Tea and cake were provided by way of an inauguration feast, and the three little girls sat up in an atmosphere of good cheer, strongly suggestive of school feasts, and were left in the midst, with many promises of being good, a matter that Lovedy seemed to think would be very easy in this happy place, with no lace to make.

Mrs. Rawlins, whose husband had been a trained schoolmaster, was to take the children to church, and attend to their religious instruction; indeed, Mr. Mauleverer was most anxious on this head, and as Rachel already knew the scruples that withheld him from ordination were only upon the absolute binding himself to positive belief in minor technical points, that would never come in the way of young children.

Altogether, the neat freshness of the room, the urbanity of Mr. Mauleverer, the shy grief of the matron, all left a most pleasant impression.  Rachel was full of delight and triumph, and Grace and Fanny quite enthusiastic; the latter even to the being sure that the Colonel would be delighted, for the Colonel was already beginning to dawn on the horizon, and not alone.  He had written, in the name of his brother, to secure a cottage of gentility of about the same calibre as Myrtlewood, newly completed by a speculator on one of the few bits of ground available for building purposes.  A name was yet wanting to it; but the day after the negotiation was concluded, the landlord paid the delicate compliment to his first tenant by painting “Gowanbrae” upon the gate-posts in letters of green.  “Go and bray,” read Bessie Keith as she passed by; “for the sake of the chief of my name, I hope that it is not an omen of his occupations here.”

The two elder boys were with her; and while Francis, slowly apprehending her meaning in part, began to bristle up with the assurance that “Colonel Keith never brayed in his life,” Conrade caught the point with dangerous relish, and dwelt with colonial disrespect, that alarmed his mother, on the opinion expressed by some unguarded person in his hearing, that Lord Keith was little better than an old donkey.  “He is worse than Aunt Rachel,” said Conrade, meditatively, “now she has saved Don, and keeps away from the croquet.”

Meantime Rachel studied her own feelings.  A few weeks ago her heart would have leapt at the announcement; but now her mission had found her out, and she did not want to be drawn aside from it.  Colonel Keith might have many perfections, but alike as Scotsman, soldier, and High-Churchman, he was likely to be critical of the head of the F. U. E. E., and matters had gone too far now for her to afford to doubt, or to receive a doubting master.  Moreover, it would be despicable to be diverted from a great purpose by a courtship like any ordinary woman; nor must marriage settlements come to interfere with her building and endowment of the asylum, and ultimate devotion of her property thereunto.  No, she would school herself into a system of quiet discouragement, and reserve herself and her means as the nucleus of the great future establishment for maintaining female rights of labour.