Mr. Grey had done his work at last! The long waiting, the weary

constraint, and at last the recurrence of Lovedy's sufferings and her

own share in them, entirely overcame her. Mists danced before her eyes,

and the very sensation that had been so studiously avoided was produced

by her fainting helplessly away in her chair, while Mr. Grey was talking

to her.

To be sure it brought deliverance from the multitude, and she awoke

in the quiet of her room, upon her bed, in the midst of the despairing

compunction of the mother, and the tender cares of Grace, but she

was too utterly overdone for even this to be much relief to her; and

downstairs poor Miss Wellwood's one desire was to hinder the spread of

the report that her swoon had been caused by the tidings of Mauleverer's

apprehension. It seemed as if nothing else had been wanting to make the

humiliation and exposure complete. Rachel had despised fainting ladies,

and had really hitherto been so superabundant in strength that she had

no experience of the symptoms, or she might have escaped in time. But

there she lay, publicly censured before the dignitaries of her county

for moral folly, and entirely conquered before the rest of the world by

the physical weakness she had most contemned.

Then the mother was so terrified and distressed that all sorts of

comforting reassurances were required, and the chief object soon became

to persuade her to go downstairs and leave Rachel to her bed. And at

last the thought of civility and of the many Mrs. Grundys prevailed, and

sent her downstairs, but there was little more comfort for Rachel even

in being left to herself--that for which she had a few minutes before

most ardently longed.

That night was perhaps the most painful one of her whole life. The

earnest desire to keep her mother from uneasiness, and the longing to be

unmolested, made her play her part well when the mother and Grace came

up to see her before going to bed, and they thought she would sleep off

her over-fatigue and excitement, and yielded to her desire that they

should bid her good night, and leave her to rest.

But what sort of rest was it? Sometimes even her own personal identity

was gone, and she would live over again in the poor children, the

hunger and the blows, or she would become Mrs. Rawlins, and hear herself

sentenced for the savage cruelty, or she would actually stand in court

under sentence for manslaughter. Her pulses throbbed up to fever pitch,

head and cheeks burnt, the very power to lie still was gone, and whether

she commanded her thoughts or lapsed into the land of dreams, they

worked her equal woe.

Now it was the world of gazing faces, feverishly magnified, multiplied,

and pressing closer and closer on her, till she could have screamed to

dispel them; now it was her mother weeping over the reports to which she

had given occasion, and accusing herself of her daughter's errors; and

now it was Lovedy Kelland's mortal agony, now the mob, thirsting for

vengeance, were shouting for justice on her, as the child's murderer,

and she was shrieking to Alick Keith to leave her to her fate, and only

save her mother.




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