"I have been thinking what I ought to do. I ought to just put on my hat and jacket and run away. I could go to a friend, a poor widow, who used to be very kind to me in the old days, and she would let me stay with her until I could get a situation. No, don't scold me—it is ten o'clock, isn't it? It is too late for a girl to be out at night alone. I can't do it, if I would."
"And would you, indeed if you could?" demanded Mrs. Reade, holding her by her wrists and looking imploringly into her face. "Do you really mean that you have a mind to do such a thing, Rachel?"
Rachel was silent for a few seconds and then she began to cry bitterly.
"Oh, I don't know—I don't know!" she said, turning her head wildly from side to side. "Sometimes I feel one way and sometimes another. I want somebody—somebody strong, like Roden—to tell me what it is right to do!"
For a moment Mrs. Reade weighed the merits of the proposition, and all that lay against it, with as near an approach to impartial judgment as true friendship and human fallibility allowed. And the thought of Rachel's weakness of purpose and inability to take care of herself, and of Mr. Dalrymple's traditional character, turned the scale.
"You cannot go back now," she said. "My darling, you have doubly given yourself to Mr. Kingston, and you must try to make yourself happy with him—much can be done by trying, if you will only make up your mind!"
It was the last chance that Rachel had, and she accepted the fate that deprived her of it with characteristic meekness.
"Yes, I will try," she said, wiping her eyes. "It is too late to go back now."
