"I will tell you nothing. I will come here day after day and you shall gather nothing from me. I have escaped you."
"Indeed you have not escaped me. My power over you is only now beginning——"
No word between them but the most civil. There was no trace in the old woman now of her earlier irony—no sign in Rachel of irritation or rebellion.
But the girl knew that war was declared, that her only ally was one in whose alliance lay, for her, the very heart of danger.
All these things she might hide from the world—from Christopher she knew that she could hide nothing.
II
It was on an early afternoon in May that Christopher had tea with Rachel. He had waited for his visit with very real anxiety; the letters that he had had from her had been unsatisfactory, not because they were actively expressive of unhappiness, but because there was an effort in every word of them—Rachel had never found it difficult to write to him before.
He was also uneasy because he had been against this marriage from the beginning. He did, as he said to the Duchess, know Rachel better than anyone else knew her; he knew her from his love for her, and also from that scientific study that he applied in his profession. And he had found, too, in her, as he had found in Breton, some strain of fierce helplessness, as of an animal caught in a trap, that especially moved his interest and affection—
Was Rachel's marriage a disaster? If so she had certainly managed to conceal it, for even the Duchess did not know—of that he was sure.