Rachel Dunstable listened, indeed, attentively.

But it was clear that she resented the story, which she did not believe; resented the telling of it, on her own ground, by this young woman whom she disliked; and resented above all the compulsory discussion which it involved, of her most intimate affairs, with a stranger and her social inferior.

All sorts of suspicions, indeed, ran through her mind as to the motives that could have prompted Mrs.Meadows to hurry up to Scotland, without taking even the decently polite trouble to announce herself, bringing this unlikely and trumped-up tale.

Most probably, a mean jealousy of her husband, and his greater social success!--a determination to force herself on people who had not paid the same attention to herself as to him, to _make_ them pay attention, willy-nilly.

Of course Herbert had undesirable acquaintances, and was content to go about with people entirely beneath him, in birth and education.