"Don't talk nonsense," retorted Mrs. Hardy. CHAPTER VII. "HE HAS COME BACK." Mrs. Reade, being satisfied that she had found out Rachel's complaint--as indeed she had--put her under treatment without delay. On the very day of her interview with her mother in the store-room, she sought and obtained permission to take the patient home with her for a week's visit, in order to try the experiment of change and a new set of dissipations, and to make her preliminary investigations undisturbed. She had a charming house of her own at South Yarra, which she "kept" admirably, and where, in an unpretensious manner, she had established a little _salon_ that was a fashionable head centre in Melbourne society, and well deserved by virtue of its own legitimate merits to be so. She was not severely orthodox in these matters, like Mrs. Hardy, who weighted her entertainments with any number of dull people, if they only happened to be in the right set; though she was quite ready to acknowledge the propriety of her mother's system in her mother's circumstances. There was no want of refinement in her hospitality, but there was a delicate flavour of Bohemianism that, like the garlic rubbed on the salad bowl, was the piquant element that made it delightful--to those, at any rate, who were sufficiently intelligent to appreciate it. If men and women were uninteresting, she could have nothing to do with them, though they were the very "best people;" that is to say, she limited her intercourse to those ceremonial observances which rigid etiquette demanded. If they were clever and cultured, and otherwise respectable and well-behaved, and were capable of being fused harmoniously into the general brightness of her little circle, she was inclined to condone a multitude of sins in the matter of birth and station. Artists of all sorts, travellers and politicians, distinguished members of every profession (so long as their own merits and accomplishments distinguished them) were welcome at her house; where they would be sure to meet the most interesting women that a judicious woman, superior to the petty weakness of her sex, could gather together. So it was that Mrs. Edward Reade's afternoons and evenings were synonymous with all that was intellectually refreshing and socially delightful to those who were privileged to enjoy them. But so it was, also, that Rachel, in consideration of her youth, her impressionable nature, and what were supposed to be her democratic tendencies, had not been allowed to know much about them hitherto.