All these years had the old lady been refusing to set eyes upon her grandson, therefore, how dramatic would it be were she confronted with him unexpectedly. Out of the heart of that meeting would come most assuredly the truth about Rachel.
There, in a flash, solid, substantial, beautifully compact, magnificently splendid his plan lay before him. He would have them there. Rachel, the Duchess, this Breton, all of them there before him. They should come ignorant, unprepared, Breton first, then Rachel, then the Duchess.
Having them there he would quite simply say that someone had been pouring into his ears a story of friendship to which he might take objection.
He would then, very quietly.... But here he paused. Oh! he knew what he would do. He smiled at the thought of the success of his plan.
When he had made his little speech to them all there would never again be any danger of scandal. The old lady would never again have any single word to say.
The thought that Rachel might be angry at his deceptive plot did not disturb him. When she had heard his little speech she would not say that—and here, suddenly, he knew how deeply, in his heart, he trusted her.
But what if, after all, it should be a lie on the old lady's part? Was he not doing wrong to take things so far without a question to anyone else, Christopher or Lizzie Rand?
But this was Roddy. Here both his pride and his impatience were concerned. He did not wish that the business should pass beyond its present bounds. He could not go from person to person asking them whether they trusted his wife. And then he could not wait. Here was a plan that killed the danger at one blow, something direct, open, with sharply defined issues. Oh! Rachel should see how he loved her!
"All these days," he said to Jacob, "I've been worryin' about her, but I knew—yes, I knew—that she was comin' to me all right." He thought of a day long before and of Miss Nita Raseley and of a meeting in the garden. "I'll show her that I can forgive, too, if it's necessary. Not because I care so little, but, by God, because I care so much. No," he thought, shaking his head over it, "she doesn't love me, not yet. But she's beginnin' to belong to me. She's coming."
There was also the thought that the Duchess was an old, sick woman and that the scene might be too much for her strength. "Not she," he grimly decided, "that's the kind of thing she lives on. Anyway, I owe her one. Didn't do her any harm comin' to me the other day, won't do her any harm now. I know her."