Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/28

20 damage repaired, he suddenly bent his head to steal a kiss.

But Rachel was too quick for him. She flung his face away with her hand; she flushed vividly; she was grievously indignant. That she considered it in the light of an insult, was only too apparent: her voice was pained—her words were severe.

“Be quiet, stupid! I was not going to eat you,” laughed John Massingbird. “I won’t tell Luke.”

“Insult upon insult!” she exclaimed, strangely excited. “You know that Luke Roy is nothing to me, Mr. Massingbird; you know that I have never in my life vouchsafed to give him a civil word. But, much as I despise him—much as he is beneath me—I would rather submit to have my face touched by him than by you.”

What more she would have said was interrupted by the re-appearance of Mrs. Verner. That lady’s ears had caught the sound of the contest—of the harsh words, and she felt inexpressibly surprised.

“What has happened?” she asked. “What is it, Rachel?”

“She pricked herself with one of the needles,” said John, taking the explanation upon himself, “and then said I did it.”

Mrs. Verner looked from one to the other. Rachel had turned quite pale. John laughed: he knew his mother did not believe him.

“The truth is, mother, I began teasing Rachel about her admirer, Luke. It made her angry.”

“What absurdity!” exclaimed Mrs. Verner, testily, to Rachel. “My opinion is, you would have done well to encourage Luke. He was steady and respectable, and old Roy must have saved plenty of money.”

Rachel burst into tears.

“What now!” cried Mrs. Verner. “Not a word can anybody say to you lately, Rachel, but you must begin to cry as if you were heart-broken. What has come to you, child? Is anything the matter with you?”

The tears deepened into long sobs of agony, as if her heart were indeed broken. She held her handkerchief up to her face, and went sobbing from the room.

Mrs. Verner gazed after her in very astonishment.

“What has taken her? What can it possibly be?” she uttered. “John, you must know.”

“I, mother! I declare to you that I know no more about it than Adam. Rachel must be going a little crazed.”

the sun had well set, the family at Verner’s Pride were assembling for dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Verner, and John Massingbird: neither Lionel Verner nor Frederick Massingbird was present. The usual custom appeared somewhat reversed on this evening: while roving John would be just as likely to be absent from dinner as not, his brother and Lionel Verner nearly always appeared at it. Mr. Verner looked surprised.

“Where are they?” he cried, as he waited to say Grace.

“Mr. Lionel has not come in, sir,” replied the butler, Tynn, who was husband to the housekeeper.

“And Fred has gone out to keep some engagement with Sibylla West,” spoke up Mrs. Verner. “She is going to spend the evening at the Bitterworths’, and Fred promised, I believe, to see her safely thither. He will take his dinner when he comes in.”

Mr. Verner bent his head, said the Grace, and the dinner began.

Later,—but not much later, for it was scarcely dark yet,—Rachel Frost was leaving the house to pay a visit in the adjoining village, Deerham. Her position may be at once explained. It was mentioned in the last chapter that Mr. Verner had had one daughter, who died young. The mother of Rachel Frost had been this child’s nurse, Rachel being an infant at the same time, so that the child, Rachel Verner, and Rachel Frost—named after her—had been what is called foster sisters. It had caused Mr. Verner, and his wife also while she lived, to take an interest in Rachel Frost: it is very probable that their own child’s death only made this interest greater. They were sufficiently wise not to lift the girl palpably out of her proper sphere; but they paid for a decent education for her at a day-school, and were personally kind to her. Rachel—I was going to say fortunately, but it may be as just to say unfortunately—was one of those who seem to make the best of every trifling advantage: she had grown, without much effort of her own, into what might be termed a lady, in appearance, in manners, and in speech. The second Mrs. Verner also took an interest in her; and nearly a year before this period, on Rachel’s eighteenth birthday, she took her to Verner’s Pride as her own attendant.

A fascinating, loveable child had Rachel Frost ever been: she was a fascinating, loveable girl. Modest, affectionate, generous, everybody liked Rachel: she had not an enemy, so far as was known, in all Deerham. Her father was nothing but a labourer on the Verner estate; but in mind and conduct he was superior to his station; an upright, conscientious, and, in some degree, a proud man: her mother had been dead several years. Rachel was proud too, in her way; proud and sensitive.

Rachel, dressed in her bonnet and shawl, passed out of the house by the front entrance. She would not have presumed to do so by daylight; but it was dusk now, the family not about, and it cut off a few yards of the road to the village. The terrace—which you have heard of as running along the front of the house—sloped gradually down at either end to the level ground, so as to admit the approach of carriages.

Riding up swiftly to the door, as Rachel appeared at it, was a gentleman of some five or six-and-twenty years. Horse and man both looked thorough-bred. Tall, strong, and slender, with a keen, dark-blue eye, and regular features of a clear, healthy paleness, he—the man—would draw a second glance to himself wherever he might be met. His face was not inordinately handsome; nothing of the sort; but it wore an