CHAPTER IV. 

WHAT SHALL BE DONE ABOUT IT? 

Rachel was still thinking of Luke Rowan and of the man's arm when she opened the cottage door, but the sight of her sister's face, and the tone of her sister's voice, soon brought her back to a full consciousness of her immediate present position. "Oh, Dolly, do not speak with that terrible voice, as though the world were coming to an end," she said, in answer to the first note of objurgation that was uttered; but the notes that came afterwards were so much more terrible, so much more severe, that Rachel found herself quite unable to stop them by any would-be joking tone. 

Mrs. Prime was desirous that her mother should speak the words of censure that must be spoken. She would have preferred herself to remain silent, knowing that she could be as severe in her silence as in her speech, if only her mother would use the occasion as it should be used. Mrs. Ray had been made to feel how great was the necessity for outspoken severity; but when the moment came, and her dear beautiful child stood there before her, she could not utter the words with which she had been already prompted. "Oh, Rachel," she said, "Dorothea tells me--" and then she stopped. 

"What has Dorothea told you?" asked Rachel. 

"I have told her," said Mrs. Prime, now speaking out, "that I saw you standing alone an hour since with that young man,--in the churchyard. And yet you had said that he was to have been away in Exeter!" 
How long ws Rachel with the man?
hat I saw you standing alone an hour since with that young man,-