it to me she
saw that afternoon that the whole scheme of things had gone out of her
hands and that the new generation didn't want her--But I think she was
glad to have it settled for her, she was tired of it all, her struggle
to keep it had been much earlier.

"She just wasn't going to bother any more and she might have gone on in
that sort of way for years."

But although he had thus reassured Roddy he was not, in his heart, so
certain. He seemed to see a long chain of events (he dated his own
observation of them from the time of Rachel's coming out), that had led
both Rachel and the Duchess to the climax of their actual challenge one
to another. It was not that that meeting in Roddy's house had been of
itself so important, it was rather that the fates had selected it as a
definite culmination of the struggle. That meeting stood for a sharp
visualization of much more than the personal conflict.

She had been glad to go, he did not in any way see her death as a
tragedy, but her departure had marked the opening of a new period, a new
personal history for the remaining characters, ultimately perhaps a new
social epoch for everybody--

Meanwhile he was happy about Roddy and Rachel for the first time since
their marriage and, as he was a man who lived in the lives of his
friends, their happiness meant his own.

He found Lord John with Roddy, Rachel was with Aunt Adela, but "would be
back for tea." Lord John, rather solemn and awkward in black clothes,
was demanding comfort and assistance from his friends. His trouble was
that he did not miss his mother as fundamentally as he desired, and
that, at the same time, life was now most terribly different. His
brothers, Vincent and Richard, had instantly after the funeral adapted
themselves, with gravity and assurance, to the new conditions.

Lord John had never adapted himself to anything, but had fitted his
stout body into the soft places that life had offered to him and had
been placidly grateful for their softness. Only once had he shown energy
of his own initiative and that had been in the matter of his nephew
Francis, and of that now he did not dare to think.

He could never, so long as he lived, forget the slightest detail of that
horrible quarter of an hour with his mother when she discovered his
iniquity--and yet, even now, he felt, obscurely but obstinately, that he
had done right. Nevertheless he would never again take life into his own
hands: upon that he was a