that was past the
fountain. Coming through Fountain Court, he was just to glance down the
steps leading into Garden Court, and to look once all round him; and if
Ruth had come to meet him, there he would see her--not sauntering, you
understand (on account of the clerks), but coming briskly up, with the
best little laugh upon her face that ever played in opposition to the
fountain and beat it all to nothing. For, fifty to one, Tom had been
looking for her in the wrong direction, and had quite given her up,
while she had been tripping towards him from the first, jingling that
little reticule of hers (with all the keys in it) to attract his
wondering observation.

"Whether there was life enough left in the slow vegetation of Fountain
Court for the smoky shrubs to have any consciousness of the brightest
and purest-hearted little woman in the world, is a question for
gardeners and those who are learned in the loves of plants. But that it
was a good thing for that same paved yard to have such a delicate little
figure flitting through it, that it passed like a smile from the grimy
old houses and the worn flagstones, and left them duller, darker,
sterner than before, there is no sort of doubt. The Temple fountain
might have leaped up twenty feet to greet the spring of hopeful
maidenhood that in her person stole on, sparkling, through the dry and
dusty channels of the law; the chirping sparrows, bred in Temple chinks
and crannies, might have held their peace to listen to imaginary
skylarks as so fresh a little creature passed; the dingy boughs, unused
to droop, otherwise than in their puny growth, might have bent down in a
kindred gracefulness to shed their benedictions on her graceful head;
old love-letters, shut up in iron boxes in the neighbouring offices, and
made of no account among the heaps of family papers into which they had
strayed, and of which in their degeneracy they formed a part, might have
stirred and fluttered with a moment's recollection of their ancient
tenderness, as she went lightly by. Anything might have happened that
did not happen, and never will, for the love of Ruth....

"Merrily the tiny fountain played, and merrily the dimples sparkled on
its sunny face. John Westlock hurried after her. Softly the whispering
water broke and fell, and roguishly the dimples twinkled as he stole
upon her footsteps.

"Oh, foolish, panting, timid little heart! why did she feign to be
unconscious of his coming?...

"