The answer is that youth, when youth craves for it, will draw knowledge even from the empty air and drink it through the very pores of the skin.  Mr. Hichens might be dry—­inhumanly dry—­and his methods repellent; but there were the books, after all, and the books held food for her hunger, wine for her thirst.  So too the harpsichord held music, though Miss Quiney’s touch upon it was formal and lifeless. . . .  In these eighteen months Ruth Josselin had been learning eagerly, teaching herself in a hundred ways and by devices of which she wist not.  Yet always she was conscious of the final purpose of this preparation; nay, it possessed her, mastered her.  For whatever fate her lord designed her, she would be worthy of it.

He never came.  For eighteen months she had not seen him.  Was it carelessly or in delicacy that he withheld his face?  Or peradventure in displeasure?  Her heart would stand still at times, and her face pale with the fear of it.  She could not bethink her of having displeased him; but it might well be that he repented of his vast condescension.  Almost without notice, and without any reason given, he had deported her to this house on the hill. . . .  Yet, if he repented, why did he continue to wrap her around with kindness?  Why had she these good clothes, and food and drink, servants to wait on her, tutors to teach her—­everything, in short, but liberty and young companions and his presence that most of all she desired and dreaded?

On the slope to the south-west of the house, in a dingle well screened with willow and hickory, a stream of water gushed from the living rock and had been channelled downhill over a stairway of flat boulders, so that it dropped in a series of miniature cascades before shooting out of sight over the top of a ferny hollow.  The spot was a favourite one with Dicky, for between the pendent willow boughs, as through a frame, it overlooked the shipping and the broad bosom of the Charles.  Ruth and he stole away to it, unperceived of Miss Quiney; to a nook close beside the spray of the fall, where on a boulder the girl could sit and read while Dick wedged his back into a cushion of moss, somewhat higher up the slope, and recumbent settled himself so as to bring (luxurious young dog!) her face in profile between him and the shining distance.

She had stipulated for silence while she read her lesson over; but he at once began to beg off.

“If you won’t let me talk,” he grumbled, “the least you can do is to read aloud.”

“But it’s the Bible,” she objected.

“Oh, well, I don’t mind.  Only choose something interesting.  David and Goliath, or that shipwreck in the Acts.”

“You don’t seem to understand that this is a lesson, and I must read what Mr. Hichens sets.  To-day it’s about Hagar and Ishmael.”

“I seem to forget about them; but fire away, and we’ll hope there’s a story in it.”

Ruth began to read:  “And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, mocking her.  Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman. . .”