One had been handed a bouquet in the dock; another had been overwhelmed by proposals of marriage.

Rachel herself had received letters of which the first line was enough.

But there had been no letter from Mr.Steel.

Ah! but he had attended her trial; she remembered him now, his continual presence had impressed itself very subtly upon her mind, without the definite memory of a single glance; and after the trial he sent her his card, he dogged her in the train! What was she to think?
There was the voice in which he had offered her his aid; there was the look in his eyes; there was the delicate indirectness of that offer.
A year or two ago, with all her independence, Rachel would not have been so ready to repel one whose advances, however unwarrantable in themselves, were yet marked by so many evidences of sympathy and consideration.

She had not always been suspicious and repellent; and she sighed to think how sadly she must have changed, even before the nightmare of the last few weeks.
But a more poignant reminder of her married life was now in store for Rachel Minchin.