"Ruth," he said, coming and standing close to her, "I do not believe you have given me the whole answer even yet. The true reason, please!" "Must a woman give all her reasons? . . . She follows her fate, and at each new turning she may have a dozen, all to be forgotten at the next." "I am sure you harbour some grudge--some reservation?" His eyes questioned her. She kept him waiting for some seconds. "My lord, women have no consistency but in this--they are jealous when they love. As your slave, I demand nothing; as your mistress, I demand only you. But if you wished also to set me high among women, you should have given me all or nothing. . . . You did not offer to take me with you. I was not worthy to be shown to that proud folk, your family." "If you had breathed a wish, even the smallest hint of one--" "I had no wish, save that you should offer it. I had only some pride. I was--I am--well content; only do not come back and offer me these women of Boston, or anything second best in your eyes, however much the gift may cost you." "Have it as you will," said he, after a long pause. "I was wrong, and I beg your pardon. But I was less wrong than your jealousy suspects. My family will welcome you. Forgive me that I thought it well--that it might save you any chance of humiliation--to prepare them." She swept him a curtsy. "They are very good," she said. He detected the irony, yet he persisted, holding his temper well in control. "But all this presupposes, you see, that you marry me. . . . Ruth, you confess that you were wrong, for the child's sake. He is dead; and, on the whole, so much the better, poor mite! But for another, should another be born--" "There would be time," she said quietly. "But we shall never have another." She had hardened strangely. It was as if the milk of motherhood, wasting in her, had packed itself in a crust about her heart. He loved her; she never ceased to love him; but whereas under the public scourge something had broken, letting her free of opinion, to love the good and hate the evil for their own sakes, under this second and more mysterious visitation, she kept her courage indeed, but certainty was hers no longer; nor was she any longer free of opinion, but hardened her heart against it consciously, as against an enemy. Not otherwise can I account for the image of Ruth Josselin--my Lady Vyell--Lady Good-for-Nothing--as under these various names it flits, for the next few years, through annals, memoirs, correspondence, scandalous chronicles; now vindicated, now glanced at with unseemly nods and becks, anon passionately denounced; now purely shining, now balefully, above and between the clouds of those times; but always a star and an object of wonder.