you could."

"I should have to do without you," Lady Gore said. "I could not let you
give up your happiness to mine."

"It would not be giving up my happiness to stay with you, you know that
quite well," Rachel said. "On the contrary, I simply could not be happy
if I felt that you needed me and that I had left you."

"Rachel, do you care for him?"

"Do I, I wonder?" Rachel said, half thinking aloud and letting herself
go as one does who, having overcome the first difficulty of speech,
welcomes the rapturous belief of pouring out her heart to the right
listener. "I believe," she said, "that I care for him as much as I could
for any one, in that way, but"--and she shook her head--"I know all the
time that you come first, and that you always, always will."

"Oh, but that is not right," said Lady Gore. "That is not natural."

"Not natural," Rachel said, "that I should care for my mother most?"

"No," Lady Gore said, "not in the long run. Of course," she went on with
a smile, "to say a thing is not 'natural' is simply begging the
question, and sounds as if one were dismissing a very complicated
problem with a commonplace formula, but it has truth in it all the same.
It is difficult enough to fashion existence in the right way, even with
the help of others, but to do it single-handed is a task few people are
qualified to achieve. I am quite sure that a woman has more chance of
happiness if she marries than if she remains alone. It is right that
people should renew their stock of affection, should see that their hold
on the world, on life, is renewed, should feel that fresh claims, for
that is a part, and a great part, of happiness, are ready at hand when
the old ones disappear. All this is what means happiness, and you know
that the one thing I want in the world is that you should be happy. I
was thinking to-day," she went on, with a slight tremor in her voice,
"that if I were quite sure that your life were happily settled, that you
were beginning one of your own not wholly dependent on those behind
you, I should not mind very much if mine were to come to an end."

"To an end?" said Rachel, startled. "Don't say that--don't talk about
that."

"I do not talk about it often," Lady Gore said; "but this is a moment
when it must be said, because, remember, when you talk of sacrificing
your life to me----"

"Sacrificing!" interjected Rachel.

"Well, of devoting it to me," Lady Gore went on; "and putting aside
those thi