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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lady Rose's Daughter, by Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lady Rose's Daughter
+
+Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
+Release Date: October 18, 2004 [EBook #13782]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY ROSE'S DAUGHTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: See page 122
+"AS THOUGH SHE LISTENED STILL TO WORDS IN HER EARS"]
+
+Lady Rose's Daughter
+
+A Novel
+
+BY
+MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
+Author of "Eleanor" "Robert Elsmere" etc. etc.
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY
+
+1903
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATION
+"AS THOUGH SHE LISTENED STILL TO WORDS IN HER EARS" . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+"LADY HENRY LISTENED EAGERLY" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Facing p_. 30
+
+"'INDEED I WILL!' CRIED SIR WILFRID, AND THEY WALKED ON". . . . . . .   52
+
+"LADY HENRY GASPED. SHE FELL BACK INTO HER CHAIR" . . . . . . . . . .  100
+
+"HE ENTERED UPON A MERRY SCENE" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  242
+
+"'FOR MY ROSE'S CHILD,' HE SAID, GENTLY". . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  254
+
+"HER HANDS CLASPED IN FRONT OF HER" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  356
+
+"SHE FOUND HERSELF KNEELING BESIDE HIM" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  480
+
+
+
+
+LADY ROSE'S DAUGHTER
+
+I
+
+"Hullo! No!--Yes!--upon my soul, it _is_ Jacob! Why, Delafield, my dear
+fellow, how are you?"
+
+So saying--on a February evening a good many years ago--an elderly
+gentleman in evening dress flung himself out of his cab, which had just
+stopped before a house in Bruton Street, and hastily went to meet a
+young man who was at the same moment stepping out of another hansom a
+little farther down the pavement.
+
+The pleasure in the older man's voice rang clear, and the younger met
+him with an equal cordiality, expressed perhaps through a manner more
+leisurely and restrained.
+
+"So you _are_ home, Sir Wilfrid? You were announced, I saw. But I
+thought Paris would have detained you a bit."
+
+"Paris? Not I! Half the people I ever knew there are dead, and the rest
+are uncivil. Well, and how are you getting on? Making your fortune, eh?"
+
+And, slipping his arm inside the young man's, the speaker walked back
+with him, along a line of carriages, towards a house which showed a
+group of footmen at its open door. Jacob Delafield smiled.
+
+"The business of a land agent seems to be to spend some one else's--as
+far as I've yet gone."
+
+"Land agent! I thought you were at the bar?"
+
+"I was, but the briefs didn't come in. My cousin offered me the care of
+his Essex estates. I like the country--always have. So I thought I'd
+better accept."
+
+"What--the Duke? Lucky fellow! A regular income, and no anxieties. I
+expect you're pretty well paid?"
+
+"Oh, I'm not badly paid," replied the young man, tranquilly. "Of course
+you're going to Lady Henry's?"
+
+"Of course. Here we are."
+
+The older man paused outside the line of servants waiting at the door,
+and spoke in a lower tone. "How is she? Failing at all?"
+
+Jacob Delafield hesitated. "She's grown very blind--and perhaps rather
+more infirm, generally. But she is at home, as usual--every evening for
+a few people, and for a good many on Wednesdays."
+
+"Is she still alone--or is there any relation who looks after her?"
+
+"Relation? No. She detests them all."
+
+"Except you?"
+
+Delafield raised his shoulders, without an answering smile. "Yes, she is
+good enough to except me. You're one of her trustees, aren't you?"
+
+"At present, the only one. But while I have been in Persia the lawyers
+have done all that was necessary. Lady Henry herself never writes a
+letter she can help. I really have heard next to nothing about her for
+more than a year. This morning I arrived from Paris--sent round to ask
+if she would be at home--and here I am."
+
+"Ah!" said Delafield, looking down. "Well, there is a lady who has been
+with her, now, for more than two years--"
+
+"Ah, yes, yes, I remember. Old Lady Seathwaite told me--last year.
+Mademoiselle Le Breton--isn't that her name? What--she reads to her, and
+writes letters for her--that kind of thing?"
+
+"Yes--that kind of thing," said the other, after a moment's hesitation.
+"Wasn't that a spot of rain? Shall I charge these gentry?"
+
+And he led the way through the line of footmen, which, however, was not
+of the usual Mayfair density. For the party within was not a "crush."
+The hostess who had collected it was of opinion that the chief object of
+your house is not to entice the mob, but to keep it out. The two men
+mounted the stairs together.
+
+"What a charming house!" said the elder, looking round him. "I remember
+when your uncle rebuilt it. And before that, I remember his mother, the
+old Duchess here, with her swarm of parsons. Upon my word, London tastes
+good--after Teheran!"
+
+And the speaker threw back his fair, grizzled head, regarding the
+lights, the house, the guests, with the air of a sensitive dog on a
+familiar scent.
+
+"Ah, you're fresh home," said Delafield, laughing. "But let's just try
+to keep you here--"
+
+"My dear fellow, who is that at the top of the stairs?"
+
+The old diplomat paused. In front of the pair some half a dozen guests
+were ascending, and as many coming down. At the top stood a tall lady in
+black, receiving and dismissing.
