"I dare say I can, my diplomatist. But you are not going to leave till the post has arrived, when you will receive business letters requiring your immediate presence in London. You are not going to let a woman know that you leave on her account." "You are very sharp, Cackles," said Dick, drearily. "And I'll take a leaf out of your book and lie, if you think it is the right thing. But I expect she will know very well that the same business which took me to that infernal temperance meeting has taken me to London." Rachel was vaguely relieved when Dick went off next morning. She was not, as a rule, oppressed by the attentions she received from young men, which in due season became "marked," and then resulted in proposals neatly or clumsily expressed. But she was disturbed when she thought of Dick, and his departure was like the removal of a weight, not a heavy, but still a perceptible one. For Rachel was aware that Dick was in deadly earnest, and that his love was growing steadily, almost unconsciously, was accumulating like snow, flake by flake, upon a mountain-side. Some day, perhaps not for a long time, but some day, there would be an avalanche, and, in his own language, she "would be in it." CHAPTER XX Si l'on vous a trahi, ce n'est pas la trahison qui importe; c'est le pardon qu'elle a fait naitre dans votre ame. . . . Mais si la trahison n'a pas accru la simplicite, la confiance plus haute, l'etendue de l'amour, on vous aura trahi bien inutilement, et vous pouvez vous dire qu'il n'est rien arrive.--MAETERLINCK. Rachel and Hester were sitting in the shadow of the church-yard wall where Hester had so unfortunately fallen asleep on a previous occasion. It was the first of many clandestine meetings. Mr. and Mrs. Gresley did not realize that Hester and Rachel wished to "talk secrets," as they would have expressed it, and Rachel's arrival was felt by the Gresleys to be the appropriate moment to momentarily lay aside their daily avocations, and to join Hester and Rachel in the garden for social intercourse. The Gresleys liked Rachel. Listeners are generally liked. Perhaps also her gentle, unassuming manner was not an unpleasant change after the familiar nonchalance of the Pratts. The two friends bore their fate for a time in inward impatience, and then, not without compunction, "practised to deceive." Certain obtuse persons push others, naturally upright, into eluding and outwitting them, just as the really wicked people, who give _viva voce_ invitations, goad us into crevasses of lies, for which, if there is any justice anywhere, they will have to answer at the last day. Mr. Gresley gave the last shove to Hester and Rachel by an exhaustive harangue on what he called socialism. Finding they were discussing some phase of it, he drew up a chair and informed them that he had "threshed out" the whole subject.