"Who told you?" the girl demanded, with sharp entreaty. "Oh, Beatrice, what have you heard? Did Mrs. Digby tell you anything about him? Is he in Queensland? Is he alive? What is he doing?"
Mrs. Reade replied that she had heard nothing of Mr. Dalrymple beyond the fact that he was believed to be in Queensland, and doing well.
"If he had not been, they must have known," said Rachel. "Oh, my love, if I could see you for myself just once."
She began to cry again, more bitterly than before, and to wring her hands. There was a fierce excitement in her grief and despair that for a moment stunned the little woman who had never known what it was to be in love.
And then Rachel told all the story of her clandestine engagement, as the reader already knows it, without any reservations. The dénouement was exactly what Mrs. Reade expected—"And he never came!"
"Poor little thing!" she ejaculated pitifully.
"I was as certain that he would come as that Christmas would come," said Rachel, reckless in her confessions now that she had begun to open her heart. "And there was a strange gentleman here, and he was shut up a long time with Aunt Elizabeth, and I thought it was he—"
"Are you sure it was not he?"
"Quite sure. When he was going away I ran out into the garden and watched for him; he was an ugly little man. And if it had been Roden, and he had wanted to see me, he would not have allowed himself to be sent away."
"That would have depended on mamma; wouldn't it?"