There stood in the doorway the freshest, the most beaming of young men. He was tall and broad; his face was of a red-brick colour, and his dark London clothes, although they were well cut and handsome enough, were obviously only worn to please a necessary convention. His hair was light brown and cut close to his head, and his body had the healthy sturdiness of someone whose every muscle was in proper training. He came forward to the group at the fireplace with the walk of a man accustomed to space and air and freedom; his smiling face was so genial and good-humoured that the whole room seemed to break away a little from its decorous and shining propriety. They were all pleased to see him. Lady Carloes and Lord John came over and joined the group, and they stood all about him talking and laughing. Roddy Seddon was the only young man whom the Duchess permitted, and people said that that was because he was the only young man who had never shown any fear of her. The knowledge of this fact gave him in Lady Adela's eyes a curious interest. She beheld him always rather as she would have beheld anyone who had learnt an abstruse language that no one else had ever mastered or some traveller who was reputed to have said or done the most extraordinary things in some savage country. How _could_ he? What talisman had he discovered that protected him? And then, swiftly on that, came the curious thought that she herself was glad that she had her terror, that she was proud, in some strange, inverted way, that any Beaminster could have the effect upon anyone that her mother had upon her. But Roddy Seddon had another especial interest for her, for it was Roddy, all the Beaminsters had decided, who was to marry Rachel. Roddy was, in every way, the right person; not very wealthy, perhaps, but he had one nice place in Sussex, and Rachel would not, herself, be a pauper. Roddy would never let the Beaminsters down; he hated all these new invaders as strongly as any Beaminster could. He hated this mixing of the classes, this perpetual urging of the working man to think. "Lots of our fellows," Lady Adela had heard him say, "get along without thinkin'--why not the other fellers?" She felt now that a conversation with Roddy would complete the soothing process that Lord Crewner and her brother had begun. He would finally reassure her. She had no difficulty in securing him. Lady Carloes sat by the fire and talked to Lord Crewner, and the nondescript, and the two brothers departed. When Roddy had drunk his tea, she led him away to the farther part of the long dim room, and there by that more distant fireplace the two of them sat, shadowy against the leaping light, their faces and their hands white and sharp and definite. "Who else is dinin' on Thursday?"