er and making so quickly so conventional a
marriage ("One hadn't expected her to care about a man like Seddon"),
stirred their curiosity.

Monty Carfax, licensed transmitter of public opinion, reported her
unpopular. "Met her one week-end at the Massiters'--that very time when
Seddon proposed. Didn't like her and, really, can't find anyone who
does. Conceited, farouche. It's my opinion Roddy Seddon finds her
difficult." "Yes, but she's interesting," someone would reply, "unusual.
Dissatisfied-looking--not at all happy, I should say."

Lady Adela, stiff, awkward but important, in an ugly grey dress found
Lord Crewner the only helpful person in the room. He seemed to
understand the way that worries accumulated about one and yet refused to
be defined.... He stayed near her throughout the afternoon. She saw
Rachel moving across to her brother and the sight of her stirred all her
discomfort.

"Why need she look as though she hated everyone?" she thought.

Rachel came at length to Uncle John and found him talking to Maurice
Garden. That large and prosperous gentleman hastily proclaimed his
delight in meeting Rachel again, but she had very little to say to him.

He left them, secretly determined that he would never speak to the girl
again if he could help it.

Uncle John regarded her with an air of supplicating nervousness.

"Come along, my dear," he said. "We haven't had a talk for weeks. Let's
find a corner somewhere----"

They found a corner and then were both of them uncomfortable. The girl
whom Uncle John had known and loved had had her tempers and
intolerances, but she had also had her wonderful spontaneous affections
and tendernesses.

Now she sat there looking straight before her and replying only in
monosyllables to his questions.

She was saying to herself: "Shall I go? Shall I go?"

At last he said timidly:

"You'll see mother before you leave?"

"Yes," Rachel said.

"I'm afraid she's not very well."

"Not very well?" Rachel looked up at him sharply, Lord John stared away
from her. No one had ever said that publicly before, Lord John himself
wondered at his words when he had spoken them.

"Of course she doesn't admit it," he said hurriedly. "No one _says_
anything about it--even Christopher. I oughtn't perhaps to have said
anything myself--but I thought----" He broke off. Rachel knew that he
meant that she should be kind and considerate on this visit.

Before she could say anything the Duke cam