For her wilful self-sacrifice had suddenly paled and dwindled down before her eyes into a hideous mistake--a mistake which yet had its roots so firmly knit into the past that it was hopeless to think of pulling it up now. To abide by a mistake is sometimes all that an impetuous youth leaves an honorable middle age to do. Poor middle age, with its clear vision, that might do and be so much if it were not for the heavy burdens, grievous to be borne, which youth has bound upon its shoulders. And worse than the dreary weight of personal unhappiness, harder to bear than the pang of disappointed love, was the aching sense of failure, of having misunderstood God's intention, and broken the purpose of her life. For some natures the cup of life holds no bitterer drop than this. Ruth dimly saw the future, the future which she had chosen, stretching out waste and barren before her. The dry air of the desert was on her face. Her feet were already on its sandy verge. And the iron of a great despair entered into her soul. CHAPTER XXV. Dare left Slumberleigh Hall early the following morning, and drove up to the rectory on his way to Vandon. After being closeted with Mr. Alwynn in the study for a short time, they both came out and drove away together. Ruth, invisible in her own room with a headache, her only means of defence against Mrs. Alwynn's society, heard the coming and the going, and was not far wrong in her surmise that Dare had come to beg Mr. Alwynn to accompany him to Vandon--being afraid to face alone the mysterious enemy intrenched there. No conversation was possible in the dog-cart, with the groom on the back seat thirsting to hear any particulars of the news which had spread like wildfire from Vandon throughout the whole village the previous afternoon, and which was already miraculously flying from house to house in Slumberleigh this morning, as things discreditable do fly among a Christian population, which perhaps "thinks no evil," but repeats it nevertheless. There was not a servant in Dare's modest establishment who was not on the lookout for him on his return. The gardener happened to be tying up a plant near the front door; the house-maids were watching unobserved from an upper casement; the portly form of Mrs. Smith, the house-keeper, was seen to glide from one of the unused bedroom windows; the butler must have been waiting in the hall, so prompt was his appearance when the dog-cart drew up before the door. Another pair of keen black eyes was watching too, peering out through the chinks between the lowered Venetian blinds in the drawing-room; was observing Dare intently as he got out, and then resting anxiously on his companion. Then the owner of the eyes slipped away from the window, and went back noiselessly to the fire.