"The sooner the better, my sweet--if it lasts," he responded, kissing her with solemn pa.s.sion; "and I will _make_ it last."

"Do not be afraid of that," she whispered eagerly. "I know I am young--I know one ought not to be too positive about the future--but I _feel_ that it will be impossible to help loving you always, even if I try not to, which I certainly shan't. I am sure I began it when I saw you riding across the racecourse that day--I am sure I shall not stop any more as long as I live. I don't think there can be another man in the world like you."

And so they talked, until it occurred to one of them to wonder what the time was. Mr. Dalrymple struck a match and looked at his watch, Rachel shielding the small flame from the wind with her hand.

"Oh," she exclaimed in dismay, "what would Aunt Elizabeth say if she knew I was sitting out here at eleven o'clock at night!"

"Call it eleven p.m.," he suggested, looking at her with his slow smile; "that sounds so much better."

"Did you think it was so late? The time has flown."

"I _felt_ it flying," he replied. "But I did not think it was so late.

I'm afraid you must go home, little one. Oh, dear me, when shall we have such a time again! Will you come here to-morrow night, and tell me how you have got over your day's troubles?"

This was not a proposal that Rachel could accept comfortably, nor that he could bring himself to press upon her. But when they came to reconsider their position and necessities, it was hard to find an alternative.

"You see, I must go back to Queensland in a day or two," Mr. Dalrymple explained, when, having taken her out of her hole and dusted her skirts with his handkerchief, he led her through the labyrinth of walls into the open moonlight, and they paused, hand in hand, for a few last words.

"We have an immense deal to do up there, and Gordon wants me. I must look after getting things together for you too. There is not even a roof for your head yet. But I can't bear to leave town without knowing first how matters are likely to go with you."

"If you _should_ be obliged to do that--if I _cannot_ see you again,"

said Rachel, "when will you come back?"

"I will come back in--let me see, this is October--in two months. I will be back at Christmas. I should have liked to see your uncle to-morrow, just that there should be no mistake about what I mean to do; but if you think it will make things harder for you, I won't, of course. You shall just tell Kingston what you like, and the rest of them I will enlighten when I come. By that time he will be out of the way and done with, and we shall have a straight road before us."

"Yes," said Rachel, sighing; "I think that will be best. And perhaps, by that time, Aunt Elizabeth will let you in."

"If she doesn't, I shall bombard the house."

"You will be _sure_ to be back at Christmas?"

"If I am alive, dear, and a free agent--certainly. And I shall find you ready for me then?"

"Oh, yes!"

With this compact between them, and the giving to Rachel of her lover's town address, and very explicit directions as to where she might find him at any given hour when she might happen to want him until the day of his departure, they kissed one clinging, lingering kiss in motionless silence, and bade one another--though they did not know it--a long farewell.

"Which is your window, Rachel? Can I see it from here?"

She pointed to it in silence, it was very distinct just now in the moonshine, between two dark pine trees. She was crying a little, and she could not speak.

"I will be here to-morrow night," he said; "and if you _can't_ come out to me, have a light in your room at twelve o'clock, darling, to let me know you are all right."

And then they separated; and Rachel felt rather than saw her way home, so dazzled with tears was she, while Roden Dalrymple at her desire remained behind and watched her.

She went straight into the house and upstairs to her room, to gather together, in a feverish hurry of renunciation, all her diamonds and jewels, which like Dead Sea apples, had suddenly become dust.

And he, long after she was gone,--long after Mrs. Hardy's carriage returned, and all the chimes in the city had rung the midnight hour--lingered where she had left him, leaning his arms on a convenient wall, watching a lighted window, and thinking. He was very happy. He had come unawares upon his happiness, when he was most in need of it, and it seemed to him that it was the best he could have had.

Anything sweeter than this fresh and simple heart, which was satisfied to invest all its wealth in him--anything brighter than the future she had spread before him--he did not want or wish for. It was the amplest compensation that he could imagine for the mistakes and disappointments of his wasted past.

And yet, though he was hardly conscious of it--though he would not have owned to it if he had been--he had a vague misgiving about her. He did not wish that she had been less easy to win; he had no fear that she was mistaking a sentimental girlish fancy for love; he did not for a moment apprehend that she would forsake or wrong him.

But there was a suggestion of untried and untested youth about all the circ.u.mstances of this sudden betrothal, as far as she had influenced them, and there was an intangible suspicion that somewhere she was weak.

He did not recognise, and therefore did not formulate, the sentiment that infused that touch of grave and sad anxiety into his happy meditations; but, nevertheless, it was there, and the time came when it was justified.

