She went on then more firmly, turning a little round to her grandmother again: "Roddy, I don't want to defend myself—it's the very last thing I can try to do—I only want to tell you—all three of you—exactly the truth. You know, Roddy, that when I said I'd marry you it wasn't a question of love between us at all. We had that out quite straight from the beginning. I was awfully young: I wanted safety and protection and so I took you. You rather wanted me, and grandmother wanted you to marry me, and so there you were too. Then I met my cousin—I'd heard about him since I'd been a baby and he'd heard about me. We had a lot in common, tastes and dislikes—all kinds of things. We met and he stirred in me all those things that you, Roddy, had never touched. I had found marriage wasn't the freedom I had thought that it would be. I was fond of you, you were fond of me, but there was something always there jogging both of us—just putting us out of patience with one another. Things got worse. You never could explain what you felt. I tried, but the whole trouble wouldn't go into words somehow.
"Francis and I wrote to one another a little and then one day—as grandmamma has so kindly told you—(here her voice was sharp for a moment)—I went to his rooms." Rachel stopped. She was looking straight in front of her, her hands clenched. She seemed to dive deep for courage, to remain for an instant struggling, then to rise with it in her hands. Her voice was strong and unfaltering. "We found that we loved one another. We told each other ... it seemed to Francis then that the only thing was for us to go away together. But I refused. Odd though it may seem, Roddy, I cared for you then more than I'd ever cared for you before, and I think it's gone on since then, getting stronger always. I wouldn't go and I wouldn't see Francis again and we weren't to write again—unless I found that our living together, Roddy—you and I—was hopeless. Then I said I'd go to him."
Her voice sank and faltered—"There did come a day when I thought that—we couldn't get on any longer. You know what finally ... Lizzie Rand found out. She knew that I intended to go away with Francis. She fought to prevent it—she was splendid about it, splendid! We quarrelled, and in the middle of it, came your accident.... I wrote afterwards to Francis and told him that it was all over—absolutely—for ever. Since then—only once...." She broke off, recovered: "Since then there's been nothing—no letter, no meeting—nothing. My whole life now is wrapped up in you, Roddy, and Francis knows that. I've told you the whole truth!" She turned from him, fiercely, round to her grandmother. "I don't know what you told Roddy, what you made him believe—you've wanted, always, to harm me with Roddy if you could. At least, now, you can't tell him more than I've done."
The Duchess stared first at Rachel, then at Roddy. She had behaved from the beginning as though Breton did not exist.
Some of her amiability had left her. Her lips were tightly drawn together as she listened and her rings tapped one against the other.
"This is all rather tiresome," she said sharply. "Very like you, Rachel, to do these things in public. You get that from your mother. But you're strangely lacking in humour. It all comes from my own very unfortunate remark the other day. Not like you, Roddy dear, to arrange this kind of thing. Stupid ... distinctly—I'm sure now, however, that you're satisfied. Rachel's certainly been very frank—and now perhaps we might leave it."
It was then that Francis Breton came forward into the middle of the room, his face grey with anger, something suddenly unrestrained and savage in his eyes so that the room was filled with a wind of angry agitation.
He stood in front of his grandmother, but turned his head, sharply, now and again, round to Roddy. So agitated was he that his words came in little gasps, flung out, in little bundles together, and strangely accented as though he were speaking in a language that was strange to him.
The sarcastic smile came back into the old lady's eyes and she leaned forward on her stick again, looking up into his eyes.
"I didn't know—I didn't know—that we were going to meet like this. You didn't know either or you wouldn't have come, but I've been waiting for years for this. It's been nice for me, hasn't it, to sit by whilst you've done everything to make things wretched for me, to ruin me, to push me back to where...."