e, I never did. I
had a kind of idea that we'd all get it over sort of in five minutes and
then have tea, don't you know, and all go away comfortably. I don't feel
now that you've rightly got all that everybody thinks about it. It was
very decent of you, Mr. Breton, to say exactly--so plainly, you
know--how you felt. But I don't want to talk a lot--I can't you know,
anyhow.

"It's only this. I wanted the Duchess to hear me say, amongst ourselves,
that I know _all_ about it, that we _all_ know all about it and that
there isn't anything for anyone to talk about because there isn't
anything in it, and if I hear of anyone sayin' a word they've just got
to reckon with me. Rachel and I know one another and, Mr. Breton, I hope
you'll go on bein' a friend of ours and come and see us often. Of course
you and Rachel have a lot in common and it's only natural you should
have.

"Now Duchess, you can just tell anyone who's talkin' that Mr. Breton is
welcome here just as often as he pleases and he's a friend of mine and
my wife's--and they can jolly well shut their mouths. Thank God, all
_that's_ over."

II

But he was very swiftly to realize that it was _not_ all over. Sharply,
quivering through the air like an arrow from a bow, came the Duchess's
words.

"Good God, Roddy, are you completely insane?"

She was twisted, distorted with anger, she seemed to take her rage and
fling it about her so that the chairs, the tables, Roddy's innocent
little sporting sketches and even the case of birds' eggs were saturated
with it.

The gleaming park, the peaceful evening sky, the sharp curve of an
apricot-tinted moon, these things were blotted out and the noises of the
town deadened by this indignant fury. Rachel had known it in other days,
to Breton it evoked long-distant nursery hours, to Roddy it was
something utterly new and unsuspected. For the first time in his life he
caught a shadow of the terror that had darkened Rachel's young days.

To the Duchess it was simply that she now clearly discovered that she
was the victim of an elaborate plot. The three of them! Oh! she saw it
all! and Roddy, Roddy--who had been the one living soul to whom her hard
independence had made concession! This came, the definite climax to the
year's accumulations, the final decision flung at her, before she died,
by those two--Rachel and Breton--from whom, of all living souls, she
could endure it least.

With her rage rose her fighting spirit. She w