ine, after a pause, "he were not so
unreasonably prejudiced against me. You may think me weak, Rachel, but I
have a sort of yearning for family ties."

"Why should I think you weak? It is a natural and I suppose a healthy
feeling. _I_ don't understand it myself because I never had any.
Isolation is my second nature. The only human being that ever treated me
with tenderness and loyal friendship is yourself, and what you have been
to me, what I feel toward you, none can know, for I can never tell."

"Dear Rachel! How glad I am to have been of use to you! And you amply
repay me, you are looking so much better. Tell me, are you not feeling
content and happy?"

Rachel smiled, a smile somewhat grim in spite of the soft lips it
parted. "I am resigned, and I have found an object to live for, and you
know what an improvement that is compared to the condition you found me
in. But I don't think I am really any more in love with life now than I
was then. However, I am more mistress of myself." She paused, and her
face grew very grave as she leaned back in her chair, her arm and small
hand, closely shut, resting on the table beside her.

"All the minute details, the thought and anxiety, my business, or rather
our business, requires an enormous help--it is such a boon to be too
weary at night-time to think! But _no_ amount of work, of care, can
quite shut out the light of other days. It is no doubt wrong, immoral,
unworthy of a reformed outcast, but _if_ my real heart's desire could
be fulfilled, I would live over again those few months of exquisite
happiness, and die before waking to the terrible reality of my
insignificance in the sight of him who was more than life to me--die
while I was still something to be missed, to be regretted. He would have
tired of me had I been his wife, and that would have been as terrible as
my present lot--even more, for I must have seen his weariness day by
day, and no amount of social esteem would have consoled me. As it is, my
real self seems to have died, and this creature"--striking her
breast--"was a cunningly contrived machine, that can work, and
understand, but, save for one friend, cannot feel. I do not even look
back to _him_ with any regretful tenderness. I do not love him--that is
dead. I do not hate him--I have no right. He did not deceive me; I
voluntarily overstepped the line which separates the reputable and
disreputable; as long as I was loved and cherished I never felt as if I
had