"I can never tell you how much I owe to this dear friend of mine," she said, looking up into Sidney's face, "and I want you to be a friend to Rachel Goldsmith."
Rachel Goldsmith! The shock was utterly unexpected; but his nature possessed an instinctive kindly consideration for his inferiors which impelled him to stretch out his hand and shake hands with Margaret's favorite maid.
"Since my mother died she has been almost a mother to me," said Margaret.
"I love my young lady as much as I could love a child of my own, sir," said Rachel, looking at him with eyes so much like Sophy's he felt that she must read the secret so jealously guarded in his heart. There was a keen reproach to him in her gaze, and in the air of sadness which rested on her face. She took up the case of diamonds and left them again alone.
"I must tell you something about Rachel," said Margaret, as soon as she was gone. "Her people live at Apley; and her brother is my father's saddler. He had one daughter, about six years older than me; a very pretty girl; quite a lovely face she had. But you may some time have seen her when you were a boy, and came to Apley."
"No," he answered, hardly knowing what he said.
"Everybody admired her," Margaret went on, "and her two aunts doted on her. They sent her to a boarding-school; and then she went out as a nursery governess. But just after she was twenty she disappeared."
Margaret paused, but Sidney said nothing.
"They never found her; they have not found her yet," she continued. "O Sidney! think how dreadful it is to lose anyone you love in such a way! A thousand times worse than dying, for then we lay the body in the quiet grave, and the soul is in the hands of God; but what misery and degradation she may be suffering."
"It is a sad history for you to know, my darling," said Sidney.