Mr. Ferdinand that I shall be honored if he will grace my
humble cottage with his presence? Thank you. Good-night, child. And
remember, not a word to anybody."

She dropped her veil and walked to the front door with her usual crisp
and bird-like carriage. At the door she turned.

"Shun Mr. Ezra Gold, my dear. Shun all people who bear his name. I know
them. I have cause to know them. They are cheats! deceivers! villains!"

She closed her lips tightly after this, and nodded many times. Then
turning abruptly she hopped down the steps which led towards the garden
gate, and disappeared. Ruth stood looking into the quiet street a
moment, then closed the door and returned to the garden.

"Not all," she said to herself, as she paused in sight and hearing
of the quartette party, who were by this time deep in an andante of
Haydn's--"not all."

CHAPTER VII.

When Aunt Rachel had spent a fortnight or thereabouts in Heydon Hay, and
had got her own small dwelling-place into precise order, she began to
make a round of visits among the people she had known in her youth. She
had met most of the survivors of that earlier day at the parish church
on Sundays, and had had no occasion to find fault with the manner of
her reception at their hands. If there was not precisely that warmth of
greeting which she felt in her own heart, she found at least a kindly
interest in her return and a friendly curiosity as to her past. To
her, her return to her birthplace was naturally an event of absorbing
interest. To the other inhabitants of the village it was no more than
an episode, but nobody being distinctly cold or careless, Rachel was not
allowed to see the difference between their stand-point and her own.

In her round of calls she left the house of Sennacherib Eld till the
last, though she and Mrs. Sennacherib had been school-fellows and close
friends. Perhaps she had not found Sennacherib's manner inviting, or
perhaps the fact that Ezra Gold's house lay between her own and his had
held her back a little. Everybody had supposed that she and Ezra Gold
were going to be married six-and-twenty years ago, Rachel herself being
among the believers, and having, it must be confessed, admirable ground
for the belief. Nobody knew how the match had come to be broken off. It
was so Old-world a bit of history that even in Heydon Hay, where history
dies hard, it had died and been buried long ago. Even Rachel's return
could not resuscitate it for mo