"Well, I do; and I know that he has openly defied the combined powers of her charming s.e.x for--I am afraid to say how many years--as long as I can remember."

"I daresay that has not distressed them," said Mr. Dalrymple.

"Come, come, Hale," said Mr. Digby, who thought his kinsman's allusion to Mr. Kingston's age a terrible slip of the tongue; "let us go and wash our hands. Come along, Lessel."

"And my wife tells me," continued the irrepressible little man, "that the--a--the interesting event is to take place very shortly!"

Rachel came out of her majestic reticence with a rush that astonished everybody.

"Oh, _no_, Mr. Hale--not for a _long_ time--not for a year, at the very least! Who _could_ have told Mrs. Hale such a thing? I a.s.sure you it is quite, quite wrong! _Do_ you know who told her? Was it my aunt?"

She looked at him with an earnest, imploring look that aroused Mr.

Dalrymple to regard her with considerably sharpened interest. The alarming thought had struck her that her lover might have privately enlisted Mrs. Hardy's support for his new scheme; and if so, how should she be able to resist so formidable a pressure?

"I think it was Mrs. Thornley told Mrs. Hale. She had a letter from her sister, Mrs. Reade, yesterday; and Mrs. Reade had mentioned it. Ladies'

gossip, Miss Fetherstonhaugh!--ladies never can keep secrets, you know.

They tell everything to one another, and then to us. And we--we tell them nothing. We know better, eh, Digby?"

"Come along," said Digby, who was getting a little savage, "and don't talk like a fool."

At this critical juncture Mr. Thornley appeared to announce that there was bread and cheese in the dining-room for anybody who was hungry.

Whereupon the men trooped out--all but Mr. Dalrymple, who apparently was not hungry. He was lounging at Rachel's side, with an elbow on the mantelpiece, pulling his moustache meditatively; and he did not move.

Rachel was fluttered and excited.

"How _do_ people get hold of those things?" she exclaimed, with a vexed, embarra.s.sed laugh. "It is very true that everybody knows one's business better than one does one's self. I _hate_ that kind of impertinent gossip. No one has the _least_ ground for supposing that I am going to be married shortly. I have no intention of being married for ever so long."

"Why do you care what people say?" said Mr. Dalrymple. "I never care. It is much the best plan."

"I would not, if I could help it; but I can't," she responded, turning round and mechanically spreading her pink palms to the fire.

"And, after all," he continued, slowly, "all the talking in the world can't make you marry if you don't want to."

She did not look up, but the blood flew over her face.

"I did not say I didn't want to," she murmured. "Of course I want to--not yet, for a long time, but some day--or I should not be engaged."

"I don't think that _always_ follows, Miss Fetherstonhaugh. I think many people engage themselves, and live to think better of it. And then, if they don't refuse to consummate an admitted mistake, they--well, they ought to, that's all. Forgive me, I am speaking in the abstract of course. I have had a great deal of experience, you know."

"Of broken engagements?" queried Rachel, smiling faintly at the fire.

"No, not of them--not personally. The curse of my life was an engagement that was kept. And I have seen so much misery, such everlasting wreck and ruin, come upon people I have known and cared for--people who kept the letter of the law of honour and disregarded the spirit--who preferred sacrificing all that made life worth having, for certainly two people, and probably four, to breaking an engagement that had no longer any sense or reason in it."

"But surely an engagement--it is the initial marriage ceremony--should be kept sacred," protested Rachel, daring at last to look up, in defence of pious principles.

"Yes," he said, "certainly--when it is _really_ the initial marriage ceremony."

"And how--what--what is the proof of that?"

"Shall I tell you what I think it is? When the people who are engaged long and weary for the consummation--for the time to be over which keeps them from one another."

There was a dead silence. Rachel continued to gaze into the fire, but her eyes were dim, and all her pretty colour sank out of her face. He had given her a great shock, and she had to take a little time to recover. Presently she looked up, pale and grave, with a fuller and more open look than she had ever given him.

"You should not have told me," she said gently; "you should not talk to me so."

"No--you are right--I should not--forgive me," he replied, speaking low and hurriedly, with something new and strange in his voice. And then they became simultaneously aware of the dangerous ways into which their discussion had led them, and, by tacit consent, turned back. Rachel moved away to the writing-table, and began to gather her papers together; Mr. Dalrymple brought his arm down from the chimney-piece and looked at his watch.

"It is five o'clock," he said; "the ladies are having a long walk, are they not?"

