ull down the blinds and lie
there, hunting sleep.

The day was intolerably heavy. The windows of the little room had all
been flung open and, through the park, figures wearily dragged
themselves and the waters of the lake lay as though they had fallen,
because of this leaden heaviness, from the grey sky.

She sat there, listening for every sound, starting at every opening or
closing of a door, thinking that were Lord Massiter not there she would
go down now and tell everything to Roddy, yet knowing in her heart that
if Peters were to come now and tell her that his master was alone she
would not move.

Peters _did_ come, but it was to tell her that Lord John would like to
see her. Uncle John! She scarcely knew whether she hailed him as a
relief or no.

"Oh! ask him to come up, Peters, at once. Bring tea here. Lord Massiter
will have his downstairs, I expect."

Had her grandmother told Uncle John anything? Was his visit in
connection with anything that he had heard? Of all the changes that her
marriage had brought her, that she should have slipped away from Uncle
John was one of the saddest. She loved him as dearly as ever, but
restraint had been there between them, struggle against it though they
might. He was, like Roddy, so ineloquent that anything like a situation
was real agony to him; he could never explain his feelings about
anything and he would eagerly agree with you that it was a great pity
that he had any. What had made this trouble between them? Rachel only
knew that now there were so many things in her life which Uncle John
could not understand. At her heart her love for him was as clear and
simple as it had ever been.

But oh! Uncle John was glad to see her! His picture of her, as she sat
there, her cheeks flushed, in a rose-coloured dress, with the room as
soft and delicate as a shell around her, filled him with delight:
changes had come to him even since their last meeting. The lines in his
forehead seemed to her a little deeper, his eyes were anxious and his
smile less sure and genial. He wore a beautiful white waistcoat and sat
there, with his chest out, his white hair rising into a crest, looking
exactly like a pouter pigeon.

"Dear Uncle John! I'm _so_ glad!"

"Well, my dear, I was just passing. Been to some woman who's got a
party in Harley House. War party, of course, there were characters of
the names of different generals and if you won you paid a guinea to the
War Fund--quite a reversal