ook every opportunity of impressing on
Rachel that all was the result of her summons to the rescue. Ermine
wished Rachel had found out who was the bishop's chaplain who rejected
him, but allowed that it would have been an awkward question to ask, and
also she wondered if he were a university man; but Mr. Touchett had been
at a Hall, and never knew anybody, besides being so firmly convinced
that Mr. Mauleverer was a pestiferous heretic, that no one, except Lady
Temple, could have obtained a patient answer from him on that head--and
even with her he went the length of a regret that she had given the
sanction of her name to an undertaking by a person of whose history and
principles nothing satisfactory was known. "Oh!" said Fanny, with her
sweet look of asking pardon, "I am so sorry you think so; Rachel wished
it so much, and it seems such a nice thing for the poor children."

"Indeed," said Mr. Touchett, well nigh disarmed by the look, "I am quite
sensible of the kindness of all you do, I only ventured to wish there
had been a little more delay, that we were more certain about this
person."

"When Colonel Keith comes back he will find out all about him, I
am sure," said Fanny, and Mr. Touchett, to whom seemed to have been
transferred Rachel's dislike to the constant quoting of Colonel Keith,
said no more.

The immediate neighbourhood did not very readily respond to the appeal
to it in behalf of the lace-makers. People who did not look into the
circumstances of their neighbours thought lace furnished a good trade,
and by no means wished to enhance its price; people who did care for the
poor had charities of their own, nor was Rachel Curtis popular enough
to obtain support for her own sake; a few five-pound notes, and a scanty
supply of guineas and half-guineas from people who were ready at any
cost to buy off her vehement eyes and voice was all she could obtain,
and with a subscription of twenty pounds each from her mother, Lady
Temple, and Grace, and all that she could scrape together of her own,
hardly seemed sufficient to meet the first expenses, and how would the
future be provided for? She calculated how much she could spare out of
her yearly income, and actually, to the great horror of her mother and
the coachman, sold her horse.

Bessie Keith was the purchaser. It was an expense that she could quite
afford, for she and her brother had been left very well off by their
father--a prudent man, who, having been a wid