chocolate, mother," she said at last. "It'll be cold."

The Duchess was looking at her letters, but was absorbing only a little
of their contents. She was summoning all her will to her aid; she wanted
to order the blind to be pulled down, to command her daughter to avoid
her presence for at least a week, to scatter her correspondence to the
four corners of the earth, and to see none of it again; at the same time
she was driving into her brain the fact that before Adela, of all people
in the world, she must be alert and wise and wonderful; Adela, the
ugliest and most foolish of living women, must see no weakness.

"Shall I read your letters to you, mother?"

She did not answer; slowly, steadily at last, her will was flooding her
brain. She could feel the warmth and the colour and the strength of it
pervading again her body. The day did not now appear of so appalling a
heat and the weight of the things to be done was less heavy upon her.

Lady Adela, meanwhile, watching her mother was struck once again by that
chill dismay that had alarmed her first on that May evening, after the
visit to the picture gallery. In that half-light her mother did seem
very, very old and very, very feeble. Lady Adela had a dreadful
temptation to say in a brusque sharp voice, "What do you let your
chocolate get cold like that for? Why don't you get someone to read your
letters sensibly to you instead of groping through them like that?" and
at the mere horror of such a thought a shudder shook her and her heart
began wildly to beat. Let once such words as those cross her lips and an
edifice, a wonderful, towering temple raised by submissions and subduals
and self-denials, would tumble to the ground.

For some moments the struggle in Lady Adela's breast was sharp, then by
a tense dominion of her will she produced once again for herself the
Ceremonial, the Terror, the agitated, humble Submission.

"Julia Massiter," the Duchess said, "has asked Rachel for the last
week-end in July--She'll go of course----"

"Yes," said Lady Adela.

"Roddy Seddon is going----"

"Yes."

"Roddy is going to marry Rachel. He's coming to see me this afternoon."

Lady Adela was silent.

"A very suitable business. I'd intended it for a long time." Then, after
a pause--

"You may tell Dorchester I will dress now."

Lady Adela, conscious, as she left the room, of the relief of her
dismissal, joyfully yielded that relief as witness--

The Terror was still the