she had known that she would be sent to meet
Rachel--It had to be....

Then her thoughts left, for a time, her own miserable little history.
She wondered how Lady Adela would manage without her. Lady Adela had
never been alone before and now that the Duchess had had, a fortnight
ago, that fainting fit, they were all unsettled and alarmed. What would
happen if the Duchess died? Then all the dignity and splendour of 104
Portland Place would pass away! other people might inhabit it, but the
soul of that house would be dead.

Everything on every side of her seemed to be hastening to a climax and
Lizzie could see that old woman fighting, behind her closed doors, for
Life, beaten at last, dead, swept away, others laughing in her place--a
new world to whom she was only a portrait cleverly painted by some young
artist.

Yes, there were other histories developing now besides Lizzie's and she
felt as though she had been whirled, during the last months, into a
wild, tossing medley of contacts and revelations--all this after a life
so grey and quiet and steadily busy.

As the train plunged into Sussex the rain stayed for a little and the
shining earth steamed upwards to a grey sky broken here and there to
saffron. Little towns quietly rested under the hills and many streams
ran through the woods and the roads drove white like steel through the
crust of the soil. White lights spread in the upper air and the heaving
grey was pushed, as though by some hand, back into the distant horizon.
For a moment it seemed that the sun was bursting through; trees were
suddenly green where they had been black and fields red where they had
been sombre dark--Light was on all the hills.

But the hand was stayed. Back the grey rolled again, heavily like
chariots the clouds wheeled round and drove down upon the earth--The
rain fell.

The carriage was very cold. Lizzie's hand and feet were so chill that
they seemed not to belong to her at all. Pictures of houses at Brighton
and the dining-car of some train and two public-houses at the bottom of
a hill stared at her.

The sense of some coming disaster grew with her. It was as though
someone were telling her that she must prepare to be very brave and
controlled and wise because, very soon, all her restraint and wisdom
would be needed. She summoned now, as she had learnt to do, a stern
armoured resolution that sat always a little oddly upon her. Any
observer who had seen her sitting there would ha