to cross stopped as a matter of course on the pavement and waited indifferently, hardly seeing what it was, until the obstruction had gone by, as they would have done had it been anything else. Rachel, leaning back by her father, trying to hide herself, yet felt as if she could not help seeing everything they met. Every step of the way was a slow torture. And oh, the return home! that drive, at a brisk trot this time, through the same crowded, unfeeling streets, which still retained the association of the former progress through them, the sense that now, as the coachman whipped up his horses, for every one save for the two desolate people who sat silently together inside the carriage, life might--indeed, would--throw off that aspect of gloom and go on as before! And then the worst moment of all, the finding on their return that the house had taken on a ghastly semblance of its usual aspect, that the blinds were up, the windows open, the sun streaming in everywhere--the hard, cruel light, as it seemed to Rachel, shining into the rooms that were for evermore to be different. Then followed the time which is incomparably the worst after a great loss, the time when, ordinary life being taken up again, the sufferer has the additional trial of too large an amount of leisure on his hands--the horror of all those new spare hours that used to be passed in a companionship that is gone, that must be filled up with something fresh unless they are to stand in wide, horrible emptiness, to assail recollection with unendurable grief. And especially in that house were they empty, where the existence of both father and daughter had revolved round that of another to a greater extent than that of most people. The problem of how to readjust the daily conditions was a hard, hard one to solve, harder obviously for Sir William than it was for Rachel. The girl was uplifted in those days by the sense that, however difficult she might find it to carry out in detail, the general scheme of her life lay clear before her. She was going to devote it to her father, she was going to carry out that unmade promise, which she now considered more binding on her than ever, although her mother had warned her against making it, the promise that her father should come first. But the warning at the moment it was made had not been accepted by Rachel, and in the exaltation of her self-sacrifice it was forgotten now. She saw her way, as she conceived, plainly in front of her. Rendel, with his usual understanding and wisdom, did not obtrude himself on her during those days. He had quite made up his mind not to ask for her decision until there might be some hope of its being made in his favour. He had felt Lady Gore's death as acutely as though he had the right of kinship to grieve for her. He was miserably conscious that something inestimably precious had gone out of his life, almost before he had had time to realise his happiness in possessing it. But neither he nor Rachel