Rachel was found in the drawing-room, nervously rearranging the cups and saucers that had just been brought in for tea. Lucilla ushered him in with a smile, and discreetly retired with her mother, upon some utterly unnecessary errand. The lovers met in the middle of the room, and Rachel went through the ordeal that she had been vaguely dreading all day. It was worse than she had expected, for she felt, by some subtle, newly-developed sense, that she had been greatly missed and ardently longed for, and that they were truly lover's arms that folded her, trembling and shrinking, in that apparently interminable embrace. She had not yet come to realise the magnitude and the ignominy of the wrong that she was doing him, but a pang of remorseful pity did hurt her somewhere, through all her stony irresponsiveness, for the fate that had driven him, the desired of so many women, to set his heart at last upon one who did not want it. For a brief intolerable moment she felt that she had it in her to implore him to release her from her engagement, but--well, she was a little coward, if the truth must be told. And, moreover, she had not quite come to the point of giving up her pink boudoir, and her diamond necklace, and all her other splendid possessions in prospect, because she could not love the contingent husband as was her duty to him to do. She did not know as yet that she loved another man. "And you never came to meet me?" said Mr. Kingston, with tender reproach, as he led her by one reluctant hand to a sofa that was wheeled up comfortably to the fireside. "And I was straining my eyes all across the paddock, to see you on the verandah looking out." "I was looking out," said Rachel; "I saw the buggy before it reached the woolshed. But----" "But you thought it would be nicer to have our meeting here, with no one to look on? So it is, darling; you were quite right. I could not have helped kissing you, if all the servants on the place had been standing round; and one doesn't like to make a public exhibition of one's self. Oh, my pet, I _am_ so glad to get you again! And how are you? Let me have a good look at you. Oh, if you are going to blush, how am I to tell whether you are looking well or not?" "I am not going to blush," said Rachel; "and I am quite well. I never was better. The country air is doing me ever so much good." "I am not so sure of that," rejoined Mr. Kingston, rather gravely, stroking her soft cheek. "You look fagged, as if you had been knocking about too much. I didn't like your going to those rubbishy little races--I told Thornley so. Have you been sitting up late at night?" "No--I have been doing _nothing_," pleaded Rachel; "I am really as well as possible. How is the house getting on?"