ghed a little impatiently. He was
incredibly young and might, after all, let them down.

He was thirty now, but he looked not a day more than nineteen, and he
always talked and behaved as though he were still in his last year at
Eton. She opposed him, in her mind's eye, to that figure of Frank Breton
that had been before her all day. How could a mere boy stand up against
a scoundrel like that?

Moreover, she had heard stories about Roddy. Women had terrible power
over him, she had been told, and then, with a glance at him, sighed
again at the thought that her own time had gone by for having power
over anybody, even Lord Crewner.

Well, after all, her mother knew the boy better than anyone did and her
mother loved him--better than everyone else put together her mother
loved him.

"How's Rachel takin' it?"

"How does Rachel take anything? She never says anything, and one never
knows. She seems to have no curiosity, or eagerness."

"I was talkin' to May Eversley about her the other night. May says
she'll be splendid."

"I don't like May Eversley"--Lady Adela nervously moved her hands on her
lap. "I wish Rachel hadn't made such friends with her in Munich."

"Oh, May's all right." Roddy's blue eyes were smiling. "Took her down to
Hurlingham yesterday and we had no end of a time."

It was a pity, Lady Adela reflected, that Roddy was so absolutely on his
own.

His mother had died at his birth, and his father had been dead for five
years now, and here it seemed to Lady Adela a curious coincidence that
both Rachel and Roddy were orphans--and both so young.

She leant forward towards him--

"You can do a lot for Rachel, Roddy. You can help her to understand her
grandmother, you can reconcile her to all of us."

"Oh! I say," Roddy laughed. "Perhaps she won't have anythin' to say to
me, you know. My seein' your mother so often is quite enough----"

"No. She likes cheerful people--Dr. Christopher and John. You're in the
same line of country, Roddy. She doesn't like me, and I haven't got the
things in me to draw affection out of her. I'm not that kind of woman."

As a rule Lady Adela betrayed no emotion of any kind, but now, this
afternoon, both to Lady Carloes and Roddy she had made some vague,
indefinite appeal. Perhaps the news of Breton's arrival had alarmed her,
perhaps her visit to the gallery with Rachel had really disturbed her.
She seemed to beg for assistance.

Roddy analysed neither his own emotions nor