+
+Delafield looked up.
+
+"That is Mademoiselle Le Breton," he said, quietly.
+
+"She receives?"
+
+"She distributes the guests. Lady Henry generally establishes herself in
+the back drawing-room. It doesn't do for her to see too many people at
+once. Mademoiselle arranges it."
+
+"Lady Henry must indeed be a good deal more helpless that I remember
+her," murmured Sir Wilfrid, in some astonishment.
+
+"She is, physically. Oh, no doubt of it! Otherwise you won't find much
+change. Shall I introduce you?"
+
+They were approaching a woman whose tall slenderness, combined with a
+remarkable physiognomy, arrested the old man's attention. She was not
+handsome--that, surely, was his first impression? The cheek-bones were
+too evident, the chin and mouth too strong. And yet the fine pallor of
+the skin, the subtle black-and-white, in which, so to speak, the head
+and face were drawn, the life, the animation of the whole--were these
+not beauty, or more than beauty? As for the eyes, the carriage of the
+head, the rich magnificence of hair, arranged with an artful
+eighteenth-century freedom, as Madame Vigée Le Brun might have worn
+it--with the second glance the effect of them was such that Sir Wilfrid
+could not cease from looking at the lady they adorned. It was an effect
+as of something over-living, over-brilliant--an animation, an intensity,
+so strong that, at first beholding, a by-stander could scarcely tell
+whether it pleased him or no.
+
+"Mademoiselle Le Breton--Sir Wilfrid Bury," said Jacob Delafield,
+introducing them.
+
+"_Is_ she French?" thought the old diplomat, puzzled. "And--have I ever
+seen her before?"
+
+"Lady Henry will be so glad!" said a low, agreeable voice. "You are one
+of the old friends, aren't you? I have often heard her talk of you."
+
+"You are very good. Certainly, I am an old friend--a connection also."
+There was the slightest touch of stiffness in Sir Wilfrid's tone, of
+which the next moment he was ashamed. "I am very sorry to hear that Lady
+Henry has grown so much more helpless since I left England."
+
+"She has to be careful of fatigue. Two or three people go in to see her
+at a time. She enjoys them more so."
+
+"In my opinion," said Delafield, "one more device of milady's for
+getting precisely what she wants."
+
+The young man's gay undertone, together with the look which passed
+between him and Mademoiselle Le Breton, added to Sir Wilfrid's stifled
+feeling of surprise.
+
+"You'll tell her, Jacob, that I'm here?" He turned abruptly to the young
+man.
+
+"Certainly--when mademoiselle allows me. Ah, here comes the Duchess!"
+said Delafield, in another voice.
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton, who had moved a few steps away from the
+stair-head with Sir Wilfrid Bury, turned hastily. A slight, small woman,
+delicately fair and sparkling with diamonds, was coming up the
+stairs alone.
+
+"My dear," said the new-comer, holding out her hands eagerly to
+Mademoiselle Le Breton, "I felt I must just run in and have a look at
+you. But Freddie says that I've got to meet him at that tiresome Foreign
+Office! So I can only stay ten minutes. How are you?"--then, in a lower
+voice, almost a whisper, which, however, reached Sir Wilfrid Bury's
+ears--"worried to death?"
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton raised eyes and shoulders for a moment, then,
+smiling, put her finger to her lip.
+
+"You're coming to me to-morrow afternoon?" said the Duchess, in the same
+half-whisper.
+
+"I don't think I can get away."
+
+"Nonsense! My dear, you must have some air and exercise! Jacob, will you
+see she comes?"
+
+"Oh, I'm no good," said that young man, turning away. "Duchess, you
+remember Sir Wilfrid Bury?"
+
+"She would be an unnatural goddaughter if she didn't," said that
+gentleman, smiling. "She may be your cousin, but I knew her before
+you did."
+
+The young Duchess turned with a start.
+
+"Sir Wilfrid! A sight for sair een. When did you get back?"
+
+She put her slim hands into both of his, and showered upon him all
+proper surprise and the greetings due to her father's oldest friend.
+Voice, gesture, words--all were equally amiable, well trained, and
+perfunctory--Sir Wilfrid was well aware of it. He was possessed of a
+fine, straw-colored mustache, and long eyelashes of the same color. Both
+eyelashes and mustache made a screen behind which, as was well known,
+their owner observed the world to remarkably good purpose. He perceived
+the difference at once when the Duchess, having done her social and
+family duty, left him to return to Mademoiselle Le Breton.
+
+"It _was_ such a bore you couldn't come this afternoon! I wanted you to
+see the babe dance--she's _too_ great a duck! And that Canadian girl
+came to sing. The voice is magnificent--but she has some tiresome
+tricks!--and _I_ didn't know what to say to her. As to the other music
+on the 16th--I say, can't we find a corner somewhere?" And the Duchess
+looked round the beautiful drawing-room, which she and her companions
+had just entered, with a dissatisfied air.
