s down upon the page over and over again, as
though in pinning down her eyes she could pin down her mind also.
But by degrees the delay became so long that she was tantalized
into surmises as to the subject of their conversation. If it were
not wicked, why should not she have been allowed to share it? She
did not imagine it to be wicked according to the world's ordinary
wickedness;--but she feared that it was wicked according to that
tone of morals to which she was desirous of tying her mother down as
a bond slave. They were away talking about love and pleasure, and
those heart-throbbings in which her sister had so unfortunately been
allowed to indulge. She felt all but sure that some tidings of Luke
Rowan had been brought in Mrs. Sturt's budget of news, and she had
never been able to think well of Luke Rowan since the evening on
which she had seen him standing with Rachel in the churchyard. She
knew nothing against him; but she had then made up her mind that he
was pernicious, and she could not bring herself to own that she had
been wrong in that opinion. She had been loud and defiant in her
denunciation when she had first suspected Rachel of having a lover.
Since that she had undergone some troubles of her own by which the
tone of her remonstrances had been necessarily moderated; but even
now she could not forgive her sister such a lover as Luke Rowan. She
would have been quite willing to see her sister married, but the
lover should have been dingy, black-coated, lugubrious, having about
him some true essence of the tears of the valley of tribulation.
Alas, her sister's taste was quite of another kind!

"I'm afraid you will have been thinking that we were never coming
back again," said Mrs. Ray, as she entered the room.

"No, mother, I didn't think that. But I thought you were staying late
with Mrs. Sturt."

"So we were,--and really I didn't think we had been so long. But,
Dorothea, there was some one else over there besides Mrs. Sturt, and
he kept us."

"He! What he?" said Mrs. Prime. She had not even suspected that the
lover had been over there in person.

"Mr. Rowan, my dear. He has been at the farm."

"What! the young man that was dismissed from Mr. Tappitt's?"

It was ill said of her,--very ill said, and so she was herself aware
as soon as the words were out of her mouth. But she could not help
it. She had taken a side against Luke Rowan, and could not restrain
herself from ill-natured words. Rachel was