e had encountered her very seldom--

Ever since that night in the summer when he had taken her to the theatre
she had avoided him, and he decided that she had been shocked at his
confession about Rachel--"You never know about women--I shouldn't have
thought that would have shocked her--But there it is; you never can
tell." Lizzie had been very good for him; he missed her now. He would
tackle her, he said, one day.

Then not only with every day, but with every hour the torture grew. He
avoided Christopher, because Christopher might see things. His work
faded like mist from before him--He could not sleep, but lay on his back
thinking of what she would say if she _did_ write, whether she were
thinking of him--how she found his own silence and what she felt about
it.

Then he heard the astonishing news that Lizzie Rand had gone down to
Seddon to stay.... At first he thought that he would write to her and
beg her to find out for him all that she could as to Rachel's mind.

But Lizzie's avoidance of him checked him there--if she had been shocked
at his just telling her, why then she would not be likely to help him
now--No, that would not be fair to Rachel....

It occurred to him then that Rachel had asked Lizzie in order that she
might speak of him, have with her someone who could tell her about his
daily life, and so, without breaking her word, yet be in some kind of
communication with him--

Soon this became with him a certainty. It assured him that her patience
was exhausted and that she would forgive, and more than forgive, a
letter from him.

He wrote--then in an agony would have snatched it back again, and yet
was glad that the post had taken it from him. He had broken his word,
and shown himself for the miserable poor creature that he was. She would
never trust him again, but surely now she would write were it only to
dismiss him for ever.

He waited and the agony once again grew phantasmal in its terrors; then
swiftly came word first that Roddy Seddon had been flung from his horse
and was hovering between life and death, then that he would not die,
but--"Paralysis of the spine--always have to lie on his back, I'm
afraid" (this from Christopher)--then, finally this note:

"SEDDON COURT,

NEAR LEWES,

SUSSEX.

DEAR MR. BRETON,

I have to come up to London next Tuesday for the day--I shall
return here that same evening. I have a message for you. Could
we have tea toget