At a quarter to five the elderly parlour-maid brought in tea. "Miss
Deane said you were not to wait for her, Miss Rachel," was the message
she delivered. "She'll be down presently, I was to say."

Rachel could not suppress a scornful twist of her mouth. She had no
doubt that her aunt was taking very special pains with her toilet;
trying to obliterate, perhaps, her recent vision before the console
glass. Rachel saw her entrance in imagination, stiff-necked and proud,
defying the criticisms of youth and the suggestions of age.

"Oh! why doesn't she come and let me get it over?" she passionately
demanded, and even as she spoke she heard the sounds of some one coming
down the stairs, not the accustomed sounds of her aunt's finicking,
high-heeled steps, but a shuffling and creaking, accompanied by the
murmurs of a weak, protesting voice.

Rachel jumped to her feet. She knew everything then--before the door
opened, and she saw first of all the shocked, scared face of the
elderly parlour-maid who supported the crumpled, palsied figure of the
old, old woman who, three hours before, had been so miraculously young,
magically upheld and supported then by the omnipotent strength of an
idea.

She only stayed in the drawing-room for five minutes; a querulous,
resentful old lady, malignantly jealous, so it seemed, of their vigour
and impatient of their sympathy.

When the parlour-maid had been sent for and Miss Deane had gone, Rachel
stood up and looked down at Adrian with all her old hauteur.