of possession, to one who had
possessed so little in her life, came back to her with a certain
poignancy.

But her resolve remained unshaken. It might hurt her to take his
personal gifts, but that was all she had ever had from him; he had never
granted her a set allowance; for every penny she must needs ask and look
grateful. It would be no fault of hers if she had to strip her fingers
for passage-money. Yet the exigency troubled her; it touched her honor,
to say nothing of her pride; and, after an unforeseen fit of
irresolution, Rachel suddenly determined to tell her husband of her
difficulty, making direct appeal to the capricious generosity which had
been recalled to her mind as an undeniably redeeming point. It was true
that he had given her hearty leave to go to the uttermost ends of the
earth, and highly probable that he would bid her work her own way. She
felt an impulse to put it to him, however, and at once.

She looked at her watch--it at least had been her mother's--and the
final day was already an hour old. But Alexander Minchin was a late
sitter, as his young wife knew to her cost, and to-night he had told her
where he meant to sleep, but she had not heard him come up. The room
would have been the back drawing-room in the majority of such houses,
and Rachel peeped in on her way down. It was empty; moreover, the bed
was not made, nor the curtains drawn. Rachel repaired the first
omission, then hesitated, finally creeping upstairs again for clean
sheets. And as she made his bed, not out of any lingering love for him,
but from a sense of duty and some consideration for his comfort, there
was yet something touching in her instinctive care, that breathed the
wife she could have been.

He did not hear her, though the stairs creaked the smallness of the
hour--or if he heard he made no sign. This discouraged Rachel as she
stole down the lower flight; she would have preferred the angriest sign.
But there were few internal sounds which penetrated to the little study
at the back of the dining-room, for the permanent tenant was the widow
of an eminent professor lately deceased, and that student had protected
his quiet with double doors. The outer one, in dark red baize, made an
alarming noise as Rachel pulled it open; but, though she waited, no
sound came from within; nor was Minchin disturbed by the final entry of
his wife, whose first glance convinced her of the cause. In the
professor's armchair sat his unworthy