Page:The Semi-detached House.djvu/321

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THE SEMI-DETACHED HOUSE.
313

parents, the Sampsons had always believed that Moses was irresistible, and that Rachel would eventually marry him. Mr. Bolland's advice had averted the danger which she had run, of putting the Baron legally in possession of her fortune, and his ruin had at last been so sudden and so complete, that there had been no time to achieve the fraudulent embezzlement of her property.

Mrs Hopkinson found the house in great confusion, and full of strange looking men, some trying to seize valuable property which they looked upon as their own, as it had never been paid for—others guarding it for the general benefit of the creditors, and all heaping abuse, in no measured terms, on the head of the plausible swindler. Rachel was in her own room, preparing for departure, but sinking at times into gloomy reveries, which seemed to unfit her for any exertion. She was in one of these fits of exhaustion when Mrs. Hopkinson arrived, and the sight of an honest and friendly face broke up at once the icy gloom that had closed over her.