III
When Rachel had gone the Duchess felt very ill indeed. She had only to touch a bell and Dorchester would be with her, but she did not intend to summon Dorchester before she need.
She felt now, at this minute, that her spirit of resistance had almost snapped. Again and again, throughout the last months, the temptation to lie down and surrender had swept up, beaten about her walls and then sunk, defeated, back again.
But this last week of disaster had tried her severely. Her pride in life had been largely her pride in the arrangement of it and now all that arrangement was tumbling to pieces and she powerless to prevent it. For the first time in all her days she felt that she would like to have someone with her who would reassure her—someone less acid than Dorchester.
Why had she never had a companion—a woman like Miss Rand who would understand without being sentimental?
There was pain in every muscle and nerve of her body: it swept up and down her old limbs in hot waves.... She clutched the arms of her chair.
Even her brain, that had always been so sharp and clear, was now confused a little and passed strange unusual pictures before her eyes. That girl ... yes ... Dorchester had been very clever about that: Dorchester had been in communication with Breton's man-servant for a long time past. To go to tea there ... to be alone with him ... Roddy—
And at that dearly loved name all was sharp and accurate. Night and day she was terrified lest she should suddenly hear that he was off to South Africa. She believed that that would really kill her. Roddy—her Roddy—to go and make another of those ghastly tragedies with which the newspapers were now full. But let Rachel disdain him and he would go merely to show her how fine a fellow he was—what idiots men were!
Or let this other thing become a scandal, then surely he would go.
She shook there in her chair and then with her eyes fixed on the fire prayed to whatever gods or devils were hers that he might not go. Anything, anything so that he might not go. Break him up, hurt him—only, only he must not go.