![]() But in this less than perfect world nothing ever remains secret, especially a ‘sinful’ past. To those outside the Benson household she appears to be a gentle and beautiful woman who is the epitome of industry and purity. ![]() Leonard is the centre of her life and with the Bensons she strives to live a godly life and redeem herself, acknowledging her previous ‘sinfulness’. Presented as Mrs Denbeigh, a young widow, Ruth gives birth to her son, Leonard. When Ruth is well enough, she travel with Benson and his sister, Faith, to their home in Benson’s northern parish of Eccleston. She is saved by the intervention of non-conformist minister, Thorston Benson. Now pregnant, she despairs of her future and contemplates suicide. When he falls ill, his imperious mother arrives to take him home and care of him, and Ruth is abandoned. They go first to London and later to Wales where she lives with him as his mistress. As she has nowhere to go, Bellingham takes care of her. When he convinces her to let him take her on a long Sunday walk to visit the village where she was raised, she is seen by her employer and is sacked on the spot. Beautiful, innocent and unworldly, she unwittingly attracts the attention of a wealthy young man, the feckless Henry Bellingham. ![]() First published in 1853, Ruth begins with sixteen-year-old Ruth Hilton, raised in a respectable loving family and newly orphaned, working for a seamstress in the town of Fordham. ![]()
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