Ruby's Reward — page 281: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The two turned away and passed on toward the sreat gate, while Ruby, as soon as she dared to do so, sped, light as a fairy, over the velvet turf back to the house, sprang up the stairs, to her room, and was apparently sleeping the sleep of the innocent, when, tifteen minutes later, Mrs. Gordon stopped to listen an instant at her door before passing on to her own chamber. CHAPTER XXXVI. RUBY MAKES ANOTHER IMPORTANT DISCOVERY. There was not much restful sleep for Ruby that night. She lay thinking, and trying to decide what course she ought to pursue all through the long, weary hours which seemed as if they would never end and bring the welcome dawn, She woudered if it would do to go to Estelle, tell her what she had overheard, demand that she con- fess the plot, and exonerate Walter, Then she remembered what she had told Edmund Carpenter, that ‘torture would not draw the con- fession trom her;’’ she atid her accomplice would, of course, deny all knowledge of any such conversa- tion, while she would have only her own word to aie it. and they would be two against one. If she dared search among her sister’s things for that bill, and could tind it, she would have some tangible proof of what she had heard; ‘but she shrank from doing anything of the kind, while she doubted if Estelle— who was evidently very much troubled to have it in her possession—would allow it to be away trom her person a moment until she could transfer it to Mr. Carpenter. She resolved at last that she would wait and see if she mailed a letter to him in the morning. If she did, she would go directly to Mr. Conant, tell him what she had learned, and if he took prompt and decisive meagures, the bill might be discovered on Endmund Carpenter's person, and thus the guilt A y transuction would be tranaterred to himneomtbnc ERE