onwards to her father; so for the present, at any rate, she determined to realise her secret position alone.  Somehow, the sympathy of all others that she most longed for was Ruth’s; but the first communication of such an event was due to her parents.  She imposed very strict regulations on Mr. Farquhar’s behaviour; and quarrelled and differed from him more than ever, but with a secret joyful understanding with him in her heart, even while they disagreed with each other—­for similarity of opinion is not always—­I think not often—­needed for fulness and perfection of love.

After Ruth’s “detection,” as Mr. Bradshaw used to call it, he said he could never trust another governess again; so Mary and Elizabeth had been sent to school the following Christmas, and their place in the family was but poorly supplied by the return of Mr. Richard Bradshaw, who had left London, and been received as a partner.

CHAPTER XXIX

SALLY TAKES HER MONEY OUT OF THE BANK

The conversation narrated in the last chapter as taking place between Mr. Farquhar and Jemima, occurred about a year after Ruth’s dismissal from her situation.  That year, full of small events, and change of place to the Bradshaws, had been monotonous and long in its course to the other household.  There had been no want of peace and tranquillity; there had, perhaps, been more of them than in the preceding years, when, though unacknowledged by any, all must have occasionally felt the oppression of the falsehood—­and a slight glancing dread must have flashed across their most prosperous state, lest, somehow or another, the mystery should be disclosed.  But now, as the shepherd-boy in John Bunyan sweetly sang, “He that is low need fear no fall.”  Still, their peace was as the stillness of a grey autumnal day, when no sun is to be seen above, and when a quiet film seems drawn before both sky and earth, as if to rest the wearied eyes after the summer’s glare.  Few events broke the monotony of their lives, and those events were of a depressing kind.  They consisted in Ruth’s futile endeavours to obtain some employment, however humble; in Leonard’s fluctuations of spirits and health; in Sally’s increasing deafness; in the final and unmendable wearing-out of the parlour carpet, which there was no spare money to replace, and so they cheerfully supplied its want by a large hearth-rug that Ruth made out of ends of list; and, what was more a subject of unceasing regret to Mr. Benson than all, the defection of some of the members of his congregation, who followed Mr. Bradshaw’s lead.  Their places, to be sure, were more than filled up by the poor, who thronged to his chapel; but still it was a disappointment to find that people about whom he had been earnestly thinking—­to whom he had laboured to do good—­should dissolve the connection without a word of farewell or explanation.  Mr. Benson did not wonder that they should go; nay, he even felt it right that they