But, after all, Fate willed that this marriage should be but the chief episode in the story, and not the story itself, of Rachel's life.

One day, when she was flitting about her great drawing-room, with a basket of flowers on her arm, singing soft airs from "Don Giovanni"

under her breath as she busied herself with the arrangement of little groups of leaves and flowers in sundry precious receptacles here and there, a footman entered with a telegram.

"That is from your master," said Rachel, lifting it from the salver and tearing off the envelope.

"Wait a moment, James, until I see if there are any orders for you to take out."

She put down her flowers on the piano, read the brief message tranquilly, and then lifted her face with a smile.

"Ask Wilkinson to have the carriage ready at three o'clock," she said; "not the brougham, if it keeps as fine as it is now, the open carriage.

And tell cook I want to speak to her in half an hour.

"Your master is coming home to-day instead of Friday."

James said "Yes'm" and retired, and his mistress continued her occupation of arranging the flowers with more haste and eagerness than before.

Mr. Kingston had gone from home a few days previously to meet some distinguished foreign visitors at a friend's house in the country, a thing he did not often do, and she had stayed behind because little Alfred seemed to have symptoms of a bad cold coming on--which, however, had been happily checked at that stage.

She had not expected her lord's return just yet, but she concluded that he had not found the party amusing, or had been bored in some way, and so had excused himself from prolonging his visit; and she was glad of the accident, whatever it was, that was bringing him back so soon.

In the afternoon she went upstairs to get ready to go to the station to meet him. It was winter, and she clothed herself in rich furs--sealskin and sable, with the sealskin cap of old days on her shining head--against which the soft roundness of her cheek and throat, and the blush-rose delicacy of her complexion was particularly distinct and striking, and also the evident fact that, far from pining away, she had developed in health and strength quite as much as in beauty during the five or six years of her married life.

When she was dressed she went to the nursery, where her little boy ran to meet her, begging her to take him with her wherever she was going.

She caught him up in her arms and looked irresolutely at the imposing nurse, who was responding to his appeal in an official and determined manner, telling him that he must not cry to go in the carriage to-day; he must go for a nice walk with his nursey, because his dear papa did not like to be bothered with little boys when he was driving with his dear mamma (which was very true).

"Never mind, Alfy," said Rachel, hugging him to her maternal bosom, and covering his fair little face--which was very like her own--with kisses; "You shall go with mother next time, my sweet. Don't cry, dear little man! Suppose mother brings him home a pretty new toy? What shall mother bring Alfy home, nurse, eh?"

"I don't want toys, I want to go with you, mother," wailed Alfy.

"Oh, well, I think he might," said Rachel, weakly. "It is a fine afternoon, and he would enjoy it so! And his father hasn't seen him for four days. Dress him quickly, nurse, and I'll take him. You needn't come to-day, I can look after him quite well by myself for once."

Alfy was accordingly dressed, his nurse performing that operation silently, with a mien of severe disapproval, and his mother kneeling on the floor and helping her.

When he was ready--looking, Rachel thought, more nearly like an angel than ever child looked before--he was carried downstairs in her own caressing arms, resting his curly head on her sable collar, and clasping his mites of hands round her white throat; and she placed him in the carriage beside her, and tucked up his little legs in the soft bearskin, and they set forth together to Spencer Street in a state of beatific satisfaction and enjoyment, slightly qualified by Rachel's well-founded apprehension that her husband would scold her for spoiling the child and making a nursemaid of herself.

When Mr. Kingston arrived at the station, closely m.u.f.fled in overcoat and comforters, it was evident to Rachel's experienced eye--or ear rather, for as she knew he would object to her waiting unattended on the platform, she stayed in the carriage and sent the footman to meet him at the train and to take his baggage, and so heard him before she saw him--that he was in anything but a good temper.

He rated an unfortunate porter who drove a barrow in his way in unnecessarily violent terms, and then he demanded angrily of his servant why the d.i.c.kens they hadn't brought the brougham for him on such a bitter day.

"Oh, Graham," said Rachel, stretching out her hand, "how do you do, dear? I am so sorry!--but I thought you would like the open carriage best. It was beautifully mild when we started--it has been quite a warm day. And here is Alfy come to meet you. He is quite well, again, you see, and such a good little boy, aren't you, Alfy? He is taking care of his mother to-day, and sitting so quietly."

"Why did you bring him out in the cold?" responded the father snappishly. "And where's the nurse? At home? Upon my word, Rachel, we might as well be spared the expense of servants altogether, for all the use you make of them. No, I won't kiss him--I might give him a sore throat."

"Have you a sore throat, dear?" inquired Rachel meekly, tucking the child into her own corner of the carriage, and whispering to him to sit very still.

"I should rather say so--not so much a sore throat, perhaps, as a general bad cold--the most confounded bad cold I ever had in my life.

I'm regularly seedy and done up," grumbled Mr. Kingston, climbing into his seat beside her.

"Oh, dear, I'm so sorry!"

"That is why I have come home to-day," he added. "It's the most wretched thing to be in other people's houses when you don't feel well."

"Indeed it is," a.s.sented Rachel sympathetically; "and I am very glad you came back. How did you catch it, do you think?"

