“Oh no, they would only detest you for my sake. I can’t,” she said again, bowed down again with shame and dejection.
“I’ll take care of that!” he said with the dry tone that perhaps was above all reassurance, and conquered her far enough to enable him to take possession of the thin and still listless hand.
“Then,” he said, “you will let me take this whole matter in hand; and if the worst comes to the worst, we will make up to the charity out of the Indian money, without vexing the mother.”
“I can’t let you suffer for my miserable folly.”
“Too late to say that!” he answered; and as her eyes were raised to him in startled inquiry, he said gravely, “These last weeks have shown me that your troubles must be mine.”
A hand was on the door, and Rachel fled, in time to screen her flight from Miss Wellwood, whom Alick met with his usual undisturbed front, and inquiries for Mrs. Curtis.
That good lady was in the town more worried than flattered by the numerous inquiries after Rachel’s health, and conscious of having gone rather near the wind in making the best of it. She had begun to dread being accosted by any acquaintance, and Captain Keith, sauntering near the archway of the close, was no welcome spectacle. She would have passed him with a curt salutation, but he grasped her hand, saying, “May I have a few words with you?”
“Not Fanny—not the children!” cried Mrs. Curtis in dismay.
“No indeed. Only myself,” and a gleam of intelligence under his eyelashes and judicious pressure of his hand conveyed volumes to Grace, who had seen him often during Rachel’s illness, and was not unprepared. She merely said that she would see how her sister was, substituted Captain Keith’s arm for her own as her mother’s support, and hurried away, to encounter Miss Wellwood’s regrets that, in spite of all her precautions, dear Rachel had been disturbed by “a young officer, I believe. We see him often at the cathedral, and somebody said it was his sister whom Lord Keith married.”
“Yes, we know him well, and he is a Victoria Cross man,” said Grace, beginning to assume his reflected glory.