+
+"Lady Henry, you'll remember, doesn't like corners," said Mademoiselle
+Le Breton, smiling. Her tone, delicately free and allusive, once more
+drew Sir Wilfrid's curious eyes to her, and he caught also the impatient
+gesture with which the Duchess received the remark.
+
+"Ah, that's all right!" said Mademoiselle Le Breton, suddenly, turning
+round to himself. "Here is Mr. Montresor--going on, too, I suppose, to
+the Foreign Office. Now there'll be some chance of getting at
+Lady Henry."
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked down the drawing-room, to see the famous War Minister
+coming slowly through the well-filled but not crowded room, stopping now
+and then to exchange a greeting or a farewell, and much hampered, as it
+seemed, in so doing, by a pronounced and disfiguring short-sight. He was
+a strongly built man of more than middle height. His iron-gray hair,
+deeply carved features, and cavernous black eyes gave him the air of
+power that his reputation demanded. On the other hand, his difficulty of
+eyesight, combined with the marked stoop of overwork, produced a
+qualifying impression--as of power teased and fettered, a Samson among
+the Philistines.
+
+"My dear lady, good-night. I must go and fight with wild beasts in
+Whitehall--worse luck! Ah, Duchess! All very well--but you can't
+shirk either!"
+
+So saying, Mr. Montresor shook hands with Mademoiselle Le Breton and
+smiled upon the Duchess--both actions betraying precisely the same
+degree of playful intimacy.
+
+"How did you find Lady Henry?" said Mademoiselle Le Breton, in a lowered
+voice.
+
+"Very well, but very cross. She scolds me perpetually--I haven't got a
+skin left. Ah, Sir Wilfrid!--_very_ glad to see you! When did you
+arrive? I thought I might perhaps find you at the Foreign Office."
+
+"I'm going on there presently," said Sir Wilfrid.
+
+"Ah, but that's no good. Dine with me to-morrow night?--if you are free?
+Excellent!--that's arranged. Meanwhile--send him in, mademoiselle--send
+him in! He's fresh--let him take his turn." And the Minister, grinning,
+pointed backward over his shoulder towards an inner drawing-room, where
+the form of an old lady, seated in a wheeled invalid-chair between two
+other persons, could be just dimly seen.
+
+"When the Bishop goes," said Mademoiselle Le Breton, with a laughing
+shake of the head. "But I told him not to stay long."
+
+"He won't want to. Lady Henry pays no more attention to his cloth than
+to my gray hairs. The rating she has just given me for my speech of last
+night! Well, good-night, dear lady--good-night. You _are_ better,
+I think?"
+
+Mr. Montresor threw a look of scrutiny no less friendly than earnest at
+the lady to whom he was speaking; and immediately afterwards Sir
+Wilfrid, who was wedged in by an entering group of people, caught the
+murmured words:
+
+"Consult me when you want me--at any time."
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton raised her beautiful eyes to the speaker in a
+mute gratitude.
+
+"And five minutes ago I thought her plain!" said Sir Wilfrid to himself
+as he moved away. "Upon my word, for a _dame de compagnie_ that young
+woman is at her ease! But where the deuce have I seen her, or her
+double, before?"
+
+He paused to look round the room a moment, before yielding himself to
+one of the many possible conversations which, as he saw, it contained
+for him. It was a stately panelled room of the last century, furnished
+with that sure instinct both for comfort and beauty which a small
+minority of English rich people have always possessed. Two glorious
+Gainsboroughs, clad in the subtlest brilliance of pearly white and
+shimmering blue, hung on either side of the square opening leading to
+the inner room. The fair, clouded head of a girl, by Romney, looked down
+from the panelling above the hearth. A gowned abbé, by Vandyck, made the
+centre of another wall, facing the Gainsboroughs. The pictures were all
+famous, and had been associated for generations with the Delafield name.
+Beneath them the carpets were covered by fine eighteenth-century
+furniture, much of it of a florid Italian type subdued to a delicate and
+faded beauty by time and use. The room was cleverly broken into various
+circles and centres for conversation; the chairs were many and
+comfortable; flowers sheltered tête-à-têtes or made a setting for
+beautiful faces; the lamps were soft, the air warm and light. A cheerful
+hum of voices rose, as of talk enjoyed for talking's sake; and a general
+effect of intimacy, or gayety, of an unfeigned social pleasure, seemed
+to issue from the charming scene and communicate itself to the onlooker.
+
+And for a few moments, before he was discovered and tumultuously annexed
+by a neighboring group, Sir Wilfrid watched the progress of Mademoiselle
+Le Breton through the room, with the young Duchess in her wake. Wherever
+she moved she was met with smiles, deference, and eager attention. Here
+and there she made an introduction, she redistributed a group, she moved
+a chair. It was evident that her eye was everywhere, that she knew every
+one; her rule appeared to be at once absolute and welcome. Presently,
+when she herself accepted a seat, she became, as Sir Wilfrid perceived
+in the intervals of his own conversation, the leader of the most
+animated circle in the room. The Duchess, with one delicate arm
+stretched along the back of Mademoiselle Le Breton's chair, laughed and
+chattered; two young girls in virginal white placed themselves on big
+gilt footstools at her feet; man after man joined the group that stood
+or sat around her; and in the centre of it, the brilliance of her black
+head, sharply seen against a background of rose brocade, the grace of
+her tall form, which was thin almost to emaciation, the expressiveness
+of her strange features, the animation of her gestures, the sweetness of
+her voice, drew the eyes and ears of half the room to Lady Henry's
+"companion."
