"It's only this. I wanted the Duchess to hear me say, amongst ourselves, that I know _all_ about it, that we _all_ know all about it and that there isn't anything for anyone to talk about because there isn't anything in it, and if I hear of anyone sayin' a word they've just got to reckon with me. Rachel and I know one another and, Mr. Breton, I hope you'll go on bein' a friend of ours and come and see us often. Of course you and Rachel have a lot in common and it's only natural you should have. "Now Duchess, you can just tell anyone who's talkin' that Mr. Breton is welcome here just as often as he pleases and he's a friend of mine and my wife's--and they can jolly well shut their mouths. Thank God, all _that's_ over." II But he was very swiftly to realize that it was _not_ all over. Sharply, quivering through the air like an arrow from a bow, came the Duchess's words. "Good God, Roddy, are you completely insane?" She was twisted, distorted with anger, she seemed to take her rage and fling it about her so that the chairs, the tables, Roddy's innocent little sporting sketches and even the case of birds' eggs were saturated with it. The gleaming park, the peaceful evening sky, the sharp curve of an apricot-tinted moon, these things were blotted out and the noises of the town deadened by this indignant fury. Rachel had known it in other days, to Breton it evoked long-distant nursery hours, to Roddy it was something utterly new and unsuspected. For the first time in his life he caught a shadow of the terror that had darkened Rachel's young days. To the Duchess it was simply that she now clearly discovered that she was the victim of an elaborate plot. The three of them! Oh! she saw it all! and Roddy, Roddy--who had been the one living soul to whom her hard independence had made concession! This came, the definite climax to the year's accumulations, the final decision flung at her, before she died, by those two--Rachel and Breton--from whom, of all living souls, she could endure it least. With her rage rose her fighting spirit. She would show them, these young fools, the kind of woman that an earlier and a finer generation than theirs could produce! They had more there before them than one old woman, sick and ailing, and they should see it. Her voice shook a little, but she gave no other sign, after that first challenge: her little eyes flamed from the mask of her face like candles behind holes in a screen.