Rachel had never understood why it was that she was driven so constantly into her grandmother's presence. The impulse that drove her had in it, perhaps, something of defiance and something of challenge as though she cried to some weakness in her that it should not master her and that she would just show it how little those visits mattered to her. It had all begun from some reason of that kind, and lately, when she grew older, she discovered that her grandmother was more terrible through imagination than she was through actual vision. There was never absent from Rachel a lurking presentiment of what her grandmother might one day do, and she went to see her now to discover what she might be at, to prove to her that, whatever she be doing, Rachel was "up" to her. On this particular occasion the visit was a very brief one, but there was one moment in it that after events always produced for Rachel as a most definite and (on the part of the Duchess) omniscient omen. Rachel had said that she had come in only for a moment to say good-bye. She had talked a little and then, rising, stood by the fire. As she stood there her grandmother suddenly looked at her--a glance that Rachel had not been intended to catch. There was there a malicious humour, a consciousness of some power, of some disaster that could be delivered, triumphantly, at an instant's notice. Very swiftly Rachel gathered her control, but she had felt what that look conveyed. "Francis ... she knows ... what is she going to do?" She strung her slim, tall figure to its finest restraint and without a quiver in her voice (her heart was beating wildly), "Good-bye, grandmamma. I promised Roddy to be back." But the old lady looked at her-- "How you do hate me, my dear," she said almost complacently. Rachel compelled the other's eyes. "Would I come to see you so often if I did?" she said. "Yes, my dear, you would. You've got a sense of humour hidden somewhere although, God knows, we've seen little enough of it lately. Oh! yes, you'd come all right--if it were only to see me growing older and older." Rachel turned flaming. "There, at any rate, you're unjust. It's you that have always hated me from the beginning--since I was small. Hated me, been unjust to me----" Her body trembled with agitation--she was not far from one of her old tempests of passion. But the Duchess smiled. "You exaggerate, Rachel, your old fault. At any rate, I'll be gone soon, I suppose--it will seem trivial enough one day...." Then as Rachel, turning to the door, left her--"But hurt a hair of Roddy's head, my dear, and--well, you'll hate me more than ever----" III When Rachel had gone the Duchess felt very ill indeed. She had only to touch a bell and Dorchester would be with her, but she did not intend to summon Dorchester before she need.