ions to do more
than speculate on what she would do if they should become more pointed,
and yet she felt angry and sore at having been exposed to so absurd a
blunder by the silence of the parties concerned. "After all," she said
to herself, "there can be no great harm done, I have not been weak
enough to commit my heart to the error. I am unscathed, and I will show
it by sympathy for Ermine. Only--only, why could not she have told me?"

An ordeal was coming for which Rachel was thus in some degree prepared.
On the return of the party from the book club, Mrs. Curtis came into
Rachel's sitting-room, and hung lingering over the fire as if she had
something to say, but did not know how to begin. At last, however, she
said, "I do really think it is very unfair, but it was not his fault, he
says."

"Who?" said Rachel, dreamily.

"Why, Colonel Keith, my dear," said good Mrs. Curtis, conceiving that
her pronominal speech had "broken" her intelligence; "it seems we were
mistaken in him all this time."

"What, about Miss Williams?" said Rachel, perceiving how the land lay;
"how did you hear it?"

"You knew it, my dear child," cried her mother in accents of extreme
relief.

"Only this afternoon, from Bessie Keith."

"And Fanny knew it all this time," continued Mrs. Curtis. "I cannot
imagine how she could keep it from me, but it seems Miss Williams was
resolved it should not be known. Colonel Keith said he felt it was wrong
to go on longer without mentioning it, and I could not but say that it
would have been a great relief to have known it earlier."

"As far as Fanny was concerned it would," said Rachel, looking into the
fire, but not without a sense of rehabilitating satisfaction, as
the wistful looks and tone of her mother convinced her that this
semi-delusion had not been confined to herself.

"I could not help being extremely sorry for him when he was telling me,"
continued Mrs. Curtis, as much resolved against uttering the idea as
Rachel herself could be. "It has been such a very long attachment, and
now he says he has not yet been able to overcome her scruples about
accepting him in her state. It is quite right of her, I can't say but it
is, but it is a very awkward situation."

"I do not see that," said Rachel, feeling the need of decision in order
to reassure her mother; "it is very sad and distressing in some ways,
but no one can look at Miss Williams without seeing that his return has
done her a great deal o