She could not help laughing at the notion of it--Rachel a Tory hostess!--and marvelling as she left him at the astonishing ignorance of a father.
Rachel, when consulted, showed less enthusiasm than Helen could have wished.

One moment she was eager, the next doubtful.

Visions of a great river, now blue, now yellow in the tropical sun and crossed by bright birds, now white in the moon, now deep in shade with moving trees and canoes sliding out from the tangled banks, beset her.

Helen promised a river.

Then she did not want to leave her father.