“Go upstairs and take off your things.  You know papa does not like you to come into this room in the shoes in which you have been out.”

She was glad to out her sisters short in the details which they were so mercilessly inflicting—­details which she must harden herself to, before she could hear them quietly and unmoved.  She saw that she had lost her place as the first object in Mr. Farquhar’s eyes—­a position she had hardly cared for while she was secure in the enjoyment of it; but the charm of it now was redoubled, in her acute sense of how she had forfeited it by her own doing, and her own fault.  For if he were the cold, calculating man her father had believed him to be, and had represented him as being to her, would he care for a portionless widow in humble circumstances like Mrs. Denbigh—­no money, no connection, encumbered with her boy?  The very action which proved Mr. Farquhar to be lost to Jemima reinstated him on his throne in her fancy.  And she must go on in hushed quietness, quivering with every fresh token of his preference for another?  That other, too, one so infinitely more worthy of him than herself; so that she could not have even the poor comfort of thinking that he had no discrimination, and was throwing himself away on a common or worthless person.  Ruth was beautiful, gentle, good, and conscientious.  The hot colour flushed up into Jemima’s sallow face as she became aware that, even while she acknowledged these excellences on Mrs. Denbigh’s part, she hated her.  The recollection of her marble face wearied her even to sickness; the tones of her low voice were irritating from their very softness.  Her goodness, undoubted as it was, was more distasteful than many faults which had more savour of human struggle in them.

“What was this terrible demon in her heart?” asked Jemima’s better angel.  “Was she, indeed, given up to possession?  Was not this the old stinging hatred which had prompted so many crimes?  The hatred of all sweet virtues which might win the love denied to us?  The old anger that wrought in the elder brother’s heart, till it ended in the murder of the gentle Abel, while yet the world was young?”

“O God! help me!  I did not know I was so wicked,” cried Jemima aloud in her agony.  It had been a terrible glimpse into the dark, lurid gulf—­the capability for evil, in her heart.  She wrestled with the demon, but he would not depart:  it was to be a struggle whether or not she was to be given up to him, in this her time of sore temptation.

All the next day long she sat and pictured the happy strawberry-gathering going on, even then, in pleasant Scaurside Wood.  Every touch of fancy which could heighten her idea of their enjoyment, and of Mr. Farquhar’s attention to the blushing, conscious Ruth—­every such touch which would add a pang to her self-reproach and keen jealousy, was added by her imagination.  She got up and walked about, to try and stop her over-busy fancy by bodily exercise.  But she had eaten little