"Thank you this Welsh air does make one hungry. Mrs. Bradshaw is paying poor old Maggie's rent, to save her from being sent into the workhouse.

"That's right. Won't you have another cup of tea?"

"I have had two. However, I think I'll take another."

Mr. Benson could not refrain from a little sigh as he poured it out. He thought he had never seen his sister so deliberately hungry and thirsty before. He did not guess that she was feeling the meal rather a respite from a distasteful interview, which she was aware was awaiting her at its conclusion. But all things come to an end, and so did Miss Benson's tea.

"Now, will you go and see her?"

And so they went. Mrs. Hughes had pinned up a piece of green calico, by way of a Venetian blind, to shut out the afternoon sun; and in the light thus shaded lay Ruth--still, and wan, and white. Even with her brother's account of Ruth's state, such death-like quietness startled Miss Benson--startled her into pity for the poor lovely creature who lay thus stricken and felled. When she saw her, she could no longer imagine her to be an impostor, or a hardened sinner; such prostration of woe belonged to neither. Mr. Benson looked more at his sister's face than at Ruth's; he read her countenance as a book.

Mr. Benson touched his sister, and they left the room together.

"Do you think she will live?" asked he.