Yet he loved her well enough to be glad and thankful for the comfort that had come to her, though the coming of it left him doubly bereaved.
CHAPTER IX.
REPARATION.
BUT, after all, Fate willed that this marriage should be but the chief episode in the story, and not the story itself, of Rachel's life.
One day, when she was flitting about her great drawing-room, with a basket of flowers on her arm, singing soft airs from "Don Giovanni" under her breath as she busied herself with the arrangement of little groups of leaves and flowers in sundry precious receptacles here and there, a footman entered with a telegram.
"That is from your master," said Rachel, lifting it from the salver and tearing off the envelope.