"But they have told me something which has frightened me."
"They! who are they?"
"Your sister told me, and Miss Pucker told her."
"Oh, Miss Pucker! What business has Miss Pucker with me? If she is to come between us all our happiness will be over." Then Rachel rose from her knees and began to look angry, whereupon her mother was more frightened than ever. "But let me hear it, mamma. I've no doubt it is something very awful."
Mrs. Ray looked at her daughter with beseeching eyes, as though praying to be forgiven for having introduced a subject so disagreeable. "Dorothea says that on Wednesday evening you were walking under the churchyard elms with—that young man from the brewery."
At any rate everything had been said now. The extent of the depravity with which Rachel was to be charged had been made known to her in the very plainest terms. Mrs. Ray as she uttered the terrible words turned first pale and then red,—pale with fear and red with shame. As soon as she had spoken them she wished the words unsaid. Her dislike to Miss Pucker amounted almost to hatred. She felt bitterly even towards her own eldest daughter. She looked timidly into Rachel's face and unconsciously construed into their true meaning those lines which formed themselves on the girl's brow and over her eyes.
"Well, mamma; and what else?" said Rachel.
"Dorothea thinks that perhaps you are going into Baslehurst to meet him again."
"And suppose I am?"
From the tone in which this question was asked it was clear to Mrs. Ray that she was expected to answer it. And yet what answer could she make?