s, so brilliant once, were dim and clouded; the complexion sallow
and colourless; a lowering expression was on the dark brow, and the
corners of her mouth drooped as with sorrowful thoughts. She looked
up, and her eyes met Ruth's.

"Oh! you beautiful creature!" thought Jemima, "with your still, calm,
heavenly face, what are you to know of earth's trials! You have lost
your beloved by death--but that is a blessed sorrow; the sorrow I
have pulls me down and down, and makes me despise and hate every
one--not you, though." And, her face changing to a soft, tender look,
she went up to Ruth, and kissed her fondly; as if it were a relief to
be near some one on whose true, pure heart she relied. Ruth returned
the caress; and even while she did so, she suddenly rescinded her
resolution to keep clear of what Mr Bradshaw had desired her to do.
On her way home she resolved, if she could, to find out what were
Jemima's secret feelings; and if (as, from some previous knowledge,
she suspected) they were morbid and exaggerated in any way, to try
and help her right with all the wisdom which true love gives. It
was time that some one should come to still the storm in Jemima's
turbulent heart, which was daily and hourly knowing less and less of
peace. The irritating difficulty was to separate the two characters,
which at two different times she had attributed to Mr Farquhar--the
old one, which she had formerly believed to be true, that he was a
man acting up to a high standard of lofty principle, and acting up
without a struggle (and this last had been the circumstance which
had made her rebellious and irritable once); the new one, which
her father had excited in her suspicious mind, that Mr Farquhar
was cold and calculating in all he did, and that she was to be
transferred by the former, and accepted by the latter, as a sort of
stock-in-trade--these were the two Mr Farquhars who clashed together
in her mind. And in this state of irritation and prejudice, she could
not bear the way in which he gave up his opinions to please her;
that was not the way to win her; she liked him far better when he
inflexibly and rigidly adhered to his idea of right and wrong, not
even allowing any force to temptation, and hardly any grace to
repentance, compared with that beauty of holiness which had never
yielded to sin. He had been her idol in those days, as she found out
now, however much at the time she had opposed him with violence.

As for Mr Farquhar