A hand was on the door, and Rachel fled, in time to screen her flight
from Miss Wellwood, whom Alick met with his usual undisturbed front, and
inquiries for Mrs. Curtis.

That good lady was in the town more worried than flattered by the
numerous inquiries after Rachel's health, and conscious of having gone
rather near the wind in making the best of it. She had begun to dread
being accosted by any acquaintance, and Captain Keith, sauntering near
the archway of the close, was no welcome spectacle. She would have
passed him with a curt salutation, but he grasped her hand, saying, "May
I have a few words with you?"

"Not Fanny--not the children!" cried Mrs. Curtis in dismay.

"No indeed. Only myself," and a gleam of intelligence under his
eyelashes and judicious pressure of his hand conveyed volumes to Grace,
who had seen him often during Rachel's illness, and was not unprepared.
She merely said that she would see how her sister was, substituted
Captain Keith's arm for her own as her mother's support, and hurried
away, to encounter Miss Wellwood's regrets that, in spite of all her
precautions, dear Rachel had been disturbed by "a young officer, I
believe. We see him often at the cathedral, and somebody said it was his
sister whom Lord Keith married."

"Yes, we know him well, and he is a Victoria Cross man," said Grace,
beginning to assume his reflected glory.

"So some one said, but the Dean never calls on the officers unless there
is some introduction, or there would be no end to it. It was a mistake
letting him in to disturb Rachel. Is your mother gone up to her, my
dear?"

"No, I think she is in the cathedral yard. I just came in to see about
Rachel," said Grace, escaping.

Miss Wellwood intended going out to join her old friend; but, on going
to put on her bonnet, she saw from the window Mrs. Curtis, leaning on
the intruder's arm, conversing so confidentially that the Dean's sister
flushed with amazement, and only hoped she had mentioned him with due
respect. And under that southern cathedral wall good Mrs. Curtis took
the longest walk she had indulged in for the last twenty years, so that
Grace, and even Rachel, beholding from the window, began to fear that
the mother would be walked to death.

But then she had that supporting arm, and the moral support, that was
infinitely more! That daughter, the spoilt pet of her husband, the
subject of her pride, even when an enigma and an anxiety, whom she had
lately