The acute little woman who practically had never solved the meaning of love and marriage, and quite understood her disqualifications in this respect, yet had glimmerings of the state of things that existed in Rachel's heart. She knew--though she had come to the knowledge by slow degrees--that the girl was not weak all through, but only weak as the water-lily is, "Whose root is fix'd in stable earth, whose head Floats on the tossing waves." And that just as she had been tenacious of certain principles in her earlier life, when living with her father in an atmosphere which she had only her own instinct to teach her was tainted with dishonour, so she would hold fast to some other things, if they had taken root, with a secret, blind integrity in spite of her emotional fluctuations in the winds and waves of circumstance. She had adapted herself to the conditions of her marriage with the pliant submissiveness of her disposition; but there was a part of her that refused to be reconciled to all the degradation that was involved, and it was a tough and vital part of her. Since this was violently repressed, comprehending as it did all those aspiring ideals which had had so much poetry and promise, and which represented for her, in their loss as in their possession, the meaning of human happiness and the diviner aspect of human life, there was naturally a great vacuum somewhere--a great emptiness for which no compensating interests were available. Hence that serene inexpressiveness of mien and manner which had so mature and distinguished an air. Mrs. Reade's own marriage was very much of the same pattern in one respect--it was but an outward and visible sign of marriage that had no inward and spiritual grace; but then she did not know what it was that she missed, and Rachel did. And the difference between the two cases was perfectly obvious to that intelligent woman. On the return of Mr. and Mrs. Kingston to Melbourne, a number of fashionable parties were of course given in their honour. At the chief of these, a great ball in the Town-hall, the dramatic action of this story, temporarily suspended by our heroine's absence from the country which held all its elements in solution, so to speak, was suddenly set going again. It was towards the end of October, just when the gay season of the races was about to set in, and when the spring was in its glory. It strangely happened to be also the anniversary of the night of her clandestine betrothal to Roden Dalrymple, which was the memorable last time--two whole years ago--that she had seen or heard of him.