Ruth hung
down her head, and blushed with exceeding happiness; but she
could not speak, even to urge her doubts afresh. Thus it was in a
manner settled. How delightfully happy the plan made her through
the coming week! She was too young when her mother died to have
received any cautions or words of advice respecting the subject
of a woman's life--if, indeed, wise parents ever directly speak
of what, in its depth and power, cannot be put into words--which
is a brooding spirit with no definite form or shape that men
should know it, but which is there, and present before we have
recognised and realised its existence. Ruth was innocent and
snow-pure. She had heard of falling in love, but did not know the
signs and symptoms thereof; nor, indeed, had she troubled her
head much about them. Sorrow had filled up her days, to the
exclusion of all lighter thoughts than the consideration of
present duties, and the remembrance of the happy time which had
been. But the interval of blank, after the loss of her mother and
during her father's life-in-death, had made her all the more
ready to value and cling to sympathy--first from Jenny, and now
from Mr. Bellingham. To see her home again, and to see it with
him; to show him (secure of his interest) the haunts of former
times, each with its little tale of the past--of dead-and-gone
events!--No coming shadow threw its gloom over this week's dream
of happiness--a dream which was too bright to be spoken about to
common and indifferent ears.
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