"
"Why, my dear?"
"I have a strong feeling against taking it. While he," said she,
deeply blushing, and letting her large white lids drop down and
veil her eyes, "loved me, he gave me many things--my watch--oh,
many things; and I took them from him gladly and thankfully,
because he loved me--for I would have given him anything--and I
thought of them as signs of love. But this money pains my heart.
He has left off loving me, and has gone away. This money
seems--oh, Miss Benson--it seems as if he could comfort me, for
being forsaken, by money." And at that word the tears, so long
kept back and repressed, forced their way like rain.
She checked herself, however, in the violence of her emotion, for
she thought of her child.
"So, will you take the trouble of sending it back to Mrs.
Bellingham?"
"That I will, my dear. I am glad of it, that I am! They don't
deserve to have the power of giving: they don't deserve that you
should take it." Miss Benson went and enclosed it up there and
then; simply writing these words in the envelope, "From Ruth
Hilton."
"And now we wash our hands of these Bellinghams," said she
triumphantly. But Ruth looked tearful and sad; not about
returning the note, but from the conviction that the reason she
had given for the ground of her determination was true--he no
longer loved her.
To cheer her, Miss Benson began to speak of the future. Miss
Benson was one of those people who, the more she spoke of a plan
in its details, and the more she realised it in her own mind, the
more firmly she became a partisan of the project.
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