it be were she confronted with
him unexpectedly. Out of the heart of that meeting would come most
assuredly the truth about Rachel.

There, in a flash, solid, substantial, beautifully compact,
magnificently splendid his plan lay before him. He would have them
there. Rachel, the Duchess, this Breton, all of them there before him.
They should come ignorant, unprepared, Breton first, then Rachel, then
the Duchess.

Having them there he would quite simply say that someone had been
pouring into his ears a story of friendship to which he might take
objection.

He would then, very quietly.... But here he paused. Oh! he knew what he
would do. He smiled at the thought of the success of his plan.

When he had made his little speech to them all there would never again
be any danger of scandal. The old lady would never again have any single
word to say.

The thought that Rachel might be angry at his deceptive plot did not
disturb him. When she had heard his little speech she would not say
that--and here, suddenly, he knew how deeply, in his heart, he trusted
her.

But what if, after all, it should be a lie on the old lady's part? Was
he not doing wrong to take things so far without a question to anyone
else, Christopher or Lizzie Rand?

But this was Roddy. Here both his pride and his impatience were
concerned. He did not wish that the business should pass beyond its
present bounds. He could not go from person to person asking them
whether they trusted his wife. And then he could not wait. Here was a
plan that killed the danger at one blow, something direct, open, with
sharply defined issues. Oh! Rachel should see how he loved her!

"All these days," he said to Jacob, "I've been worryin' about her, but I
knew--yes, I knew--that she was comin' to me all right." He thought of a
day long before and of Miss Nita Raseley and of a meeting in the garden.
"I'll show her that I can forgive, too, if it's necessary. Not because I
care so little, but, by God, because I care so much. No," he thought,
shaking his head over it, "she doesn't love me, not yet. But she's
beginnin' to belong to me. She's coming."

There was also the thought that the Duchess was an old, sick woman and
that the scene might be too much for her strength. "Not she," he grimly
decided, "that's the kind of thing she lives on. Anyway, I owe her one.
Didn't do her any harm comin' to me the other day, won't do her any harm
now. _I_ know her."

His scheme must be c