Perhaps, after all, her grandmother had not spoken? In that case how cruel to make Roddy miserable with something that was dead and already remote. In her heart too was terror lest she should precipitate Breton into some peril. On every side it seemed to her better that she should wait and discover, perhaps through Christopher, perhaps by her own intelligence, what exactly had occurred. Four days afterwards, on the afternoon of that day that brought Breton to dine with Christopher, she had not yet spoken. She had taken no steps at all; despising herself, afraid for Breton, feeling at one instant that Roddy knew everything, at another that he knew nothing, ill with this same lassitude that had hung about her now for so many weeks, determining at one moment that she would confront her grandmother, at another that she would go instantly and confess to Roddy. Yet Rachel hesitated and did nothing. On this close and heavy afternoon Rachel sat up in her little drawing-room, wondering whether she would wait there for possible callers, or go down to Roddy, who was being entertained at the moment by Lord Massiter, or, complete confession of surrender to nerves and general catastrophe, go up to her bedroom, pull down the blinds and lie there, hunting sleep. The day was intolerably heavy. The windows of the little room had all been flung open and, through the park, figures wearily dragged themselves and the waters of the lake lay as though they had fallen, because of this leaden heaviness, from the grey sky. She sat there, listening for every sound, starting at every opening or closing of a door, thinking that were Lord Massiter not there she would go down now and tell everything to Roddy, yet knowing in her heart that if Peters were to come now and tell her that his master was alone she would not move. Peters _did_ come, but it was to tell her that Lord John would like to see her. Uncle John! She scarcely knew whether she hailed him as a relief or no. "Oh! ask him to come up, Peters, at once. Bring tea here. Lord Massiter will have his downstairs, I expect." Had her grandmother told Uncle John anything? Was his visit in connection with anything that he had heard? Of all the changes that her marriage had brought her, that she should have slipped away from Uncle John was one of the saddest. She loved him as dearly as ever, but restraint had been there between them, struggle against it though they might. He was, like Roddy, so ineloquent that anything like a situation was real agony to him; he could never explain his feelings about anything and he would eagerly agree with you that it was a great pity that he had any. What had made this trouble between them? Rachel only knew that now there were so many things in her life which Uncle John could not understand. At her heart her love for him was as clear and simple as it had ever been.