"How do you know?" she asked.

"By the sound of your move across the room, and the stream of talk I heard above must be enough to exhaust any one."

"She thinks badly of that poor child," said Rachel, her voice trembling.

"My dear, it would take a good deal to make me uneasy about anything I heard in that voice."

"And if he lives, she is to have the charge of him," added Rachel.

"That is another matter on which I would suspend my fears," said Mr.

Clare. "Come out, and take a turn in the peacock path. You want air more than rest. So you have been talked to death."

"And I am afraid she is gone to talk Alick to death! I wonder when Alick will come home," she proceeded, as they entered on the path. "She says Colonel Keith had a telegram about the result of the trial, but she does not know what it was, nor indeed who was tried."

"Alick will not keep you in doubt longer than he can help," said Mr.

Clare.

"You know all about it;" said Rachel. "The facts every one must know, but I mean that which led to them."

"Alick told me you had suffered very much."

"I don't know whether it is a right question, but if it is, I should much like to know what Alick did say. I begged him to tell you all, or it would not have been fair towards you to bring me here."

"He told me that he knew you had been blind and wilful, but that your confidence had been cruelly abused, and you had been most unselfish throughout."

"I did not mean so much what I had done as what I am--what I was."

"The first time he mentioned you, it was as one of the reasons that he wished to take our dear Bessie to Avonmouth. He said there was a girl there of a strong spirit, independent and thorough-going, and thinking for herself. He said, 'to be sure, she generally thinks wrong, but there's a candour and simplicity about her that make her wildest blunders better than parrot commonplace,' and he thought your reality might impress his sister. Even then I gathered what was coming."

"And how wrong and foolish you must have thought it."

"I hoped I might trust my boy's judgment."

"Indeed, you could not think it worse for him than I did; but I was ill and weak, and could not help letting Alick do what he would; but I have never understood it. I told him how unsettled my views were, and he did not seem to mind--"

"My dear, may I ask if this sense of being unsettled is with you still?"

"I don't know! I had no power to read or think for a long time, and now, since I have been here, I hope it has not been hypocrisy, for going on in your way and his has been very sweet to me, and made me feel as I used when I was a young girl, with only an ugly dream between. I don't like to look at it, and yet that dream was my real life that I made for myself."

"Dear child, I have little doubt that Alick knew it would come to this."

Rachel paused. "What, you and he think a woman's doubts so vague and shallow as to be always mastered by a husband's influence?"

Mr. Clare was embarrassed. If he had thought so he had not expected her to make the inference. He asked her if she could venture to look back on her dream so as to mention what had chiefly distressed her. He could not see her frowning effort at recollection, but after a pause, she said, "Things will seem to you like trifles, indeed, individual criticisms appear so to me; but the difficulty to my mind is that I don't see these objections fairly grappled with. There is either denunciation or weak argument; but I can better recollect the impression on my own mind than what made it."

"Yes, I know that feeling; but are you sure you have seen all the arguments?"

"I cannot tell--perhaps not. Whenever I get a book with anything in it, somebody says it is not sound."

"And you therefore conclude that a sound book can have nothing in it?"

he asked, smiling.

"Well, most of the new 'sound' books that I have met are just what my mother and sister like--either dull, or sentimental and trashy."

"Perhaps those that get into popular circulation do deserve some of your terms for them. Illogical replies break down and carry off some who have pinned their faith to them; but are you sure that though you have read much, you have read deep?"

"I have read more deeply than any one I know--women, I mean--or than any man ever showed me he had read. Indeed, I am trying not to say it in conceit, but Ermine Williams does not read argumentative books, and gentlemen almost always make as if they knew nothing about them."

"I think you may be of great use to me, my dear, if you will help me.

The bishop has desired me to preach the next visitation sermon, and he wishes it to be on some of these subjects. Now, if you will help me with the book work, it will be very kind in you, and might serve to clear your mind about some of the details, though you must be prepared for some questions being unanswered."

"Best so," replied Rachel, "I don't like small answers to great questions."

"Nor I. Only let us take care not to get absorbed in admiring the boldness that picks out stones to be stumbled over."

"Do you object to my having read, and thought, and tried?"

"Certainly not. Those who have the capability should, if they feel disturbed, work out the argument. Nothing is gained while it is felt that both sides have not been heard. I do not myself believe that a humble, patient, earnest spirit can go far wrong, though it may for a time be tried, and people often cry out at the first stumbling block, and then feel committed to the exclamations they have made."

The conversation was here ended by the sight of Alick coming slowly and wearily in from the churchyard, looking as if some fresh weight were upon him, and he soon told them that the doctors had pronounced that Lord Keith was in a critical state, and would probably have much to suffer from the formation that had begun where he had received the neglected bruise in the side. No word of censure of poor Bessie had been breathed, nor did Alick mention her name, but he deeply suffered under the fulfilment of his own predictions, and his subdued, dejected manner expressed far more than did his words. Rachel asked how Lord Keith seemed.

"Oh, there's no getting at his feelings. He was very civil to me--asked after you, Rachel--told me to give you his thanks, but not a single word about anything nearer. Then I had to read the paper to him--all that dinner at Liverpool, and he made remarks, and expected me to know what it was about. I suppose he does feel; the Colonel says he is exceedingly cut up, and he looks like a man of eighty, infinitely worse than last time I saw him, but I don't know what to make of him."

"And, Alick, did you hear the verdict?"

"What verdict?"

"That man at Avoncester. Mrs. Menteith said there had been a telegram."

Alick looked startled. "This has put everything out of my head!" he said. "What was the verdict?"

"That was just what she could not tell. She did not quite know who was tried."

"And she came here and harassed you with it," he said, looking at her anxiously. "As if you had not gone through enouqh already."

"Never mind that now. It seems so long ago now that I can hardly think much about it, and I have had another visitor," she added, as Mr. Clare left them to themselves, "Mrs. Carleton--that poor son of hers is in such distress."

"She has been palavering you over," he said, in a tone more like displeasure than he had ever used towards her.

"Indeed, Alick, if you would listen, you would find him very much to be pitied."

"I only wish never to hear of any of them again." He did not speak like himself, and Rachel was aghast.

"I thought you would not object to my letting her in," she began.

"I never said I did," he answered; "I can never think of him but as having caused her death, and it was no thanks to him that there was nothing worse."

The sternness of his manner would have silenced Rachel but for her strong sense of truth and justice, which made her persevere in saying, "There may have been more excuse than you believe."