He did not, as a rule, have tea, but to-day he needed company, and he found Adela in the little sitting-room next to the library, a little room with faded wall-paper, faded pictures (groups, some of them, of himself and Vincent and Richard at Eton and Oxford), faded arm-chairs and faded chintzes--a nice, cosy, friendly room, full of old associations and old hopes and despairs. This room did not often see either Lady Adela or John, but to-day Norris, for reasons best known to himself, had put tea there and, to both of them, as they sat over the fire with the great house so still and quiet about them, the shabby intimacy of the little place was grateful. John, disturbed, himself, out of his normal easy geniality, noticed that Adela also was disturbed. That dry and rather gritty assurance that had all her life protected her from both the praise and abuse of her fellow-men and women was, to-day, absent. She seemed really grateful to John for coming to have tea with her to-day. He wondered whether she felt as he did that this war, with all its horrors, foreboded, in some manner, special disasters upon the Beaminster family, as though it were a portent, to be read of all men, of the destruction and ruin of that family. "Poor Adela," he thought, "she's very plain. If she asks me to help her I will. She's got something on her mind." "Rachel's here," Lady Adela said, looking at her brother nervously. "Now?" "Yes, she's with mother. She came to say good-bye to her. She and Roddy are going down to Seddon to-morrow." "Yes, I know----" said John. "She's very queer--very odd. I don't pretend to understand her." "We're all queer just now," said John. "Down at the club to-day it was too awful. No other subject--fellows killed, fellows going out to be killed. Blunder, blame, disgrace--all the time. But what's Rachel been doing odd?" "You understand her better than I do," said his sister. "She always liked you better. I did my best with her, but she never cared about me. But now I understand her less than ever. She's so excited and hard and unnatural. Something's happened to her that we don't know about, I'm sure." John said nothing. He was unhappy enough about Rachel, but he did not intend to talk to Adela about it. He would rather not talk to anyone about it because talking only brought it more actually in front of him. Besides, he did not know what to say. He knew that he had been cowardly about Rachel. He had tried to pretend to himself that she was happy when he had known that she was not and so, for the sake of his comfort, he had stifled the most genuine emotion in his life; that indeed was the Beaminster habit. "She's not happy," continued Adela. "I'm sure I don't know why--Roddy's very good to her--very good. She's so queer. She wants to have Miss Rand down with her at Seddon for Christmas." "Miss Rand?"