+
+Presently there was a movement in the distance. A man in knee-breeches
+and silver-buckled shoes emerged from the back drawing-room.
+Mademoiselle Le Breton rose at once and went to meet him.
+
+"The Bishop has had a long innings," said an old general to Sir Wilfrid
+Bury. "And here is Mademoiselle Julie coming for you."
+
+Sir Wilfrid rose, in obedience to a smiling sign from the lady thus
+described, and followed her floating black draperies towards the
+farther room.
+
+"Who are those two persons with Lady Henry?" he asked of his guide, as
+they approached the _penetralia_ where reigned the mistress of the
+house. "Ah, I see!--one is Dr. Meredith--but the other?"
+
+"The other is Captain Warkworth," said Mademoiselle Le Breton. "Do you
+know him?"
+
+"Warkworth--Warkworth? Ah--of course--the man who distinguished himself
+in the Mahsud expedition. But why is he home again so soon?"
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton smiled uncertainly.
+
+"I think he was invalided home," she said, with that manner, at once
+restrained and gracious, that Sir Wilfrid had already observed in her.
+It was the manner of some one who _counted_; and--through all outward
+modesty--knew it.
+
+"He wants something out of the ministry. I remember the man," was Sir
+Wilfrid's unspoken comment.
+
+But they had entered the inner room. Lady Henry looked round. Over her
+wrinkled face, now parchment-white, there shone a ray of
+pleasure--sudden, vehement, and unfeigned.
+
+"Sir Wilfrid!"
+
+She made a movement as though to rise from her chair, which was checked
+by his gesture and her helplessness.
+
+"Well, this is good fortune," she said, as she put both her hands into
+both of his. "This morning, as I was dressing, I had a feeling that
+something agreeable was going to happen at last--and then your note
+came. Sit down there. You know Dr. Meredith. He's as quarrelsome as
+ever. Captain Warkworth--Sir Wilfrid Bury."
+
+The square-headed, spectacled journalist addressed as Dr. Meredith
+greeted the new-comer with the quiet cordiality of one for whom the day
+holds normally so many events that it is impossible to make much of any
+one of them. And the man on the farther side of Lady Henry rose and
+bowed. He was handsome, and slenderly built. The touch of impetuosity in
+his movement, and the careless ease with which he carried his curly
+head, somehow surprised Sir Wilfrid. He had expected another sort
+of person.
+
+"I will give you my chair," said the Captain, pleasantly. "I have had
+more than my turn."
+
+"Shall I bring in the Duchess?" said Mademoiselle Le Breton, in a low
+tone, as she stooped over the back of Lady Henry's chair.
+
+That lady turned abruptly to the speaker.
+
+"Let her do precisely as she pleases," said a voice, sharp, lowered
+also, but imperious, like the drawing of a sword. "If she wants me, she
+knows where I am."
+
+"She would be so sorry--"
+
+"Ne jouez pas la comédie, ma chère! Where is Jacob?"
+
+"In the other room. Shall I tell him you want him?"
+
+"I will send for him when it suits me. Meanwhile, as I particularly
+desired you to let me know when he arrived--"
+
+"He has only been here twenty minutes," murmured Mademoiselle Le Breton.
+"I thought while the Bishop was here you would not like to be
+disturbed--"
+
+"You thought!" The speaker raised her shoulders fiercely. "Comme
+toujours, vous vous êtes trop bien amusée pour vous souvenir de mes
+instructions--voilà la vérité! Dr. Meredith," the whole imperious form
+swung round again towards the journalist, "unless you forbid me, I shall
+tell Sir Wilfrid who it was reviewed his book for you."
+
+"Oh, good Heavens! I forbid you with all the energy of which I am
+capable," said the startled journalist, raising appealing hands, while
+Lady Henry, delighted with the effect produced by her sudden shaft, sank
+back in her chair and grimly smiled.
+
+Meanwhile Sir Wilfrid Bury's attention was still held by Mademoiselle Le
+Breton. In the conversation between her and Lady Henry he had noticed an
+extraordinary change of manner on the part of the younger lady. Her
+ease, her grace had disappeared. Her tone was humble, her manner
+quivering with nervous anxiety. And now, as she stood a moment behind
+Lady Henry's chair, one trembling hand steadying the other, Sir Wilfrid
+was suddenly aware of yet another impression. Lady Henry had treated her
+companion with a contemptuous and haughty ill-humor. Face to face with
+her mistress, Mademoiselle Le Breton had borne it with submission,
+almost with servility. But now, as she stood silent behind the blind old
+lady who had flouted her, her wonderfully expressive face, her delicate
+frame, spoke for her with an energy not to be mistaken. Her dark eyes
+blazed. She stood for anger; she breathed humiliation.
