Pipkin as to Ruby's late hours, had heard also that
there was a lover, and knew very well who that lover was. He also was
quite familiar with John Crumb's state of mind. John Crumb was a
gallant, loving fellow who might be induced to forgive everything, if
Ruby would only go back to him; but would certainly persevere, after
some slow fashion of his own, and 'see the matter out,' as he would say
himself, if she did not go back. 'As you found yourself obliged to run
away,' said Roger, 'I'm glad that you should be here; but you don't
mean to stay here always?'

'I don't know,' said Ruby.

'You must think of your future life. You don't want to be always your
aunt's maid.'

'Oh dear, no.'

'It would be very odd if you did, when you may be the wife of such a
man as Mr Crumb.'

'Oh, Mr Crumb! Everybody is going on about Mr Crumb. I don't like Mr
Crumb, and I never will like him.'

'Now look here, Ruby; I have come to speak to you very seriously, and
I expect you to hear me. Nobody can make you marry Mr Crumb, unless
you please.'

'Nobody can't, of course, sir.'

'But I fear you have given him up for somebody else, who certainly
won't marry you, and who can only mean to ruin you.'

'Nobody won't ruin me,' said Ruby. 'A girl has to look to herself, and
I mean to look to myself.'

'I'm glad to hear you say so, but being out at night with such a one
as Sir Felix Carbury is not looking to yourself. That means going to
the devil head foremost.'

'I ain't a going to the devil,' said Ruby, sobbing and blushing.

'But you will, if you put yourself into the hands of that young man.
He's as bad as bad can be. He's my own cousin, and yet I'm obliged to
tell you so. He has no more idea of marrying you than I have; but were
he to marry you, he could not support you. He is ruined himself, and
would ruin any young woman who trusted him. I'm almost old enough to
be your father, and in all my experience I never came across so vile a
young man as he is. He would ruin you and cast you from him without a
pang of remorse. He has no heart in his bosom;--none.' Ruby had now
given way altogether, and was sobbing with her apron to her eyes in
one corner of the room. 'That's what Sir Felix Carbury is,' said the
Squire, standing up so that he might speak with the more energy, and
talk her down more thoroughly. 'And if I understand it rightly,' he
continued, 'it is for a vile thing such as he, that you have left a
man who is as much abov