But no--I am cruelly limited to my actual experience of persons
and things. In less than a month from the time of which I am now
writing, events in the money-market (which diminished even my miserable
little income) forced me into foreign exile, and left me with nothing
but a loving remembrance of Mr. Godfrey which the slander of the world
has assailed, and assailed in vain.

Let me dry my eyes, and return to my narrative.

I went downstairs to luncheon, naturally anxious to see how Rachel was
affected by her release from her marriage engagement.

It appeared to me--but I own I am a poor authority in such matters--that
the recovery of her freedom had set her thinking again of that other man
whom she loved, and that she was furious with herself for not being able
to control a revulsion of feeling of which she was secretly ashamed. Who
was the man? I had my suspicions--but it was needless to waste time in
idle speculation. When I had converted her, she would, as a matter of
course, have no concealments from Me. I should hear all about the man;
I should hear all about the Moonstone. If I had had no higher object in
stirring her up to a sense of spiritual things, the motive of relieving
her mind of its guilty secrets would have been enough of itself to
encourage me to go on.

Aunt Ablewhite took her exercise in the afternoon in an invalid chair.
Rachel accompanied her. "I wish I could drag the chair," she broke out,
recklessly. "I wish I could fatigue myself till I was ready to drop."

She was in the same humour in the evening. I discovered in one of my
friend's precious publications--the Life, Letters, and Labours of Miss
Jane Ann Stamper, forty-fourth edition--passages which bore with
a marvellous appropriateness on Rachel's present position. Upon my
proposing to read them, she went to the piano. Conceive how little she
must have known of serious people, if she supposed that my patience was
to be exhausted in that way! I kept Miss Jane Ann Stamper by me, and
waited for events with the most unfaltering trust in the future.

Old Mr. Ablewhite never made his appearance that night. But I knew the
importance which his worldly greed attached to his son's marriage with
Miss Verinder--and I felt a positive conviction (do what Mr. Godfrey
might to prevent it) that we should see him the next day. With his
interference in the matter, the storm on which I had counted would
certainly come, and the salutary exhaustion of Rachel's