"Oh, no! no! but--" Miss Wellwood made a great confusion of noes, buts,

and my dears, and Mrs. Curtis came to the rescue. "After all, my love,

one can't so much wonder! You have always been very peculiar, you know,

and so clever, and you took up this so eagerly. And then the Greys saw

you so unwilling to prosecute. And--and I have always allowed you too

much liberty--ever since your poor dear papa was taken--and now it has

come upon you, my poor child! Oh, I hope dear Fanny will take warning by

me," and off went poor Mrs. Curtis into a fit of sobs.

"Mother--mother! this is worse than anything," exclaimed Rachel in an

agony, springing to her feet, and flying after sal volatile, but feeling

frightfully helpless without Grace, the manager of all Mrs. Curtis's

ailments and troubles. Grace would have let her quietly cry it out.

Rachel's remedies and incoherent protestations of all being her own

fault only made things worse, and perhaps those ten minutes were the

most overwhelming of all the griefs that Rachel had brought on herself.

However, what with Miss Wellwood's soothing, and her own sense of the

becoming, Mrs. Curtis struggled herself into composure again by the time

the maid came to dress them for dinner; Rachel all the while longing for

Grace's return, not so much for the sake of hearing the verdict, as of

knowing whether the mother ought to be allowed to go down to dinner, so

shaken did she look; for indeed, besides her distress for her daughter,

no small ingredient in her agitation was this recurrence to a stated

custom of her husband's magisterial days.

Persuasion was unavailing. At any cost the Curtis family must present

an unassailable front to the public eye, and if Mrs. Curtis had forced

forward her much tried and suffering daughter, far more would she

persist in devoting herself to gaiety and indifference, but her

nervousness was exceeding, and betrayed itself in a continual wearying

for Grace, without whom neither her own dress nor Rachel's could be

arranged to her satisfaction, and she was absolutely incapable of not

worrying Rachel about every fold, every plait, every bow, in a manner

that from any one else would have been unbearable; but those tears

had frightened Rachel into a penitent submission that endured with an

absolute semblance of cheerfulness each of these torments. The languor

and exhaustion had been driven away, and feverish excitement had set in,

not so much from the spirit of defiance that the two elder ladies had

expected to excite, as from the having been goaded into a reckless

determination to sustain her part. No matter for the rest.

It often happened in these parties that the ladies would come in from

the country in reasonable time, while their lords would be detained

much later in court, so when the cathedral clock had given notice of

the half-hour, Mrs. Curtis began to pick up fan and handkerchief, and

prepare to descend. Rachel suggested there would be no occasion so to

do till Grace's return, since it was plain that no one could yet be

released.




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