s--"

Mrs. Curtis paused, Miss Wellwood was as pink as her cap strings. Rachel
grasped the meaning at last. "Oh!" she said, with less reticence than
her elders, "there must needs be a spice of flirtation to give piquancy
to the mess of gossip! I don't wonder, there are plenty of people
who judge others by themselves, and think that motive must underlie
everything! I wonder who imagines that I am fallen so low?"

"There, I knew she would take it in that way," said Mrs. Curtis. "And so
you understand us, my dear, we could not bear to ask you to do anything
so distressing except for your own sake."

"I am far past caring for my own sake," said Rachel, "but for yours and
Grace's, mother, I will give as much ocular demonstration as I can, that
I am not pining for this hero with a Norman name. I own I should have
thought none of the Dean's friends would have needed to be convinced."

"Oh, no! no! but--" Miss Wellwood made a great confusion of noes, buts,
and my dears, and Mrs. Curtis came to the rescue. "After all, my love,
one can't so much wonder! You have always been very peculiar, you know,
and so clever, and you took up this so eagerly. And then the Greys saw
you so unwilling to prosecute. And--and I have always allowed you too
much liberty--ever since your poor dear papa was taken--and now it has
come upon you, my poor child! Oh, I hope dear Fanny will take warning by
me," and off went poor Mrs. Curtis into a fit of sobs.

"Mother--mother! this is worse than anything," exclaimed Rachel in an
agony, springing to her feet, and flying after sal volatile, but feeling
frightfully helpless without Grace, the manager of all Mrs. Curtis's
ailments and troubles. Grace would have let her quietly cry it out.
Rachel's remedies and incoherent protestations of all being her own
fault only made things worse, and perhaps those ten minutes were the
most overwhelming of all the griefs that Rachel had brought on herself.
However, what with Miss Wellwood's soothing, and her own sense of the
becoming, Mrs. Curtis struggled herself into composure again by the time
the maid came to dress them for dinner; Rachel all the while longing for
Grace's return, not so much for the sake of hearing the verdict, as of
knowing whether the mother ought to be allowed to go down to dinner, so
shaken did she look; for indeed, besides her distress for her daughter,
no small ingredient in her agitation was this recurrence to a stated
custom of her husband's