magisterial days.

Persuasion was unavailing. At any cost the Curtis family must present
an unassailable front to the public eye, and if Mrs. Curtis had forced
forward her much tried and suffering daughter, far more would she
persist in devoting herself to gaiety and indifference, but her
nervousness was exceeding, and betrayed itself in a continual wearying
for Grace, without whom neither her own dress nor Rachel's could be
arranged to her satisfaction, and she was absolutely incapable of not
worrying Rachel about every fold, every plait, every bow, in a manner
that from any one else would have been unbearable; but those tears
had frightened Rachel into a penitent submission that endured with an
absolute semblance of cheerfulness each of these torments. The languor
and exhaustion had been driven away, and feverish excitement had set in,
not so much from the spirit of defiance that the two elder ladies had
expected to excite, as from the having been goaded into a reckless
determination to sustain her part. No matter for the rest.

It often happened in these parties that the ladies would come in from
the country in reasonable time, while their lords would be detained
much later in court, so when the cathedral clock had given notice of
the half-hour, Mrs. Curtis began to pick up fan and handkerchief, and
prepare to descend. Rachel suggested there would be no occasion so to
do till Grace's return, since it was plain that no one could yet be
released.

"Yes, my dear, but perhaps--don't you think it might be remarked as if
you chose to keep out of sight?"

"Oh, very well."

Rachel followed her mother down, sustained by one hope, that Captain
Keith would be there. No; the Deanery did not greatly patronize the
barracks; there was not much chance of any gentleman under forty,
except, perhaps, in the evening. And at present the dean himself and
one canon were the entire gentleman element among some dozen ladies.
Everybody knew that the cause of delay was the trial of the cruel
matron, and added to the account of Rachel's iniquities their famished
and weary state of expectation, the good Dean gyrating among the groups,
trying to make conversation, which every one felt too fretful and
too hungry to sustain with spirit. Rachel sat it out, trying to talk
whenever she saw her mother's anxious eyes upon her, but failing in
finding anything to say, and much doubting whether her neighbours liked
talking to her.

At last gentlem