She was determined not to let Rachel out of her sight, she said; and she stuck to that determination against many artful manoeuvres so steadily that the powerful small woman, little accustomed to be thwarted, and still less to own to it, nearly made up her mind to confess herself beaten, and to break the disappointment to Rachel. Mrs. Hardy, however, relented in a sudden and unexpected manner. She received a consignment of furniture and _bric-à-brac_ from her travelling daughter, together with most interesting and bewildering advices. Laura wrote to say that the Toorak House, if it had any respect for itself, must immediately get rid of its pierglasses, its whitewash, and its aniline colours; and poor Mrs. Hardy, who had ever walked with the complacent dignity of a priestess and oracle in the sacred regions of household art, was too much excited and disturbed by the humiliating discovery that she was old-fashioned and behind the times, and by her agonising desire to recover her proper position, to pay the customary attention even to Rachel's business. While she was absorbed in beginning the mighty task of re-adjusting her ideas of taste and the details of her domestic environment, which, after a few years of painful struggle with the impracticabilities of Eastlake mediævalism, was to result in the existing combination of Chippendale and the Japanesque, she felt that it would be a relief to divest herself of superfluous cares. So she laid her daughter under solemn obligations to protect Rachel's interests and the honour of the family, and allowed her to take the invalid away with her for a week or two, that so she might give her undivided attention to the choice of new coverings for the drawing-room furniture, and the question what should be done to the ceiling. The two young women were very grateful for the chance which set them free to follow their own devices. Mrs. Reade brought her new brougham--a propitiatory offering from Ned after he had scandalously disgraced himself by going to a public dinner and coming home in a dishevelled condition at noon next day--and conveyed her charge to South Yarra in a nest of soft cushions, and laid her on a pillowy sofa in the brightest of homely boudoirs, where they discussed the situation and afternoon tea with much content and cheerfulness. Rachel was strangely peaceful and amiable at this time. She puzzled her companion excessively. She had, indeed, a sort of exalted transcendentalism about her that was almost aggravating to that practical and most unsentimental person. Her way of moralising upon love and lovers, after such an experience as she had had, was very naïve and touching, but eminently preposterous, Mrs. Reade considered--and she did not at all mind saying so.