Above an hour had passed after the interruption mentioned at the end of the last chapter before Mrs Ray and Rachel crossed back from the farmhouse to the cottage, and when they went they went alone. During that hour they had been sitting in Mrs Sturt’s parlour; and when at last they got up to go they did not press Luke Rowan to go with them. Mrs Prime was at the cottage, and it was necessary that everything should be explained to her before she was asked to give her hand to her future brother-in-law. The farmer had come in and had joked his joke, and Mrs Sturt had clacked over them as though they were a brood of chickens of her own hatching; and Mrs Ray had smiled and cried, and sobbed and laughed till she had become almost hysterical. Then she had jumped up from her seat, saying, “Oh, dear, what will Dorothea think has become of us?” After that Rachel insisted upon going, and the mother and daughter returned across the green, leaving Luke at the farmhouse, ready to take his departure as soon as Mrs Ray and Rachel should have safely reached their home.

“I knew thee was minded steadfast to take her”, said Mrs Sturt, “when it came out upon the newspaper how thou hadst told them all in Baslehurst that thou wouldst wed none but a Baslehurst lass.”

In answer to this Luke protested that he had not thought of Rachel when he was making that speech, and tried to explain that all that was “soft sawder,” as he called it, for the election. But the words were too apposite to the event, and the sentiment too much in accordance with Mrs Sturt’s chivalric views to allow of her admitting the truth of any such assurance as this.

“I know,” she said; “I know. And when I read them words in the newspaper I said to the gudeman there, we shall have bride-cake from the cottage now before Christmas.”

“For the matter of that, so you shall,” said Luke, shaking hands with her as he went, “or the fault will not be mine.”

Rachel, as she followed her mother out from the farmyard gate, had not a word to say. Could it have been possible she would have wished to remain silent for the remainder of the evening and for the night, so that she might have time to think of this thing which she had done, and a enjoy the full measure of her happiness. Hitherto she had hardly had any joy in her love. The cup had been hardly given to her to drink before it had been again snatched away, and since then she had been left to think that the draught for which she longed would never again be offered to her lips. The whole affair had now been managed so suddenly, and the action had been so quick, that she had hardly found a moment for thought. Could it be that things were so fixed that there was no room for further disappointment? She had been scalded so cruelly that she still feared the hot water. Her heart was sore with the old hurt, as the head that has ached will be still sore when the actual malady has passed away. She longed for hours of absolute quiet, in which she might make herself sure that her malady had also passed away, and that the soreness which remained came only from the memory of former pain. But there was no such perfect rest within her reach as yet.

“Will you tell her or shall I?” said Mrs Ray, pausing for a moment at the cottage gate.

“You had better tell her, mamma.”

“I suppose she won’t set herself against it; will she?”

“I hope not, mamma. I shall think her very ill-natured if she does. But it can t make any real difference now, you know.”

“No; it can’t make any difference. Only it will be so uncomfortable.”

Then with half-frightened, muffled steps they entered their own house, and joined Mrs Prime in the sitting-room.

Mrs Prime was still reading the serious book; but I am bound to say that her mind had not been wholly intent upon it during the long absence of her mother and sister. She had struggled for a time to ignore the slight fact that her companions were away gossiping with the neighbouring farmer’s wife: she had made a hard fight with her book, pinning her eyes down upon the page over and over again, as though in pinning down her eyes she could pin down her mind also. But by degrees the delay became so long that she was tantalised into surmises as to the subject of their conversation. If it were not wicked, why should not she have been allowed to share it? She did not imagine it to be wicked according to the world’s ordinary wickedness — but she feared that it was wicked according to that tone of morals to which she was desirous of tying her mother down as a bond slave. They were away talking about love and pleasure, and those heart-throbbings in which her sister had so unfortunately been allowed to indulge. She felt all but sure that some tidings of Luke Rowan had been brought in Mrs Sturt’s budget of news, and she had never been able to think well of Luke Rowan since the evening on which she had seen him standing with Rachel in the churchyard. She knew nothing against him; but she had then made up her mind that he was pernicious, and she could not bring herself to own that she had been wrong in that opinion. She had been loud and defiant in her denunciation when she had first suspected Rachel of having a lover. Since that she had undergone some troubles of her own by which the tone of her remonstrances had been necessarily moderated; but even now she could not forgive her sister such a lover as Luke Rowan. She would have been quite willing to see her sister married, but the lover should have been dingy, black-coated, lugubrious, having about him some true essence of the tears of the valley of tribulation. Alas, her sister’s taste was quite of another kind!

