"That isn't so," Rachel said; "it won't, I think, be like that. There's so much more between us than you can understand. There's all our early life—not that we were together, but we seem to have it all in common, to have known it all together. We're unlike our family—all the Beaminsters—we're together in that—we are together in everything."
But Lizzie's voice went on, so coldly, with such assurance that, with every word, the flame of Rachel's anger climbed a little higher, grew stronger and steadier.
"There's another thing too. I watched you, more than you know. No, no man—no man in the world—will ever keep you altogether—there's something—I can't tell you what it is—there's something in you that demands more than just a personal relationship like that—Perhaps it's maternity—it is, with many women,—perhaps it's a great cause, a movement of a country—
"But I know, with certainty, that you will never love Breton as you should love a man. Realization will never be the thing to you that anticipation and retrospection are. I believe if you were to lose your husband now, you'd find that you loved him—All thoughts of Francis Breton, would go——"
At that, because at the very heart of her determination burnt the knowledge that Lizzie's words were true, Rachel's control was abandoned, her anger leapt: "You think you know—you think ... why ... why ... you don't know me at all!—you can't know me—we're strangers, Miss Rand—now—always....
"Nothing, nothing can ever make us friends again—I'll never forgive you for what you've said—the poor creature that you take me for—no doubt you'd have done better had the chance been yours, but you go too far——"
"That was unfair of you," Lizzie said very low—"You may say to me what you please—That's of no importance to anybody. But Francis Breton's happiness, his success, that is more to me than anything or anyone.—You shall not break his life into pieces for your own pleasure. There are more important things than your personal happiness, Lady Seddon——"
They were both standing, but they could not see one another, save, very faintly, their hands and faces—
"It's too late, Miss Rand," Rachel laughed. "I shall write to him to-morrow. I myself shall tell my husband—there is nothing that you can do——"
They stood there, conscious that a word, a movement on either side might produce an absurd, a tragic scene. Lizzie had never known such anger as the passion that now held her. Rachel was taunting her with the thing that she had missed; she stood there, before the world, as the woman for whom no man cared—she stood there with the one human being who mattered to her on the edge of complete disaster—nothing that she could do could prevent it—and the woman at her side was the cause.