shaped her conviction into words and sentences, but still it was there, that all the respectable, all the family and religious circumstances of her life, would hedge her in, and guard her from ever encountering the great shock of coming face to face with Vice.  Without being pharisaical in her estimation of herself, she had all a Pharisee’s dread of publicans and sinners, and all a child’s cowardliness—­that cowardliness which prompts it to shut its eyes against the object of terror, rather than acknowledge its existence with brave faith.  Her father’s often reiterated speeches had not been without their effect.  He drew a clear line of partition, which separated mankind into two great groups, to one of which, by the grace of God, he and his belonged; while the other was composed of those whom it was his duty to try and reform, and bring the whole force of his morality to bear upon, with lectures, admonitions, and exhortations—­a duty to be performed, because it was a duty—­but with very little of that Hope and Faith which is the Spirit that maketh alive.  Jemima had rebelled against these hard doctrines of her father’s, but their frequent repetition had had its effect, and led her to look upon those who had gone astray with shrinking, shuddering recoil, instead of with a pity so Christ-like as to have both wisdom and tenderness in it.

And now she saw among her own familiar associates one, almost her house-fellow, who had been stained with that evil most repugnant to her womanly modesty, that would fain have ignored its existence altogether.  She loathed the thought of meeting Ruth again.  She wished that she could take her up, and put her down at a distance somewhere—­anywhere—­where she might never see or hear of her more; never be reminded, as she must be whenever she saw her, that such things were in this sunny, bright, lark-singing earth, over which the blue dome of heaven bent softly down as Jemima sat in the hay-field that June afternoon; her cheeks flushed and red, but her lips pale and compressed, and her eyes full of a heavy, angry sorrow.  It was Saturday, and the people in that part of the country left their work an hour earlier on that day.  By this, Jemima knew it must be growing time for her to be at home.  She had had so much of conflict in her own mind of late, that she had grown to dislike struggle, or speech, or explanation; and so strove to conform to times and hours much more than she had done in happier days.  But oh! how full of hate her heart was growing against the world!  And oh! how she sickened at the thought of seeing Ruth!  Who was to be trusted more, if Ruth—­calm, modest, delicate, dignified Ruth—­had a memory blackened by sin?  As she went heavily along, the thought of Mr. Farquhar came into her mind.  It showed how terrible had been the stun, that he had been forgotten until now.  With the thought of him came in her first merciful feeling towards Ruth.  This would never have been, had there been the least