I don't know how
to be thankful enough when I think how things have turned out;--but
when I first heard of him I thought he was dangerous too."

"But you don't think he is dangerous now, mamma?"

"No, my dear; of course I don't. And I never did after he drank tea
here that night; only Mr. Comfort told me it wouldn't be safe not to
see how things went a little before you,--you understand, dearest?"

"Yes, I understand. I ain't a bit obliged to Mr. Comfort, though I
mean to forgive him because of Mrs. Cornbury. She has behaved best
through it all,--next to you, mamma."

I am afraid it was late before Mrs. Ray went to sleep that night, and
I almost doubt whether Rachel slept at all. It seemed to her that in
the present condition of her life sleep could hardly be necessary.
During the last month past she had envied those who slept while she
was kept awake by her sorrow. She had often struggled to sleep as she
sat in her chair, so that she might escape for a few moments from the
torture of her waking thoughts. But why need she sleep now that every
thought was a new pleasure? There was no moment that she had ever
passed with him that had not to be recalled. There was no word of his
that had not to be re-weighed. She remembered, or fancied that she
remembered, her idea of the man when her eye first fell upon his
outside form. She would have sworn that her first glance of him had
conveyed to her far more than had ever come to her from many a day's
casual looking at any other man. She could almost believe that he had
been specially made and destined for her behoof. She blushed even
while lying in bed as she remembered how the gait of the man, and the
tone of his voice, had taken possession of her eyes and ears from
the first day on which she had met him. When she had gone to Mrs.
Tappitt's party, so consciously alive to the fact that he was to be
there, she had told herself that she was sure she thought no more of
him than of any other man that she might meet; but she now declared
to herself that she had been a weak fool in thus attempting to
deceive herself; that she had loved him from the first,--or at any
rate from that evening when he had told her of the beauty of the
clouds; and that from that day to the present hour there had been no
other chance of happiness to her but that chance which had now been
so wondrously decided in her favour. When she came down to breakfast
on the next morning she was very quiet,--so quiet t