aven't I heard it all my life? Haven't my
precious family lived on lies? You've caught it all from my delightful
grandmother! I congratulate you!"

"What if I have?" he said. "She's a friend of mine, Rachel. She's been
dashed good to me--You're not to say a word against her."

"I hate her," Rachel cried passionately. "All my life she's been over
me--for years she's been my enemy. If she stands for everything that you
believe, then it isn't any wonder that we have nothing in common, that
you should be proud of this afternoon, that--that----"

She was biting her lips to keep back the tears. Over his face had crept
a sulky obstinate look that might have told her, had she seen it, that
she was driving him very far.

"She's fine," he said. "She's made England what it is. You're all for
ideas, Rachel, and for Truth and lots of things, but you're difficult to
live with."

"Very well, Roddy. Thank you. Now we know how we stand. I at least owe
Nita a debt for having cleared up the situation. If you find it
difficult with me I can at least return the compliment--and I have at
any rate this added advantage, that I speak the truth."

As he looked at her across the room he saw in her that same figure that
he'd seen once just before proposing to her--someone foreign,
unknown--He felt as though he were quarrelling with a stranger....

She turned and went.

For a long while he stood gazing into the fire, his hands in his
pockets. How had it all happened? Why had they let it come to that kind
of quarrel when they might so easily have prevented it?

And she, crying bitterly in her room, asked herself the same question.

CHAPTER IV

RACHEL--AND CHRISTOPHER AND RODDY

I

Christopher had snatched his first holiday for two years and was abroad
during the January of 1899 when the Seddons were in town.

February, March and April they spent at Seddon Court, and it was not
therefore until early in May that Christopher saw Rachel.

She had dreaded with an almost fantastic alarm this meeting. No other
human being knew her so honestly and accurately as did Christopher, and
the change in her that he would at once discern would, when she caught
the reflection of it in his eyes, mark definitely the sinister country
into which these last months had carried her.

It had seemed as though some malign spirit had been determined to make
the most of that quarrel that Nita Raseley had provoked.

Both Roddy and Rachel hated scenes-