“Oh, yes, sir,” said Ruth, glad that this commission was completely within her power to execute, and anxious to make up for her previous seeming neglect.  “I’ll look directly I get home, and ask Mrs. Mason to write and let you know.”

“Thank you,” said he, only half satisfied; “I think, perhaps, however, it might be as well not to trouble Mrs. Mason about it; you see it would compromise me, and I am not quite determined to purchase the picture; if you would ascertain whether the painting is there, and tell me, I would take a little time to reflect, and afterwards I could apply to Mrs. Mason myself.”

“Very well, sir; I will see about it.”  So they parted.

Before the next Sunday Mrs. Wood had taken her daughter to her distant home, to recruit in that quiet place.  Ruth watched her down the street from an upper window, and, sighing deep and long, returned to the workroom, whence the warning voice and gentle wisdom had departed.

CHAPTER III

SUNDAY AT MRS. MASON’S

Mr. Bellingham attended afternoon service at St. Nicholas’ church the next Sunday.  His thoughts had been far more occupied by Ruth than hers by him, although his appearance upon the scene of her life was more an event to her than it was to him.  He was puzzled by the impression she had produced on him, though he did not in general analyse the nature of his feelings, but simply enjoyed them with the delight which youth takes in experiencing new and strong emotion.  He was old compared to Ruth, but young as a man; hardly three-and-twenty.  The fact of his being an only child had given him, as it does to many, a sort of inequality in those parts of the character which are usually formed by the number of years that a person has lived.

The unevenness of discipline to which only children are subjected; the thwarting, resulting from over-anxiety; the indiscreet indulgence, arising from a love centred all in one object—­had been exaggerated in his education, probably from the circumstance that his mother (his only surviving parent) had been similarly situated to himself.

He was already in possession of the comparatively small property he inherited from his father.  The estate on which his mother lived was her own; and her income gave her the means of indulging or controlling him, after he had grown to man’s estate, as her wayward disposition and her love of power prompted her.  Had he been double-dealing in his conduct towards her, had he condescended to humour her in the least, her passionate love for him would have induced her to strip herself of all her possessions to add to his dignity or happiness.  But although he felt the warmest affection for her, the regardlessness which she had taught him (by example, perhaps, more than by precept) of the feelings of others, was continually prompting him to do things that she, for the time being, resented as mortal affronts.  He would mimic the clergyman she specially esteemed, even to his very face; he would refuse to visit her schools for months and months; and, when wearied into going at last, revenge himself by puzzling the children with the most ridiculous questions (gravely put) that he could imagine.