She was placed in the carriage--Christopher got in beside her and they moved off. He was interested to see the effect that this breaking into the world would have upon her. He felt himself a little in the position of showman and was glad that he had a spring afternoon of gleaming sunshine and a suggestion of budding trees and shrubs in the Portland Crescent garden to provide for her. They were held up by traffic as they crossed the Marylebone Road; drays, hansoms, bicycles passed--there was a stir of voices and wheels, somewhere in the park a band was playing. He looked at her and saw that she paid no heed, but sat back in the dim shadow, her eyes, he thought, closed. She was, at that instant, more remote from him and all that he represented than she had ever been--Curiously he was moved, just then, by a consciousness of her personality that exceeded anything that he had ever felt in her before. "Yes, she must have been tremendous," he thought. And then he wondered of what she was thinking, so quiet, and yet, from her very silence, sinister, and then--how could he have not considered this before? What was she going to say to Roddy? At this, the dark carriage was suddenly, for him, as flashing with life and circumstance as though it had been the florid circle of some popular music-hall--_What_ would she say to Roddy? He knew her for the most selfish of all possible old women: unselfish only perhaps if Roddy were concerned, but there also, if some question of her power moved her, ruthless. He had traced the windings of her queer intertwisted brain with some accuracy--He knew also that the coloured unreal state that her closed, fantastic life (resembling, you might say, life inside a Chinese puzzle) had brought upon her led her now to see Rachel as arch-antagonist in every step and movement of her day. She would not wish to make Roddy unhappy, she might persuade herself that to hint to him of Rachel's infidelity would be to put him on his guard--she might say that it was not fair that Rachel should not be pulled up.... Christopher himself could not tell how far this affair with Breton had gone.... During that short time it seemed to him that a crisis, that had been building up around him, here, there, for months, for years perhaps, had leapt upon him and that in some way he must deal with it. Even whilst he struggled with the thoughts that were sweeping upon him now from every side, they were at the house--As he stepped out of the carriage he felt that he was before a locked door, that the safety of many persons depended upon his opening it, that he could not find the key. "Lady Seddon was out. Sir Roderick was alone----" The Duchess was half assisted, half carried into the house. III The Duchess's feelings were indeed confused as she was helped into Roddy's room, placed in a large easy chair opposite to him and at last left alone with him.