"Oh, yes," Mrs. Reade replied promptly; "I know that Minnie Hale is not _his_ taste. I know he did not go on with her as you say he did, merely for the pleasure of it to himself. I think it must have been to spite Rachel."

"Beatrice!"

"Yes, mother--that is what I think. It is the only reasonable motive he could have had."

"But why on earth should he wish to spite Rachel?"

"That is what I want you to tell me. You were in the house with them--try and think of all that happened just before the ball. I'm certain something was wrong between them, to begin with. Perhaps you did not notice it at the time, but you might remember little circ.u.mstances--" Mrs. Reade broke off, and watched her mother's disturbed face with bright attentiveness. "_Rachel_ did not flirt with anybody, did she?"

"Now, my dear, you know the child is incapable of such a thing."

"Oh, I don't mean deliberately, of course. But she might do it accidentally, with those sentimental eyes of hers. And she _is_ so charmingly pretty!"

"No, she certainly did not flirt," said Mrs. Hardy; "she has never given him any uneasiness on that score, pretty as she is, and never will, I am quite sure. But there was a man----"

"Ah!" sighed Mrs. Reade, laying her parasol across her knees, and folding her hands resignedly.

"Why do you say 'ah,' Beatrice, before you hear what I am going to tell you? There was a man there whom Mr. Kingston disliked very much. He gave himself airs, and they somehow came into collision, and Mr. Kingston was in rather a bad temper. That was all that went wrong before the ball, and Rachel had nothing to do with that."

"Do you think so? I am certain she had," the young lady replied deliberately.

"Well, if you think you know better than I do, who was there to see----"

"Go on, dear mamma. Tell me all about him. Who was he? What was he like?"

Mrs. Hardy, pocketing her dignity, proceeded to describe Mr. Dalrymple, with great amplitude of detail, as he had appeared from her point of view.

The result was a kind of superior Newgate villian, of good birth and distinguished presence, whom Mrs. Reade regarded with a sinking heart.

"Oh, dear me!" she sighed, blankly, "what a pity! What a grevious pity!"

"I _can't_ see why you should look at it in this way, Beatrice. I tell you she had little or nothing to say to him, and she only danced with him once the whole evening. I took care to point out to her the kind of man he was, and to warn her against him."

"You ought not to have done that."

"My dear, you will allow me to be the best judge of what I ought to do.

She was very good and obedient, and she acted in every way as I wished her."

"But she liked him, didn't she?" asked Mrs. Reade.

"Yes," Mrs. Hardy admitted, with evident reluctance, "I am afraid she did like him."

"I am sure she did," said Mrs. Reade, decisively. "And there is more than liking in the matter, unless I am much mistaken. I have never been in love myself," she remarked frankly, "but I fancy I know the symptoms when I see them. I feared from the first that it was something of that sort that was the matter with her. At any rate--" putting up her hand to stay the imminent protest on her mother's lips--"at any rate, if he has not made her love him, he has made her discontented with Mr. Kingston."

"Well, Beatrice," the elder woman exclaimed, with an impatient sigh, rising from her chair, "if such a thing should be--if such a misfortune should have happened after all my care--we must only do the best we can to mend it. Thank goodness he's gone. He is not at all likely to give her another thought. If he does--" Mrs. Hardy shut her mouth significantly, and her Roman nostrils dilated.

"You can't help his thinking what he likes," said Mrs. Reade, with a gleam of mockery in her bright eyes.

"I can help his doing anything further to disturb her. I can see that he never meets or speaks to her again."

Mrs. Reade continued to smile, looking at her majestic mother with her bird-like head on one side.

"I hope so," she said. "I'm sure I hope so, if you can do it without her knowledge. But if you should have to act, whatever you do, don't make martyrs of them."

"Don't talk nonsense," retorted Mrs. Hardy.

CHAPTER VII.

"HE HAS COME BACK."

Mrs. Reade, being satisfied that she had found out Rachel's complaint--as indeed she had--put her under treatment without delay.

On the very day of her interview with her mother in the store-room, she sought and obtained permission to take the patient home with her for a week's visit, in order to try the experiment of change and a new set of dissipations, and to make her preliminary investigations undisturbed.

She had a charming house of her own at South Yarra, which she "kept"

admirably, and where, in an unpretensious manner, she had established a little _salon_ that was a fashionable head centre in Melbourne society, and well deserved by virtue of its own legitimate merits to be so.

She was not severely orthodox in these matters, like Mrs. Hardy, who weighted her entertainments with any number of dull people, if they only happened to be in the right set; though she was quite ready to acknowledge the propriety of her mother's system in her mother's circ.u.mstances.

There was no want of refinement in her hospitality, but there was a delicate flavour of Bohemianism that, like the garlic rubbed on the salad bowl, was the piquant element that made it delightful--to those, at any rate, who were sufficiently intelligent to appreciate it.

If men and women were uninteresting, she could have nothing to do with them, though they were the very "best people;" that is to say, she limited her intercourse to those ceremonial observances which rigid etiquette demanded.

If they were clever and cultured, and otherwise respectable and well-behaved, and were capable of being fused harmoniously into the general brightness of her little circle, she was inclined to condone a mult.i.tude of sins in the matter of birth and station.

Artists of all sorts, travellers and politicians, distinguished members of every profession (so long as their own merits and accomplishments distinguished them) were welcome at her house; where they would be sure to meet the most interesting women that a judicious woman, superior to the petty weakness of her s.e.x, could gather together.

So it was that Mrs. Edward Reade's afternoons and evenings were synonymous with all that was intellectually refreshing and socially delightful to those who were privileged to enjoy them.

But so it was, also, that Rachel, in consideration of her youth, her impressionable nature, and what were supposed to be her democratic tendencies, had not been allowed to know much about them hitherto.

"Now, however, the case is different," said Beatrice, authoritatively, as she sat in her little pony carriage at the front door, waiting for her cousin to come down stairs. "It will do her good to shake up her ideas a little, and draw her out of herself. And if she does take an undue interest in people of the lower orders"--looking at her mother with mocking bright eyes--"it will be so much the better. Perhaps Signor Scampadini, with that lovely tenor of his----"

"Oh, no, Beatrice. Mr. Kingston would very much dislike anything of that sort."

"Anything of what sort?" laughed Mrs. Reade. "Mr. Kingston can trust me, mamma. And we must counteract Mr. Dalrymple somehow."

"Mr. Kingston himself ought to counteract him--if there is any counteracting necessary."

"Ah!" sighed Mrs. Reade, shaking her head slightly. She said no more, but in her own mind she put that argument aside as useless.

There had been a time, indeed, when she had believed Mr. Kingston sufficient for all purposes, on the basis of Rachel's apparently modest spiritual needs; but now she knew she had been mistaken.

The girl had grown and changed since then, and the old conditions no longer fitted her. The little woman was disappointed, but she was too wise to make a fuss about it. Difficulties had come that she ought to have foreseen and provided for, but since they had come, they must be dealt with. "Ah!" she said, with a sigh and a smile; and that was the extent of her lamentation.