With this compact between them, and the giving to Rachel of her lover's town address, and very explicit directions as to where she might find him at any given hour when she might happen to want him until the day of his departure, they kissed one clinging, lingering kiss in motionless silence, and bade one another--though they did not know it--a long farewell. "Which is your window, Rachel? Can I see it from here?" She pointed to it in silence, it was very distinct just now in the moonshine, between two dark pine trees. She was crying a little, and she could not speak. "I will be here to-morrow night," he said; "and if you _can't_ come out to me, have a light in your room at twelve o'clock, darling, to let me know you are all right." And then they separated; and Rachel felt rather than saw her way home, so dazzled with tears was she, while Roden Dalrymple at her desire remained behind and watched her. She went straight into the house and upstairs to her room, to gather together, in a feverish hurry of renunciation, all her diamonds and jewels, which like Dead Sea apples, had suddenly become dust. And he, long after she was gone,--long after Mrs. Hardy's carriage returned, and all the chimes in the city had rung the midnight hour--lingered where she had left him, leaning his arms on a convenient wall, watching a lighted window, and thinking. He was very happy. He had come unawares upon his happiness, when he was most in need of it, and it seemed to him that it was the best he could have had. Anything sweeter than this fresh and simple heart, which was satisfied to invest all its wealth in him--anything brighter than the future she had spread before him--he did not want or wish for. It was the amplest compensation that he could imagine for the mistakes and disappointments of his wasted past. And yet, though he was hardly conscious of it--though he would not have owned to it if he had been--he had a vague misgiving about her. He did not wish that she had been less easy to win; he had no fear that she was mistaking a sentimental girlish fancy for love; he did not for a moment apprehend that she would forsake or wrong him. But there was a suggestion of untried and untested youth about all the circumstances of this sudden betrothal, as far as she had influenced them, and there was an intangible suspicion that somewhere she was weak. He did not recognise, and therefore did not formulate, the sentiment that infused that touch of grave and sad anxiety into his happy meditations; but, nevertheless, it was there, and the time came when it was justified. CHAPTER X. MRS. READE'S ADVICE. Rachel was not a heroine. She was simply a sweet and interesting girl; except that she was unusually pretty, by no means above the ordinary level of nice girls. She was better than a great many that we are acquainted with, no doubt, but she was not so good as some.