The thought of Miss Deane had
revived the repulsive sense of acting, speaking, looking like that aged
caricature of herself. Yet she wanted strangely enough, to get back to
Tavistock Square; for only there, it seemed to her, was she safe from
the examination of an inquisitive stare that might at any moment
penetrate her secret and reveal her as a posturing hag masquerading in
the alluring freshness of a young girl.
"I ought to be going back to her now," she said.
"But you promised that we should have tea together," Adrian
remonstrated.
"Yes, I know; but please don't pester me. I'll see you again
to-morrow," Rachel returned with a touch of elderly hauteur. And,
despite all his entreaties, she would not be persuaded to change her
mind. Already he was looking at her with a touch of suspicion, she
thought; and as she checked his remonstrances, she was aware of doing
it with the air, the tone, the very look that were her inheritance from
endless generations of precisely similar ancestors.
IV
If she could but have lived a double life, Rachel thought, her present
position might have been endurable, and then, in a few months or even
weeks, the problem would be solved for ever by her marriage with Adrian
and the final obliteration of Miss Deane from her memory.
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