+
+"A dangerous woman, and an extraordinary situation," so ran his thought,
+while aloud he was talking Central Asian politics and the latest Simla
+gossip to his two companions.
+
+Meanwhile, Captain Warkworth and Mademoiselle Le Breton returned
+together to the larger drawing-room, and before long Dr. Meredith took
+his leave. Lady Henry and her old friend were left alone.
+
+"I am sorry to hear that your sight troubles you more than of old," said
+Sir Wilfrid, drawing his chair a little nearer to her.
+
+Lady Henry gave an impatient sigh. "Everything troubles me more than of
+old. There is one disease from which no one recovers, my dear Wilfrid,
+and it has long since fastened upon me."
+
+"You mean old age? Oh, you are not so much to be pitied for that," said
+Sir Wilfrid, smiling. "Many people would exchange their youth for
+your old age."
+
+"Then the world contains more fools than even I give it credit for!"
+said Lady Henry, with energy. "Why should any one exchange with me--a
+poor, blind, gouty old creature, with no chick or child to care whether
+she lives or dies?"
+
+"Ah, well, that's a misfortune--I won't deny that," said Sir Wilfrid,
+kindly. "But I come home after three years. I find your house as
+thronged as ever, in the old way. I see half the most distinguished
+people in London in your drawing-room. It is sad that you can no longer
+receive them as you used to do: but here you sit like a queen, and
+people fight for their turn with you."
+
+Lady Henry did not smile. She laid one of her wrinkled hands upon his
+arm.
+
+"Is there any one else within hearing?" she said, in a quick undertone.
+Sir Wilfrid was touched by the vague helplessness of her gesture, as she
+looked round her.
+
+"No one--we are quite alone."
+
+"They are not here for _me_--those people," she said, quivering, with a
+motion of her hand towards the large drawing-room.
+
+"My dear friend, what do you mean?"
+
+"They are here--come closer, I don't want to be overheard--for a
+_woman_--whom I took in, in a moment of lunacy--who is now robbing me of
+my best friends and supplanting me in my own house."
+
+The pallor of the old face had lost all its waxen dignity. The lowered
+voice hissed in his ear. Sir Wilfrid, startled and repelled, hesitated
+for his reply. Meanwhile, Lady Henry, who could not see it, seemed at
+once to divine the change in his expression.
+
+"Oh, I suppose you think I'm mad," she said, impatiently, "or
+ridiculous. Well, see for yourself, judge for yourself. In fact, I have
+been looking, hungering, for your return. You have helped me through
+emergencies before now. And I am in that state at present that I trust
+no one, talk to no one, except of _banalités_. But I should be greatly
+obliged if _you_ would come and listen to me, and, what is more, advise
+me some day."
+
+"Most gladly," said Sir Wilfrid, embarrassed; then, after a pause, "Who
+is this lady I find installed here?"
+
+Lady Henry hesitated, then shut her strong mouth on the temptation to
+speak.
+
+"It is not a story for to-night," she said; "and it would upset me. But,
+when you first saw her, how did she strike you?"
+
+"I saw at once," said her companion after a pause, "that you had caught
+a personality."
+
+"A personality!" Lady Henry gave an angry laugh. "That's one way of
+putting it. But physically--did she remind you of no one?"
+
+Sir Wilfrid pondered a moment.
+
+"Yes. Her face haunted me, when I first saw it. But--no; no, I can't put
+any names."
+
+Lady Henry gave a little snort of disappointment.
+
+"Well, think. You knew her mother quite well. You have known her
+grandfather all your life. If you're going on to the Foreign Office, as
+I suppose you are, you'll probably see him to-night. She is uncannily
+like him. As to her father, I don't know--but he was a rolling-stone of
+a creature; you very likely came across him."
+
+"I knew her mother and her father?" said Sir Wilfrid, astonished and
+pondering.
+
+"They had no right to be her mother and her father," said Lady Henry,
+with grimness.
+
+"Ah! So if one does guess--"
+
+"You'll please hold your tongue."
+
+"But at present I'm completely mystified," said Sir Wilfrid.
+
+"Perhaps it'll come to you later. You've a good memory generally for
+such things. Anyway, I can't tell you anything now. But when'll you come
+again? To-morrow--luncheon? I really want you."
+
+"Would you be alone?"
+
+"Certainly. _That_, at least, I can still do--lunch as I please, and
+with whom I please. Who is this coming in? Ah, you needn't tell me."
+
+The old lady turned herself towards the entrance, with a stiffening of
+the whole frame, an instinctive and passionate dignity in her whole
+aspect, which struck a thrill through her companion.
+
+The little Duchess approached, amid a flutter of satin and lace,
+heralded by the scent of the Parma violets she wore in profusion at her
+breast and waist. Her eye glanced uncertainly, and she approached with
+daintiness, like one stepping on mined ground.
+
+"Aunt Flora, I must have just a minute."
+
+"I know no reason against your having ten, if you want them," said Lady
+Henry, as she held-out three fingers to the new-comer. "You promised
+yesterday to come and give me a full account of the Devonshire House
+ball. But it doesn't matter--and you have forgotten."
