Not only Ermine, but other inhabitants of Avonmouth found the world
more flat in his absence. Rachel's interest was lessened in her readings
after she had lost the pleasure of discussion, and she asked herself
many times whether the tedium were indeed from love, or if it were
simply from the absence of an agreeable companion. "I will try myself,"
she said to herself, "if I am heartily interested in my occupations by
the end of the next week, then I shall believe myself my own woman!"
But in going back to her occupations, she was more than ordinarily
sensible of their unsatisfactoriness. One change had come over her in
the last few months. She did not so much long for a wider field, as for
power to do the few things within her reach more thoroughly. Her late
discussions had, as it were, opened a second eye, that saw two sides
of questions that she had hitherto thought had only one, and she was
restless and undecided between them, longing for some impulse from
within or without, and hoping, for her own dignity and consistency's
sake, that it was not only Colonel Keith's presence which had rendered
this summer the richest in her life.
A test was coming for her, she thought, in the person of Miss Keith.
Judging by the brother, Rachel expected a tall fair dreamy blonde,
requiring to be taught a true appreciation of life and its duties, and
whether the training of this young girl would again afford her food for
eagerness and energy, would, as she said to herself, show whether her
affections were still her own. Moreover, there was the great duty of
deciding whether the brother were worthy of Fanny!
It chanced to be convenient that Rachel should go to Avoncester on
the day of the arrival, and call at the station for the traveller. She
recollected how, five months previously, she had there greeted Fanny,
and had seen the bearded apparition since regarded, with so much
jealousy, and now with such a strangely mixed feeling. This being a far
more indifferent errand, she did not go on the platform, but sat in the
carriage reading the report of the Social Science Congress, until
the travellers began to emerge, and Captain Keith (for he had had his
promotion) came up to her with a young lady who looked by no means like
his sister. She was somewhat tall, and in that matter alone realized
Rachel's anticipations, for she was black-eyed, and her dark hair was
crepe and turned back from a face of the plump contour, and slightly
rosy complexion that suggested the patches of the last century; as
indeed Nature herself seemed to have thought when planting near the
corner of the mouth a little brown mole, that added somehow to the
piquancy of the face, not exactly pretty, but decidedly attractive under
the little round hat, and in the point device, though simple and plainly
coloured travelling dress.