Agnes looked round the large bare apartment, in which the only article of furniture worth notice was an old piano, and which looked only upon the little square of kitchen-garden and the servants’ rooms. It was somewhat larger than both the parlours in Bellevue, and for a best room would have rejoiced Mrs Atheling’s ambitious heart; but Agnes was already a little wiser than she had been in Islington, and it chilled her heart to compare this lonely and dreary apartment with all the surrounding luxuries, which Rachel saw and did not share. “Come up with me and see Marian,” said Agnes, putting her arm through her companion’s; “you are not to avoid us now any more; we are all to be friends after to-day.” And Rachel, who did not know what friendship was, yielded, thinking of Louis. Had she been wrong throughout in keeping him, by her entreaties, so long at Winterbourne? A vision of a home, all to themselves, burst once in a great delight upon the mind of Rachel. If Louis would only consent to it! With such a motive before her as that, the poor girl fancied she “would not mind” being a singer after all. CHAPTER V. CONFIDENTIAL. When the first ice was broken, Rachel became perfectly confidential with her new friends--_perfectly_ confidential--far more so than they, accustomed to the domestic privateness of humble English life, could understand. This poor girl had no restraint upon her for family pride or family honour; no compensation in family sympathy; and her listeners, who had very little skill in the study of character, though one of them had written a novel, were extremely puzzled with a kind of doubleness, perfectly innocent and unconscious, which made Rachel’s thoughts and words at different moments like the words and the thoughts of two different people. At one time she was herself, humble, timid, and content to do anything which any authority bade her do; but in a moment she remembered Louis; and the change was instantaneous--she became proud, stately, obdurate, even defiant. She was no longer herself, but the shadow and representative of her brother; and in this view Rachel resisted and defied every influence, anchoring her own wavering will upon Louis, and refusing, with unreasonable and unreasoning obstinacy, all injunctions and all persuasions coming from those to whom her brother was opposed. She seemed, indeed, to have neither plan nor thought for herself: Louis was her inspiration. _She_ seemed to have been born for no other purpose but to follow, to love, and to serve this brother, who to her was all the world. As she sat on the pretty chintz sofa in that sunny little dressing-room where Agnes and Marian passed the morning, running rapidly over the environs of the Old Wood Lodge, and telling them about their future neighbours, they were amazed and amused to find the total absence of personal opinion, and almost of personal liking, in their new acquaintance. She had but one standard, to