+
+"No, indeed, I haven't," said the Duchess, embarrassed. "But you seemed
+so well employed to-night, with other people. And now--"
+
+"Now you are going on," said Lady Henry, with a most unfriendly suavity.
+
+"Freddie says I must," said the other, in the attitude of a protesting
+child.
+
+"_Alors_!" said Lady Henry, lifting her hand. "We all know how obedient
+you are. Good-night!"
+
+The Duchess flushed. She just touched her aunt's hand, and then, turning
+an indignant face on Sir Wilfrid, she bade him farewell with an air
+which seemed to him intended to avenge upon his neutral person the
+treatment which, from Lady Henry, even so spoiled a child of fortune as
+herself could not resent.
+
+Twenty minutes later, Sir Wilfrid entered the first big room of the
+Foreign Office party. He looked round him with a revival of the
+exhilaration he had felt on Lady Henry's staircase, enjoying, after his
+five years in Teheran, after his long homeward journey by desert and
+sea, even the common trivialities of the scene--the lights, the gilding,
+the sparkle of jewels, the scarlet of the uniforms, the noise and
+movement of the well-dressed crowd. Then, after this first physical
+thrill, began the second stage of pleasure--the recognitions and the
+greetings, after long absence, which show a man where he stands in the
+great world, which sum up his past and forecast his future. Sir Wilfrid
+had no reason to complain. Cabinet ministers and great ladies, members
+of Parliament and the permanent officials who govern but do not rule,
+soldiers, journalists, barristers--were all glad, it seemed, to grasp
+him by the hand. He had returned with a record of difficult service
+brilliantly done, and the English world rewarded him in its
+accustomed ways.
+
+It was towards one o'clock that he found himself in a crowd pressing
+towards the staircase in the wake of some departing royalties. A tall
+man in front turned round to look for some ladies behind him from whom
+he had been separated in the crush. Sir Wilfrid recognized old Lord
+Lackington, the veteran of marvellous youth, painter, poet, and sailor,
+who as a gay naval lieutenant had entertained Byron in the Ægean; whose
+fame as one of the raciest of naval reformers was in all the newspapers;
+whose personality was still, at seventy-five, charming to most women and
+challenging to most men.
+
+As the old man turned, he was still smiling, as though in unison with
+something which had just been said to him; and his black eyes under his
+singularly white hair searched the crowd with the animation of a lad of
+twenty. Through the energy of his aspect the flame of life still
+burned, as the evening sun through a fine sky. The face had a faulty yet
+most arresting brilliance. The mouth was disagreeable, the chin common.
+But the general effect was still magnificent.
+
+Sir Wilfrid started. He recalled the drawing-room in Bruton Street; the
+form and face of Mademoiselle Le Breton; the sentences by which Lady
+Henry had tried to put him on the track. His mind ran over past years,
+and pieced together the recollections of a long-past scandal. "Of
+course! _Of course!_" he said to himself, not without excitement. "She
+is not like her mother, but she has all the typical points of her
+mother's race."
+
+
+
+II
+
+It was a cold, clear morning in February, with a little pale sunshine
+playing on the bare trees of the Park. Sir Wilfrid, walking southward
+from the Marble Arch to his luncheon with Lady Henry, was gladly
+conscious of the warmth of his fur-collared coat, though none the less
+ready to envy careless youth as it crossed his path now and then,
+great-coatless and ruddy, courting the keen air.
+
+Just as he was about to make his exit towards Mount Street he became
+aware of two persons walking southward like himself, but on the other
+side of the roadway. He soon identified Captain Warkworth in the slim,
+soldierly figure of the man. And the lady? There also, with the help of
+his glasses, he was soon informed. Her trim, black hat and her black
+cloth costume seemed to him to have a becoming and fashionable
+simplicity; and she moved in morning dress, with the same ease and
+freedom that had distinguished her in Lady Henry's drawing-room the
+night before.
+
+He asked himself whether he should interrupt Mademoiselle Le Breton with
+a view to escorting her to Bruton Street. He understood, indeed, that he
+and Lady Henry were to be alone at luncheon; Mademoiselle Julie had, no
+doubt, her own quarters and attendants. But she seemed to be on her way
+home. An opportunity for some perhaps exploratory conversation with her
+before he found himself face to face with Lady Henry seemed to him not
+undesirable.
+
+But he quickly decided to walk on. Mademoiselle Le Breton and Captain
+Warkworth paused in their walk, about no doubt to say good-bye, but,
+very clearly, loath to say it. They were, indeed, in earnest
+conversation. The Captain spoke with eagerness; Mademoiselle Julie, with
+downcast eyes, smiled and listened.
+
+"Is the fellow making love to her?" thought the old man, in some
+astonishment, as he turned away. "Hardly the place for it either, one
+would suppose."
+
+He vaguely thought that he would both sound and warn Lady Henry. Warn
+her of what? He happened on the way home to have been thrown with a
+couple of Indian officers whose personal opinion of Harry Warkworth was
+not a very high one, in spite of the brilliant distinction which the
+young man had earned for himself in the Afridi campaign just closed. But
+how was he to hand that sort of thing on to Lady Henry?--and because he
+happened to have seen her lady companion and Harry Warkworth together?
