“There, Ruth! now you’ll do.  Come and look at yourself in the pond.  Here, where there are no weeds.  Come.”

She obeyed, and could not help seeing her own loveliness; it gave her a sense of satisfaction for an instant, as the sight of any other beautiful object would have done, but she never thought of associating it with herself.  She knew that she was beautiful; but that seemed abstract, and removed from herself.  Her existence was in feeling and thinking, and loving.

Down in that green hollow they were quite in harmony.  Her beauty was all that Mr. Bellingham cared for, and it was supreme.  It was all he recognised of her, and he was proud of it.  She stood in her white dress against the trees which grew around; her face was flushed into a brilliancy of colour which resembled that of a rose in June; the great, heavy, white flowers drooped on either side of her beautiful head, and if her brown hair was a little disordered, the very disorder only seemed to add a grace.  She pleased him more by looking so lovely than by all her tender endeavours to fall in with his varying humour.

But when they left the wood, and Ruth had taken out her flowers, and resumed her bonnet, as they came near the inn, the simple thought of giving him pleasure was not enough to secure Ruth’s peace.  She became pensive and sad, and could not rally into gaiety.

“Really, Ruth,” said he, that evening, “you must not encourage yourself in this habit of falling into melancholy reveries without any cause.  You have been sighing twenty times during the last half-hour.  Do be a little cheerful.  Remember, I have no companion but you in this out-of-the-way place.”

“I am very sorry,” said Ruth, her eyes filling with tears; and then she remembered that it was very dull for him to be alone with her, heavy-hearted as she had been all day.  She said in a sweet, penitent tone—­

“Would you be so kind as to teach me one of those games at cards you were speaking about yesterday?  I would do my best to learn.”

Her soft, murmuring voice won its way.  They rang for the cards, and he soon forgot that there was such a thing as depression or gloom in the world, in the pleasure of teaching such a beautiful ignoramus the mysteries of card-playing.

“There!” said he, at last, “that’s enough for one lesson.  Do you know, little goose, your blunders have made me laugh myself into one of the worst headaches I have had for years.”

He threw himself on the sofa, and in an instant she was by his side.

“Let me put my cool hands on your forehead,” she begged; “that used to do mamma good.”