He could not let the night go over. He was in a state of nervous excitement, and felt that he must get away from home at once, and see Preene there and then and know the worst. That night, for the first time since their marriage, Ruth and her husband were parted. That night, for the first time, she closed her eyes with a heavy heart, and felt that something had come between them. And up in London the squire sat with Seth Preene and heard his story, and then he knew that his dream was at an end; that he must wander back into the old path of shame once more, and plot and plan again, putting his conscience behind him if he would not let his enemy triumph over him and drag him and her who bore his name to ruin and disgrace. CHAPTER LV. THE ARREST. It was late that afternoon, and the shades of evening were falling rapidly on the little street, but the happy little party seated round the hospitable board in the front parlour seemed little inclined to break up. Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis were honest-hearted genuine English folks, with hearts as big as their appetites, and they were as pleased to think they had reunited the convict and his wife as they would have been had royalty patronized their show at some country town. Besides, steeped as they were in the morality of the British peripatetic drama, it seemed to them that things were only in their right course. In the drama all escaped convicts are innocent, and in the drama it is always the duty of the ‘first old woman’ to help the convict to find his sweetheart. And when that sweetheart turned out to be the kind lodger to whom her Shakspeare owed his life, no wonder Mrs. Jarvis declared that Providence had arranged it all with a keen eye to a ‘situation’ and the triumph of persecuted virtue. Up in her own room Bess had cried and sobbed upon George’s shoulder for a good hour, and then, when all the tears were shed, and the sacred joy of that strange meeting had been duly respected, Mrs. Jarvis came upstairs and insisted that they should come down and have dinner with them. It was a grand dinner indeed. Granny was sent out with a plentiful supply of coin, and returned from the cookshop with a famous dish of hot boiled beef and carrots and at least a dozen slices of ‘spotted dog,’ which were popped into the oven to keep hot while the beef and carrots were being disposed of. George and Bess had little heart to eat, for to this joy of their sudden meeting was added the bitter knowledge of the circumstances which led to it. George had told Bess all; how, maddened by his unjust treatment, fearing that she might be ill, perhaps dying, he had determined to make a desperate effort to escape, and how when the opportunity presented itself he had seized it.