nd
Frank Jones was often with him. Frank, however, had returned from
London a much altered man. Rachel had knocked under to him. It was
thus that he spoke of it to himself. I do not think that she spoke of
it to herself exactly in the same way. She knew her own constancy,
and felt that she was to be rewarded.

"Nothing, I think, would ever have made me marry Lord Castlewell."

It was thus she talked to her father while he was awaiting the period
of his dismissal.

"I dare say not," said he. "Of course he is a poor weak creature. But
he would have been very good to you, and there would have been an end
to all your discomforts."

Rachel turned up her nose. An end to all her discomforts!

Her father knew nothing of what would comfort her and what would
discomfort.

She was utterly discomforted in that her voice was gone from her. She
would lie and sob on her bed half the morning, and would feel herself
to be inconsolable. Then she would think of Frank, and tell herself
that there was some consolation in store even for her. Had her voice
been left to her she would have found it to be very difficult to
escape from the Castlewell difficulty. She would have escaped, she
thought, though the heavens might have been brought down over her
head. When the time had come for appearing at the altar, she would
have got into the first train and disappeared, or have gone to bed
and refused to leave it. She would have summoned Frank at the last
moment, and would submit to be called the worst behaved young woman
that had ever appeared on the London boards. Now she was saved from
that; but,--but at what a cost!

"I might have been the greatest woman of the day, and now I must be
content to make his tea and toast."

Then she began to consider whether it was good that any girl should
be the greatest woman of the day.

"I don't suppose the Queen has so much the best of it with a pack of
troubles on her hands."

But Frank in the meantime had gone back to Galway, and Mr. Robert
Morris had been murdered. Soon after the death of Mr. Morris the man
had been killed as he was mending the ditch, and Captain Clayton
found that the tone of the people was varied in the answers which
they made to his inquiries. They were astounded, and, as it were,
struck dumb with surprise. Nobody knew anything, nobody had heard
anything, nobody had seen anything. They were as much in the dark
about poor Pat Gilligan as they had been as to Mr. Robert Morris.