s, and glasses; dishes of
fragmentary remains of cake and chocolate; plates smeared with roseate
ham, sticky teaspoons, loaded ash-trays, and a large general crumby
mess--Rachel, the downright, the contemner of silly social prejudices
and all nonsense, was actually puffed up because she had a servant in
a cap and because automobiles had deposited elegant girls at her door
and whirled them off again. And she would have denied it and yet was
not ashamed.

The sole extenuation of Rachel's base worldliness was that during the
previous six months she had almost continuously had the sensations of
a person crossing Niagara on a tight-rope, and that now, on this very
day, she had leaped to firm ground and was accordingly exultant. After
Mrs. Maldon's death she had felt somehow guilty of disloyalty; she
passionately regretted having had no opportunity to assure the old
lady that her suspicions about Louis were wrong and cruel, and
to prove to her in some mysterious way the deep rightness of the
betrothal. She blushed only for the moment of her betrothal. She had
solemnly bound Louis to keep the betrothal secret until Christmas. She
had laid upon both of them a self-denying ordinance as to meeting.
The funeral over, she was without a home. She wished to find another
situation; Louis would not hear of it. She contemplated a visit to her
father and brother in America. In response to a letter, her brother
sent her the exact amount of the steerage fare, and, ready to accept
it, she was astounded at Louis' fury against her brother and at the
accent with which he had spit out the word "steerage." Her brother
and father had gone steerage. However, she gave way to Louis, chiefly
because she could not bear to leave him even for a couple of months.
She was lodging at Knype, at a total normal expense of ten shillings
a week. She possessed over fifty pounds--enough to keep her for six
months and to purchase a trousseau, and not one penny would she deign
to receive from her affianced.

The disclosure of Mrs. Maldon's will increased the delicacy of her
situation. Mrs. Maldon had left the whole of her property in equal
shares to Louis and Julian absolutely. There were others who by blood
had an equal claim upon her with these two, but the rest had been
mere names to her, and she had characteristically risen above the
conventionalism of heredity. Mr. Batchgrew, the executor, was able
to announce that in spite of losses the heirs would get over