

And worse than the dreary weight of personal unhappiness, harder to bear
than the pang of disappointed love, was the aching sense of failure, of
having misunderstood God's intention, and broken the purpose of her
life. For some natures the cup of life holds no bitterer drop than this.

Ruth dimly saw the future, the future which she had chosen, stretching
out waste and barren before her. The dry air of the desert was on her
face. Her feet were already on its sandy verge. And the iron of a great
despair entered into her soul.

CHAPTER XXV.

Dare left Slumberleigh Hall early the following morning, and drove up to
the rectory on his way to Vandon. After being closeted with Mr. Alwynn
in the study for a short time, they both came out and drove away
together. Ruth, invisible in her own room with a headache, her only
means of defence against Mrs. Alwynn's society, heard the coming and the
going, and was not far wrong in her surmise that Dare had come to beg
Mr. Alwynn to accompany him to Vandon--being afraid to face alone the
mysterious enemy intrenched there.

No conversation was possible in the dog-cart, with the groom on the back
sea