"Ah! I never said I could do it. I could not tell him I did not care for him, and short of that nothing would stop it," sobbed Rachel, "only I wished to feel it was not very mean--very wrong." She laid her weary head on Ermine's lap, and Ermine bent down and kissed her.

"So happy, so bright and free, and capable, his life seems now,"

proceeded Rachel. "I can't understand his joining it to mine; and if people shunned and disliked him for my sake!"

"Surely that will depend on yourself. I have never seen you in society, but if you have the fear of making him unpopular or remarkable before your eyes, you will avoid it."

"Oh, yes, I know," said Rachel, impatiently. "I did think I should not have been a commonplace woman," and she shed a few tears.

Ermine was provoked with her, and began to think that she had been arguing on a wrong tack, and that it would be better after all for Alick to be free. Rachel looked up presently. "It must be very odd to you to hear me say so, but I can't help feeling the difference. I used to think it so poor and weak to be in love, or to want any one to take care of one. I thought marriage such ordinary drudgery, and ordinary opinions so contemptible, and had such schemes for myself. And this--and this is such a break down, my blunders and their consequences have been so unspeakably dreadful, and now instead of suffering, dying--as I felt I ought--it has only made me just like other women, for I know I could not live without him, and then all the rest of it must come for his sake."

"And will make you much more really useful and effective than ever you could have been alone," said Ermine.

"He does talk of doing things together, but, oh! I feel as if I could never dare put out my hand again!"

"Not alone perhaps."

"I like to hear him tell me about the soldiers' children, and what he wants to have done for them."

"You and I little thought what Lady Temple was to bring us," said Ermine, cheerfully, "but you see we are not the strongest creatures in the world, so we must resign ourselves to our fate, and make the best of it. They must judge how many imperfections they choose to endure, and we can only make the said drawbacks as little troublesome as may be. Now, I think I see Miss Curtis watching in fear that I am over-talking you."

"Oh, must you go? You have really comforted me! I wanted an external opinion very much, and I do trust yours! Only tell me," she added, holding Ermine's hand, "is this indeed so with you?"

"Not yet," said Ermine, softly, "do not speak about it, but I think you will be comforted to hear that this matter of yours, by leading to the matron's confession, may have removed an obstacle that was far more serious in my eyes than even my own helplessness, willing as Colin was to cast both aside. Oh, Rachel, there is a great deal to be thankful for."

Rachel lay down on her sofa, and fell asleep, nor did Alick find any occasion for blaming Grace when he returned the next day. The effect of the conversation had been to bring Rachel to a meek submission, very touching in its passiveness and weary peacefulness. She was growing stronger, walked out leaning on Alick's arm, and was even taken out by him in a boat, a wonderful innovation, for a dangerous accident to Mr.

Curtis had given the mother such a horror of the sea that no boating excursions had ever taken place during her solitary reign, and the present were only achieved by a wonderful stretch of dear Alexander's influence. Perhaps she trusted him the more, because his maimed hand prevented him from being himself an oarsman, though he had once been devoted to rowing. At any rate, with an old fisherman at the oar, many hours were spent upon the waters of the bay, in a tranquillity that was balm to the harassed spirit, with very little talking, now and then some reading aloud, but often nothing but a dreamy repose. The novelty and absence of old association was one secret of the benefit that Rachel thus derived. Any bustle or resumption of former habits was a trial to her shattered nerves, and brought back the dreadful haunted nights. The first sight of Conrade, still looking thin and delicate, quite overset her; a drive on the Avoncester road renewed all she had felt on the way thither; three or four morning visitors coming in on her unexpectedly, made the whole morbid sense of eyes staring at her recur all night, and when the London solicitor came down about the settlements, she shrank in such a painful though still submissive way, from the sight of a stranger, far more from the semblance of a dinner party, that the mother yielded, and let her remain in her sitting-room.

"May I come in?" said Alick, knocking at the door. "I have something to tell you."

"What, Alick! Not Mr. Williams come?"

"Nothing so good. In fact I doubt if you will think it good at all. I have been consulting this same solicitor about the title-deeds; that cheese you let fall, you know," he added, stroking her hand, and speaking so gently that the very irony was rather pleasant.

"Oh, it is very bad."

"Now wouldn't you like to hear it was so bad that I should have to sell out, and go to the diggings to make it up?"

"Now, Alick, if it were not for your sake, you know I should like--"

"I know you would; but you see, unfortunately, it was not a cheese at all, only a wooden block that the fox ran away with. Lawyers don't put people's title-deeds into such dangerous keeping, the true cheese is safe locked up in a tin-box in Mr. Martin's chambers in London."

"Then what did I give Mauleverer?"

"A copy kept for reference down here." Rachel hid her face.

