At the misery, the anguish that could impress so strange and white a look on Ruth's winsome face, she was smitten with remorse, her incipient satisfaction dashed.

This was her work; the fruit of her scheming.

But it had gone further than she had foreseen; and for all that no result could better harmonize with her own ambitions and desires, for the moment--under the first shock of that announcement--she felt guilty and grew afraid.
"Ruth!" she cried, her voice a whisper of stupefaction.

"Oh, I wish I had come with you!" "But you couldn't; you were faint." And then--recalling what had passed--her mind was filled with sudden concern for Diana, even amid her own sore troubles.

"Are you quite yourself again, Diana ?" she inquired.
Diana answered almost fiercely, "I am quite well." And then, with a change to wistfulness, she added, "Oh, I would I had come with you!" "Matters had been no different," Ruth assured her.