"Do you know, love," I said, "I had an odd fancy, yesterday, about Mr.
Bruff? I thought, when I saw you after your walk with him, that he had
been telling you some bad news."
Her fingers dropped from the frilling of her nightgown, and her fierce
black eyes flashed at me.
"Quite the contrary!" she said. "It was news I was interested in
hearing--and I am deeply indebted to Mr. Bruff for telling me of it."
"Yes?" I said, in a tone of gentle interest.
Her fingers went back to the frilling, and she turned her head sullenly
away from me. I had been met in this manner, in the course of plying the
good work, hundreds of times. She merely stimulated me to try again.
In my dauntless zeal for her welfare, I ran the great risk, and openly
alluded to her marriage engagement.
"News you were interested in hearing?" I repeated. "I suppose, my dear
Rachel, that must be news of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite?"
She started up in the bed, and turned deadly pale. It was evidently on
the tip of her tongue to retort on me with the unbridled insolence
of former times. She checked herself--laid her head back on the
pillow--considered a minute--and then answered in these remarkable
words: "I SHALL NEVER MARRY MR. GODFREY ABLEWHITE."
It was my turn to start at that.
"What can you possibly mean?" I exclaimed. "The marriage is considered
by the whole family as a settled thing!"
"Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite is expected here to-day," she said doggedly.
"Wait till he comes--and you will see."
"But my dear Rachel----"
She rang the bell at the head of her bed. The person with the
cap-ribbons appeared.
"Penelope! my bath."
Let me give her her due. In the state of my feelings at that moment,
I do sincerely believe that she had hit on the only possible way of
forcing me to leave the room.
By the mere worldly mind my position towards Rachel might have been
viewed as presenting difficulties of no ordinary kind. I had reckoned on
leading her to higher things by means of a little earnest exhortation on
the subject of her marriage. And now, if she was to be believed, no such
event as her marriage was to take place at all. But ah, my friends! a
working Christian of my experience (with an evangelising prospect before
her) takes broader views than these. Supposing Rachel really broke off
the marriage, on which the Ablewhites, father and son, counted as a
settled thing, what would be the result? It could only end, if she held
firm, in an exchanging of hard words and bitter accusations on both
sides. And what would be the effect on Rachel when the stormy interview
was over? A salutary moral depression would be the effect. Her pride
would be exhausted, her stubbornness would be exhausted, by the
resolute resistance which it was in her character to make under the
circumstances. She would turn for sympathy to the nearest person who had
sympathy to offer. And I was that nearest person--brimful of comfort,
charged to overflowing with seasonable and reviving words. Never had the
evangelising prospect looked brighter, to my eyes, than it looked now.