Her ways were very quiet; she never spoke much.  Any one who has been oppressed with the weight of a vital secret for years, and much more any one the character of whose life has been stamped by one event, and that producing sorrow and shame, is naturally reserved.  And yet Ruth’s silence was not like reserve; it was too gentle and tender for that.  It had more the effect of a hush of all loud or disturbing emotions, and out of the deep calm the words that came forth had a beautiful power.  She did not talk much about religion; but those who noticed her knew that it was the unseen banner which she was following.  The low-breathed sentences which she spoke into the ear of the sufferer and the dying carried them upwards to God.

She gradually became known and respected among the roughest boys of the rough populace of the town.  They would make way for her when she passed along the streets with more deference than they used to most; for all knew something of the tender care with which she had attended this or that sick person, and, besides, she was so often in connection with Death that something of the superstitious awe with which the dead were regarded by those rough boys in the midst of their strong life, surrounded her.

She herself did not feel changed.  She felt just as faulty—­as far from being what she wanted to be, as ever.  She best knew how many of her good actions were incomplete, and marred with evil.  She did not feel much changed from the earliest Ruth she could remember.  Everything seemed to change but herself.  Mr. and Miss Benson grew old, and Sally grew deaf, and Leonard was shooting up, and Jemima was a mother.  She and the distant hills that she saw from her chamber window, seemed the only things which were the same as when she first came to Eccleston.  As she sat looking out, and taking her fill of solitude, which sometimes was her most thorough rest—­as she sat at the attic window looking abroad—­she saw their next-door neighbour carried out to sun himself in his garden.  When she first came to Eccleston, this neighbour and his daughter were often seen taking long and regular walks; by-and-by his walks became shorter, and the attentive daughter would convoy him home, and set out afresh to finish her own.  Of late years he had only gone out in the garden behind his house; but at first he had walked pretty briskly there by his daughter’s help—­now he was carried, and placed in a large, cushioned easy-chair, his head remaining where it was placed against the pillow, and hardly moving when his kind daughter, who was now middle-aged, brought him the first roses of the summer.  This told Ruth of the lapse of life and time.

Mr. and Mrs. Farquhar were constant in their attentions; but there was no sign of Mr. Bradshaw ever forgiving the imposition which had been practised upon him, and Mr. Benson ceased to hope for any renewal of their intercourse.  Still, he thought that he must know of all the kind attentions which Jemima paid to them, and of the fond regard which both she and her husband bestowed on Leonard.  This latter feeling even went so far that Mr. Farquhar called one day, and with much diffidence begged Mr. Benson to urge Ruth to let him be sent to school at his (Mr. Farquhar’s) expense.