"It's about Francis—" She gave him the name with a little hesitation and with an air of restraint as though about the very whisper penalties could linger.
"You're the best friend that he's got—the best friend any man could have—and I want you to care for him, to look after him, to watch over him. I know," she went on hurriedly, "that you always have done that, but I want you to feel now that you're doing it a little for my sake as well as your own. I want you to be the one link that I've still got with him."
"But Roddy asked him——" began Christopher.
"Oh yes! I know—Roddy was splendid. But of course that can't be. We can't meet, at any rate for years. Besides, that time is so utterly done with. There's only Roddy now for me in all the world. But I know, better, I expect, than you think, how weak Francis is, how much he depends upon what the people whom he cares for say to him—and so I want you——"
"But of course," Christopher said. "He knows that he can count on me whatever happens—he's always known that."
He stopped and waited for her to continue; he saw that she had more to say.
"It's so strange," she said, staring, her eyes deep and black seeing into sacred places that were known only to her, "how grandmother's death has cleared, amazingly, the air. The motive for almost everything has gone. I didn't see—I hadn't the least idea—how all my thoughts and actions and wishes and impulses came from my sense of opposition to her. Francis saw that—knowing that we both hated her—and that was why I was so difficult with Roddy, because I thought that grandmother had arranged the marriage and had him under her thumb—I had no idea of the kind of person Roddy was."
"Nor had I—nor had anyone," said Christopher.
"That whole affair with Francis was in idea—always—more than in fact. I knew, and I believe that he knew, that it was simply a piece of wild rebellion on my part; and on his—well, he's like that, romantic, rebellious, responding in a minute to everything, but wanting, really, all the time to be safe and proper. That day we met in his rooms, we both knew, at heart, that something was missing—something one had to have if one was going to break away altogether. He was always a rebel by force of circumstances, never by real inclination."
She put her hand on Christopher's knee and drew very close to him. "Chris dear, I'm terrified now when I think of how near I was to absolute, complete disaster. If it hadn't been for Roddy's accident and for Lizzie ... Lizzie's been to all of us everything in the world.