For a moment Mrs. Reade weighed the merits of the proposition, and all that lay against it, with as near an approach to impartial judgment as true friendship and human fallibility allowed. And the thought of Rachel's weakness of purpose and inability to take care of herself, and of Mr. Dalrymple's traditional character, turned the scale. "You cannot go back _now_," she said. "My darling, you have doubly given yourself to Mr. Kingston, and you must try to make yourself happy with him--much can be done by trying, if you will only make up your mind!" It was the last chance that Rachel had, and she accepted the fate that deprived her of it with characteristic meekness. "Yes, I will try," she said, wiping her eyes. "It is too late to go back now." CHAPTER II. "WHEN YULE IS COLD." Rachel, when she did at last get married, had a very stately wedding, if that was any comfort to her. The weather was beautiful, to begin with; a lovelier autumn morning even Australia could not have furnished, to be an omen of good luck for the future years. Each of the eight young Melbourne belles who had been invited to assist at the interesting ceremony took care to point out the significance of sunshine and a cloudless sky when offering their congratulations to the bride and to the bridegroom also. The bridegroom on this occasion by no means filled the humble office which tradition and custom assigned to him. There was not a bridesmaid of them all who did not feel that she was much more Mr. Kingston's bridesmaid than Mrs. Kingston's. Not only were they better acquainted and on more friendly terms generally with him than with her, but he had far more to say to them, and practically far more to do with them, in the course of the day and in the discharge of his and their official duties. He was the prince of bridegrooms, indeed. He had made magnificent settlements upon his wife (though the credit of that really belonged to Mr. Hardy, who, for once in a way, had to be reckoned with in the progress of these arrangements); and his wedding presents were on an equally noble scale. The bridesmaids' bracelets were solid evidences of his worth in every sense of the term, and inasmuch as each bracelet slightly differed from the rest, though all were equally costly, of the excellence of his taste and tact. They were valued thereafter by their respective recipients rather as parting keepsakes from their bachelor friend than as mementoes of his auspicious marriage. And the diamond necklace that was his special wedding-day gift to his bride, and which lay just under the ruffled lace encircling her white throat--a dazzling ring of shifting lights and colours--a magnet to the eyes of all spectators--was worthy to have been a gift from Solomon to the Queen of Sheba.