Not only Ermine, but other inhabitants of Avonmouth found the world more flat in his absence.  Rachel’s interest was lessened in her readings after she had lost the pleasure of discussion, and she asked herself many times whether the tedium were indeed from love, or if it were simply from the absence of an agreeable companion.  “I will try myself,” she said to herself, “if I am heartily interested in my occupations by the end of the next week, then I shall believe myself my own woman!”

But in going back to her occupations, she was more than ordinarily sensible of their unsatisfactoriness.  One change had come over her in the last few months.  She did not so much long for a wider field, as for power to do the few things within her reach more thoroughly.  Her late discussions had, as it were, opened a second eye, that saw two sides of questions that she had hitherto thought had only one, and she was restless and undecided between them, longing for some impulse from within or without, and hoping, for her own dignity and consistency’s sake, that it was not only Colonel Keith’s presence which had rendered this summer the richest in her life.

A test was coming for her, she thought, in the person of Miss Keith.  Judging by the brother, Rachel expected a tall fair dreamy blonde, requiring to be taught a true appreciation of life and its duties, and whether the training of this young girl would again afford her food for eagerness and energy, would, as she said to herself, show whether her affections were still her own.  Moreover, there was the great duty of deciding whether the brother were worthy of Fanny!

It chanced to be convenient that Rachel should go to Avoncester on the day of the arrival, and call at the station for the traveller.  She recollected how, five months previously, she had there greeted Fanny, and had seen the bearded apparition since regarded, with so much jealousy, and now with such a strangely mixed feeling.  This being a far more indifferent errand, she did not go on the platform, but sat in the carriage reading the report of the Social Science Congress, until the travellers began to emerge, and Captain Keith (for he had had his promotion) came up to her with a young lady who looked by no means like his sister.  She was somewhat tall, and in that matter alone realized Rachel’s anticipations, for she was black-eyed, and her dark hair was crepe and turned back from a face of the plump contour, and slightly rosy complexion that suggested the patches of the last century; as indeed Nature herself seemed to have thought when planting near the corner of the mouth a little brown mole, that added somehow to the piquancy of the face, not exactly pretty, but decidedly attractive under the little round hat, and in the point device, though simple and plainly coloured travelling dress.

“Will you allow me a seat?” asked Captain Keith, when he had disposed of his sister’s goods; and on Rachel’s assent, he placed himself on the back seat in his lazy manner.