ter, no embargo upon the comings and goings between the
two new friends. But Mr. Steel invariably appeared upon the scene as
well. The good vicar attributed it to the elderly bridegroom's jealous
infatuation for his beautiful young bride; but Morna knew better from
the first.

"Are you going?" asked Rachel, eagerly, when she and Morna met again;
indeed, she had gone expressly to the Vicarage to ask the question; and
not until she had seen the Woodgates' invitation could Steel himself
induce her to answer theirs.

The Woodgates were going. Morna was already in alternate fits of despair
and of ideas about her dress.

"I wish I might dress you!" said Rachel, knowing her well enough already
to say that. "I have wardrobes full of them, and yet my husband insists
upon taking me up to London to get something fit to wear!"

"But not necessarily on your back!" cried Steel himself, appearing at
that moment in his usual way, warm, breathless, but only playfully put
out. "My dear Mrs. Woodgate, I must have a special wire between your
house and ours. One thing, however, I always know where to find her! Did
she tell you we go by the 12:55 from Northborough?"

It was something to wear upon her neck--a diamond necklet of superb
stones, gradually swelling to one of the first water at the throat; and
Rachel duly wore it at the dinner-party, with a rich gown of bridal
white, whose dazzling purity had perhaps the effect of cancelling the
bride's own pallor. But she was very pale. It was her first appearance
at a gathering of the kind, not only there in Delverton, but anywhere
at all since her second marriage. And the invitation had been of the
correct, most ample length; it had had time to wind itself about
Rachel's nerves.

Mr. Venables, who of course did take her in, by no means belied her
husband's description of him; he was a rotund man with a high
complexion, and his bulging eye was on the menu before his soft body had
sunk into his chair. His conversation proved limited, but strictly to
the point; he told Rachel what to eat, and once or twice what to avoid;
lavished impersonal praise upon one dish, impartial criticisms upon
another, and only spoke between the courses. It was a large
dinner-party; twenty-two sat down. Rachel was at last driven to glancing
at the other twenty.

To the man on her left she had not been introduced, but he had offered
one or two civil observations while Mr. Venables was better engaged;
and, after