support, "indeed, I don't know that I could sit out a dinner! A number
of people together make me so dizzy and confused."

"Poor child!" said Miss Wellwood, kindly, but looking to Mrs. Curtis
in her turn. "Perhaps, as she has been so ill, the evening might be
enough."

"Oh," exclaimed Rachel, "I hope to be in bed before you have finished
dinner. Indeed I am not good company for any one."

"Don't say that, my dear," and Miss Wellwood looked puzzled.

"Indeed, my dear," said Mrs. Curtis, evidently distressed, "I think the
exertion would be good for you, if you could only think so."

"Yes, indeed," said Miss Wellwood, catching at the notion; "it is your
mind that needs the distraction, my dear."

"I am distracted enough already," poor Rachel said, putting her hand up.
"Indeed, I do not want to be disobliging," she said, interpreting her
mother's anxious gestures to mean that she was wanting in civility; "it
is very kind in you, Miss Wellwood, but this has been a very trying day,
and I am sure I can give no pleasure to anybody, so if I might only be
let off."

"It is not so much--" began Miss Wellwood, getting into a puzzle, and
starting afresh. "Indeed, my dear, my brother and I could not bear that
you should do anything you did not like, only you see it would never do
for you to seem to want to shut yourself up."

"I should think all the world must feel as if I ought to be shut up for
life," said Rachel, dejectedly.

"Ah! but that is the very thing. If you do not show yourself it will
make such a talk."

Rachel had nearly said, "Let them talk;" but though she felt tormented
to death, habitual respect to these two gentle, nervous, elderly women
made her try to be courteous, and she said, "Indeed, I cannot much care,
provided I don't hear them."

"Ah! but you don't know, my dear," said Mrs. Curtis, seeing her friend
looked dismayed at this indifference. "Indeed, dear Miss Wellwood, she
does not know; we thought it would be so awkward for her in court."

"Know what?" exclaimed Rachel, sitting upright, and putting down her
feet. "What have you been keeping from me?"

"Only--only, my dear, people will say such things, and nobody could
think it that knew you."

"What?" demanded Rachel.

"Yes," said Mrs. Curtis, perhaps, since her daughter was to have the
shock, rather glad to have a witness to the surprise it caused her: "you
know people will gossip, and some one has put it about that--that this
horrid man wa