ike to return this money."

"Why, my dear?"

"I have a strong feeling against taking it. While he," said she,
deeply blushing, and letting her large white lids drop down and veil
her eyes, "loved me, he gave me many things--my watch--oh, many
things; and I took them from him gladly and thankfully because he
loved me--for I would have given him anything--and I thought of them
as signs of love. But this money pains my heart. He has left off
loving me, and has gone away. This money seems--oh, Miss Benson--it
seems as if he could comfort me, for being forsaken, by money." And
at that word the tears, so long kept back and repressed, forced their
way like rain.

She checked herself, however, in the violence of her emotion, for she
thought of her child.

"So, will you take the trouble of sending it back to Mrs Bellingham?"

"That I will, my dear. I am glad of it, that I am! They don't deserve
to have the power of giving: they don't deserve that you should take
it."

Miss Benson went and enclosed it up, there and then; simply writing
these words in the envelope, "From Ruth Hilton."

"And now we wash our hands of these Bellinghams," said she,
triumphantly. But Ruth looked tearful and sad; not about returning
the note, but from the conviction that the reason she had given for
the ground of her determination was true--he no longer loved her.

To cheer her, Miss Benson began to speak of the future. Miss Benson
was one of those people who, the more she spoke of a plan in its
details, and the more she realised it in her own mind, the more
firmly she became a partisan of the project. Thus she grew warm and
happy in the idea of taking Ruth home; but Ruth remained depressed
and languid under the conviction that he no longer loved her. No
home, no future, but the thought of her child, could wean her
from this sorrow. Miss Benson was a little piqued; and this pique
showed itself afterwards in talking to her brother of the morning's
proceedings in the sick-chamber.

"I admired her at the time for sending away her fifty pounds so
proudly; but I think she has a cold heart: she hardly thanked me at
all for my proposal of taking her home with us."

"Her thoughts are full of other things just now; and people have such
different ways of showing feeling: some by silence, some by words. At
any rate, it is unwise to expect gratitude."

"What do you expect--not indifference or ingratitude?"

"It is better not to expect or calculate c