He came when some morning visitors were at the Homestead, prosy neighbours whose calls were always a penance to Rachel, and the butler, either from the manner of the inquiry or not regarding him as drawing-room company, put him into the dining-room and announced, “Mr. Mauleverer to see Miss Rachel.”  Up jumped Miss Rachel, with “You’ll excuse me, it is on business;” and went off highly satisfied that “the mother” was hindered by politeness from making any attempt at chaperonage either personally or through Grace, so unnecessary at her age, for since Colonel Keith’s departure, Rachel’s age had begun to grow on her again.  She held out her hand as if to atone for her search, but she found at once that it had been remarked.

“You were doing me the honour to look for my name in the ’Clergy List,’ Miss Curtis,” he said.

“Yes, one is apt—­,” faltered Rachel, decidedly out of countenance.

“I quite appreciate the motive.  It is exactly in accord with Miss Curtis’s prudence and good sense.  I should wish to be fully explicit before any arrangements are made.  I am unhappily not in orders, Miss Curtis.  I know your liberality will regard the cause with leniency.”

“Indeed,” said Rachel, sufficiently restored to recall one of her premeditated reassurances.  “I can fully appreciate any reluctance to become stringently bound to dogmatic enunciations, before the full powers of the intellect have examined into them.”

“You have expressed it exactly, Miss Curtis.  Without denying an iota of them, I may be allowed to regret that our formularies are too technical for a thoughtful mind in the present age.”

“Many have found it so,” returned Rachel, thoughtfully, “who only needed patience to permit their convictions to ripen.  Then I understand you, it was a rejection on negative not positive grounds?”

“Precisely; I do not murmur, but it has been the blight of my life.”

“And yet,” said Rachel, consolingly, “it may enable you to work with more freedom.”

“Since you encourage me to believe so, Miss Curtis, I will hope it, but I have met with much suspicion.”

“I can well believe it,” said Rachel; “even some of the most superior persons refuse to lay their hands to any task unless they are certified of the religious opinions of their coadjutors, which seems to me like a mason’s refusing to work at a wall with a man who liked Greek architecture when he preferred Gothic!”

If Rachel had been talking to Ermine she might have been asked whether the dissimilarity might not be in the foundations, or in the tempering of the mortar, but Mr. Mauleverer only commended her liberal spirit, and she thought it high time to turn from this subject to the immediate one in hand.  He had wished to discuss the plan with her, he said, before drawing it up, and in effect she had cogitated so much upon it that her ideas came forth with more than her usual