+No doubt Mademoiselle Julie was on her employer's business.
+
+Yet the little encounter added somehow to his already lively curiosity
+on the subject of Lady Henry's companion. Thanks to a remarkable
+physical resemblance, he was practically certain that he had guessed the
+secret of Mademoiselle Le Breton's parentage. At any rate, on the
+supposition that he had, his thoughts began to occupy themselves with
+the story to which his guess pointed.
+
+Some thirty years before, he had known, both in London and in Italy, a
+certain Colonel Delaney and his wife, once Lady Rose Chantrey, the
+favorite daughter of Lord Lackington. They were not a happy couple. She
+was a woman of great intelligence, but endowed with one of those
+natures--sensitive, plastic, eager to search out and to challenge
+life--which bring their possessors some great joys, hardly to be
+balanced against a final sum of pain. Her husband, absorbed in his
+military life, silent, narrowly able, and governed by a strict
+Anglicanism that seemed to carry with it innumerable "shalts" and "shalt
+nots," disagreeable to the natural man or woman, soon found her a tiring
+and trying companion. She asked him for what he could not give; she
+coquetted with questions he thought it impious to raise; the persons she
+made friends with were distasteful to him; and, without complaining, he
+soon grew to think it intolerable that a woman married to a soldier
+should care so little for his professional interests and ambitions.
+Though when she pretended to care for them she annoyed him, if possible,
+still more.
+
+As for Lady Rose, she went through all the familiar emotions of the
+_femme incomprise_. And with the familiar result. There presently
+appeared in the house a man of good family, thirty-five or so,
+traveller, painter, and dreamer, with fine, long-drawn features bronzed
+by the sun of the East, and bringing with him the reputation of having
+plotted and fought for most of the "lost causes" of our generation,
+including several which had led him into conflict with British
+authorities and British officials. To Colonel Delaney he was an
+"agitator," if not a rebel; and the careless pungency of his talk soon
+classed him as an atheist besides. In the case of Lady Rose, this man's
+free and generous nature, his independence of money and convention, his
+passion for the things of the mind, his contempt for the mode, whether
+in dress or politics, his light evasions of the red tape of life as of
+something that no one could reasonably expect of a vagabond like
+himself--these things presently transformed a woman in despair to a
+woman in revolt. She fell in love with an intensity befitting her true
+temperament, and with a stubbornness that bore witness to the dreary
+failure of her marriage. Marriott Dalrymple returned her love, and
+nothing in his view of life predisposed him to put what probably
+appeared to him a mere legality before the happiness of two people meant
+for each other. There were no children of the Delaney marriage; and in
+his belief the husband had enjoyed too long a companionship he had never
+truly deserved.
+
+So Lady Rose faced her husband, told him the truth, and left him. She
+and Dalrymple went to live in Belgium, in a small country-house some
+twenty or thirty miles from Brussels. They severed themselves from
+England; they asked nothing more of English life. Lady Rose suffered
+from the breach with her father, for Lord Lackington never saw her
+again. And there was a young sister whom she had brought up, whose image
+could often rouse in her a sense of loss that showed itself in
+occasional spells of silence and tears. But substantially she never
+repented what she had done, although Colonel Delaney made the penalties
+of it as heavy as he could. Like Karennine in Tolstoy's great novel, he
+refused to sue for a divorce, and for something of the same reasons.
+Divorce was in itself impious, and sin should not be made easy. He was
+at any time ready to take back his wife, so far as the protection of
+his name and roof were concerned, should she penitently return to him.
+
+So the child that was presently born to Lady Rose could not be
+legitimized.
+
+Sir Wilfrid stopped short at the Park end of Bruton Street, with a start
+of memory.
+
+"I saw it once! I remember now--perfectly."
+
+And he went on to recall a bygone moment in the Brussels Gallery, when,
+as he was standing before the great Quintin Matsys, he was accosted with
+sudden careless familiarity by a thin, shabbily dressed man, in whose
+dark distinction, made still more fantastic and conspicuous by the fever
+and the emaciation of consumption, he recognized at once Marriott
+Dalrymple.
+
+He remembered certain fragments of their talk about the pictures--the
+easy mastery, now brusque, now poetic, with which Dalrymple had shown
+him the treasures of the gallery, in the manner of one whose learning
+was merely the food of fancy, the stuff on which imagination and reverie
+grew rich.
+
+Then, suddenly, his own question--"And Lady Rose?"
+
+And Dalrymple's quiet, "Very well. She'd see you, I think, if you want
+to come. She has scarcely seen an English person in the last
+three years."
+
+And as when a gleam searches out some blurred corner of a landscape,
+there returned upon him his visit to the pair in their country home. He
+recalled the small eighteenth-century house, the "château" of the
+village, built on the French model, with its high _mansarde_ roof; the
+shabby stateliness of its architecture matching plaintively with the
+field of beet-root that grew up to its very walls; around it the flat,
+rich fields, with their thin lines of poplars; the slow, canalized
+streams; the unlovely farms and cottages; the mire of the lanes; and,
+shrouding all, a hot autumn mist sweeping slowly through the damp
+meadows and blotting all cheerfulness from the sun. And in the midst of
+this pale landscape, so full of ragged edges to an English eye, the
+English couple, with their books, their child, and a pair of
+Flemish servants.
