shall only live a little while longer--a very little while." The
contrast between this and her buoyant announcement on the previous
day that she was not going to die just yet was highly disturbing,
but Rachel could not protest or even speak. "A very little while!"
repeated Mrs. Maldon reflectively. "I've not known you long--as you
say--Rachel. But I've never seen a girl I liked more, if you don't
mind me telling you. I've never seen a girl I thought better of. And I
don't think I could die in peace if I thought Louis was going to
cause you any trouble after I'm gone. No, I couldn't die in peace if I
thought that."

And Rachel, intimately moved, thought: "She has saved me from
something dreadful!" (Without trying to realize precisely from what.)
"How splendid she is!"

And she cast out from her mind all the multitudinous images of Louis
Fores that were there. And, full of affection, and flattered pride and
gratitude and childlike admiration, she bent down and rewarded the old
woman who had so confided in her with a priceless girlish kiss. And
she had the sensation of beginning a new life.

III

And yet, a few moments later, when Mrs. Maldon faintly murmured, "Some
one at the front door," Rachel grew at once uneasy, and the new life
seemed an illusion--either too fine to be true or too leaden to be
desired; and she was swaying amid uncertainties. Perhaps Louis was at
the front door. He had not yet called; but surely he was bound to call
some time during the day! Of the dozen different Rachels in Rachel,
one adventurously hoped that he would come, and another feared that he
would come; one ruled him sharply out of the catalogue of right-minded
persons, and another was ready passionately to defend him.

"I think not," said Rachel.

"Yes, dear; I heard some one," Mrs. Maldon insisted.

Mrs. Maldon, long practised in reconstructing the life of the street
from trifling hints of sound heard in bed, was not mistaken. Rachel,
opening the door of the bedroom, caught the last tinkling of the
front-door bell below. On the other side of the front door somebody
was standing--Louis Fores, or another!

"It may be the doctor," she said brightly, as she left the bedroom.
The coward in her wanted it to be the doctor. But, descending the
stairs, she could see plainly through the glass that Louis himself was
at the front door. The Rachel that feared was instantly uppermost in
her. She was conscious of dread. From the breathless