At those words, I rose to interfere.  Mr. Bruff had done exactly what I had dreaded he would do, when he asked Mrs. Ablewhite for Rachel’s bonnet and shawl.

Before I could interpose a word, Rachel had accepted his invitation in the warmest terms.  If I suffered the arrangement thus made between them to be carried out—­if she once passed the threshold of Mr. Bruff’s door—­farewell to the fondest hope of my life, the hope of bringing my lost sheep back to the fold!  The bare idea of such a calamity as this quite overwhelmed me.  I cast the miserable trammels of worldly discretion to the winds, and spoke with the fervour that filled me, in the words that came first.

“Stop!” I said—­“stop!  I must be heard.  Mr. Bruff! you are not related to her, and I am.  I invite her—­I summon the executors to appoint me guardian.  Rachel, dearest Rachel, I offer you my modest home; come to London by the next train, love, and share it with me!”

Mr. Bruff said nothing.  Rachel looked at me with a cruel astonishment which she made no effort to conceal.

“You are very kind, Drusilla,” she said.  “I shall hope to visit you whenever I happen to be in London.  But I have accepted Mr. Bruff’s invitation, and I think it will be best, for the present, if I remain under Mr. Bruff’s care.”

“Oh, don’t say so!” I pleaded.  “I can’t part with you, Rachel—­I can’t part with you!”

I tried to fold her in my arms.  But she drew back.  My fervour did not communicate itself; it only alarmed her.

“Surely,” she said, “this is a very unnecessary display of agitation?  I don’t understand it.”

“No more do I,” said Mr. Bruff.

Their hardness—­their hideous, worldly hardness—­revolted me.

“Oh, Rachel!  Rachel!” I burst out.  “Haven’t you seen yet, that my heart yearns to make a Christian of you?  Has no inner voice told you that I am trying to do for you, what I was trying to do for your dear mother when death snatched her out of my hands?”

Rachel advanced a step nearer, and looked at me very strangely.

“I don’t understand your reference to my mother,” she said.  “Miss Clack, will you have the goodness to explain yourself?”

Before I could answer, Mr. Bruff came forward, and offering his arm to Rachel, tried to lead her out of the room.

“You had better not pursue the subject, my dear,” he said.  “And Miss Clack had better not explain herself.”

If I had been a stock or a stone, such an interference as this must have roused me into testifying to the truth.  I put Mr. Bruff aside indignantly with my own hand, and, in solemn and suitable language, I stated the view with which sound doctrine does not scruple to regard the awful calamity of dying unprepared.

Rachel started back from me—­I blush to write—­with a scream of horror.