"You will do your best," added Steel, correcting her; "and there is my
compact cut and dried. I ask you nothing; you ask me nothing; and there
is to be no question of love between us, first or last. But we help each
other to forget--from this day forth!"

Rachel could not speak; his eyes were upon her, black, inscrutable,
arrestive of her very faculties, to say nothing of her will. She could
only answer him when he had turned away and was moving towards the door.

"Where are you going?" she cried.

"To send to my solicitor," replied Steel, "as I warned him that I might.
It has all to be drawn up; and there is the question of a settlement;
and other questions, perhaps, which you may like to put to him yourself
without delay."




CHAPTER IX

A CHANGE OF SCENE


The Reverend Hugh Woodgate, Vicar of Marley-in-Delverton--a benefice for
generations in the gift of the Dukes of Normanthorpe, but latterly in
that of one John Buchanan Steel--was writing his sermon on a Friday
afternoon just six months after the foregoing events. The month was
therefore May, and, at either end of the long, low room in which Mr.