ner, and his wife also while she lived, to take an interest in Rachel
Frost; it is very probable that their own child's death only made this
interest greater. They were sufficiently wise not to lift the girl
palpably out of her proper sphere; but they paid for a decent education
for her at a day-school, and were personally kind to her. Rachel--I
was going to say fortunately, but it may be as just to say
_un_fortunately--was one of those who seem to make the best of every
trifling advantage: she had grown, without much effort of her own, into
what might be termed a lady, in appearance, in manners, and in speech.
The second Mrs. Verner also took an interest in her; and nearly a year
before this period, on Rachel's eighteenth birthday, she took her to
Verner's Pride as her own attendant.

A fascinating, lovable child had Rachel Frost ever been: she was a
fascinating, lovable girl. Modest, affectionate, generous, everybody
liked Rachel; she had not an enemy, so far as was known, in all Deerham.
Her father was nothing but a labourer on the Verner estate; but in mind
and conduct he was superior to his station; an upright, conscientious,
and, in some degree, a proud man: her mother had been dead several
years. Rachel was proud too, in her way; proud and sensitive.

Rachel, dressed in her bonnet and shawl, passed out of the house by the
front entrance. She would not have presumed to do so by daylight; but it
was dusk now, the family not about, and it cut off a few yards of the
road to the village. The terrace--which you have heard of as running
along the front of the house--sloped gradually down at either end to the
level ground, so as to admit the approach of carriages.

Riding up swiftly to the door, as Rachel appeared at it, was a gentleman
of some five or six and twenty years. Horse and man both looked
thoroughbred. Tall, strong, and slender, with a keen, dark blue eye, and
regular features of a clear, healthy paleness, he--the man--would draw a
second glance to himself wherever he might be met. His face was not
inordinately handsome; nothing of the sort; but it wore an air of
candour, of noble truth. A somewhat impassive face in repose, somewhat
cold; but, in speaking, it grew expressive to animation, and the frank
smile that would light it up made its greatest charm. The smile stole
over it now, as he checked his horse and bent towards Rachel.

"Have they thought me lost? I suppose dinner is begun?"

"Dinner has been