"I think I must have got it before I started. But that idiot Lambert sent an open trap to meet me--you know what a pouring wet day it turned out? --and I had to sit and be soaked for an hour and a half. Umbrellas were no good in that rain, and there was a sharp wind, too, and before we reached the house--great, cold barrack of a place, with stingy little coal fires--fancy _coal_ fires!--shows what an idiot the fellow is, and she's worse--before we got there I was thoroughly wet through, and chilled to the bone. I never was so cold in my life. I took a hot bath before I dressed for dinner, and I got Lambert to send me up some brandy, but it was no use--it seemed to have regularly struck into me. I _couldn't_ get warm--not till about the middle of the night, and then I felt as if I'd got a fever. I believe I have too."

"Oh, Graham, I hope not."

"It has settled on my chest," he went on. "I haven't been able to sleep for coughing--you know I have never had a cough in my life--and I can't draw a breath without feeling as if I was dragging something up by the roots. Can't you hear how I breathe? You never heard me breathe like that before did you?"

Rachel turned her blooming face, now grave and anxious, to listen to his respiration, which certainly was strangely quick and laboured, and noisy, and she was struck by a great change in _his_ since she had seen it four days ago. It had become all at once wrinkled, and hollow, and haggard--the face of an old man.

"Oh, my dear," she exclaimed, in an accent of genuine distress, "you _have_ got a bad cold, indeed! Hadn't you better call on the doctor at once--it won't be much out of our way--and see what he says about it? It may be nothing, but I think it seems like bronchitis, and it is best to be on the safe side."

"I think I will," said Mr. Kingston, covering his mouth with his wraps again. "It seems worse than it was when I started--the cold day, I suppose. Hang it, I wish you had brought the brougham--it is colder than ever!"

And he shivered under an acc.u.mulation of great-coats and furs that one would have thought sufficient for the temperature of polar regions.

The carriage was stopped in Collins Street, and remained in the doctors' quarter until little Alfy fell asleep, and was temporarily put to bed under the long, soft skirt of his mother's jacket. Then, as the dusk was falling, Mr. Kingston came back to his place, and tremulously commanded the coachman to drive home as fast as he possibly could.

"He says it is inflammation of the lungs, Rachel," he whispered excitedly, "and that I must go to bed at once. Only a touch he called it, but he didn't look as if he thought it a touch. He is coming up to-night to do something. He says I ought to have come home the first day, and not have let it run on. Inflammation of the lungs--that is a dreadful thing, isn't it? I have never had it, but I have heard of it--it's a most dangerous complaint!"

"Oh, no, dear, not dangerous, except when people are careless," said Rachel soothingly, taking his hand under the fur rug and clasping it between her own. "And now you are home, with me to nurse you, you will soon get all right. Many people have it slightly--it is quite a common thing with a bad cold--but when they are well nursed and taken care of, they soon get all right again."

"Good little woman! you will take care of me, I know."

"Indeed I will," she responded, slipping up one hand under his arm, and resting her cheek on his coat-sleeve. "I wish you had come back to me before. But, once I get you fairly into my hands, I'll soon nurse you round."

However, though she did all that a woman and a wife, and one born to be the genius of a sick room, could do, she did not nurse him round. By the time he reached home, where the household was thrown into a panic of consternation, he was very ill indeed--his fright about himself helping very much to develop the bad symptoms rapidly; and the doctor, who next day summoned other doctors in consultation upon the case, p.r.o.nounced him--not in words, but by unmistakable signs--to be in a serious and critical condition. The attack had been severe from the first; it had been allowed to run on for several days; and the const.i.tution of the patient, enervated and shattered by years of unwholesome indulgence, was as little fitted to stand an illness as any const.i.tution could be.

The pain in breathing grew worse and worse, and the fever hotter and drier; and then stupor came on, and delirium, and exhaustion, and by and bye a filmy cloud over the sunken eyes, and a dusky pallor over the old, old, wrinkled face; and, in spite of all the doctors, and all the nurses, and all that money could do--in spite of the agonised devotion of his young wife, who never left him for more than five minutes at a time, taking s.n.a.t.c.hes of sleep only when he slept, sitting by the bedside, and resting her tired head on the same pillow that she smoothed for his--it was over in less than a week. And a little paragraph appeared in "The Argus" one morning, to shock that small world of which he had so long been a distinguished ornament, with the incomprehensible intelligence that he was "gone," and would never be seen at a club mess or in a festive drawing-room again.

On the night of his death, when fever and pain and restlessness were sinking away with the sinking pulse, and when Rachel, watching beside him, thought he was past knowing anyone--even her--he looked at her with a gleam of loving recognition. "Good little woman!" he muttered in a struggling whisper. "Dear, good little woman!"

She stooped over him at once with a yearning pa.s.sion of pity and vague remorse, and kissed him, and laid her white arms about him, raining tears on his dying face and his cold limp hands.

"Oh, Graham, Graham, I have not been good enough to you!" she cried.

"And you have been so good--so kind--to me!"

He continued to look at her with dull wistful, pathetic eyes.

"Have I?" he gasped, feebly. "Have I?"

And then the gleam died out of his face in the shrouding darkness that was creeping over him. He was quiet for several minutes, and Rachel laid her cheek on the pillow beside him, and listened to the faint rattle which now and then told that the "step or two dubious of twilight"

between sleep and death was not yet crossed, motioning the other watchers away from the bedside, that he and she might be alone together.