'It was very wrong to have stood so still when the rascal began his machinations,' repeated Alick, 'Bessie absolutely helping it on! But for her, the fellow would have had no chance even of acquaintance with her.'
'Your sister hardly deserves blame for that.'
'Not exactly blame; but the responsibility remains,' he replied gravely, and indeed he was altogether much graver than his wont, entirely free from irony, and evidently too sorry for Rachel, and feeling himself, through his sister, too guilty of her entanglement, to have any of that amused satisfaction that even Colin evidently felt in her discomfiture. In fact Ermine did not fully enter into Colin's present tactics; she saw that he was more than usually excited and interested about the F. U. E. E., but he had not explained his views to her, and she could only attribute his desire, to defer the investigation, to a wish that Mr. Mitchell should have time to return from London, whither he had gone to conclude his arrangements with Mr. Touchett, leaving the duty in commission between three delicate winter visitors.
Rachel walked home in a kind of dreamy bewilderment. The first stone in her castle had been loosened, and her heart was beginning to fail her, though the tenacity of her will produced a certain incapacity of believing that she had been absolutely deceived. Her whole fabric was so compact, and had been so much solidified by her own intensity of purpose, that any hollowness of foundation was utterly beyond present credence. She was ready to be affronted with Mauleverer for perilling all for a bad joke, but wildly impossible as this explanation would have seemed to others, she preferred taking refuge in it to accepting the full brunt of the blow upon her cherished hopes.
She had just re-entered the house on her return, when Grace met her, saying, 'Oh, Rachel dear, Mrs. Rossitur is here.'
'I think old servants have a peculiar propensity for turning up when the house is in a state of turmoil,' returned Rachel.
'I have been walking round the garden with her, and doing my best to suffice for her entertainment,' said Grace, good-naturedly, 'but she really wants to see you on business. She has a bill for the F. U. E. E. which she wants you to pay.'
'A bill for the F. U. E. E.?'
'Yes; she makes many apologies for troubling you, but Tom is to be apprenticed to a grocer, and they want this fifteen pounds to make up the fee.'
'But I tell you, Grace, there can't have been fifteen pounds' worth of things had in this month, and they were paid on the 1st.'
'She says they have never been paid at all since the 1st of December.'
'I assure you, Grace, it is in the books. I made a point of having all the accounts brought to me on the 1st of every month, and giving out the money. I gave out £3. 10s. for the Rossiturs last Friday, the 1st of February, when Mr. Mauleverer was over here. He said coals were dearer, and they had to keep more fires.'
'There must be some mistake,' said Grace. 'I'll show you the books. Mr. Mauleverer keeps one himself, and leaves one with me. Oh, botheration, there's the Grey carriage! Well, you go and receive them, and I'll try to pacify Mrs. Rossitur, and then come down.'
Neatly kept were these account books of the F. U. E. E,, and sure enough for every month were entered the sums for coals, wood, and potatoes, tallying exactly with Mrs. Rossitur's account, and each month Mr. Mauleverer's signature attested the receipt of the sum paid over to him by Rachel for household expenses. Rachel carried them down to Mrs. Rossitur, but this evidence utterly failed to convince that worthy personage that she had ever received a farthing after the 1st of December. She was profuse in her apologies for troubling Miss Rachel, and had only been led to do so by the exigencies of her son's apprentice fee, and she reposed full confidence in Rachel's eager assurance that she should not be a loser, and that in another day the matter should be investigated.
'And, Miss Rachel,' added the old servant, 'you'll excuse me, but they do say very odd things of the matron at that place, and I doubt you are deceived in her. Our lads went to the the-a-ter the other night, and I checked them well for it; but mother, says they, we had more call to be there than the governess up to Miss Rachel's schule in Nichol Street, dressed out in pink feathers.'
'Well, Mrs. Rossitur, I will make every inquiry, and I do not think you will find anything wrong. There must be some one about very like Mrs. Rawlins. I have heard of those pink feathers before, but I know who the matron is, and all about her! Good-bye. I'll see you again before you go, I suppose it won't be till the seven o'clock train.'
Mrs. Rossitur remained expressing her opinion to the butler that dear Miss Rachel was too innocent, and then proceeded to lose all past cares in a happy return to 'melting day,' in the regions of her past glories as cook and housekeeper.
Rachel repaired to her room to cool her glowing cheeks, and repeat to herself, 'A mistake, an error. It must be a blunder! That boy that went to the theatre may have cheated them! Mrs. Rawlins may have deceived Mr. Mauleverer. Anything must be true rather than--No, no! such a tissue of deception is impossible in a man of such sentiments! Pursecuted as he has been, shall appearances make me--me, his only friend-turn against him? Oh, me! here come the whole posse purring upstairs to take off their things! I shall be invaded in a moment.'
And in came Grace and the two younger ladies, and Rachel was no more her own from that moment.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE FORLORN HOPE.
'She whipped two female 'prentices to death, And hid them in the coal-hole. For her mind Shaped strictest plans of discipline, sage schemes, Such as Lycurgus taught.'--Canning and Frere.
The favourite dentist of the neighbourhood dwelt in a grand mansion at St. Norbert's, and thither were conducted Conrade and Francis, as victims to the symmetry of their mouths. Their mother accompanied them to supply the element of tenderness, Alison that of firmness; and, in fact, Lady Temple was in a state of much greater trepidation than either of her sons, who had been promised five shillings each as the reward of fortitude, and did nothing but discuss what they should buy with it.
They escaped with a reprieve to Conrade, and the loss of one tooth of Francis's, and when the rewards had been laid out, and presents chosen for all the stay-at-home children, including Rose, Lady Temple became able to think about other matters. The whole party were in a little den at the pastrycook's; the boys consuming mutton pies, and the ladies ox-tail soup, while waiting to be taken up by the waggonette which had of late been added to the Myrtlewood establishment, when the little lady thus spoke--
'If you don't object, Miss Williams, we will go to Rachel's asylum on our way home.'
Miss Williams asked if she had made the appointment.
'No,' said Lady Temple, 'but you see I can't be satisfied about those woodcuts; and that poor woman, Mrs. Kelland, came to me yesterday about my lace shawl, and she is sadly distressed about the little girl. She was not allowed to see her, you know, and she heard such odd things about the place that I told her that I did not wonder she was in trouble, and that I would try to bring the child home, or at any rate see and talk to her.'
'I hope we may be able to see her, but you know Colonel Keith could not get in without making an appointment.'
'I pay for her,' said Lady Temple, 'and I cannot bear its going on in this way without some one seeing about it. The Colonel was quite sure those woodcuts were mere fabrications to deceive Rachel; and there must be something very wrong about those people.'
'Did she know that you were going?'
'No; I did not see her before we went. I do not think she will mind it much; and I promised.' Lady Temple faltered a little, but gathered courage the next moment. 'And indeed, after what Mrs. Kelland said, I could not sleep while I thought I had been the means of putting any poor child into such hands.'
'Yes,' said Alison, 'it is very shocking to leave them there without inquiry, and it is an excellent thing to make the attempt.'
And so the order was given to drive to the asylum, Alison marvelling at the courage which prompted this most unexpected assault upon the fortress that had repulsed two such warriors as Colonel Keith and Mrs. Kelland. But timid and tender as she might be, it was not for nothing that Fanny Temple had been a vice-queen, so much accustomed to be welcomed wherever she penetrated, that the notion of a rebuff never suggested itself.
