Christmas.  She had laid upon both of them a self-denying ordinance as to meeting.  The funeral over, she was without a home.  She wished to find another situation; Louis would not hear of it.  She contemplated a visit to her father and brother in America.  In response to a letter, her brother sent her the exact amount of the steerage fare, and, ready to accept it, she was astounded at Louis’ fury against her brother and at the accent with which he had spit out the word “steerage.”  Her brother and father had gone steerage.  However, she gave way to Louis, chiefly because she could not bear to leave him even for a couple of months.  She was lodging at Knype, at a total normal expense of ten shillings a week.  She possessed over fifty pounds—­enough to keep her for six months and to purchase a trousseau, and not one penny would she deign to receive from her affianced.

The disclosure of Mrs. Maldon’s will increased the delicacy of her situation.  Mrs. Maldon had left the whole of her property in equal shares to Louis and Julian absolutely.  There were others who by blood had an equal claim upon her with these two, but the rest had been mere names to her, and she had characteristically risen above the conventionalism of heredity.  Mr. Batchgrew, the executor, was able to announce that in spite of losses the heirs would get over three thousand five hundred pounds apiece.  Hence it followed that Rachel would be marrying for money as well as for position!  She trembled when the engagement was at length announced.  And when Louis, after consultation with Mr. Batchgrew, pointed out that it would be advantageous not merely to the estate as a whole, but to himself and to her, if he took over the house at Bycars and its contents at a valuation and made it their married home, she at first declined utterly.  The scheme seemed sacrilegious to her.  How could she dare to be happy in that house where Mrs. Maldon had died, in that house which was so intimately Mrs. Maldon’s?  But the manifold excellences of the scheme, appealing strongly to her common sense, overcame her scruples.  The dead are dead; the living must live, and the living must not be morbid; it would be absurd to turn into a pious monument every house which death has emptied; Mrs. Maldon, had she known all the circumstances, would have been only too pleased, etc., etc.  The affair was settled, and grew into public knowledge.

Rachel had to emerge upon the world as an engaged girl.  Left to herself she would have shunned all formalities; but Louis, bred up in Barnes, knew what was due to society.  Naught was omitted.  Louis’ persuasiveness could not be withstood.  Withal, he was so right.  And though Rachel in one part of her mind had a contempt for “fuss,” in another she liked it and was half ashamed of liking it.  Further, her common sense, of which she was still proud, told her that the delicacy of her situation demanded “fuss,” and would be much assuaged thereby.  And finally, the whole thing, being