No more she did at first. But by-and-by the dulled brain began to think most vividly and rapidly, and she spoke in a sharp way which deceived the girls into a belief that nothing had been the matter. "Yes! I was tired. I am tired. Those sands--oh! those sands,--those weary, dreadful sands! But that is all over now. Only my heart aches still. Feel how it flutters and beats," said she, taking Elizabeth's hand, and holding it to her side. "I am quite well, though," she continued, reading pity in the child's looks, as she felt the trembling, quivering beat. "We will go straight to the dressing-room, and read a chapter; that will still my heart; and then I'll go to bed, and Mr. Bradshaw will excuse me, I know, this one night. I only ask for one night. Put on your right frocks, dears, and do all you ought to do. But I know you will" said she, bending down to kiss Elizabeth, and then, before she had done so, raising her head abruptly, "You are good and dear girls--God keep you so!" By a strong effort at self-command, she went onwards at an even pace, neither rushing nor pausing to sob and think. The very regularity of motion calmed her. The front and back doors of the house were on two sides, at right angles with each other. They all shrank a little from the idea of going in at the front door, now that the strange gentlemen were about, and, accordingly, they went through the quiet farmyard right into the bright, ruddy kitchen, where the servants were dashing about with the dinner-things. It was a contrast in more than colour to the lonely, dusky field, which even the little girls perceived; and the noise, the warmth, the very bustle of the servants, were a positive relief to Ruth, and for the time lifted off the heavy press of pent-up passion. A silent house, with moonlit rooms, or with a faint gloom brooding over the apartments, would have been more to be dreaded. Then, she must have given way, and cried out. As it was, she went up the old awkward back-stairs, and into the room they were to sit in. There was no candle. Mary volunteered to go down for one; and when she returned she was full of the wonders of preparation in the drawing-room, and ready and eager to dress, so as to take her place there before the gentlemen had finished dinner. But she was struck by the strange paleness of Ruth's face, now that the light fell upon it. "Stay up here, dear Mrs. Denbigh! We'll tell papa you are tired, and are gone to bed." Another time Ruth would have dreaded Mr. Bradshaw's displeasure; for it was an understood thing that no one was to be ill or tired in his household without leave asked, and cause given and assigned. But she never thought of that now. Her great desire was to hold quiet till she was alone. Quietness it was not--it was rigidity; but she succeeded in being rigid in look and movement, and went through her duties to Elizabeth (who preferred remaining with her upstairs) with wooden precision. But her heart felt at times like ice, at times like burning fire; always a heavy, heavy weight within her.
At last Elizabeth went to bed. Still Ruth dared not think. Mary would come upstairs soon, and with a strange, sick, shrinking yearning, Ruth awaited her--and the crumbs of intelligence she might drop out about him .