Of course he "saw" Rachel, and attacked the position which she had taken up with all the forces at his command. He was, in his Mentor's judgment, indiscreetly zealous and persevering; and the almost fierce obstinacy of Rachel's resistance, which neither science nor brute force could overcome, being an altogether anomalous demonstration of character, was even more portentous.
But when presently Mr. Kingston, in a dignified and graceful letter, accepted his defeat, while at the same time clearly intimating that the withdrawal of his former pretensions in no way indicated any change in his affections and fidelity, then everything seemed to go well.
The girl was touched and grieved to the depths of her tender heart for the wrong and the trouble that she had inflicted upon him, and was in agonies of anxiety for his welfare.
"Do you think he will go back to Miss Brownlow?" she inquired one day of Beatrice, with pathetic eyes full of tears; "and, oh, do you think she will make him happy?"
She was terribly taken aback when her cousin with much asperity upbraided her with the heartlessness of the suggestion.
For a little while, having received her aunt's grudging acquiescence in the dissolution of her engagement, having sent back all her jewels, having surreptitiously despatched a note to her lover in Queensland (which she implored him not to answer) to tell him that she was honourably free, and living in the anticipation of his return, Rachel began to blossom in beauty and brightness again, like a flower that night had chilled in the warmth of morning sunshine.
It was, perhaps, a little discouraging to see how very much relieved and refreshed she was in her freedom—that she did not even hanker after her lost diamonds, and the riches and luxuries that had once been so desirable and so precious; but Mrs. Reade, as was her custom, looked below the surface of things, and found her compensations.
That the girl had recovered her balance, so to speak, and was in sound health, mentally and physically, was of the first importance in this sensible young woman's view of the case; and her eager friendliness to Mr. Kingston whenever she met him—eager in proportion to the modesty of his demands of course, and sometimes warm with impulsive tenderness such as she had never voluntarily manifested in the days of her engagement—seemed to foreshadow the most hopeful possibilities. Indeed, if Mr. Kingston behaved well, Rachel, apart from her specific misdemeanour, behaved even better.
Mrs. Hardy, outwardly conforming to her daughter's scheme, would not, or could not, disguise her resentment at the failure of the original enterprise, and visited it upon the girl, as perhaps was natural, more roughly than she would have done had Rachel been her own child or less deeply indebted to her.
She was ostentatiously cold and indifferent, or she was sarcastic, and harsh, and rude; she was rigorous to the verge of tyranny in her determination to allow no other man the smallest opportunity for improving the occasion in the manner that Mr. Kingston had indicated—withdrawing her niece from all the gay assemblies where she had hitherto disported herself with so much enjoyment and éclat, and keeping her to a petty routine of study and household duties that was made as dull and irksome as possible.