Some time after the empty ceremony of tea, Rachel sat in state in the parlour, dignified, self-controlled, pretending to sew, as she had pretended to eat and drink and, afterwards, to have an important enterprise of classifying and rearranging her possessions in the wardrobe upstairs.  Let Mrs. Tams enter ever so unexpectedly, Rachel was a fit spectacle for her, with a new work-basket by her side on the table, and her feet primly on a footstool, quite in the style of the late Mrs. Maldon, and a serious and sagacious look on her face that the fire and the gas combined to illuminate.  She did not actually sew, but the threaded needle was ready in her hand to move convincingly at a second’s notice, for Mrs. Tams was of a restless and inquisitive disposition that night.

Apparently secure between the drawn blinds, the fire, the Chesterfield, and the sideboard, Rachel was nevertheless ranging wide among vast, desolate tracts of experience, and she was making singular discoveries.  For example, it was not until she was alone in the parlour after tea that she discovered that during the whole of her interview with Julian Maldon in the afternoon she had never regarded him as a thief.  And yet he was a thief—­just as much as Louis!  She had simply forgotten that he was a thief.  He did not seem to be any the worse for being a thief.  If he had shown the desire to explain to her by word of mouth the entire psychology of his theft, she would have listened with patience and sympathy; she would have encouraged him to rectitude.  And yet Julian had no claim on her; he was not her husband; she did not love him.  But because Louis was her husband, and had a claim on her, and had received all the proofs of her affection—­therefore, she must be merciless for Louis!  She perceived the inconsistency; she perceived it with painful clearness.  She had the impartial logic of the self-accuser.  At intervals the self-accuser was flagellated and put to flight by passionate reaction, but only to return stealthily and irresistibly....

She had been wrong to take the four hundred and fifty pounds without a word.  True, Louis had somewhat casually authorized her to return half of the sum to Julian, but the half was not the whole.  And in any case she ought to have told Louis of her project.  There could be no doubt that, immediately upon Mrs. Tams’s going out, Louis had looked for the four hundred and fifty pounds, and, in swift resentment at its disappearance, had determined to disappear also.  He had been stung and stung again, past bearing (she argued) daily and hourly throughout the week, and the disappearance of the money had put an end to his patience.  Such was the upshot, and she had brought it about!

She had imagined that she was waiting for destiny, but in fact she had been making destiny all the time, with her steely glances at Louis and her acrid, uncompromising tongue!...  And did those other men really admire her?  How, for instance, could Thomas Batchgrew admire her, seeing that he had suspected her of lies and concealment about the robbery?  If it was on account of supposed lies and concealment that he admired her, then she rejected Thomas Batchgrew’s admiration....