but, had she not been quite so
confident of God's care for her, would have been very near to most real
agitation.

She looked at Rachel timidly and wondered whether that strange, fierce,
pale girl would be sympathetic. She had heard of Rachel and her
marriage, and she knew that that rather stout healthy-looking young man
standing and talking to Lord John Beaminster was the husband.

He looked kinder than she did, Lady Darrant thought.

"It's terrible about this horrid war, isn't it?" she said at last.

Rachel, watching the room, was absorbed by her own thoughts; she
scarcely noticed the little woman beside her.

She saw Uncle John, his white hair and happy smile and large rather
shapeless body, his way of laughing with his head flung back, the look
of him when he was thinking, his face precisely that of a puzzled
pig--simply to see him there across the room brought back to her a flood
of memories.

She knew that she had avoided him lately and she knew, too, that he was
unhappy about her. He was unhappy, poor Uncle John, about a number of
things--always behind his laughter and cheerful greetings there was the
little restless distress as though Life were offering him, just now,
more than he could control.

Rachel looked and then turned her eyes away.

"Yes," she said to Lady Darrant, "I hope it won't be very much. They say
that a week or two will see the end of it."

Truly, for herself, this afternoon was almost too difficult for her. She
had received, that morning, a letter from Francis Breton asking her to
go to tea with him in his rooms, one day within the following week.

She had never been to his room; she had not met him once during the
whole year.

She had known, during all these last twelve months, that meeting him had
nothing at all to do with the especial claim that they had upon one
another. That claim had existed since that day of their first coming
face to face and nothing now could ever alter it.

But the next time that they met must be, for both of them, a definite
landmark. She might either decide, now, once and for all, never to see
him again, or grasp, quite definitely, the possible result of her going
to him.

The writing of this letter brought, at last, upon her the climax that
she had been avoiding during the last year.

Sitting there in the Beaminster camp it was difficult to act without
prejudice. With the exception of Uncle John and Roddy she hated them
all.

After all if she we