"I wasn't hiding," said Rachel, "and you've no business to say so." Her tears, however, prevented her from fighting her own battle manfully, or with her usual courage.
"It looked very much like it, Rachel, at any rate. I should have thought that mother would have wished you to have known a great deal more about any young man before she encouraged you to regard him in that way, than you can possibly know of Mr. Rowan."
"But how are they to know each other, Dorothea, if they mustn't see one another?" said Mrs. Ray.
"I have no doubt he knows how to dance very cleverly. As Rachel is being taught to live now, that may perhaps be the chief thing necessary."
This blow did reach poor Mrs. Ray, who a week or two since would certainly have agreed with her elder daughter in thinking that dancing was sinful. Into this difficulty, however, she had been brought by Mr. Comfort's advice. "But what else can she know of him?" continued Mrs. Prime. "He is able to maintain a wife you say,—and is that all that is necessary to consider in the choice of a husband, or is that the chief thing? Oh, mother, you should think of your responsibility at such a time as this. It may be very pleasant for Rachel to have this young man as her lover, very pleasant while it lasts. But what—what—what?" Then Mrs. Prime was so much oppressed by the black weight of her own thoughts, that she was unable further to express them.
"I do think about it," said Mrs. Ray. "I think about it more than anything else."
"And have you concluded that in this way you can best secure Rachel's welfare? Oh, mother!"
"He always goes to church on Sundays," said Rachel. "I don't know why you are to make him out so bad." This she said with her eyes fixed upon her mother, for it seemed to her that her mother was almost about to yield.
A good deal might be said in excuse for Mrs. Prime. She was not only acting for the best in accordance with her own lights, but the doctrine which she now preached was the doctrine which had been held by the inhabitants of the cottage at Bragg's End. The fault, if fault there was, had been in the teaching under which had lived both Mrs. Prime and her mother. In their desire to live in accordance with that teaching, they had agreed to regard all the outer world, that is all the world except their world, as wicked and dangerous. They had never conceived that in forming this judgment they were deficient in charity; nor, indeed, were they conscious that they had formed any such judgment. In works of charity they had striven to be abundant, but had taken simply the Dorcas view of that virtue. The younger and more energetic woman had become sour in her temper under the régime of this life, while the elder and weaker had retained her own sweetness partly because of her weakness. But who can say that either of them were other than good women,—good according to such lights as had been lit for their guidance? But now the younger was stanch to her old lessons while the elder was leaving them. The elder was leaving them, not by force of her own reason, but under the necessity of coming in contact with the world which was brought upon her by the vitality and instincts of her younger child. This difficulty she had sought to master, once and for ever, by a reference to her clergyman. What had been the result of that reference the reader already knows.
"Mother," said Mrs. Prime, very solemnly, "is this young man such a one as you would have chosen for Rachel's husband six months ago?"