nothing from her in the meantime.

For a few minutes she lost herself in delighted anticipation, and then
slowly, insidiously, a new speculation crept into her mind. What would
be the effect upon Adrian if he saw her and her aunt together? Would he
recognise the likeness and, anticipating the movement of more than half
a century, see her in one amazing moment as she would presently become?
And, in any case, what a terrible train of suggestion might not be
started in his mind by the impression left upon him by the old woman?
Once he had seen Miss Deane, Rachel's every gesture would serve to
remind him of that repulsive image of raddled, deluded age. It might
well be that, in time, he would come to see Rachel as she would
presently be rather than as she was. It would be a hideous reversal of
the old romance; instead of seeing the girl in the old woman, he would
foresee the harridan in the girl!

That picture presented itself to Rachel with a quite appalling effect
of conviction. She suddenly remembered a case she had known that had
remarkable points of resemblance--the case of a rather pretty girl with
an unpleasant younger brother who, so she had heard it said, "put men
off his sister" because of the facial likeness between them. She was
pretty and he was ugly, but they were unmistakably brother and sister.

Oh! it would be nothing less than folly to let Adrian and her aunt
meet, Rachel decided. In imagination, she could follow the process of
his growing dismay; she could see his puzzled stare as he watched Miss
Deane, and struggled to fix that tantalising suggestion of likeness to
some one he knew; his flash of illumination as he solved the puzzle and
turned with that gentle, winning smile of his to herself; and then the
progress of his disillusionment as, day by day, he realised more