"There, I knew you would think it no good news, and it is just a thunder-clap to me. All you wanted me for was to defend the mother and make up to the charity, and now there's no use in me," he said in a disconsolate tone.

"Oh, Alick, Alick, why am I so foolish?"

"Never mind; I took care Martin should not know it. Nobody is aware of the little affair but our two selves; and I will take care the fox learns the worth of his prize. Only now, Rachel, answer me, is there any use left for me still?"

"You should not ask me such things, Alick, you know it all too well."

"Not so well that I don't want to hear it. But I had more to say. This Martin is a man of very different calibre from old Cox, with a head and heart in London charities and churches, and it had struck him as it did you, that the Homestead had an easier bargain of it than that good namesake of yours had ever contemplated. If it paid treble or quadruple rent, the dear mother would never find it out, nor grow a geranium the less."

"No, she would not! But after all, the lace apprenticeships are poor work."

"So they are, but Martin says there would be very little difficulty in getting a private bill to enable the trustees to apply the sum otherwise for the benefit of the Avonmouth girls."

"Then if I had written to him, it would have been all right! Oh, my perverseness!"

"And, Rachel, now that money has been once so intended; suppose it kept its destination. About 500 would put up a tidy little industrial school, and you might not object to have a scholarship or two for some of our little --th Highlander lassies whose fathers won't make orphans of them for the regular military charities. What, crying, Rachel! Don't you like it?"

"It is my dream. The very thing I wished and managed so vilely. If Lovedy were alive! Though perhaps that is not the thing to wish. But I can't bear taking your--"

"Hush! You can't do worse than separate your own from mine. This is no part of the means I laid before Mr. Martin by way of proving myself a responsible individual. I took care of that. Part of this is prize-money, and the rest was a legacy that a rich old merchant put me down for in a transport of gratitude because his son was one of the sick in the bungalow where the shell came. I have had it these three or four months, and wondered what to do with it."

"This will be very beautiful, very excellent. And we can give the ground."

"I have thought of another thing. I never heard of an industrial school where the great want was not food for industry. Now I know the Colonel and Mr. Mitchell have some notion floating in their minds about getting a house for convalescents down here, and it strikes me that this might supply the work in cooking, washing, and so on. I think I might try what they thought of it."

Rachel could only weep out her shame and thankfulness, and when Alick reverently added that it was a scheme that would require much thought and much prayer, the pang struck her to the heart--how little she had prayed over the F. U. E. E. The prayer of her life had been for action and usefulness, but when she had seen the shadow in the stream, her hot and eager haste, her unconscious detachment from all that was not visible and material had made her adhere too literally to that misinterpreted motto, laborare est orare. How should then her eyes be clear to discern between substance and shadow?

CHAPTER XXIV. THE HONEYMOON.

"Around the very place doth brood A calm and holy quietude."--REV. ISAAC WILLIAMS.

The level beams of a summer sun, ending one of his longest careers, were tipping a mountain peak with an ineffable rosy purple, contrasting with the deep shades of narrow ravines that cleft the rugged sides, and gradually expanded into valleys, sloping with green pasture, or clothed with wood. The whole picture, with its clear, soft sky, was retraced on the waters of the little lake set in emerald meadows, which lay before the eyes of Rachel Keith, as she reclined in a garden chair before the windows of a pretty rustic-looking hotel, but there was no admiration, no peaceful contemplation on her countenance, only the same weary air of depression, too wistful and startled even to be melancholy repose, and the same bewildered distressed look that had been as it were stamped on her by the gaze of the many unfriendly eyes at the Quarter Sessions, and by her two unfortunate dinner parties.

The wedding was to have been quietness itself, but though the bridegroom had refused to contribute sister, brother-in-law, or even uncle to the numbers, conventionalities had been too strong for Mrs. Curtis, and "just one more" had been added to the guests till a sufficient multitude had been collected to renew all Rachel's morbid sensations of distress and bewilderment with their accompanying feverish symptoms, and she had been only able to proceed on her journey by very short stages, taken late in the day.

Alick had not forgotten her original views as to travelling, and as they were eventually to go to Scotland, had proposed beginning with Dutch reformatories and Swiss cretins; but she was so plainly unfit for extra fatigue and bustle, that the first few weeks were to be spent in Wales, where the enjoyment of fine scenery might, it was hoped, be beneficial to the jaded spirits, and they had been going through a course of passes and glens as thoroughly as Rachel's powers would permit, for any over-fatigue renewed feverishness and its delusive miseries, and the slightest alarm told upon the shattered nerves.

She did not easily give way at the moment, but the shock always took revenge in subsequent suffering, which all Alick's care could not prevent, though the exceeding charm of his tenderness rendered even the indisposition almost precious to her.

"What a lovely sunset!" he said, coming to lean over the back of her chair. "Have you been watching it?"

"I don't know."

"Are you very much tired?"

"No, it is very quiet here."