And Mrs. Hardy kissed her niece affectionately and went away to bed, with a sense of having done her duty, and without the least suspicion that as a domestic diplomatist, she had covered herself with disgrace. CHAPTER XI. MR. DALRYMPLE HAS TO CONSULT GORDON. Of course it is well understood, without further explanation, that Mr. Dalrymple and Rachel were in the position of the Sleeping Beauty and her prince when the spell that held life in abeyance was--or was about to be--broken. At the same time it is not to be inferred that the man, with his years and experience, fell in love at first sight with a merely pretty face, nor that the girl was more than ordinarily impressionable and inconstant, or had any constitutional weakness for wild young men. Perhaps it is not necessary to essay the difficult task of finding a theory to account for it. Everybody knows that if there is a law of nature that will not lend itself to system, it is that which governs these affairs. The greatest force and factor in human life comes to birth by a mere chance--in Roden Dalrymple's case by the breaking of a trace, which was in itself the result of a whole series of trivial and quite avoidable circumstances; and then it thrives or languishes by the favour of petty accidents--until time and sanctifying associations put it beyond the reach of accident. That is its superficial history, taking a general average. Quality and potency are questions of temperament; vigour of growth depends in great measure on what may be called climatic influences. But, as with some other great mysteries of this world, human understanding can make very little of it. At the same time people do not fall in love with each other absolutely without rhyme or reason. And these two did not. Of course personal appearance had, in the first instance, something to do with it. To a girl of Rachel's disposition (or, indeed, of any other disposition), nothing in the whole catalogue of manly graces could have been more captivating than that quiet air of power and dignity which was the chief characteristic of her hero's person and bearing. And Mr. Dalrymple, who was not the kind of man to be at any time insensible to the charm of a sweet face, had had sufficient experience to understand and appreciate the peculiar charm of this one--its unaffected modesty and candour; and he had had, moreover, little of anything to charm him in his later wandering years. And Rachel was not merely a pretty girl, by any means. Being of a most unselfish, unassuming, kindly nature, and having a subtle apprehension of the general fitness of things, her manners were exceedingly gracious and winning--not always conventional, perhaps, but always refined and modest; and that honest youthful enthusiasm for life and its good things, which more or less flavoured all she said and did, though inimical to the prejudices of the British matron, was a charming thing to men.