For Love has many keys besides that of her own dwelling.

Some who know her slightly affirm that she can only open her own cheap patent padlock with a secret word on it that everybody knows.

But some who know her better hold that hers is the master-key which will one day turn all the locks in all the world.
* * * * * A year later Hester's first book, _An Idyll of East London_, was reaping its harvest of astonished indignation and admiration, and her acquaintances--not her friends--were still wondering how she came to know so much of a life of which they decided she could know nothing, when suddenly Lady Susan Gresley died, and Hester went to live in the country with her clergyman brother.
A few months later still, and on a mild April day, when the poor London trees had black buds on them, Rachel brushed and folded away in the little painted chest of drawers her few threadbare clothes, and put the boots--which the cobbler, whose wife she had nursed, had patched for her--under the shelf which held her few cups and plates and the faithful tin kettle, which had always been a cheerful boiler.

And she washed her seven coarse handkerchiefs, and put them in the washhandstand drawer.
And then she raked out the fire and cleaned the grate, and set the room in order.

It was quickly done.