A flush meanwhile was rising over Roddy's neck, up into his face, to the very roots of his hair.
"It's rather beastly," he said, speaking very slowly and trying to choose his words, "all this talkin'. I might have known, if I'd been able to think about it, what it would be like, but there, I never did. I had a kind of idea that we'd all get it over sort of in five minutes and then have tea, don't you know, and all go away comfortably. I don't feel now that you've rightly got all that everybody thinks about it. It was very decent of you, Mr. Breton, to say exactly—so plainly, you know—how you felt. But I don't want to talk a lot—I can't you know, anyhow.
"It's only this. I wanted the Duchess to hear me say, amongst ourselves, that I know all about it, that we all know all about it and that there isn't anything for anyone to talk about because there isn't anything in it, and if I hear of anyone sayin' a word they've just got to reckon with me. Rachel and I know one another and, Mr. Breton, I hope you'll go on bein' a friend of ours and come and see us often. Of course you and Rachel have a lot in common and it's only natural you should have.
"Now Duchess, you can just tell anyone who's talkin' that Mr. Breton is welcome here just as often as he pleases and he's a friend of mine and my wife's—and they can jolly well shut their mouths. Thank God, all that's over."
II
But he was very swiftly to realize that it was not all over. Sharply, quivering through the air like an arrow from a bow, came the Duchess's words.
"Good God, Roddy, are you completely insane?"
She was twisted, distorted with anger, she seemed to take her rage and fling it about her so that the chairs, the tables, Roddy's innocent little sporting sketches and even the case of birds' eggs were saturated with it.
The gleaming park, the peaceful evening sky, the sharp curve of an apricot-tinted moon, these things were blotted out and the noises of the town deadened by this indignant fury. Rachel had known it in other days, to Breton it evoked long-distant nursery hours, to Roddy it was something utterly new and unsuspected. For the first time in his life he caught a shadow of the terror that had darkened Rachel's young days.