warm-hearted interest in anyone who seemed to be unfairly
treated--yet--she had never told him.

Then, lying there all alone with no one in whom he could confide, there
sprang before him suspicions. If she had known this scoundrel of a
cousin of hers, if she had been so careful to keep from her husband all
cognizance of her friendship, did not that very silence and deceit imply
more than friendship? Was Breton the kind of man to abstain from
snatching every advantage that was open to him? Did not this explain
Rachel's avoidance of Roddy during the last year, her moods of
restraint, repentance, her sudden silences?

Then upon this came the thought, how much of all this did the world
know? Perhaps it was true once again that the husband was the last to be
informed, perhaps during the last year all London Society had mocked at
Roddy's blindness.

The Duchess, he might be sure, had not spared her tongue--The
Duchess ... he cursed her as he lay there and then wondered whether he
should not rather thank her for opening his eyes, then cursed himself for
daring to allow such suspicions of Rachel to gain their hold upon him.

In Roddy there was, strong beyond almost any other principle, a sturdy
hereditary pride. He was proud of his stock, proud of his ancestors and
all their doings, worthy and unworthy, proud of his own pluck and
standing--"Different from all these half-baked fellers with only their
own grandmothers to go back to." It had been this arrogance, with other
things somewhat closely allied, that had endeared him to the Duchess.
Now it was that same pride that suffered most terribly. Here was some
disaster hanging over his head that threatened most nearly the honour of
his family--Let Breton touch that....

He was alone on that evening after the Duchess's visit; Rachel had gone
out to a party; she went, he had noticed, reluctantly, protested again
and again that she wished she could stay with him, seemed to hang about
him as though she would speak to him, looked, oh! too adorably, too
adorably beautiful!

Whilst she was with him he saw behind her the dark shadow of Breton,
that fellow kicked out of the country for cheating at cards or
something as bad, disowned by his family, and she, she, Rachel so
proudly apart, could have gone to him--He was glad when, at last, she
had left him.

Then, lying there, he endured three of the most awful hours of agony
that he was ever, in, all his life, to know. Nothing that ha