Never since she had grown up to be a thinking woman had Rachel been so happy as with this outlet to her activity and powers of managing, “the good time coming at last.”  Eagerly she claimed sympathy, names and subscriptions.  Her own immediate circle was always easily under her influence, and Lady Temple, and Mrs. Curtis supplied the dignity of lady patronesses; Bessie Keith was immensely diverted at the development of “that landscape painter,” and took every opportunity of impressing on Rachel that all was the result of her summons to the rescue.  Ermine wished Rachel had found out who was the bishop’s chaplain who rejected him, but allowed that it would have been an awkward question to ask, and also she wondered if he were a university man; but Mr. Touchett had been at a Hall, and never knew anybody, besides being so firmly convinced that Mr. Mauleverer was a pestiferous heretic, that no one, except Lady Temple, could have obtained a patient answer from him on that head—­and even with her he went the length of a regret that she had given the sanction of her name to an undertaking by a person of whose history and principles nothing satisfactory was known.  “Oh!” said Fanny, with her sweet look of asking pardon, “I am so sorry you think so; Rachel wished it so much, and it seems such a nice thing for the poor children.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Touchett, well nigh disarmed by the look, “I am quite sensible of the kindness of all you do, I only ventured to wish there had been a little more delay, that we were more certain about this person.”

“When Colonel Keith comes back he will find out all about him, I am sure,” said Fanny, and Mr. Touchett, to whom seemed to have been transferred Rachel’s dislike to the constant quoting of Colonel Keith, said no more.

The immediate neighbourhood did not very readily respond to the appeal to it in behalf of the lace-makers.  People who did not look into the circumstances of their neighbours thought lace furnished a good trade, and by no means wished to enhance its price; people who did care for the poor had charities of their own, nor was Rachel Curtis popular enough to obtain support for her own sake; a few five-pound notes, and a scanty supply of guineas and half-guineas from people who were ready at any cost to buy off her vehement eyes and voice was all she could obtain, and with a subscription of twenty pounds each from her mother, Lady Temple, and Grace, and all that she could scrape together of her own, hardly seemed sufficient to meet the first expenses, and how would the future be provided for?  She calculated how much she could spare out of her yearly income, and actually, to the great horror of her mother and the coachman, sold her horse.