, mamma; it wasn't you."

"Yes, it was. I'd no business going away to other people after I had
told him he might come here. You, who had always been so good too!"

"You mustn't say again that you wish he hadn't come here."

"Oh! but I do wish it, because then he would have been nothing to
you. I do wish he hadn't ever come, but now I'd do anything to bring
him back again. I believe I'll go to him and tell him that it was my
doing."

"No, mamma, you won't do that."

"Why should I not? I don't care what people say. Isn't your happiness
everything to me?"

"But I shouldn't take him if he came in that way. What! beg him
to come and have compassion on me, as if I couldn't live without
him! No, mother; that wouldn't do. I do love him. I do love him. I
sometimes think I cannot live without his love. I sometimes feel as
though stories about broken hearts might be true. But I wouldn't have
him in that way. How could he love me afterwards, when I was his
wife? But, mamma, we'll be friends again;--shall we not? I've been so
unhappy that you should have thought ill of him!"

That night the mother and daughter shared the same bed together, and
Mrs. Ray was able to sleep. She would not confess to herself that
her sorrow had been lightened, because nothing had been said or done
to lessen that of her daughter; but on the morrow Rachel came and
hovered round her again, and the bitterness of Mrs. Ray's grief was
removed.

CHAPTER IX.

THE ELECTION AT BASLEHURST.

Towards the end of September the day of the election arrived, and
with it arrived Luke Rowan at Baslehurst. The vacancy had been
occasioned by the acceptance of the then sitting member of that
situation under the crown which is called the stewardship of the
manor of Helpholme. In other words an old gentleman who had done his
life's work retired and made room for some one more young and active.
The old member had kept his seat till the end of the session, just
leaving time for the moving for a new writ, and now the election was
about to be held, almost at the earliest day possible. It had been
thought that a little reflection would induce the Baslehurst people
to reject the smiles of the Jew tailor from London, and therefore as
little time for reflection was given to them as possible. The wealth,
the liberal politics, the generosity, and the successes of Mr. Hart
were dinned into their ears by a succession of speeches, and by an
overpowering flight of enormo