and had told his love honestly to her mother. In Rachel's
view of the matter no lover could have carried himself with better
decorum or with a sweeter grace; but because he had so done, she
would not hold him to be bound to her. He had been carried away by
his feelings too rapidly, and had not as yet known how poor and lowly
they were. He should still have opened to him a clear path backwards.
Then if the path backwards were not to his mind, then in that case--.
I am not sure that Rachel ever declared to herself in plain terms
what in such case would happen; but she stood at the door as though
she was minded to stand there till he should appear upon the green.

"I wonder when he'll come." She had watched her mother's figure
disappear along the lane, and had plucked a flower or two to pieces
before she returned within the house. He will not come till the
evening, she determined,--till the evening, when his day's work in
the brewery would be over. Then she thought of the quarrel between
him and Tappitt, and wondered what it might be. She was quite sure
that Tappitt was wrong, and thought of him at once as an obstinate,
foolish, pigheaded old man. Yes; he would come to her, and she would
take care to be provided in that article of cream which he pretended
to love so well. She would not have to run away again. But how lucky
on that previous evening had been that necessity, seeing that it had
given opportunity for that great display of a lover's excellence on
Rowan's part. Having settled all this in her mind, she went into the
house, and was beginning to think of her household work, when she
heard a man's steps in the passage. She went at once out from the
sitting-room, and encountered Luke Rowan at the door.

"How d'ye do?" said he. "Is Mrs. Ray at home?"

"Mamma?--no. You must have met her on the road if you've come from
Baslehurst."

"But I could not meet her on the road, because I've come across the
fields."

"Oh!--that accounts for it."

"And she's away in Baslehurst, is she?"

"She's gone in to see my sister, Mrs. Prime." Rachel, still standing
at the door of the sitting-room, made no attempt of asking Rowan into
the parlour.

"And mayn't I come in?" he said. Rachel was absolutely ignorant
whether, under such circumstances, she ought to allow him to enter.
But there he was, in the house, and at any rate she could not turn
him out.

"I'm afraid you'll have to wait a long time if you wait for mamma,"
she sa