as finished."

"Ah! that was cruel. But you did not understand. I suppose no man can
understand. I couldn't have believed it myself till--till after you
had gone away. It seemed as though all the sun had deserted us, and
that everything was cold and dark."

They stood at the open window looking out upon the roses and cabbages
till the patience of Mrs. Sturt and of Mrs. Ray was exhausted. What
they said, beyond so much of their words as I have repeated, need not
be told. But when a low half-abashed knock at the door interrupted
them, Luke thought that they had hardly been there long enough to
settle the preliminaries of the affair which had brought him to
Bragg's End.

"May we come in?" said Mrs. Sturt very timidly.

"Oh, mamma, mamma!" said Rachel, and she hid her face upon her
mother's shoulder.

CHAPTER XIV.

MRS. PRIME READS HER RECANTATION.

Above an hour had passed after the interruption mentioned at the end
of the last chapter before Mrs. Ray and Rachel crossed back from the
farm-house to the cottage, and when they went they went alone. During
that hour they had been sitting in Mrs. Sturt's parlour; and when at
last they got up to go they did not press Luke Rowan to go with them.
Mrs. Prime was at the cottage, and it was necessary that everything
should be explained to her before she was asked to give her hand to
her future brother-in-law. The farmer had come in and had joked his
joke, and Mrs. Sturt had clacked over them as though they were a
brood of chickens of her own hatching; and Mrs. Ray had smiled and
cried, and sobbed and laughed till she had become almost hysterical.
Then she had jumped up from her seat, saying, "Oh, dear, what will
Dorothea think has become of us?" After that Rachel insisted upon
going, and the mother and daughter returned across the green, leaving
Luke at the farm-house, ready to take his departure as soon as Mrs.
Ray and Rachel should have safely reached their home.

"I knew thee was minded stedfast to take her," said Mrs. Sturt,
"when it came out upon the newspaper how thou hadst told them all in
Baslehurst that thou wouldst wed none but a Baslehurst lass."

In answer to this Luke protested that he had not thought of Rachel
when he was making that speech, and tried to explain that all
that was "soft sawder" as he called it, for the election. But the
words were too apposite to the event, and the sentiment too much
in accordance with Mrs. Sturt's chivalric views to