r."

"Very well, Your Grace."

"I shan't get up again. Too much trouble." She turned away from the
window and closed her eyes.

CHAPTER XII

RACHEL, RODDY, LORD JOHN, CHRISTOPHER

"'Everybody came in to dinner in the best of spirits....
Everything was discussed.'"--_Inheritance._

I

The Duchess of Wrexe died on the morning of May 2nd at a quarter-past
three o'clock. The evening papers of that day and the morning papers of
the next had long columns concerning her, and these were picturesque and
almost romantic. She appealed as a figure veiled but significant, hidden
but the landmark of a period--"Nothing was more remarkable than the
influence that she exercised over English Society during the thirty
years that she was completely hidden from it"--or again, "Although
disease compelled her, for thirty years, to retire from the world, her
influence during that period increased rather than diminished."

It must be confessed, however, that London Society was not moved to its
foundations by the news of her death. People said, "Oh! that old woman;
gone at last, I see. She's been dying for years, hasn't she? Quite a
power in her day ..." Or, "Oh, the Duchess of Wrexe is dead, I see. I
must write to Addie Beaminster. Don't expect the family will miss her
much--awful old tyrant, I believe ..." or "I say, see Johnnie
Beaminster's old lady's gone? She kept the whip-hand of _him_ in his
time.... Damned glad he'll be, I bet."

Two years earlier and it would not have been thus, but now there was the
War (daily the relief of Mafeking was frantically anticipated) and fine
regal majesty, sitting dignified in a solemn room, irritated the world
by its quiescence.

"What we're needing now is for everyone to get a move on. No use sitting
around." A few carefully selected American phrases can very swiftly
kill a great deal of dignity and tradition.

In the Beaminster camp itself there was an unexpressed disappointment.
They had grown accustomed to thinking of her as a fine figure, sitting
there where, rather fortunately, they were not compelled to visit her,
but where, nevertheless, she had a grand effect. They had known, for a
long time now, that she was not so well, but they had expected, in a
vague way, that she would go on living for ever. They had been making,
during the last two years, a succession of enforced compromises and now
the crisis of her death showed them how far they had gone without
knowing it