CHAPTER X.

MRS. READE'S ADVICE.

Rachel was not a heroine. She was simply a sweet and interesting girl; except that she was unusually pretty, by no means above the ordinary level of nice girls. She was better than a great many that we are acquainted with, no doubt, but she was not so good as some.

And she had, as has been already indicated, that fault which, of all faults, perhaps, is most common to girls, whether nice or otherwise--that amiable weakness that is more disastrous in its consequences than many a downright vice--she was, if not quite a coward, cowardly.

She was afraid to meet difficulties in the open, as it were--to attack the main body and scatter them, and have done with it; she sheltered herself in ambush, and made desultory attacks on flank and rear with temporary compromises, hating the thought of duplicity and longing to do right, yet most of all dreading the violent, harsh hurt to tender sensibilities (whether her own or other people's) that was inevitable in the shock of a pitched battle.

It is a defect in a woman's character very much to be deplored, of course, and it is one that seems unpardonable to a strong-minded person.

Nevertheless, it is much more of a misfortune than a fault (and we may as well say the same, while we are about it, of all our const.i.tutional defects, from red hair to kleptomania, since we did not choose our parents nor the social conditions to which we were born); and to Rachel, whose instinctive truthfulness and high sense of moral rect.i.tude prompted her to struggle hard, if vainly, against it, it was purely a misfortune, and at no time in her life more so than now.

For, after turning the question over and over in her mind through all that feverish and wakeful night, she finally decided that in breaking off her engagement with Mr. Kingston she would not mention, either to him or to anyone else, the place that Mr. Dalrymple now occupied in her affections and affairs.

As no one was aware of their having met, and as he was coming back himself so soon to clear up everything much better than she could, she persuaded herself that it would be not only unnecessary, but in the highest degree inexpedient, to aggravate the inevitable pain and difficulty that was before her and all of them.

Hating his very name as they did, would she not expose her lover to insult, and his motives and actions to misconception, and probably prejudice their chances of happiness irrevocably?

And at the same time do no good whatever, but only add an element of unspeakable bitterness to the disappointment of her aunt, and to the mortification of her already ill-used and much-wronged _fiance_, and, as a matter of detail, an incalculable amount of difficulty to her own sufficiently formidable task? She was certain that she would, and she felt that she could not, and need not do it.

It took her all night to mature her course of action, but having finally brought herself to believe that it was not only so much the easiest to herself, but in every way the best for all concerned, to ignore Mr.

Dalrymple for the present, she committed herself to it by writing a long letter to Mr. Kingston--a tender, penitent, self-accusing letter, in which she begged him to forgive her for having discovered so much too late that they were unsuited to one another, and prayed that he might some day be happier with a better woman than it was in her power to make him, and that he would ever believe her his attached and grateful friend, without suggesting the existence or possibility of any other lover, present or to be.

The natural results followed. Mr. Kingston, seeing no sufficient reason for these sudden strong measures, refused to treat them seriously.

He was quite aware, and it troubled him deeply, that she was not happy in her engagement, and he was very jealous and suspicious of Mr.

Dalrymple, whom he had seen once or twice about town; but he had set his heart upon her, as we say, with the perverse obstinacy of a fickle man who had been spoiled by women's flattery, and the more she seemed to shrink from him the more he wanted to have her, and the more he was determined not to let her go if he could possibly help it.

His love not only lacked reciprocity--without which love is never worthy to be spelt with a capital L--but it was so diluted with all sorts of vanities and egotisms that, though its flavour was there, the potent spirit was absent, and he was incapable of making a sacrifice for her happiness at the expense of his own.

When he solemnly a.s.sured himself that he loved her as he had never loved anyone before, and that he could not and would not give her up--when he declared, moreover, that he was ready to spend his future life in her service, and would take his chance of making her care for him--he not only told the truth, as far as he understood it, but perhaps he touched the highest point of heroism of which his selfish nature was capable.

All the same, the strong necessities of the case were the carrying out of the great enterprise which was symbolised by the half-built house, and the realisation of his schemes for his own enjoyment; the possession (and the securing from other men) of the most attractive, the most admired, and to him most loveable woman of his set, who had so to speak given him a legal lien upon her person; the maintenance of his social position and dignity, and the avoidance of ridicule and embarra.s.sment.

So when he had read Rachel's letter, with a great expense of bad language in the first place, and of wise reflection subsequently, he made up his mind that it was merely the result of their Adelonga differences, which had been rankling in her sensitive heart, and not the formal resignation that he would be required to accept.