court's age it was
quite to be expected. And Ruth must remember she still had a sister, and
that there was a happy home above. And now, if she would get that green
wool out of the red plush iron (which really was a work-box--such a
droll idea, wasn't it?), Ruth should hold the wool, and they would have
a cosey little chat till luncheon time.

And so Mrs. Alwynn did her duty by her niece; and Ruth, in the dark
days that followed her grandmother's death, took all the little
kindnesses in the spirit in which they were meant, and did her duty by
her aunt.

But after a time Mrs. Alwynn became more exacting. Ruth was visibly
recovering from what Mrs. Alwynn called "her bereavement." She could
smile again without an effort; she took long walks with Mr. Alwynn, and
later in the spring paid a visit to her uncle, Lord Polesworth. It was
after this visit that Mrs. Alwynn became more exacting. She had borne
with half attention and a lack of interest in crewel-work while Ruth was
still "fretting," as she termed it. But when a person lays aside crape,
and goes into half-mourning, the time had come when she may--nay, when
she ought to be "chatty." This time had come with Ruth, but she was not
"chatty." Like Mrs. Dombey, she did not make an effort, and, as the
months passed on, Mrs. Alwynn began to shake her head, and to fear that
"there was some officer or something on her mind." Mrs. Alwynn always
called soldiers officers, and doctors physicians.

Ruth, on her side, was vaguely aware that she did not give satisfaction.
The small-talk, the perpetual demand on her attention, the constant
interruptions, seemed to benumb what faculties she had. Her mind became
like a machine out of work--rusty, creaking, difficult to set going. If
she had half an hour of leisure she could not fix her attention to
anything. She, who in her grandmother's time had been so keen and alert,
seemed to have drifted, in Mrs. Alwynn's society, into a torpid state,
from which she made vain attempts to emerge, only to sink the deeper.

When she stood once more, fresh from a fortnight of pleasant intercourse
with pleasant people, in the little ornate drawing-room at Slumberleigh,
on her return from Atherstone, the remembrance of the dulled, confused
state in which she had been living with her aunt returned forcibly to
her mind. The various articles of furniture, the red silk handkerchiefs
dabbed behind pendent plates, the musical elephants on the mantle-piece,
th