And, of them all, no one enquired as to her own heart, her thoughts, her wonders, her alarms and suspicions, her happiness, her desires. She would not if she could help it, enquire herself about these things—but sometimes she was aware that life would not for ever, leave her alone. She had one friend who was not a Trenchard, and only one. This was Lady Seddon, who had been before her marriage a Beaminster and grand-daughter of the old Duchess of Wrexe. Rachel Beaminster had married Roddy Seddon. Shortly after their marriage he had been flung from his horse, and from that time had been always upon his back—it would always be so with him. They had one child—a boy of two—and they lived in a little house in Regent’s Park. That friendship had been of Rachel Seddon’s making. She had driven herself in upon Katherine and, offering her baby as a reward, had lured Katherine into her company—but even to her, Katherine had not surrendered herself. Rachel Seddon was a Beaminster, and although the Beaminster power was now broken, about that family there lingered traditions of greatness and autocratic splendour. Neither Rachel nor Roddy Seddon was autocratic, but Katherine would not trust herself entirely to them. It was as though she was afraid that by doing so she would be disloyal to her own people. This, then, was Katherine’s world. Upon the morning of the November day when Millicent was to make, upon London, her triumphal descent from Paris, Katherine found herself, suddenly, in the middle of Wigmore Street, uneasy—Wigmore Street was mild, pleasantly lit with a low and dim November sun, humming with a little stir and scatter of voices and traffic, opening and shutting its doors, watching a drove of clouds, like shredded paper, sail through the faint blue sky above it. Katherine stopped for an instant to consider this strange uneasiness. She looked about her, thought, and decided that she would go and see Rachel Seddon. Crossing a little finger of the Park, she stopped again. The shredded clouds were dancing now amongst the bare stiff branches of the trees and a grey mist, climbing over the expanse of green, spread like thin gauze from end to end of the rising ground. A little soughing wind seemed to creep about her feet. She stopped again and stood there, a solitary figure. For, perhaps, the first time in her life she considered herself. She knew, as she stood there, that she had for several days been aware of this uneasiness. It was as though someone had been knocking at a door for admittance. She had heard the knocking, but had refused to move, saying to herself that soon the sound would cease. But it had not ceased, it was more clamorous than before. She was frightened—why? Was it Millie’s return? She knew that it was not that.... Standing there, in the still Park, she seemed to hear something say to her “You are to be caught up.... Life is coming to you.... You cannot avoid it.... You are caught.”