"It's a great relief to hear you say that, Christopher. I didn't know how we were going to get out of it. She was so determined this morning——"
He broke off—"You're sure it won't do any harm?" he said again.
"I'm sure," said Christopher.
"There's something," Lord John went on again, "dreadfully on my mother's mind—She seems to feel that, in some way or other, she was responsible for his accident. I can't get at the bottom of it all and of course she won't tell me—she never tells me things. Perhaps you can get at it. I saw Rachel yesterday."
"Yes?"
"She's very fair about it all. Must be having a very hard time. She was glad to see me, I think, but—" he added a little wistfully—"I've never been anything to her since her marriage.
"She just seemed not to want me after that, and I'd been a good deal to her before. When one's getting old, Christopher, we old bachelors, we begin to notice that nobody wants us very much."
Christopher looked at him—Yes, John Beaminster had changed in the last year. Had he himself, he wondered, also changed?
"Yes," he said, smiling. "But I've been an old bachelor, Beaminster, for years and years and I see no likelihood of your ever being one. You get younger with every year, I believe."
"This accident to Roddy," John said slowly, as though he were thinking it all out, "has upset us all. It seems so terrible, happening to him ... much worse for him ... and then Rachel—But look here, I know you've got to go up to my mother, I won't keep you a minute—But there's a thing I've got to talk to you about—It's been on my conscience now for ages.... I've not known what to do ... at last I've made up my mind."