"Not a bit of it. She'd had a last interview with the old lady and knew, after that, she'd never see her again. In a way she hasn't felt it, but in a way too I believe she'd like to have all the old time over again and see whether she couldn't manage it better ... she said to me she'd never understood the old woman until that last talk with her, not that there was much love lost between 'em even then. Was Breton there?" "No--He scarcely could go, in the circumstances." "Funny feller, Breton. What puzzles me is what did he go and give up Rachel so easily for? I couldn't tell you why, but that day he came here I was as sure as I was lyin' here that whatever there was between them was finished. I wouldn't have said what I did, seemed to take it so quietly, if I hadn't seen in a minute it was all over." "Ah, you don't know Francis," said Christopher. "It's all romantic impulses that set him going--Rachel romantic impulse on one side, getting back to the family romantic impulse on the other. He knew if he went off with her that getting back to the family would be over for ever as far as he was concerned. He knew that he'd never cease to regret it.... John Beaminster coming to him gave him what he'd been waiting for, longing for. He seized it----" "Yes, but it was more than that," said Roddy slowly. "It all lies with Rachel. He never got close to her any more than I've done. I know now that she's fond of me, but it's by the child I'll hold her and by my helplessness, nothin' else. And she'll have her wild moments when myself and everythin' about me will seem simply impossible, just as if she'd gone off with Breton she'd have had her comfortable domestic sort of longin's and hated _him_ and everythin' about _him_. I believe Breton knew--just as I knew--that never tryin' to hold her was the way to keep her, and he'd have _had_ to have her if he'd gone off with her.... "Anyway, Rachel wouldn't be so adorable if there wasn't a lot of her that no one man could master. But I've been given all the tricks in the game by bein' laid up like this--just when I thought I'd lost all worth havin' in life and never a chance of a kid again!... Funny thing, Life! "But she's mine! Christopher, and no one can take her. Breton's got his idea of her; there _is_ a bit of her that he stirred that I never could touch, but it don't matter--she's the most wonderful creature on this earth and I'm the luckiest beggar." "She'll be quieter," said Christopher, "now that the Duchess is gone. They were always conscious of one another...."