t she made; she displayed the
excitement of a child presented with a sudden unexpected gift.

He himself had known many storms, but, perhaps because she now made so
strange a central figure of this one, this always remained with him as
the worst of his life. He had never heard such thunder and, as each
crash fell upon them, he felt that she rose to it and exulted in it as
though she were a swimmer meeting great ocean rollers.

There was at last a peal that broke upon them as though it had tumbled
the whole house about their ears. Deafened by it he looked about him as
though he had expected to find everything in the room shattered.

"_That_ was the best," she cried to him.

At last she lay back tired, and he bade her good night.

She held his hand for a moment. "I regret nothing," she said, "nothing
at all. I've had a good time."

But, after he had left her, the sound of the rain had some personal fury
about it that made her uneasy.

She called to Dorchester. "I think I'd like you to sleep here to-night,
Dorchester. I may need you."

"Very well, Your Grace."

"After all," she thought as, the candles blown out, she lay and listened
to the rain, "that dream may come back...."

CHAPTER VII

CHAMBER MUSIC--A TRIO

"A place may abound in its own sense, as the phrase is, without
bristling in the least."--_The American Scene._

HENRY JAMES.

I

The storm savagely retreating left blue skies, spring, and the greenest
grass the parks had ever displayed, behind it. Roddy, lying before his
window, watched the pond, gleaming like blue grass but crisped by the
breeze into a thousand ripples. Two babies ran, tumbled, screamed and
shouted, and all the many-coloured ducks, the ducks with red bills, the
ducks with draggled feathers, the ducks in grey and brown, chattered
beneath the sun.

By midday a note had arrived from Breton saying that he would be with
Roddy at half-past four; there was no word from the Duchess. He knew
therefore that his plan had prospered. But, with those morning
reflections that freeze so remorselessly the hot decisions of the night
before, he was afraid of what he had done; he was afraid of Rachel.

He was afraid of Rachel because he recognized, now that he was on the
brink of this plunge, how much deeper and more dangerous it might be for
him than he had thought. During these last months he had been slowly
capturing Rachel; that capture was the one ambition and desire