hing if they'd come
to me when I was small." He caught her hand so fiercely that she gave a
little cry.

"What a day! We'll have to see about the shootin' down at Seddon again,
old girl ... Lord, what an afternoon!"

CHAPTER X

LIZZIE BECOMES MISS RAND AGAIN

"So she put the handkerchief, and the pin, and the lock of hair
back into the box, turned the key, and went resolutely about
her everyday duties again."--Mrs. Ewing.

I

Lizzie was waiting for Lady Adela. She had finished her work for the
day, had come from her own room to Lady Adela's and now stood at one of
the high windows looking down upon the April sunshine that coloured the
dignities of Portland Place.

The room was spacious and lofty, but curiously uncomfortable and
lifeless. High book-cases with glass shutters revealed rows of
"Cornhill" and "Blackwood" volumes, a long rather low table covered with
a green cloth held a silver inkstand, a blotting-pad, pens and a
calendar. There were stiff mahogany chairs ranged against the wall and
old prints of Beaminster House (white-pillared, spacious with sloping
lawns) and Eton College chapel faced the windows.

This was where Lady Adela spent several hours of every morning and she
had never attempted to "do" anything with it. A large marble clock on
the mantelpiece ticked out its sublime indifference to time and change.
"We're the same, thank God," it said, "as we've always been."

Lady Adela had told Lizzie that she would come in from a drive at
quarter to four and she would like then to speak to her.

Lizzie's eyes were fixed upon Portland Place, deserted for the moment
and catching in its shining surface some hint of the blue sky above it.
There was a great deal just then to occupy her thoughts. Ten days ago,
in the middle of a little dinner-party that Lady Adela was giving,
upstairs the Duchess had had a stroke. Lizzie had, of course, not been
there, but, coming next morning she had been told of it. Her Grace was
soon well again, no unhappy effects could be discovered, she had not,
herself, been apparently disturbed by it, but it had rung, like a
warning bell, through the house. "The beginning of the end.... We've
been watching, we've been waiting--soon these walls will be ours again,"
said the portraits of those stiff and superior Beaminsters.

News ran through the Beaminster camp--"The Duchess has had a stroke....
The Duchess has had a stroke."

But, for many weeks now, Liz