Woman's Mission Discovered

Nothing, however, here assisted her so much as Lady Temple's new pony
carriage which, by Fanny's desire, had been built low enough to permit
of her being easily lifted into it. Inert, and almost afraid of change,
Ermine was hard to persuade, but Alison, guessing at the benefit, was
against her, and Fanny's wistful eyes and caressing voice were not to be
gainsaid; so she suffered herself to be placed on the broad easy seat,
and driven about the lanes, enjoying most intensely the new scenes,
the peeps of sea, the distant moors, the cottages with their glowing
orchards, the sloping harvest fields, the variety that was an absolute
healing to the worn spirits, and moreover, that quiet conversation with
Lady Temple, often about the boys, but more often about Colonel Keith.

Not only Ermine, but other inhabitants of Avonmouth found the world
more flat in his absence. Rachel's interest was lessened in her readings
after she had lost the pleasure of discussion, and she asked herself
many times whether the tedium were indeed from love, or if it were
simply from the absence of an agreeable companion. "I will try myself,"
she said to herself, "if I am heartily interested in my occupations by
the end of the next week, then I shall believe myself my own woman!"

But in going back to her occupations, she was more than ordinarily
sensible of their unsatisfactoriness. One change had come over her in
the last few months. She did not so much long for a wider field, as for
power to do the few things within her reach more thoroughly. Her late
discussions had, as it were, opened a second eye, that saw two sides
of questions that she had hitherto thought had only one, and she was
restless and undecided between them, longing for some impulse from
within or without, and hoping, for her own dignity and consistency's
sake, that it was not only Colonel Keith's presence which had rendered
this summer the richest in her life.