“What does it matter what she was?  What do the facts matter, Mrs. Steel, when one has an idea like that for fiction?  Fiction is truer than fact!”

“But you haven’t answered my question.”

Rachel meant to have that answer.

“Oh, well, as a matter of fact, I read the case pretty closely, and I was thankful the jury brought in an acquittal.  It required a little imagination, but the truth always does.  It is no treason to our host to whisper that he has none.  I remember having quite a heated argument with him at the time.  Oh, dear, no; she was no more guilty than you or I; but it would be a thousand times more artistic if she were; and I should make her so, by Jove!”

Rachel finished heir dinner in great tranquillity after this; but there was a flush upon her face which had not been there before, and Langholm received an astonishing smile when the ladies rose.  He had been making tardy atonement for his neglect of the aquiline lady, but Rachel had the last word with him.

“You will come and see us, won’t you?” she said.  “I shall want to hear how the plot works out.”

“I am afraid it’s one I can’t afford to use,” he said, “unless I stick to foolish fact and make her innocent.”

And she left him with a wry face, her own glowing again.

“You looked simply great—­especially towards the end,” whispered Morna Woodgate in the drawing-room, for she alone knew how nervous Rachel had been about what was indeed her social debut in Delverton.

The aquiline lady also had a word to say.  Her eyes were like brown beads, and her nose very long, which gave her indeed a hawk-like appearance, somewhat unusual in a woman; but her gravity was rather that of the owl.

“You talked a great deal to Mr. Langholm,” said she, sounding her rebuke rather cleverly in the key of mere statement of fact.  “Have you read his books, Mrs. Steel?”

“Some of them,” said Rachel; “haven’t you?”

“Oh, no, I never read novels, unless it be George Eliot, or in these days Mrs. Humphrey Ward.  It’s such waste of time when there are Browning, Ruskin, and Carlyle to read and read again.  I know I shouldn’t like Mr. Langholm’s; I am sure they are dreadfully uncultured and sensational.”

“But I like sensation,” Rachel said.  “I like to be taken out of myself.”

“So you suggested he should write a novel about Mrs. Minchin!”

“No, I didn’t suggest it,” said Rachel, hurriedly; but the beady brown eyes were upon her, and she felt herself reddening horribly as she spoke.

“You seemed to know all about her,” said the aquiline lady.  “I’m not in the habit of reading such cases.  But I must really look this one up.”

CHAPTER XII

EPISODE OF THE INVISIBLE VISITOR