she had behaved so rudely.  She would be sixteen in another month, and she was still childish and awkward.  Thus she lectured herself, after parting with Mr. Bellingham; and the consequence was, that on the following Sunday she was ten times as blushing and conscious, and (Mr. Bellingham thought) ten times more beautiful than ever.  He suggested that, instead of going straight home through High Street, she should take the round by the Leasowes; at first she declined, but then, suddenly wondering and questioning herself why she refused a thing which was, as far as reason and knowledge (her knowledge) went, so innocent, and which was certainly so tempting and pleasant, she agreed to go the round; and, when she was once in the meadows that skirted the town, she forgot all doubt and awkwardness—­nay, almost forgot the presence of Mr. Bellingham—­in her delight at the new, tender beauty of an early spring day in February.  Among the last year’s brown ruins, heaped together by the wind in the hedgerows, she found the fresh, green, crinkled leaves and pale star-like flowers of the primroses.  Here and there a golden celandine made brilliant the sides of the little brook that (full of water in “February fill-dyke”) bubbled along by the side of the path; the sun was low in the horizon, and once, when they came to a higher part of the Leasowes, Ruth burst into an exclamation of delight at the evening glory of mellow light which was in the sky behind the purple distance, while the brown leafless woods in the foreground derived an almost metallic lustre from the golden mist and haze of sunset.  It was but three-quarters of a mile round by the meadows, but somehow it took them an hour to walk it.  Ruth turned to thank Mr. Bellingham for his kindness in taking her home by this beautiful way, but his look of admiration at her glowing, animated face, made her suddenly silent; and, hardly wishing him good-bye, she quickly entered the house with a beating, happy, agitated heart.

“How strange it is,” she thought that evening, “that I should feel as if this charming afternoon’s walk were, somehow, not exactly wrong, but yet as if it were not right.  Why can it be?  I am not defrauding Mrs. Mason of any of her time; that I know would be wrong; I am left to go where I like on Sundays.  I have been to church, so it can’t be because I have missed doing my duty.  If I had gone this walk with Jenny, I wonder whether I should have felt as I do now.  There must be something wrong in me, myself, to feel so guilty when I have done nothing which is not right; and yet I can thank God for the happiness I have had in this charming spring walk, which dear mamma used to say was a sign when pleasures were innocent and good for us.”

She was not conscious, as yet, that Mr. Bellingham’s presence had added any charm to the ramble; and when she might have become aware of this, as, week after week, Sunday after Sunday, loitering ramble after loitering ramble succeeded each other, she was too much absorbed with one set of thoughts to have much inclination for self-questioning.