"It's too late to give me that advice. And let me tell you that I prefer a wife who comes to the work fresh, rather than one who is already tired and perhaps discouraged. I said so to my mother." "I am afraid that your mother would not agree. Did she feel leaving you very much? And are her rooms close by?" Rachel listened for the answer rather anxiously. "She was wonderfully unselfish about leaving the coast clear for you; but her rooms are not far off. You will soon love her." "I am sure I shall make no end of mistakes," sighed Rachel, a little depressed at his answer. "Don't you know that it has been said that a person who makes no mistakes makes nothing else?" "Yes; but—" she paused, then she suddenly changed her mind, saying— "Let us forget everything for a moment but the moonlight on the sea, and that we have one another." Luke rested on his oars and the moon shone down upon their faces alive with love, as if it blessed them. [Illustration] CHAPTER II. THE HOME COMING. Rachel leant back in the railway carriage and watched the fields and hedges rapidly passing. But her thoughts were far away. She was going home, but not to the old familiar place she had hitherto called by that name. It was to her new home, and the life that she was to spend there was all untried. She could not but remember the welcoming smile that her mother always gave her even when she had returned only from a walk among the hills. She knew that whatever new interest might come into her mother's life that she would never cease to think first of her children. She had always made everything subservient to their interests and welfare. Before she became an invalid she had never allowed social or any other claims to interfere with theirs, and since she had had to lead a semi-invalid life their interests had still been hers, their joys and sorrows were felt to be her own. And now, Rachel would have to make her own way in her new world; and have no mother to fly to in any of her difficulties. Her mother-in-law would certainly not take her place, although Luke had talked of her with complete satisfaction and the greatest love. His mother, in his eyes, was everything a man could wish for. She was apparently perfect. But Rachel had not liked what she had seen of her at the wedding, and felt intuitively that she was not approved of by Luke's mother. Luke was evidently her idol, and no-one could be good enough for him. The few remarks she had exchanged with Mrs. Greville had convinced Rachel that Luke's mother had hoped for another kind of wife for her son; one who was used to Parish work, and capable of managing people. Rachel had told her at once that Parish work would be a new experience and had said a little wistfully that she wished she had done more than she had for their home parish. "But I had mother to take care of," she had added.