ould show them, these young
fools, the kind of woman that an earlier and a finer generation than
theirs could produce!

They had more there before them than one old woman, sick and ailing, and
they should see it.

Her voice shook a little, but she gave no other sign, after that first
challenge: her little eyes flamed from the mask of her face like candles
behind holes in a screen.

"This is your sense of fun, Roddy, I suppose," she said. "You always
_were_ lacking in that. I've told you so before. As you asked me here I
suppose you're ready for my opinion. You shall have it. I'll only ask
you to cast your eye over any friend of ours: see what you would say if
this--this idiotic folly committed by someone else had come to your
ears. I suppose you'd arranged this, the three of you. Well, you shall
know what I think. Your tenderness to Rachel is magnificent--she has
obviously reckoned on it, knew that her frankness would serve her well
enough. You've already been more patient with her than men would have
been in my day. I only hope that your patience may not be too severely
tried....

"As for my grandson, to whom you have so tenderly entrusted Rachel, your
acquaintance with him is quite recent, is it not? I am sure that if you
were to enquire of any man at one of your clubs he would give you quite
excellent reasons for my grandson's long unhappy absence from his
relations and his country. At any rate you don't know him as well as I
do. I could tell you, if you asked me, that it is a long time now since
any decent man or woman has sought his society. Do you suppose that his
family have not the best of reasons for trying to forget his
existence--an attempt that he makes unpleasantly difficult?

"Have you heard _nothing_, Roddy? Do you really want a man who has been
kicked out of society for the most excellent reasons, who has disgraced
his name as no member of his family has ever disgraced it before him,
for your wife's lover? If she must have one...."

Rachel, trembling, had come forward, Roddy had cried out, but quietly,
stronger than either of them, Breton had faced her. She had not,
throughout the afternoon, looked at him nor spoken one word to him. Now,
her anger carrying her beyond all physical control, she was compelled to
meet his gaze.

He stood very quietly beside her chair, looking at the three of them.
"My grandmother is wrong," he said, "I am not quite as deserted as she
thinks. Just before I came here