you
shall have nay.'"

Mrs. Cornbury still entertained hope that the stubbornness of the
stubborn man might be overcome; but as to that she said nothing to
Mrs. Sturt.

Mrs. Sturt, with what friendly tact she possessed, made her
communication to Mrs. Ray, but it may be doubted whether more harm
than good was not thus done. "And he didn't owe a shilling then?"
asked Mrs. Ray.

"Not a shilling," said Mrs. Sturt.

"And he is going to come back to Baslehurst about this brewery
business?"

"There's not a doubt in life about that," answered Mrs. Sturt. If
these tidings could have come in time they would have been very
salutary; but what was Mrs. Ray to do with them now? She felt that
she could not honestly withhold them from Rachel; and yet she knew
not how to tell them without adding to Rachel's misery. It was very
improbable that Rachel should hear anything about Rowan from other
lips than her own. It was clear that Mrs. Sturt did not intend to
speak to her, and also clear that Mrs. Sturt expected that Mrs. Ray
would do so.

Rachel's demeanour at this time was cause of great sorrow to Mrs.
Ray. She never smiled. She sought no amusement. She read no books.
She spoke but little, and when she did speak her words were hard and
cold, and confined almost entirely to household affairs. Her mother
knew that she was not ill, because she ate and drank and worked. Even
Dorothea must have been satisfied with the amount of needlework which
she produced in these days. But though not ill, she was thin and
pale, and unlike herself. But perhaps of all the signs which her
mother watched so carefully, the signs which tormented her most were
those ever-present lines on her daughter's forehead,--lines which
Mrs. Ray had now learned to read correctly, and which indicated some
settled inward purpose, and an inward resolve that that purpose
should become the subject of no outward discussion. Rachel had
formerly been everything to her mother;--her friend, her minister,
her guide, her great comfort;--the subject on which could be lavished
all the soft tenderness of her nature, the loving object to whom
could be addressed all the little innocent petulances of her life.
But now Mrs. Ray did not dare to be either tender with Rachel, or
petulant. She hardly dared to speak to her on subjects that were not
indifferent. On this matter of Luke Rowan she did not dare to speak
to her. Rachel never upbraided her with words,--had never spoken
one wo