Her jealousy was gone—­she knew not how or where.  She might shun and recoil from Ruth, but she now thought that she could never more be jealous of her.  In her pride of innocence, she felt almost ashamed that such a feeling could have had existence.  Could Mr. Farquhar hesitate between her own self and one who——­ No! she could not name what Ruth had been, even in thought.  And yet he might never know, so fair a seeming did her rival wear.  Oh! for one ray of God’s holy light to know what was seeming, and what was truth, in this traitorous hollow earth!  It might be—­she used to think such things possible, before sorrow had embittered her—­that Ruth had worked her way through the deep purgatory of repentance up to something like purity again; God only knew!  If her present goodness was real—­if, after having striven back thus far on the heights, a fellow-woman was to throw her down into some terrible depth with her unkind, incontinent tongue, that would be too cruel!  And yet, if—­there was such woeful uncertainty and deceit somewhere—­if Ruth——­No! that, Jemima with noble candour admitted, was impossible.  Whatever Ruth had been, she was good, and to be respected as such, now.  It did not follow that Jemima was to preserve the secret always; she doubted her own power to do so, if Mr. Farquhar came home again, and were still constant in his admiration of Mrs. Denbigh, and if Mrs. Denbigh gave him any—­the least encouragement.  But this last she thought, from what she knew of Ruth’s character, was impossible.  Only, what was impossible after this afternoon’s discovery?  At any rate, she would watch and wait.  Come what might, Ruth was in her power.  And, strange to say, this last certainty gave Jemima a kind of protecting, almost pitying, feeling for Ruth.  Her horror at the wrong was not diminished; but, the more she thought of the struggles that the wrong-doer must have made to extricate herself, the more she felt how cruel it would be to baffle all by revealing what had been.  But for her sisters’ sake she had a duty to perform; she must watch Ruth.  For her lover’s sake she could not have helped watching; but she was too much stunned to recognise the force of her love, while duty seemed the only stable thing to cling to.  For the present she would neither meddle nor mar in Ruth’s course of life.

CHAPTER XXVI

MR. BRADSHAW’S VIRTUOUS INDIGNATION

So it was that Jemima no longer avoided Ruth, nor manifested by word or look the dislike which for a long time she had been scarce concealing.  Ruth could not help noticing that Jemima always sought to be in her presence while she was at Mr. Bradshaw’s house; either when daily teaching Mary and Elizabeth, or when she came as an occasional visitor with Mr. and Miss Benson, or by herself.  Up to this time Jemima had used no gentle skill to conceal the abruptness with which she would leave the room rather than that