- how had she repined and been dull of heart to her
blessing! And in anticipation of the future there was one sharp point of red
light in the darkness which pierced her brain with agony, and which she would
not see or recognise - and saw and recognised all the more for such mad
determination - which is not the true shield against the bitterness of the
arrows of death.
    When the seaside party arrived in Eccleston, they were met by Mrs. and Miss
Bradshaw and Mr. Benson. By a firm resolution, Ruth kept from shaping the
question, »Is he alive?« as if by giving shape to her fears she made their
realisation more imminent. She said merely, »How is he?« but she said it with
drawn, tight, bloodless lips, and in her eyes Mr. Benson read her anguish of
anxiety.
    »He is very ill, but we hope he will soon be better. It is what every child
has to go through.«
 

                                  Chapter XXV

                            Jemima Makes a Discovery

Mr. Bradshaw had been successful in carrying his point. His member had been
returned; his proud opponents mortified. So the public thought he ought to be
well pleased; but the public were disappointed to see that he did not show any
of the gratification they supposed him to feel.
    The truth was, that he met with so many small mortifications during the
progress of the election, that the pleasure which he would otherwise have felt
in the final success of his scheme was much diminished.
    He had more than tacitly sanctioned bribery; and now that the excitement was
over, he regretted it: not entirely from conscientious motives, though he was
uneasy from the slight sense of wrong-doing; but he was more pained, after all,
to think that, in the eyes of some of his townsmen, his hitherto spotless
character had received a blemish. He, who had been so stern and severe a censor
on the undue influence exercised by the opposite party in all preceding
elections, could not expect to be spared by their adherents now, when there were
rumours that the hands of the scrupulous Dissenters were not clean. Before, it
had been his boast that neither friend nor enemy could say one word against him;
now, he was constantly afraid of an indictment for bribery, and of being
compelled to appear before a committee to swear to his own share in the
business.
    His uneasy, fearful consciousness made him stricter and sterner than ever;
as if he would quench all wondering, slanderous talk about him in the town by a
renewed austerity of uprightness: that the slack-