“But I must tell Rachel.”

“Rachel?  Rachel?  Oh! Her!  Why tell any one?” Mr. Batchgrew sniffed very actively.

“Oh!  I shouldn’t be easy if I didn’t tell Rachel,” insisted Mrs. Maldon with firmness.

Before the trustee could protest anew she had rung the bell.

VIII

It was another and an apronless Rachel that entered the room, a Rachel transformed, magnificent in light green frock with elaborate lacy ruchings and ornamentations, and the waist at the new fashionable height.  Her ruddy face and hands were fresh from water, her hair very glossy and very neat:  she was in high array.  This festival attire Mrs. Maldon now fully beheld for the first time.  It, indeed, honoured herself, for she had ordained a festive evening:  but at the same time she was surprised and troubled by it.  As for Mr. Batchgrew, he entirely ignored the vision.  Stretched out in one long inclined plane from the back of his chair down to the brass fender, he contemplated the fire, while picking his teeth with a certain impatience, and still sniffing actively.  The girl resented this disregard.  But, though she remained hostile to the grotesque old man with his fussy noises, the mantle of Mrs. Maldon’s moral protection was now over Councillor Batchgrew, and Rachel’s mistrustful scorn of him had lost some of its pleasing force.

“Rachel—­”

Mrs. Maldon gave a hesitating cough.

“Yes, Mrs. Maldon?” said Rachel questioningly deferential, and smiling faintly into Mrs. Maldon’s apprehensive eyes.  Against the background of the aged pair she seemed dramatically young, lithe, living, and wistful.  She was nervous, but she thought with strong superiority:  “What are those old folks planning together?  Why do they ring for me?”

At length Mrs. Maldon proceeded—­“I think I ought to tell you, dear, Mr. Batchgrew is obliged to leave this money in my charge to-night.”

“What money?” asked Rachel.

Mr. Batchgrew put in sharply, drawing up his legs—­“This!...  Here, young miss!  Step this way, if ye please.  I’ll count it.  Ten, twenty, thirty—­” With new lickings and clickings he counted the notes all over again.  “There!” When he had finished his pride had become positively naive.

“Oh, my word!” murmured Rachel, awed and astounded.

“It is rather a lot, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Maldon, with a timid laugh.

At once fascinated and repelled, the two women looked at the money as at a magic.  It represented to Mrs. Maldon a future free from financial embarrassment; it represented to Rachel more than she could earn in half a century at her wage of eighteen pounds a year, an unimaginable source of endless gratifications; and yet the mere fact that it was to stay in the house all night changed it for them into something dire and formidable, so that it inspired both of them—­the ancient dame and the young girl—­with naught but a mystic dread.  Mr. Batchgrew eyed the affrighted creatures with satisfaction, appearing to take a perverse pleasure in thus imposing upon them the horrid incubus.