CHAPTER IX.
ELEVEN P.M.
"
RACHEL," said Mr. Dalrymple presently, speaking her name as if he had had it in familiar use for years, "I suppose you have broken off with him?"
Rachel did not reply for a few seconds; he felt her trembling in his arms.
"Oh, forgive me," she whispered, turning her face a hair's-breadth nearer to his as he stooped to listen.
And then she told him all the story of her engagement, as far as her new experiences enabled her to read it, and all the circumstances which had combined to keep her still in captivity so long after she should have been free.
The simple narrative gave even him, who was rather inclined to make molehills of mountains, a sense of the difficulties of the situation, that kept him silent for a few minutes in unwonted perplexity of mind.