She had, and she had not. Her own promised splendours, the command of wealth and of a great household--this aspect of the future was blank to her as yet. But another presented itself and frightened her: it engaged her conscience in doubts even when she shook it free of fears. The Family--that mysterious shadow of which Lady Caroline no doubt showed as the ugliest projection! Ruth was conscientious. She divined that behind Lady Caroline's aggressiveness the shadow held something truly sacred and worth guarding; something impalpable and yet immensely solid; something not to be defied or laughed away because inexplicable, but venerable precisely because it could not be explained; something not fashioned hastily upon reason, but built by slow accretion, with the years for its builders--mortared by sentiments, memories, traditions, decencies, trivialities good and bad, even (may be) by the blood of foolish quarrels--but founded and welded more firmly, massed more formidably, than any structure of mere reason; and withal a temple wherein she, however chastely, might never serve without profaning it. I do most eagerly desire you, at this point in her story, to be just to Ruth Josselin. I wish you to remember what she had suffered, in the streets, at the hands of self-righteous folk; to understand that it had killed all religion in her, with all belief in its rites, but not the essential goodness of her soul. She at any rate, and according to the light given her, was incurably just. Weighing on the one hand her love and Oliver Vyell's, on the other the half-guessed injury their marriage might do to him and to others of his race; weighing them not hastily but through long hours of thought: carrying her doubts off to the hills and there considering them in solitude, under the open sky; casting out from the problem all of self save only her exceeding love; this strange girl--made strange by man's cruelty--decided to give herself in due time, but to exact no marriage. Why should she? The blessing of a clergyman meant nothing to her, as she was sure it meant nothing to her lover. Why should she tie him a day beyond the endurance of his love? Beyond the death of the thing itself what sanctity could live in its husk? And, moreover, in any event was she not his slave? So she reasoned: and let the reader call her reasoning by any name he will. By some standards it was wicked; by others wrong. It forgot one of the strongest arguments against itself, as she was in time to prove. But let none call her unchaste. After certain weeks she brought her arguments to him; standing before him, halting in her speech a little, but entreating him with eyes as straight as they were modest. Her very childishness appealed against her arguments.