ing interest--He had known
John for so long, seen him struggling behind screens and curtains,
hugging to himself the happy knowledge that to the very end he would be
able to keep life from getting at him, and now behold! Life _had_ got at
him, wag clutching him by the throat.

"It's about Frank"--at last he desperately brought out "I've made up my
mind. I must go and see him--now, perhaps whilst mother is--is still
suffering from the effects of Roddy's accident it wouldn't be wise
perhaps to have him here actually in the house--But something must be
done.... Adela agrees."

Adela agrees! Well, if the old woman upstairs.... Christopher was moved,
as he had lately been often moved, by a swift stirring of pathos.

"You see, this War has upset us all so, has made one feel
differently--And then he really does seem to have changed, been as quiet
as anything all this time, and I hear that he's working at something
sensible down in the City. I must go and see him----"

Then they hadn't heard, Christopher knew, of any rumours about Rachel
and Francis.

Perhaps there _were_ no rumours, perhaps only in the mind of the old
lady.... But then let John say a word to her about this visit to Breton
and out she would come with it all.

"Yes, Beaminster," Christopher said. "Of course I'm delighted. It's just
what I hoped would happen, but perhaps, as your mother has been rather
upset lately it would be just as well to say nothing to her...."

"Quite so...." John looked away, out of the window--Poor John!

Christopher held out his hand, and John took it and for a moment they
stood there, then Christopher went upstairs.

II

Dorchester no longer asserted that her mistress was "better than she had
ever been"--Since that terrible morning when Dr. Christopher had broken
the news of Sir Roderick's accident Dorchester had made no pretence
about anything. This was the time that must, she had always known, one
day arrive, but what she had not known was that it would be quite like
this.

She was a woman of some imagination; moreover, were there one person in
the world who touched her heart, then was it her mistress; she had
penetrated, she thought, some of the strange secrets and fantasies of
that old woman's soul, and it seemed that now, in these later days, she
was at last in touch with every motive and grim artifice that her
mistress adopted--

But no--since that terrible day at the beginning of the year Dorchester
had lost tou