Rachel lay down on her sofa, and fell asleep, nor did Alick find any occasion for blaming Grace when he returned the next day.  The effect of the conversation had been to bring Rachel to a meek submission, very touching in its passiveness and weary peacefulness.  She was growing stronger, walked out leaning on Alick’s arm, and was even taken out by him in a boat, a wonderful innovation, for a dangerous accident to Mr. Curtis had given the mother such a horror of the sea that no boating excursions had ever taken place during her solitary reign, and the present were only achieved by a wonderful stretch of dear Alexander’s influence.  Perhaps she trusted him the more, because his maimed hand prevented him from being himself an oarsman, though he had once been devoted to rowing.  At any rate, with an old fisherman at the oar, many hours were spent upon the waters of the bay, in a tranquillity that was balm to the harassed spirit, with very little talking, now and then some reading aloud, but often nothing but a dreamy repose.  The novelty and absence of old association was one secret of the benefit that Rachel thus derived.  Any bustle or resumption of former habits was a trial to her shattered nerves, and brought back the dreadful haunted nights.  The first sight of Conrade, still looking thin and delicate, quite overset her; a drive on the Avoncester road renewed all she had felt on the way thither; three or four morning visitors coming in on her unexpectedly, made the whole morbid sense of eyes staring at her recur all night, and when the London solicitor came down about the settlements, she shrank in such a painful though still submissive way, from the sight of a stranger, far more from the semblance of a dinner party, that the mother yielded, and let her remain in her sitting-room.

“May I come in?” said Alick, knocking at the door.  “I have something to tell you.”

“What, Alick!  Not Mr. Williams come?”

“Nothing so good.  In fact I doubt if you will think it good at all.  I have been consulting this same solicitor about the title-deeds; that cheese you let fall, you know,” he added, stroking her hand, and speaking so gently that the very irony was rather pleasant.

“Oh, it is very bad.”

“Now wouldn’t you like to hear it was so bad that I should have to sell out, and go to the diggings to make it up?”

“Now, Alick, if it were not for your sake, you know I should like—­”

“I know you would; but you see, unfortunately, it was not a cheese at all, only a wooden block that the fox ran away with.  Lawyers don’t put people’s title-deeds into such dangerous keeping, the true cheese is safe locked up in a tin-box in Mr. Martin’s chambers in London.”

“Then what did I give Mauleverer?”

“A copy kept for reference down here.”  Rachel hid her face.

“There, I knew you would think it no good news, and it is just a thunder-clap to me.  All you wanted me for was to defend the mother and make up to the charity, and now there’s no use in me,” he said in a disconsolate tone.