She gave him names. "The Prince and Princess are coming, you know, but they aren't alarming. They've been often to see mother when they've been over here before. They're getting old enough now to be comfortable. He dances like anything still." "I always like dinin' in the place you're dancin' at. You don't get that shivery feeling comin' up the stairs and puttin' your gloves on. You're one up on the others if you've been dinin'." Lady Adela looked at him, and sighed a little impatiently. He was incredibly young and might, after all, let them down. He was thirty now, but he looked not a day more than nineteen, and he always talked and behaved as though he were still in his last year at Eton. She opposed him, in her mind's eye, to that figure of Frank Breton that had been before her all day. How could a mere boy stand up against a scoundrel like that? Moreover, she had heard stories about Roddy. Women had terrible power over him, she had been told, and then, with a glance at him, sighed again at the thought that her own time had gone by for having power over anybody, even Lord Crewner. Well, after all, her mother knew the boy better than anyone did and her mother loved him--better than everyone else put together her mother loved him. "How's Rachel takin' it?" "How does Rachel take anything? She never says anything, and one never knows. She seems to have no curiosity, or eagerness." "I was talkin' to May Eversley about her the other night. May says she'll be splendid." "I don't like May Eversley"--Lady Adela nervously moved her hands on her lap. "I wish Rachel hadn't made such friends with her in Munich." "Oh, May's all right." Roddy's blue eyes were smiling. "Took her down to Hurlingham yesterday and we had no end of a time." It was a pity, Lady Adela reflected, that Roddy was so absolutely on his own. His mother had died at his birth, and his father had been dead for five years now, and here it seemed to Lady Adela a curious coincidence that both Rachel and Roddy were orphans--and both so young. She leant forward towards him-- "You can do a lot for Rachel, Roddy. You can help her to understand her grandmother, you can reconcile her to all of us." "Oh! I say," Roddy laughed. "Perhaps she won't have anythin' to say to me, you know. My seein' your mother so often is quite enough----" "No. She likes cheerful people--Dr. Christopher and John. You're in the same line of country, Roddy. She doesn't like me, and I haven't got the things in me to draw affection out of her. I'm not that kind of woman." As a rule Lady Adela betrayed no emotion of any kind, but now, this afternoon, both to Lady Carloes and Roddy she had made some vague, indefinite appeal. Perhaps the news of Breton's arrival had alarmed her, perhaps her visit to the gallery with Rachel had really disturbed her. She seemed to beg for assistance.