f God's hands. When
she had come, as it were, to the bitterest moment of her grief, she
told herself that, though it might be even at the end of a whole
year, there was something to be hoped.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

LORD CASTLEWELL IS MUCH TROUBLED.

When her father had been with her half-an-hour, and was beginning to
think that he could escape and go down to the House,--and he had a
rod in pickle for the Speaker's back, such a rod that the Speaker's
back should be sore for the rest of the session--Rachel began her
lengthened conversation with him. In the last half-hour she had made
up her mind as to what she would say. But the conversation was so
long and intricate, being necessarily carried on by means of her
tablet, that poor O'Mahony's rod was losing all its pickle. "Father,
you must go and see Lord Castlewell at once."

"I think, my dear, he understood me altogether when I saw him before,
and he seemed to agree with me. I told him I didn't mind being called
an ass, but that you were so absurd as to dislike it. In fact, I gave
him to understand that we were three asses; but I don't think he'll
say it again."

"It isn't about that at all," said the tablet.

"What else do you want?"

Then Rachel went to work and wrote her demand with what deliberation
she could assume.

"You must go and tell him that I don't want to marry him at all. He
has been very kind, and you mustn't tell him that he's an ass any
more. But it won't do. He has proposed to marry me because he has
wanted a singing girl; and I think I should have done for him,--only
I can't sing."

Then the father replied, having put himself into such a position
on the bed as to read the tablet while Rachel was filling it: "But
that'll all come right in a very short time."

"It can't, and it won't. The doctor says a year; but he knows nothing
about it, and says it's in God's hands. He means by that it's as bad
as it can be."

"But, my dear--"

"I tell you it must be so."

"But you are engaged. He would never be so base a man as to take your
word at such a moment as this. Of course he couldn't do it. If you
had had small-pox, or anything horrible like that, he would not have
been justified."

"I'm as ugly as ever I can be," said the tablet, "and as poor a
creature." Then she stopped her pencil for a moment.

"Of course he's engaged to you. Why, my dear, I'd have to cowhide him
if he said a word of the kind."

"Oh, no!" said the tablet with f