"A bit"—Roddy looked gravely at the fire—"I go very little though. You see, Miss Rand, it's a case of bein' born down here and likin' the place, don't you know. Of course I'd love to have been born in a huntin' country, but bein' here I've got fond of it, you see, and wouldn't leave it for any huntin' anywhere."
She looked at him sharply: "You do love the place very much—I envy you that."
Even as she spoke her consciousness of "the place" faced her; she had always known that she was more acutely aware of the personality of her surroundings than were most of her friends, but her experience here was different from anything that she had ever known before.
She remembered that in the train she had been warned of some coming event and now, sitting opposite to Roddy beside the blazing fire, she was sharply and definitely frightened.
Rachel had already appealed to her; Roddy was appealing to her now, but stronger than either of these demands was some force in herself, warning her and raising in her the most conflicting, disturbing emotions.
The very silence of the house about them, the long green stretches of the level fields, came almost personally and presented themselves to her, and in her heart, growing with every moment of passing time, was her hatred of Rachel and, from that, tenderness for Roddy, who could thus be left, so pathetically unhappy, so eloquently without words that might express his unhappiness.
Something she knew was soon to occur that would involve all three of them in a common crisis.
It was almost as though she must leap to her feet and cry to the startled and innocent Roddy, "Look out!" her finger pointing at the closed door behind him.
Meanwhile Roddy had been considering her. She said that she envied him the place. That was pleasant of her, and he warmed to the urgency with which she had said it. If she felt in that way about such things, why then, all the more, he thought, he could speak to her about his trouble with Rachel. Perhaps, too, although this he would not admit to himself—his conviction that Lizzie disliked Rachel gave him more courage.
Everyone thought Rachel so wonderful—wonderful of course she was, but a complete sense of that wonder must blind the looker-on to Roddy's point of view.