“Of course not,” said Bessie, warmly; “I will not think of it again.  Only when the fate does overtake you, you will have me here for it, Alick?”

He readily promised, feeling gratified at the effect of having spoken to his sister with full recognition of her good sense.

Meantime Rachel was feeling something of what Bessie ascribed to her, as if her sacrifice had been snatched away, and a cloud placed in its stead.  Mortification was certainly present, and a pained feeling of having been made a fool of, whether by the Colonel or herself, her candid mind could hardly decide; but she was afraid it was by herself.  She knew she had never felt sure enough of his attentions to do more than speculate on what she would do if they should become more pointed, and yet she felt angry and sore at having been exposed to so absurd a blunder by the silence of the parties concerned.  “After all,” she said to herself, “there can be no great harm done, I have not been weak enough to commit my heart to the error.  I am unscathed, and I will show it by sympathy for Ermine.  Only—­only, why could not she have told me?”

An ordeal was coming for which Rachel was thus in some degree prepared.  On the return of the party from the book club, Mrs. Curtis came into Rachel’s sitting-room, and hung lingering over the fire as if she had something to say, but did not know how to begin.  At last, however, she said, “I do really think it is very unfair, but it was not his fault, he says.”

“Who?” said Rachel, dreamily.

“Why, Colonel Keith, my dear,” said good Mrs. Curtis, conceiving that her pronominal speech had “broken” her intelligence; “it seems we were mistaken in him all this time.”

“What, about Miss Williams?” said Rachel, perceiving how the land lay; “how did you hear it?”

“You knew it, my dear child,” cried her mother in accents of extreme relief.

“Only this afternoon, from Bessie Keith.”

“And Fanny knew it all this time,” continued Mrs. Curtis.  “I cannot imagine how she could keep it from me, but it seems Miss Williams was resolved it should not be known.  Colonel Keith said he felt it was wrong to go on longer without mentioning it, and I could not but say that it would have been a great relief to have known it earlier.”

“As far as Fanny was concerned it would,” said Rachel, looking into the fire, but not without a sense of rehabilitating satisfaction, as the wistful looks and tone of her mother convinced her that this semi-delusion had not been confined to herself.

“I could not help being extremely sorry for him when he was telling me,” continued Mrs. Curtis, as much resolved against uttering the idea as Rachel herself could be.  “It has been such a very long attachment, and now he says he has not yet been able to overcome her scruples about accepting him in her state.  It is quite right of her, I can’t say but it is, but it is a very awkward situation.”