"I'll go to bed, Dorchester."
"Very well, Your Grace."
"I shan't get up again. Too much trouble." She turned away from the window and closed her eyes.
CHAPTER XII
RACHEL, RODDY, LORD JOHN, CHRISTOPHER
"'Everybody came in to dinner in the best of spirits.... Everything was discussed.'"—Inheritance.
I
The Duchess of Wrexe died on the morning of May 2nd at a quarter-past three o'clock. The evening papers of that day and the morning papers of the next had long columns concerning her, and these were picturesque and almost romantic. She appealed as a figure veiled but significant, hidden but the landmark of a period—"Nothing was more remarkable than the influence that she exercised over English Society during the thirty years that she was completely hidden from it"—or again, "Although disease compelled her, for thirty years, to retire from the world, her influence during that period increased rather than diminished."