on't know that anybody is
happy. I'm sure Dorothea is not, and I'm sure you ain't."

"I don't want you to be unhappy about me, mamma."

"Of course you don't. I know that. But how can I help it when I see
how things have gone? I tried to do for the best, and I have--"
broken my child's heart, Mrs. Ray intended to say; but she failed
altogether before she got as far as that, and bursting out into a
flood of tears, hid her face in her apron.

Rachel still kept her seat, and her face was still hard and unmoved.
Her mother did not see it; she did not dare to look upon it; but she
knew that it was so; she knew her daughter would have been with her,
close to her, embracing her, throwing her arms round her, had that
face relented. But Rachel still kept her chair, and Mrs. Ray sobbed
aloud.

"I wish I could be a comfort to you, mamma," Rachel said after
another pause, "but I do not know how. I suppose in time we shall get
over this, and things will be as they used to be."

"They'll never be to me as they used to be before he came to
Baslehurst," said Mrs. Ray, through her tears.

"At any rate that is not his fault," said Rachel, almost angrily.
"Whoever may have done wrong, no one has a right to say that he has
done wrong."

"I'm sure I never said so. It is I that have done wrong," exclaimed
Mrs. Ray. "I know it all now, and I wish I'd never asked anybody but
just my own heart. I didn't mean to say anything against him, and I
don't think it. I'm sure I liked him as I never liked any young man
the first time of seeing him, that night he came out here to tea; and
I know that what they said against him was all false. So I do."

"What was all false, mamma?"

"About his going away in debt, and being a ne'er-do-well, and
about his going away from Baslehurst and not coming back any more.
Everybody has a good word for him now."

"Have they, mamma?" said Rachel. And Mrs. Ray learned in a moment,
from the tone of her daughter's voice, that a change had come over
her feeling. She asked her little question with something of the
softness of her old manner, with something of the longing loving
wishfulness which used to make so many of her questions sweet to her
mother's ears. "Have they, mamma?"

"Yes they have, and I believe it was those wicked people at the
brewery who spread the reports about him. As for owing anybody money,
I believe he's got plenty. Of course he has, or how could he have
bought our cottages and paid for th