"Somebody really does want me," thought Lizzie with a certain grim satisfaction.
But she was terribly restless that morning. She could settle down to nothing and ended by walking up and down the garden paths, watching the pale winter light cross the Downs in sweeping shadow, seeing the bare branches, all black and sharp against the blue distance.
How she loved life and how, at every turn, life was thrust from her! For that other woman, there inside the house, two men were ready, eager to die—for herself, in all the world, no one cared.
There came up to her again, borne as it were on the sharp winter air, a determination to drive down Rachel's defences. The very sense that now, after Lady Adela's letter, she must shortly return to London, hardened her resolution.
Before breakfast she had felt that she did not care, now, quite suddenly she was determined that she would confront Rachel and drag the truth from her. How much did Rachel care? Was Rachel already involved in a liaison with Breton?
And, at that thought, a pain so fierce clutched her heart that for a moment she could not see and the garden and the sky mingled like coloured smoke before her eyes.
Suddenly, coming to the end of the garden by the stone gate she saw that a strange thing had happened—one of the gryphons, perched there for many centuries, had tumbled to the ground and lay in the path, beyond the garden, broken into two pieces.
The storm of last night must have driven it down. But what had broken it?
She was sorry. She knew how deeply attached Roddy was to those gryphons; she remembered his pride when he had pointed them out to her.
The other gryphon looked very lonely.