“And are you left in the Hall all by yourselves, two young creatures?” asked Mrs Atheling, with curiosity. “It must be very melancholy for you.”
“Not to be alone!” cried Rachel. “But very soon my lord is coming, with a great household of people; and then—I almost faint when I think upon it. What shall I do?”
“But, Rachel, Mrs Edgerley is very kind to you,” said Agnes.
Rachel answered after her usual fashion: “I do not care at all for myself—it is nothing to me; but Louis—oh, Louis!—if he is ever seen, the people stare at him as they would at a horse or a hound; and Lord Winterbourne tries to have an opportunity to speak and order him away, and when he shoots, he says he will put him in prison. And then Louis knows when they send for me, and sometimes stands under the window and hears me singing, and is white with rage to hear; and then he says he cannot bear it, and must go away, and then I go down upon my knees to him. I know how it will happen—everything, everything! It makes him mad to have to bear it. Oh, I wish I knew anything that I could do!”
“Mamma,” said Agnes earnestly, “Rachel used to tell us all this at the Willows. Do you not think he ought to go away?”
Mrs Atheling shook her head in perplexity; and instead of answering, asked a question, “Does he not think it his duty, my dear, to obey your—your father?” said Mamma doubtfully.
“But he is not our father—oh no, no, indeed he is not! I should know he was not, even without Louis,” cried Rachel, unaware what a violent affirmation this was. “Louis says we could not have any father who would not be a disgrace to us, being as we are—and Louis must be right; but even though he might be a bad man, he could not be like Lord Winterbourne. He takes pleasure in humiliating us—he never cared for us all our life.”
There was something very touching in this entire identification of these two solitary existences which still were but one life; and Rachel was not Rachel till she came to the very last words. Before that, with the strange and constantly varying doubleness of her sisterly character, she had been once again the representative of Louis. One thing struck them all as they looked at her small features, fired with this sudden inspiration of Louis’s pride and spirit. About as different as possible—at the extreme antipodes of unresemblance—were their two visitors of this day,—this small little fairy, nervous, timid, and doubtful, fatherless, homeless, and without so much as a name, and that assured and commanding old lady, owning no superior, and as secure of her own position and authority as any reigning monarch. Yes, they were about as dissimilar as two human creatures could be; yet the lookers-on were startled to recognise that subtle link of likeness, seldom a likeness of features, which people call family resemblance. Could it have come through this man, who was so repugnant to them both?
“They are all coming down on Monday next week,” said Rachel, “so we have just three days all to ourselves; and I thought, perhaps—perhaps, if you please to let me, I might bring Louis to-night?”
“Surely, my dear,” said Mrs Atheling.