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A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 3

A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 3

CHAPTER I.
A PARABLE

IT was about a month after the foregoing conversation took place, that Melbourne society was fluttered by a rumour that the engagement between Mr. Kingston and Miss Fetherstonhaugh, which had been unaccountably broken off, was "on" again, and that the long-delayed wedding was to take place immediately. Rumour for once in the way, was perfectly correct.

People went to call at Toorak, and found the aunt serene and radiant, and the bride-elect wearing all the honours of her position – not shyly as of yore, but with a quiet candour and dignified self-possession that was not generally considered becoming under the circumstances.

It was thought that a little humility would be proper in a young person who was going to enjoy such altogether undeserved good fortune.

It happened while she was staying at South Yarra. How it happened nobody quite knew. Gossip attributed it to Mrs. Reade's manœuvres; but Mrs. Reade, far from encouraging anything of the sort, set herself steadily against it, and warned Mr. Kingston of probable consequences in the most terse and trenchant manner (she had taken a very different view of the situation since her return from Adelonga).

Gossip likewise attributed it to the seductions of the new house, which was beginning to shadow forth in Palladio-gingerbread of the most ambitious pattern, the magnificence of the establishment that was to be; but gossip was equally misinformed in this respect.

Rachel was as ready as ever to admire the house, and the beautiful tiles, and carvings, and hangings, and upholstery, that were constantly being designed and produced for its adornment; she fully understood how much they represented for whoever was to possess and enjoy them. But they had not a featherweight of value in her eyes as compared with the happiness she had hoped for and lost; they did not suggest the idea of compensation or consolation in even a slight degree. The fact was that Mr. Kingston was determined to have her.

Of late he had seemed – not to Rachel, but to Mrs. Reade – to have a sort of half-sullen doggedness in his determination, indicating that he was as much bent upon winning the game as upon winning the stakes – that he meant, before all things, not to be beaten in the enterprise upon which he had set his heart.

And in this frame of mind he waited upon opportunity; and in the end, opportunity, as so often happens in such cases, served him.

One day Beatrice and her husband went out of town to lunch, and Rachel had a long, lonely afternoon. It came on to rain, and it was grey and chilly. Dull weather always sent her spirits down several degrees below the normal temperature, and just now she was morbidly sensitive to its influence.

If Beatrice had been at home there would have been a fire in no time, summer though it was; in her absence Rachel did not like to take upon herself to order one. She lay on a sofa with a shawl over her feet, and listened to the rain pattering on the window, and felt cold, and dismal, and deserted.