ood the point of the
joke. The joke was this,--that Luke Rowan had come back from Exeter,
and that Rachel was supposed to have heard of his return, and
therefore that her coming for the walk was certain. But Augusta had
not intended to be ill-natured, and had not really believed what she
had been about to insinuate. "The fact is," said Martha, "that Mr.
Rowan has come home; but I don't suppose we shall see anything of him
this evening as he is busy with papa."

Rachel for a few minutes became silent and thoughtful. Her mind had
not yet freed itself from the effects of her conversation with her
mother, and she had been thinking of this young man during the whole
of her solitary walk into town. But she had been thinking of him as
we think of matters which need not put us to any immediate trouble.
He was away at Exeter, and she would have time to decide whether or
no she would admit his proffered intimacy before she should see him
again. "I do so hope we shall be friends," he had said to her as he
gave her his hand when they parted on Cawston bridge. And then he had
muttered something, which she had not quite caught, as to Baslehurst
being altogether another place to him since he had seen her. She
had hurried home on that occasion with a feeling, half pleasant and
half painful, that something out of the usual course had occurred to
her. But, after all, it amounted to nothing. What was there that she
could tell her mother? She had no special tale to tell, and yet she
could not speak of young Rowan as she would have spoken of a chance
acquaintance. Was she not conscious that he had pressed her hand
warmly as he parted from her?

Rachel herself entertained much of that indefinite fear of young men
which so strongly pervaded her mother's mind, and which, as regarded
her sister, had altogether ceased to be indefinite. Rachel knew that
they were the natural enemies of her special class, and that any kind
of friendship might be allowed to her, except a friendship with any
of them. And as she was a good girl, loving her mother, anxious to do
well, guided by pure thoughts, she felt aware that Mr. Rowan should
be shunned. Had it not been that he himself had told her that he was
to be in Exeter, she would not have come out to walk with the brewery
girls on that evening. What she might hereafter decide upon doing,
how these affairs might be made to arrange themselves, she by no
means could foresee;--but on that evening she had thoug