A gig had been slowly toiling up the sandy hill behind, unperceived by the young couple, and now it reached the tableland, and was close upon them as they separated.  Ruth turned round, when the sound of the horse’s footsteps came distinctly as he reached the level.  She faced Mrs. Mason!

They were not ten—­no, not five yards apart.  At the same moment they recognised each other, and, what was worse, Mrs. Mason had clearly seen, with her sharp, needle-like eyes, the attitude in which Ruth had stood with the young man who had just quitted her.  Ruth’s hand had been lying in his arm, and fondly held there by his other hand.

Mrs. Mason was careless about the circumstances of temptation into which the girls entrusted to her as apprentices were thrown, but severely intolerant if their conduct was in any degree influenced by the force of these temptations.  She called this intolerance “keeping up the character of her establishment.”  It would have been a better and more Christian thing if she had kept up the character of her girls by tender vigilance and maternal care.

This evening, too, she was in an irritated state of temper.  Her brother had undertaken to drive her round by Henbury, in order to give her the unpleasant information of the misbehaviour of her eldest son, who was an assistant in a draper’s shop in a neighbouring town.  She was full of indignation against want of steadiness, though not willing to direct her indignation against the right object—­her ne’er-do-well darling.  While she was thus charged with anger (for her brother justly defended her son’s master and companions from her attacks), she saw Ruth standing with a lover, far away from home, at such a time in the evening, and she boiled over with intemperate displeasure.

“Come here directly, Miss Hilton,” she exclaimed sharply.  Then, dropping her voice to low, bitter tones of concentrated wrath; she said to the trembling, guilty Ruth—­

“Don’t attempt to show your face at my house again after this conduct.  I saw you, and your spark too.  I’ll have no slurs on the character of my apprentices.  Don’t say a word.  I saw enough.  I shall write and tell your guardian to-morrow.  The horse started away, for he was impatient to be off; and Ruth was left standing there, stony, sick, and pale, as if the lightning had tom up the ground beneath her feet.  She could not go on standing, she was so sick and faint; she staggered back to the broken sand-bank, and sank down, and covered her face with her hands.

“My dearest Ruth! are you ill?  Speak, darling!  My love, my love, do speak to me!”

What tender words after such harsh ones!  They loosened the fountain of Ruth’s tears, and she cried bitterly.

“Oh! did you see her—­did you hear what she said?”

“She!  Who, my darling?  Don’t sob so, Ruth; tell me what it is.  Who has been near you?—­who has been speaking to you to make you cry so?”