He knew how it would be with that tender and clinging heart--it would be able to solace itself now, even for the loss of him. Yet he loved her well enough to be glad and thankful for the comfort that had come to her, though the coming of it left him doubly bereaved. CHAPTER IX. REPARATION. But, after all, Fate willed that this marriage should be but the chief episode in the story, and not the story itself, of Rachel's life. One day, when she was flitting about her great drawing-room, with a basket of flowers on her arm, singing soft airs from "Don Giovanni" under her breath as she busied herself with the arrangement of little groups of leaves and flowers in sundry precious receptacles here and there, a footman entered with a telegram. "That is from your master," said Rachel, lifting it from the salver and tearing off the envelope. "Wait a moment, James, until I see if there are any orders for you to take out." She put down her flowers on the piano, read the brief message tranquilly, and then lifted her face with a smile. "Ask Wilkinson to have the carriage ready at three o'clock," she said; "not the brougham, if it keeps as fine as it is now, the open carriage. And tell cook I want to speak to her in half an hour. "Your master is coming home to-day instead of Friday." James said "Yes'm" and retired, and his mistress continued her occupation of arranging the flowers with more haste and eagerness than before. Mr. Kingston had gone from home a few days previously to meet some distinguished foreign visitors at a friend's house in the country, a thing he did not often do, and she had stayed behind because little Alfred seemed to have symptoms of a bad cold coming on--which, however, had been happily checked at that stage. She had not expected her lord's return just yet, but she concluded that he had not found the party amusing, or had been bored in some way, and so had excused himself from prolonging his visit; and she was glad of the accident, whatever it was, that was bringing him back so soon. In the afternoon she went upstairs to get ready to go to the station to meet him. It was winter, and she clothed herself in rich furs--sealskin and sable, with the sealskin cap of old days on her shining head--against which the soft roundness of her cheek and throat, and the blush-rose delicacy of her complexion was particularly distinct and striking, and also the evident fact that, far from pining away, she had developed in health and strength quite as much as in beauty during the five or six years of her married life. When she was dressed she went to the nursery, where her little boy ran to meet her, begging her to take him with her wherever she was going.