"If he had not been, they must have known," said Rachel. "Oh, my love, if I could see you for myself just once." She began to cry again, more bitterly than before, and to wring her hands. There was a fierce excitement in her grief and despair that for a moment stunned the little woman who had never known what it was to be in love. And then Rachel told all the story of her clandestine engagement, as the reader already knows it, without any reservations. The _dénouement_ was exactly what Mrs. Reade expected--"And he never came!" "Poor little thing!" she ejaculated pitifully. "I was as certain that he would come as that Christmas would come," said Rachel, reckless in her confessions now that she had begun to open her heart. "And there _was_ a strange gentleman here, and he was shut up a long time with Aunt Elizabeth, and I thought it was he--" "Are you sure it was not he?" "Quite sure. When he was going away I ran out into the garden and watched for him; he was an ugly _little_ man. And if it had been Roden, and he had wanted to see me, _he_ would not have allowed himself to be sent away." "That would have depended on mamma; wouldn't it?" "Oh, no. He would never have let her send him away; and Aunt Elizabeth says, solemnly, that he never came." "You told _her_ about him then?" asked Mrs. Reade. "Beatrice, I was nearly mad--I don't know what I said. She was very angry--she always hated him. But I did not care--I was too miserable to care. And I made her _swear_ that he had never come; and now--it is nearly February--now I know he didn't. I don't want anybody to tell me." Mrs. Reade put all these revelations into her mental crucible, and in a few seconds she had the product ready. On presenting it to Rachel, wrapped up in the gentlest language, it came to this simply--that "it was always the way with men of that kind." "He is not like other men," said Rachel. "I do not blame him. I have thought of it, over and over and over, every night and every day, and I know why it was. I _ran after him_, Beatrice--I took him before he offered himself to me--I had only seen him once or twice when I showed him I loved him, and made him think I wanted him--he did not ask me to be his wife until I had given myself to him already! I did not think of it then, but I see it clearly now. I dragged him into it--I gave him no choice. And now he is away, and he thinks about it, and he knows I am not enough for him. How should I be enough--_I_ for such a man as that? Oh, that happy woman, who died in his arms! Oh, how I wish I had been she!" "Well," said Mrs. Reade, after a pause, trying to speak cheerfully, but feeling profoundly disheartened; "you ought not to have had anything to do with lovers and marriages at your time of life, and you must just give up thinking of such things until you are older and wiser."