es."

"Funny feller, Breton. What puzzles me is what did he go and give up
Rachel so easily for? I couldn't tell you why, but that day he came here
I was as sure as I was lyin' here that whatever there was between them
was finished. I wouldn't have said what I did, seemed to take it so
quietly, if I hadn't seen in a minute it was all over."

"Ah, you don't know Francis," said Christopher. "It's all romantic
impulses that set him going--Rachel romantic impulse on one side,
getting back to the family romantic impulse on the other. He knew if he
went off with her that getting back to the family would be over for ever
as far as he was concerned. He knew that he'd never cease to regret
it.... John Beaminster coming to him gave him what he'd been waiting
for, longing for. He seized it----"

"Yes, but it was more than that," said Roddy slowly. "It all lies with
Rachel. He never got close to her any more than I've done. I know now
that she's fond of me, but it's by the child I'll hold her and by my
helplessness, nothin' else. And she'll have her wild moments when myself
and everythin' about me will seem simply impossible, just as if she'd
gone off with Breton she'd have had her comfortable domestic sort of
longin's and hated _him_ and everythin' about _him_. I believe Breton
knew--just as I knew--that never tryin' to hold her was the way to keep
her, and he'd have _had_ to have her if he'd gone off with her....

"Anyway, Rachel wouldn't be so adorable if there wasn't a lot of her
that no one man could master. But I've been given all the tricks in the
game by bein' laid up like this--just when I thought I'd lost all worth
havin' in life and never a chance of a kid again!... Funny thing, Life!

"But she's mine! Christopher, and no one can take her. Breton's got his
idea of her; there _is_ a bit of her that he stirred that I never could
touch, but it don't matter--she's the most wonderful creature on this
earth and I'm the luckiest beggar."

"She'll be quieter," said Christopher, "now that the Duchess is gone.
They were always conscious of one another...."

"And now there'll be the kid instead. If he's a boy I swear he shall be
the best rider, the best sportsman in this bloomin' old world--not that
I'd mind a girl, either. I'd like to have a girl--just the time for a
woman nowadays. Whichever way it is I'll be contented. Not, you know,"
he added hastily, "that I'm going to be a sort o' blessed angel with
domestic bliss and