"What happened?" said Lizzie, as he paused.

"She collapsed--altogether, completely. She never said another word--she
just went."

"You shouldn't have done it!" Lizzie cried, turning almost furiously
upon him. "Oh! it was cruel--she was so old and all of you so young and
strong."

"Yes!" he answered her--"But think of the years that I've waited--the
times she's given me, the suffering----"

"No," interrupted Lizzie, quiet again now. "If you're weak enough to be
pushed down by anybody like that, then you're weak enough to sink by
your own fault, whether there's anyone there or no. She's been hard in
her time, I dare say, but everything's left her now and she's ill and
lonely. It was wrong of all of you. I shouldn't have thought Sir
Roderick----"

"He only wanted things to be straightened out," Breton said eagerly. "He
didn't _intend_ to have a scene. But I expect you're right, Miss Rand,
as you always are. I've been a brute, the most howling cad. But there's
one thing--I don't think it's hurt my grandmother. She likes those
scenes, and she's been none the worse since."

"She's been much worse," said Lizzie gravely. "She's dying--She's going
down to Beaminster on Monday."

He stopped. "Oh! but I'm sorry ... That's dreadful ... I'd no idea. I'm
always responsible----"

He had sunk to such depths that she was compelled to raise him.

"I don't think you need be disturbed, Mr. Breton. Something of the sort
would have been certain to happen very soon. She would have found out in
any case ... and there were other things, I know. Rachel----"

"Ah!" he broke in, eager again and almost cheerful. "That was the
wonderful thing. When I saw her there first with Seddon--I'd never met
him before, you know--I felt angry and impatient. I wanted to carry her
off--away from everybody. And then, when Seddon began to speak I lost
all sense of Rachel's belonging to me. She seemed older, ever so far
away from him, and he was so fine, so splendid about it all that I
felt--I felt--well, that I'd do anything in the world for both of
them--but never anything that could separate them or make him unhappy."

"You can't separate them now," said Lizzie, "nobody can."

"No. It was just finished--our episode together that wasn't really an
episode at all if you consider the little that we saw one another....
Besides, I've never got near Rachel, and I felt in some way that the
nearer I got to her the farther away she was. Why, the only time t