But, perhaps, in Ruth herself there was the greatest external change; for of the change which had gone on in her heart, and mind, and soul, or if there had been any, neither she nor any one around her was conscious; but sometimes Miss Benson did say to Sally, “How very handsome Ruth is grown!” To which Sally made ungracious answer, “Yes, she’s well enough.  Beauty is deceitful, and favour a snare, and I’m thankful the Lord has spared me from such man-traps and spring-guns.”  But even Sally could not help secretly admiring Ruth.  If her early brilliancy of colouring was gone, a clear ivory skin, as smooth as satin, told of complete and perfect health, and was as lovely, if not so striking in effect, as the banished lilies and roses.  Her hair had grown darker and deeper, in the shadow that lingered in its masses; her eyes, even if you could have guessed that they had shed bitter tears in their day, had a thoughtful, spiritual look about them, that made you wonder at their depth, and look—­and look again.  The increase of dignity in her face had been imparted to her form.  I do not know if she had grown taller since the birth of her child, but she looked as if she had.  And although she had lived in a very humble home, yet there was something about either it or her, or the people amongst whom she had been thrown during the last few years, which had so changed her, that whereas, six or seven years ago, you would have perceived that she was not altogether a lady by birth and education, yet now she might have been placed among the highest in the land, and would have been taken by the most critical judge for their equal, although ignorant of their conventional etiquette—­an ignorance which she would have acknowledged in a simple, child-like way, being unconscious of any false shame.

Her whole heart was in her boy.  She often feared that she loved him too much—­more than God Himself—­yet she could not bear to pray to have her love for her child lessened.  But she would kneel down by his little bed at night—­at the deep, still midnight—­with the stars that kept watch over Rizpah shining down upon her, and tell God what I have now told you, that she feared she loved her child too much, yet could not, would not, love him less; and speak to Him of her one treasure as she could speak to no earthly friend.  And so, unconsciously, her love for her child led her up to love to God, to the All-knowing, who read her heart.

It might be superstition—­I dare say it was—­but, some-how, she never lay down to rest without saying, as she looked her last on her boy, “Thy will, not mine, be done”; and even while she trembled and shrank with infinite dread from sounding the depths of what that will might be, she felt as if her treasure were more secure to waken up rosy and bright in the morning, as one over whose slumbers God’s holy angels had watched, for the very words which she had turned away in sick terror from realising the night before.