three
thousand five hundred pounds apiece. Hence it followed that Rachel
would be marrying for money as well as for position! She trembled
when the engagement was at length announced. And when Louis, after
consultation with Mr. Batchgrew, pointed out that it would be
advantageous not merely to the estate as a whole, but to himself and
to her, if he took over the house at Bycars and its contents at
a valuation and made it their married home, she at first declined
utterly. The scheme seemed sacrilegious to her. How could she dare to
be happy in that house where Mrs. Maldon had died, in that house which
was so intimately Mrs. Maldon's? But the manifold excellences of the
scheme, appealing strongly to her common sense, overcame her scruples.
The dead are dead; the living must live, and the living must not be
morbid; it would be absurd to turn into a pious monument every
house which death has emptied; Mrs. Maldon, had she known all the
circumstances, would have been only too pleased, etc., etc. The affair
was settled, and grew into public knowledge.

Rachel had to emerge upon the world as an engaged girl. Left to
herself she would have shunned all formalities; but Louis, bred up
in Barnes, knew what was due to society. Naught was omitted. Louis'
persuasiveness could not be withstood. Withal, he was so right. And
though Rachel in one part of her mind had a contempt for "fuss," in
another she liked it and was half ashamed of liking it. Further, her
common sense, of which she was still proud, told her that the delicacy
of her situation demanded "fuss," and would be much assuaged thereby.
And finally, the whole thing, being miraculous, romantic, and
incredible, had the quality of a dream through which she lived in a
dazed nonchalance. Could it be true that she had resided with Mrs.
Maldon only for a month? Could it be true that her courtship had
lasted only two days--or at most, three? Never, she thought, had a
sensible, quiet girl ridden such a whirlwind before in the entire
history of the world. Could Louis be as foolishly fond of her as
he seemed? Was she truly to be married? "I shan't have a single
wedding-present," she had said. Then wedding-presents began to come.
"Are we married?" she had said, when they were married and in the
conventional clothes in the conventional vehicle. After that she soon
did realize that the wondrous and the unutterable had happened to her
too. And she swung over to the other extreme: instead o