"Poor child!" sighed Mrs. Woburn; "I am afraid she has been working too hard. I am glad for her sake that the holidays are so near. She is so anxious to do well, and to-day's examination has tried her sadly." Meanwhile Ruth, upstairs in her own room, was sobbing bitterly, and thinking hard thoughts of herself. The examination _had_ tried her, but not half as much as the loss of self-respect she had felt since she gave up her papers that morning with the translation which was certainly not the result of her own work. "I wish I had never left home," she thought; "everything is going wrong, it is so difficult to do right here. If only I had not seen Julia's translation. If I had never promised Gerald that I would not mention about his coming in so late. Oh, I wish I were back at Cressleigh!" With the thought of home, which to her troubled mind seemed so calm and peaceful, came the remembrance of her mother's words, "I should have no fear for you if I were sure that you were not going alone, if I knew that you had an almighty Friend with you to lead you in the right way." She knew that she had strayed out of the right way, and she had not far to seek for the reason. Ever since she came to Busyborough she had been growing careless about the things of eternity, and had ceased to take delight in reading God's Word and in prayer. The Bible upon her dressing-table was read daily, it is true, and both morning and evening Ruth knelt for a few moments in prayer. But the sweet meaning was gone from the texts, and the prayer was little better than a form; there was no life in either. When the young girl went to live at her uncle's house, she found that the lives of those with whom she came into daily contact were not ruled by the same principles and motives as her own. At first she grieved and prayed for her cousins, then she became self-sufficient and wise in her own conceit; and having once allowed the unchristian spirit of pride and dislike for Julia to creep into her heart and take possession, other evils had quickly followed, and had gradually drawn her farther and farther away from her Saviour. She began to see it all that night, and to realize how far off she was; but the knowledge only increased her wretchedness, and made her more miserable. Suddenly a thought struck her. Would it not be wise and right to go to Miss Elgin before school the next morning, to confess that she had yielded to temptation, and to ask that the obnoxious translation might at once be burnt? But Ruth angrily resisted the notion. Confess that _she_, who bore the character of the most conscientious and trustworthy girl in the school, had stooped to do the very thing which she had so often censured in others? No, never. It would be too degrading and humiliating. Perhaps, after all, Julia's translation was not correct. There might be many faults in her own, and it was very unlikely that she would get a high number of marks for her French paper.