than she was looking for. She thought of many things quickly, and among others she thought that she had accomplished rather more than she intended. "Have you quarrelled with Pauline?" she said presently.
"No, but she is tired of me."
"Everything has not gone well, then, and you have another reason for going home than your mother's cough?"
"Yes, if you must know, Pauline wants me to go. I didn't feel free to tell you that; but since you guess it—" said Rachel, with her rancorless smile.
"Has she asked you to decamp?"
"Oh, dear no! for what do you take us? But she absents herself from the house; she stays away all day. I have to play to Florimond to console him."
"So you have been fighting about him?" Miss Daintry remarked, perversely.
"Ah, my dear cousin, what have you got in your head? Fighting about sixpence! if you knew how Florimond bores me! I play to him to keep him silent. I have heard everything he has to say, fifty times over!"
Miss Daintry sank back in her chair; she was completely out of her reckoning. "I think he might have made love to you a little!" she exclaimed, incoherently.
"So do I! but he did n't—not a crumb. He is afraid of me—thank Heaven!"
"It is n't for you he comes, then?" Miss Daintry appeared to cling to her theory.
