“There is no fool like an old fool,” quoted Rachel to herself; and it was remarkable that until this moment she had never thought of Mr. Steel as either elderly or old.  His eyes were young; his voice was young; she could hear him and see him still, so the strong impression was not all on one side.  No more, it would seem, was the fascination.  Rachel, indeed, owned to no such feeling, even in her inmost heart.  But she did begin to blame herself, alike for her reception of advances which might well have been dictated by mere eccentric benevolence, and for her readiness now to put another construction upon them.  And all this time she was threading the streets of Chelsea at a pace suggestive of a destination and a purpose, while in her mind she did nothing but look back.

Impulsive by nature, Rachel had also the courage of each impulse while it lasted; on the other hand, if quick to act, she was only too ready to regret.  Like many another whose self-reliance is largely on the surface, an achievement of the will and not the gift of a temperament, she usually paid for a display of spirit with the most dispiriting reaction; and this was precisely the case in point.  Rachel was ashamed alike of her rudeness and her vanity; the latter she traced to its source.  It was inspired by vague memories of other women who had been through the same ordeal as herself.  One had been handed a bouquet in the dock; another had been overwhelmed by proposals of marriage.  Rachel herself had received letters of which the first line was enough.  But there had been no letter from Mr. Steel.  Ah! but he had attended her trial; she remembered him now, his continual presence had impressed itself very subtly upon her mind, without the definite memory of a single glance; and after the trial he sent her his card, he dogged her in the train!  What was she to think?  There was the voice in which he had offered her his aid; there was the look in his eyes; there was the delicate indirectness of that offer.

A year or two ago, with all her independence, Rachel would not have been so ready to repel one whose advances, however unwarrantable in themselves, were yet marked by so many evidences of sympathy and consideration.  She had not always been suspicious and repellent; and she sighed to think how sadly she must have changed, even before the nightmare of the last few weeks.

But a more poignant reminder of her married life was now in store for Rachel Minchin.  She had come to Chelsea because it was the only portion of the town in which she had the semblance of a friend; but there did live in Tite Street a young couple with whom the Minchins had at one time been on friendly terms.  That was in the day of plenty and extravagance; and the acquaintance, formed at an hotel in the Trossachs, had not ripened in town as the two wives could have wished.  It was Mrs. Carrington, however, who had found the Minchins their furnished house, while her husband certainly interested himself in Rachel’s