Mr. Jones was not habitually a man of keen perceptions, but love is ever quick. It cut him to the heart to see his little Mary so woebegone. He looked at her wistfully, tried to check a sigh, and said as brightly as he could: "Cheer up, Mary; law bless you girl, well have lots of lodgers yet; and as to that Saunders, I don't so much care about it, now he's gone. He was a clever fellow, but he hadn't got no capital, and as to taking a Co. without capital, why none but a good-natured easy fellow like me would dream of such a thing now a days; but, as I said, we'll have lots of lodgers--lots of lodgers." "We never had but that one all them nine months," said Mary with some asperity. "They're all a coming," said her father gaily, "They're all a coming." And he said it in such droll fashion, and winked so knowingly that, do what she could, Mary could not but laugh. CHAPTER XIII. Mary was gone; Jane, had come in but to go up to her room. Rachel sat alone in the little parlour, reading by candle-light. And did she read, indeed! Alas no! Her will fixed her eyes on the page, but her mind received not the impressions it conveyed. The sentences were vague and broken as images in a dream; the words had no meaning. Outwardly, calm as ever did Rachel seem, but there was a strange sorrow-- a strange tumult in her heart. That day the hope of years had been wrecked, that day she had offered herself, and been finally rejected. In vain she said to herself: "I must submit--it is the will of God, I must submit." A voice within her ever seemed to say: "Father, Father why hast thou forsaken me!" until, at length, Rachel felt as if she could bear no more. Sorrows endured in silence are ever doubly felt. The nature of Rachel Gray was silent; she had never asked for sympathy; she had early been taught to expect and accept in its stead, its bitter step-sister Ridicule. Derided, laughed at, she had learned to dread that the look of a human being should catch a glimpse of her sorrows. If her little troubles were thus treated--how would her heavier griefs fare? And now no more than ever did Rachel trouble any with her burden. Why should she? Who, what was she that others should care whether or not her father loved her! That he did not sufficiently, condemned her to solitude. The pitying eye of God might, indeed, look down upon her with tenderness and love, but from her brethren Rachel expected nothing.