There was at last a peal that broke upon them as though it had tumbled the whole house about their ears. Deafened by it he looked about him as though he had expected to find everything in the room shattered. "_That_ was the best," she cried to him. At last she lay back tired, and he bade her good night. She held his hand for a moment. "I regret nothing," she said, "nothing at all. I've had a good time." But, after he had left her, the sound of the rain had some personal fury about it that made her uneasy. She called to Dorchester. "I think I'd like you to sleep here to-night, Dorchester. I may need you." "Very well, Your Grace." "After all," she thought as, the candles blown out, she lay and listened to the rain, "that dream may come back...." CHAPTER VII CHAMBER MUSIC--A TRIO "A place may abound in its own sense, as the phrase is, without bristling in the least."--_The American Scene._ HENRY JAMES. I The storm savagely retreating left blue skies, spring, and the greenest grass the parks had ever displayed, behind it. Roddy, lying before his window, watched the pond, gleaming like blue grass but crisped by the breeze into a thousand ripples. Two babies ran, tumbled, screamed and shouted, and all the many-coloured ducks, the ducks with red bills, the ducks with draggled feathers, the ducks in grey and brown, chattered beneath the sun. By midday a note had arrived from Breton saying that he would be with Roddy at half-past four; there was no word from the Duchess. He knew therefore that his plan had prospered. But, with those morning reflections that freeze so remorselessly the hot decisions of the night before, he was afraid of what he had done; he was afraid of Rachel. He was afraid of Rachel because he recognized, now that he was on the brink of this plunge, how much deeper and more dangerous it might be for him than he had thought. During these last months he had been slowly capturing Rachel; that capture was the one ambition and desire of his life. But in the very intensity and ardour of his desire he had learnt more surely than ever the strange contradictions that made her character. His accident had increased his own age and so emphasized her youth; she was ever so young, ever so impulsive; her seriousness was the seriousness of some very youthful spirit, who, guessing at the terrific difficulty of life, feels that the only way to surmount it is to close eyes blindly and leap over the whole of it at once. This was what he knew in his heart--although he would never have put it into words--as her adorable priggishness. She had found her solution and everything must fit into it, but, since she had finally resolved it, nothing would fit into it at all--and there was the whole of Rachel's young history!