“I’m afraid you will have been thinking that we were never coming back again,” said Mrs Ray, as she entered the room.

“No, mother. I didn’t think that. But I thought you were staying late with Mrs Sturt.”

“So we were — and really I didn’t think we had been so long. But, Dorothea, there was someone else over there besides Mrs Sturt, and be kept us.”

“He! What he?” said Mrs Prime. She had not even suspected that the lover had been over there in prison.

“Mr Rowan, my dear. He has been at the farm.”

“What! the young man that was dismissed from Mr Tappitt’s?”

It was ill said of her — very ill said, and so she was herself aware as soon as the words were out of her mouth. But she could not help it. She had taken a side against Luke Rowan, and could not restrain herself from ill-natured words. Rachel was still standing in the middle of the room when she heard her lover thus described; but she would not condescend to plead in answer to such a charge. The colour came to her cheeks, and she threw up her head with a gesture of angry pride, but at the moment she said nothing. Mrs Ray spoke.

“It seems to me, Dorothea,” she said, “that you are mistaken there. I think he has dismissed Mr Tappitt.”

“I don’t know much about it,” said Mrs Prime; “I only know that they’ve quarrelled.”

“But it would be well that you should learn, because I’m sure you will be glad to think as well of your brother-in-law as possible.”

“Do you mean that he is engaged to marry Rachel?”

“Yes, Dorothea. I think we may say that it is all settled now — mayn’t we, Rachel? And a very excellent young man he is — and as for being well off, a great deal better than what a child of mine could have expected. And a fine comely fellow he is, as a woman’s eye would wish to rest on.”

“Beauty is but skin deep,” said Mrs Prime, with no little indignation in her tone, that a thing so vile as personal comeliness should have been mentioned by her mother on such an occasion.

“When he came out here and drank tea with us that evening,” continued Mrs Ray, “I took a liking to him most unaccountable, unless it was that I had a foreshadowing that he was going to be so near and dear to me.”

“Mother, there can have been nothing of the kind. You should not say such things. The Lord in His providence allows us no foreshadowing of that kind.”

“At any rate I liked him very much; didn’t I, Rachel? — from the first moment I set eyes on him. Only I don’t think he’ll ever do away with cider in Devonshire, because of the apple trees. But if people are to drink beer it stands to reason that good beer will be better than bad.”

All this time Rachel had not spoken a word, nor had her sister uttered anything expressive of congratulation or good wishes. Now, as Mrs Ray ceased, there came, a silence in the room, and it was incumbent on the elder sister to break it.

“If this matter is settled, Rachel —”

“It is settled — I think,” said Rachel.

“If it is settled I hope that it may be for your lasting happiness and eternal welfare.”

“I hope it will,” said Rachel.

“Marriage is a most important step.”

“That’s quite true, my dear,” said Mrs Ray.

“A most important step, and one that requires the most exact circumspection — especially on the part of the young woman. I hope you may have known Mr Rowan long enough to justify your confidence in him.”

It was still the voice of a raven! Mrs Prime as she spoke thus knew that she was croaking, and would have divested herself of her croak and spoken joyously, had such mode of speech been possible to her. But it was not possible. Though she would permit no such foreshadowings as those at which her mother had hinted, she had committed herself to forebodings against this young man, to such extent that she could not wheel her thoughts round and suddenly think well of him. She could not do so as yet, but she would make the struggle.

“God bless you, Rachel!” she said, when they parted for the night. “You have my best wishes for your happiness. I hope you do not doubt my love because I think more of your welfare in another world than in this.” Then she kissed her sister and they parted for the night.

Rachel now shared her mother’s room; and from her mother, when they were alone together, she received abundance of that sympathy for which her heart was craving.

“You mustn’t mind Dorothea,” the widow said.

“No, mamma; I do not.”

“I mean that you mustn’t mind her seeming to be so hard. She means well through it all and is as affectionate as any other woman.”

“Why did she say that he had been dismissed when she knew that it wasn’t true?”

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