each
other when school hours were over and their tongues were once more
unloosed.

"I suppose that you have done it, Julia, you are so clever at French,"
said Ethel.

"It really wasn't difficult," replied Julia carelessly. "What have you
done, Ruth?"

"I think I answered nearly all the questions," was the reply.

"And the poem?"

"Yes, I did it."

Julia looked rather surprised, but she said nothing, though several of
the girls were loud in their exclamations of wonder that Ruth should
even have attempted it.

She listened rather impatiently to their remarks, for already she felt
ashamed of the advantage she had taken, and would gladly have seized the
paper upon which her translation was written and thrown it upon the
fire.

But it had gone out of her possession and was hers no longer.

CHAPTER XVI.

A DOWNWARD STEP.

"I can't think what has happened to Ruth, she is not at all like her
usual self," remarked Ernest that evening.

He had been playfully teasing his cousin about her studies, when she
suddenly answered him sharply, burst into a violent flood of tears, and
ran away to her own room.

"She is crosser than ever," said Julia.

"Poor child!" sighed Mrs. Woburn; "I am afraid she has been working too
hard. I am glad for her sake that the holidays are so near. She is so
anxious to do well, and to-day's examination has tried her sadly."

Meanwhile Ruth, upstairs in her own room, was sobbing bitterly, and
thinking hard thoughts of herself. The examination _had_ tried her, but
not half as much as the loss of self-respect she had felt since she gave
up her papers that morning with the translation which was certainly not
the result of her own work.

"I wish I had never left home," she thought; "everything is going wrong,
it is so difficult to do right here. If only I had not seen Julia's
translation. If I had never promised Gerald that I would not mention
about his coming in so late. Oh, I wish I were back at Cressleigh!"

With the thought of home, which to her troubled mind seemed so calm and
peaceful, came the remembrance of her mother's words, "I should have no
fear for you if I were sure that you were not going alone, if I knew
that you had an almighty Friend with you to lead you in the right way."

She knew that she had strayed out of the right way, and she had not far
to seek for the reason. Ever since she came to Busyborough she had been
growing careless about the things of eternity,