After this the girls were very silent, saying nothing, and much absorbed with their own thoughts. Marian, who perhaps for the moment found a certain analogy between her father’s pretty sister and herself, was wrapt in breathless horror of the whole catastrophe. Her mind glanced back upon Sir Langham--her fancy started forward into the future; but though the young beauty for the moment was greatly appalled and startled, she could not believe in the possibility of anything at all like this “happening to me!” Agnes, for her part, took quite a different view of the matter. The first suggestion of her eager fancy was, what could be done for Louis and Rachel, to deliver them from the presence and control of such a man? Innocently and instinctively her thoughts turned upon her own gift, and the certain modest amount of power it gave her. Louis might get a situation like Charlie, and be helped until he was able for the full weight of his own life; and Rachel, another sister, could come home to Bellevue. So Agnes, who at this present moment was writing in little bits, much interrupted and broken in upon, her second story, rose into a delightful anticipatory triumph, not of its fame or success, though these things did glance laughingly across her innocent imagination, but of its mere ignoble coined recompense, and of all the great things for these two poor orphans which might be done in Bellevue. And while the mother and the daughters sat at work in the shady little parlour, where the sunshine did not enter, but where a sidelong reflection of one waving bough of clematis, dusty with blossom, waved across the little sloping mirror, high on the wall, Hannah sat outside the open door, watching with visible delight, and sometimes joining for an instant with awkward kindliness, the sports of Bell and Beau. They rolled about on the soft grass, ran about on the garden paths, tumbled over each other and over everything in their way, but, with the happy immunity of children in the country, “took no harm.” Hannah had some work in her great white apron, but did not so much as look at it. She had no eye for a rare passenger upon the grassy byway, and scarcely heard the salutation of the Rector’s man. All Hannah’s soul and thoughts were wrapt up in the “blessed babies,” who made her old life blossom and rejoice; and it was without any intervention of their generally punctilious attendant that a light and rapid step came gliding over the threshold of the Lodge, and a quiet little knock sounded lightly on the parlour door. “May I come in, please?” said a voice which seemed to Agnes to be speaking out of her dream; and Mrs Atheling had not time to buckle on her armour of objection when the door opened, and the same little light rapid figure came bounding into the arms of her daughters. Once there, it was not very difficult to reach to the good mother’s kindly heart. CHAPTER XX. RACHEL.