through it without
a tremor--it had not affected her at all. "It isn't that I've changed
much either. I'm just as nervous of other things--I'm just the same
coward...."

Perhaps it was, a little, that the war had altered one's values--So many
Beaminster necessities were not quite so necessary--

Certainly John felt the same, and the one consolation to Adela, through
all this horrible time, was that she had grown nearer to John than she
had ever been to anyone--John and she had been attacked by the Real
World, both of them at the same moment, and they did find comfort, at
this terrifying crisis, in being together.

But all Adela's energy was directed towards concealing from her mother
that there was any change at all--"She must think that things are just
the same, exactly the same. She mustn't ever know that ... well,
that ..."

She could not put it into words. Her Grace's illness was never alluded
to by any member of the household.

There came word, at the beginning of March, that Roddy had been moved up
to London, that Rachel had taken a little house in York Terrace
overlooking Regent's Park, that Roddy was wonderfully cheerful, suffered
pain at times, but was, on the whole marvellous--

Two or three days after this news when Christopher arrived at 104 on his
usual morning visit Lord John met him in the hall.

"I say, come in here a minute," he said, leading the way into his own
little smoking-room--Lord John was fatter, scarcely now as rubicund, as
shining as he had been--as neat and clean as ever, but there were lines
on his forehead, and in his eye, that glance of surprise that had always
been there had advanced into one of alarm--

"What the devil is life going to do, what horrible trick is it up to
next?" he seemed to say--

"Look here, Christopher," he brought out, when the door was closed.
"There's the devil and all to pay. My mother declares this morning that
she's going to pay a visit to Roddy!"

"Well?" Christopher seemed amused.

"But ... Good heavens!" John was aghast--"She hasn't stirred out of her
room for thirty years! She ... she ... it'll kill her!"

"Oh! no, it won't--" Christopher answered, "not if she really means to
do it. Of course she can't walk much--she won't have to--We can get her
downstairs, and Roddy's room in York Terrace is on the ground
floor--We'll have to see she doesn't catch cold--She'll have to choose a
warm day."

"She says she's going this afternoon!" said Lord J