And yet, a few moments later, when Mrs. Maldon faintly murmured, "Some one at the front door," Rachel grew at once uneasy, and the new life seemed an illusion--either too fine to be true or too leaden to be desired; and she was swaying amid uncertainties. Perhaps Louis was at the front door. He had not yet called; but surely he was bound to call some time during the day! Of the dozen different Rachels in Rachel, one adventurously hoped that he would come, and another feared that he would come; one ruled him sharply out of the catalogue of right-minded persons, and another was ready passionately to defend him. "I think not," said Rachel. "Yes, dear; I heard some one," Mrs. Maldon insisted. Mrs. Maldon, long practised in reconstructing the life of the street from trifling hints of sound heard in bed, was not mistaken. Rachel, opening the door of the bedroom, caught the last tinkling of the front-door bell below. On the other side of the front door somebody was standing--Louis Fores, or another! "It may be the doctor," she said brightly, as she left the bedroom. The coward in her wanted it to be the doctor. But, descending the stairs, she could see plainly through the glass that Louis himself was at the front door. The Rachel that feared was instantly uppermost in her. She was conscious of dread. From the breathless sinking within her bosom the stairs might have been the deck of a steamer pitching in a heavy sea. She thought-- "Here is the Louis to whom I am indifferent. There is nothing between us, really. But shall I have strength to open the door to him?" She opened the door, with the feeling that the act was tremendous and irrevocable. The street, in the Sabbatic sunshine, was as calm as at midnight. Louis Fores, stiff and constrained, stood strangely against the background of it. The unusualness of his demeanour, which was plain to the merest glance, increased Rachel's agitation. It appeared to Rachel that the two of them faced each other like wary enemies. She tried to examine his face in the light of Mrs. Maldon's warning, as though it were the face of a stranger; but without much success. "Is auntie well enough for me to see her?" asked Louis, without greeting or preliminary of any sort. His voice was imperfectly under control. Rachel replied curtly-- "I dare say she is." To herself she said-- "Of course if he's going to sulk about last night--well, he must sulk. Really and truly he got much less than he deserved. He had no business at all to have suggested me going to the cinematograph with him. The longer he sulks the better I shall be pleased." And in fact she was relieved at his sullenness. She tossed her proud head, but with primness. And she fervently credited to the full Mrs. Maldon's solemn insinuations against the disturber.