rdly thought much before she reached the door. She thought
only of him, how beautiful he was, how grand,--and how dangerous; of
him and of his words, how beautiful they were, how grand, and how
terribly dangerous! She knew that it was very late and she hurried
her steps. She knew that her mother must be appeased, and her sister
must be opposed,--but neither to her mother or to her sister was
given the depth of her thoughts. She was still thinking of him, and
of the man's arm in the clouds, when she opened the door of the
cottage at Bragg's End.

CHAPTER IV.

WHAT SHALL BE DONE ABOUT IT?

Rachel was still thinking of Luke Rowan and of the man's arm when
she opened the cottage door, but the sight of her sister's face,
and the tone of her sister's voice, soon brought her back to a full
consciousness of her immediate present position. "Oh, Dolly, do not
speak with that terrible voice, as though the world were coming to
an end," she said, in answer to the first note of objurgation that
was uttered; but the notes that came afterwards were so much more
terrible, so much more severe, that Rachel found herself quite unable
to stop them by any would-be joking tone.

Mrs. Prime was desirous that her mother should speak the words of
censure that must be spoken. She would have preferred herself to
remain silent, knowing that she could be as severe in her silence as
in her speech, if only her mother would use the occasion as it should
be used. Mrs. Ray had been made to feel how great was the necessity
for outspoken severity; but when the moment came, and her dear
beautiful child stood there before her, she could not utter the words
with which she had been already prompted. "Oh, Rachel," she said,
"Dorothea tells me--" and then she stopped.

"What has Dorothea told you?" asked Rachel.

"I have told her," said Mrs. Prime, now speaking out, "that I saw you
standing alone an hour since with that young man,--in the churchyard.
And yet you had said that he was to have been away in Exeter!"

Rachel's cheeks and forehead were now suffused with red. We used to
think, when we pretended to read the faces of our neighbours, that
a rising blush betrayed a conscious falsehood. For the most part
we know better now, and have learned to decipher more accurately
the outward signs which are given by the impulses of the heart. An
unmerited accusation of untruth will ever bring the blood to the face
of the young and innocent. But Mrs. Ra