"No; it was nearly four when they started. They will be in directly for their tea."

Then, without looking to right or left, Rachel hurried out of the room; and Mr. Dalrymple, after silently holding the door for her, strode away to the dining-room, where he was still in time for some bread and cheese.

The first thing Rachel did on reaching her room, was to sit down and cry--why or wherefore she never asked herself. She had not yet learned the art of a.n.a.lysing her emotions.

She felt vaguely perplexed and hurt, and ashamed and indignant; and a few tears were necessary to put her to rights. They were very few, and soon over.

In less than ten minutes she had again addressed herself to Mr.

Kingston's letter, which she finished up with the suggestion that their marriage should take place "next year," and a profusion of unwonted endearments.

At dusk she went to the drawing-room, where the reunited guests were having tea in the pleasant firelight, the gentlemen lounging about in their knickerbockers and leggings, the ladies sitting with hats tilted on the back of their heads, Mrs. Hale victorious over her subdued husband. Miss Hale happy with her recovered beau. She sat a little outside the circle and talked in under-tones to Lucilla; Mr. Dalrymple stood far away on the other side of the room, and talked to n.o.body.

That night Rachel was the first to go to dress; she was the last to come back when the gong announced dinner. And when she came she was arrayed in all her glory--pearl necklace, diamond pendant, diamond bracelet, jewelled fan--all her absent lover's love-gifts that good taste permitted her to wear, and a few more. And there was no repet.i.tion of the conservatory scene.

Mrs. Hardy was perfectly satisfied with the result of her diplomatic measures. Rachel sat by her aunt's side, and sewed industriously all the evening at a pinafore for her precious baby, who was about to be short-coated. Mr. Dalrymple sat rather apart, gnawing his moustache, apparently absorbed in a photographic alb.u.m of Lucilla's, which he had discovered in a cabinet near him.

Two or three times, when Rachel stole a look across the room, unable to repress her restless curiosity to know what he was doing, she saw him gazing meditatively at this open book, and always on the first page of it. She wondered whose photographs they were that interested him so much, and she felt that she could not go to bed without satisfying her anxiety on this point.

When after tea, music and cards and other gentle entertainments were set going, and Mr. Dalrymple was at last enticed by his host from his corner and his alb.u.m to make a fourth at the whist-table, she watched her opportunity and stole round to the chair on which he had been sitting.

He had his back to her, but he was facing a mirror in which he could see her distinctly; and while he watched her movements, he trumped his partner's trick for the first time in his life, and otherwise disgraced a notorious reputation.

"I suppose," said Mrs. Hale, who was his partner, with considerable asperity, "that you don't trouble to play well if you haven't some great stake to play for."

"I beg your pardon," he replied, gravely bending his head. Rachel was stealing back to her aunt's side and her baby's pinafore, and he left off looking into the mirror and making mistakes.

Meanwhile Rachel had satisfied her curiosity. When she opened the alb.u.m on the first page she saw two familiar faces--one of a young, bright girl, with pensive eyes, conspicuous for "that royalty which subjects kings;" the other angular, aquiline, hollow, full of the lines of age, and smirking with the sprightliness of youth--herself and Mr. Kingston, to whom, unknown to her, Lucilia had lately given this place of honour.

She stood still for a few minutes, looking down on them, with the colour deepening in her cheeks. She seemed to see for the first time how incongruous a pair they made, and how mean a presence her lover really bore.

It was a bad likeness of him, she said to herself; but in point of fact she was shocked by a faithful representation of his meagre features and his peculiar smile--which after all was too frivolous and artificial to be worthy of comparison with the smile of Mephistopheles.

She did not consciously judge his by the standard of that other face, which was so impressively dignified and resolute; but she had looked at this same photograph two days ago, and then it had not struck her unpleasantly, as it did now.

Without thinking what she was doing, she tore out her own likeness, and also the last photograph in the book, which was an old one of her Cousin Lucilla as a child, and she made them change places. Having effected which--surrept.i.tiously, as she thought--she closed the alb.u.m softly, laid it away in the cabinet, and returned to her seat by her aunt's side.

When the ladies were gone to bed, the first thing Mr. Dalrymple did was to get out that alb.u.m again and look at it; and he had some very serious thoughts when he found out what she had done.

In the morning all the visitors left early, for they had a long distance to travel. Mr. Thornley was to take them part of the way home, and the break and the four horses were brought round at eight o'clock. Rachel came out to the verandah with her aunt and cousin to see them start.