hess should know, and she
herself should never again go back.

Breton did not move from the corner where he was sitting; he waited
there, his hand pressing hard upon his knee.

Roddy said, "Most awfully good of you, Duchess, to come out again. I
wouldn't have dared to ask you to come if Christopher hadn't said that
last time did you no harm."

"Only for you, Roddy," she answered him almost gaily, "and Rachel of
course. To-day's a nice day. All that thunder has cleared the air."

What her voice must have seemed to Francis Breton, coming back to him
again after so vast a distance, bringing to him a thousand memories,
scenes and faces that had been buried, a whole world of regrets, and
disappointments.

Rachel gave her her tea; brought a little table to her side.

"Thank you, my dear. How _are_ you, Rachel? You're not looking very
well. Richard, who came in to see me this morning, told me that you were
ill at dinner last night. He seemed quite anxious."

"It was nothing, thank you, grandmamma. That thunder always upsets me. I
was sorry to interfere with Lady Carloes' dinner-party."

"Not much of a party from what Richard told me. And she had in a harpist
afterwards. Why a harpist? Poor Aggie Carloes! Always done the wrong
thing ever since she was a child. Yes, her little drawing-room's so
stuffy, they tell me--must have been intolerable last night."

It was for all three of them a quite unbearable situation. Roddy had
never, even when he was a boy of sixteen, been afraid of her; now at
last he understood what the power was that had kept her family at her
feet for so many years, indeed, he seemed now to perceive in all of
them--in Breton, in Rachel, as well as in the Duchess--a strain of some
almost hysterical passion, that, held in check though it was, for the
moment, promised to flare into the frankest melodrama at the slightest
pretext.

Anything better than this pause; he plunged.

"You won't forgive me, Duchess," he said abruptly. "I believe I've done
a pretty rotten thing. I didn't intend it that way. I only meant just to
clear everything up and make it all straight for everybody, but if I've
been unpardonable just say so and give it me hot."

He paused and cleared his throat. "I wonder if you'd mind, Rachel," said
the Duchess, "passing me that little stool that I see over there--that
little brown stool. Just put it under my feet, will you? Thank you."

Roddy desperately proceeded.

"It's only this. Y