“Not Fanny—­not the children!” cried Mrs. Curtis in dismay.

“No indeed.  Only myself,” and a gleam of intelligence under his eyelashes and judicious pressure of his hand conveyed volumes to Grace, who had seen him often during Rachel’s illness, and was not unprepared.  She merely said that she would see how her sister was, substituted Captain Keith’s arm for her own as her mother’s support, and hurried away, to encounter Miss Wellwood’s regrets that, in spite of all her precautions, dear Rachel had been disturbed by “a young officer, I believe.  We see him often at the cathedral, and somebody said it was his sister whom Lord Keith married.”

“Yes, we know him well, and he is a Victoria Cross man,” said Grace, beginning to assume his reflected glory.

“So some one said, but the Dean never calls on the officers unless there is some introduction, or there would be no end to it.  It was a mistake letting him in to disturb Rachel.  Is your mother gone up to her, my dear?”

“No, I think she is in the cathedral yard.  I just came in to see about Rachel,” said Grace, escaping.

Miss Wellwood intended going out to join her old friend; but, on going to put on her bonnet, she saw from the window Mrs. Curtis, leaning on the intruder’s arm, conversing so confidentially that the Dean’s sister flushed with amazement, and only hoped she had mentioned him with due respect.  And under that southern cathedral wall good Mrs. Curtis took the longest walk she had indulged in for the last twenty years, so that Grace, and even Rachel, beholding from the window, began to fear that the mother would be walked to death.

But then she had that supporting arm, and the moral support, that was infinitely more!  That daughter, the spoilt pet of her husband, the subject of her pride, even when an enigma and an anxiety, whom she had lately been forced to think of as

       “A maid whom there were few to praise
        And very few to love,”

she now found loved by one at least, and praised in terms that thrilled through and through the mother’s heart in their truth and simplicity, for that sincerity, generosity, and unselfishness.  It was her own daughter, her real Rachel, no illusion, that she heard described in those grave earnest words, only while the whole world saw the errors and exaggerated them, here was one who sank them all in the sterling worth that so few would recognise.  The dear old lady forgot all her prudence, and would hardly let him speak of his means; but she soon saw that Rachel’s present portion would be more than met on his side, and that no one could find fault with her on the score of inequality of fortune.  He would have been quite able to retire, and live at ease, but this he said at once and with decision he did not intend.  His regiment was his hereditary home, and his father had expressed such strong wishes that he should not lightly desert his profession, that he felt bound