+
+It had been evident to him at once that their circumstances were those
+of poverty. Lady Rose's small fortune, indeed, had been already mostly
+spent on "causes" of many kinds, in many countries. She and Dalrymple
+were almost vegetarians, and wine never entered the house save for the
+servants, who seemed to regard their employers with a real but
+half-contemptuous affection. He remembered the scanty, ill-cooked
+luncheon; the difficulty in providing a few extra knives and forks; the
+wrangling with the old _bonne_-housekeeper, which was necessary before
+_serviettes_ could be produced.
+
+And afterwards the library, with its deal shelves from floor to ceiling
+put up by Dalrymple himself, its bare, polished floor, Dalrymple's table
+and chair on one side of the open hearth, Lady Rose's on the other; on
+his table the sheets of verse translation from Æschylus and Euripides,
+which represented his favorite hobby; on hers the socialist and
+economical books they both studied and the English or French poets they
+both loved. The walls, hung with the faded damask of a past generation,
+were decorated with a strange crop of pictures pinned carelessly into
+the silk--photographs or newspaper portraits of modern men and women
+representing all possible revolt against authority, political,
+religious, even scientific, the Everlasting No of an untiring and
+ubiquitous dissent.
+
+Finally, in the centre of the polished floor, the strange child, whom
+Lady Rose had gone to fetch after lunch, with its high crest of black
+hair, its large, jealous eyes, its elfin hands, and the sudden smile
+with which, after half an hour of silence and apparent scorn, it had
+rewarded Sir Wilfrid's advances. He saw himself sitting bewitched
+beside it.
+
+Poor Lady Rose! He remembered her as he and she parted at the gate of
+the neglected garden, the anguish in her eyes as they turned to look
+after the bent and shrunken figure of Dalrymple carrying the child back
+to the house.
+
+"If you meet any of his old friends, don't--don't say anything! We've
+just saved enough money to go to Sicily for the winter--that'll set
+him right."
+
+And then, barely a year later, the line in a London newspaper which had
+reached him at Madrid, chronicling the death of Marriott Dalrymple, as
+of a man once on the threshold of fame, but long since exiled from the
+thoughts of practical men. Lady Rose, too, was dead--many years since;
+so much he knew. But how, and where? And the child?
+
+She was now "Mademoiselle Le Breton "?--the centre and apparently the
+chief attraction of Lady Henry's once famous salon?
+
+"And, by Jove! several of her kinsfolk there, relations of the mother or
+the father, if what I suppose is true!" thought Sir Wilfrid, remembering
+one or two of the guests. "Were they--was she--aware of it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The old man strode on, full of a growing eagerness, and was soon on Lady
+Henry's doorstep.
+
+"Her ladyship is in the dining-room," said the butler, and Sir Wilfrid
+was ushered there straight.
+
+"Good-morning, Wilfrid," said the old lady, raising herself on her
+silver--headed sticks as he entered. "I prefer to come down-stairs by
+myself. The more infirm I am, the less I like it--and to be helped
+enrages me. Sit down. Lunch is ready, and I give you leave to eat some."
+
+"And you?" said Sir Wilfrid, as they seated themselves almost side by
+side at the large, round table in the large, dingy room.
+
+The old lady shook her head.
+
+"All the world eats too much. I was brought up with people who lunched
+on a biscuit and a glass of sherry."
+
+"Lord Russell?--Lord Palmerston?" suggested Sir Wilfrid, attacking his
+own lunch meanwhile with unabashed vigor.
+
+"That sort. I wish we had their like now."
+
+"Their successors don't please you?"
+
+Lady Henry shook her head.
+
+"The Tories have gone to the deuce, and there are no longer enough Whigs
+even to do that. I wouldn't read the newspapers at all if I could help
+it. But I do."
+
+"So I understand," said Sir Wilfrid; "you let Montresor know it last
+night."
+
+"Montresor!" said Lady Henry, with a contemptuous movement. "What a
+_poseur_! He lets the army go to ruin, I understand, while he joins
+Dante societies."
+
+Sir Wilfrid raised his eyebrows.
+
+"I think, if I were you, I should have some lunch," he said, gently
+pushing the admirable _salmi_ which the butler had left in front of him
+towards his old friend.
+
+Lady Henry laughed.
+
+"Oh, my temper will be better presently, when those men are gone"--she
+nodded towards the butler and footman in the distance--"and I can
+have my say."
+
+Sir Wilfrid hurried his meal as much as Lady Henry--who, as it turned
+out, was not at all minded to starve him--would allow. She meanwhile
+talked politics and gossip to him, with her old, caustic force, nibbling
+a dry biscuit at intervals and sipping a cup of coffee. She was a
+wilful, characteristic figure as she sat there, beneath her own portrait
+as a bride, which hung on the wall behind her. The portrait represented
+a very young woman, with plentiful brown hair gathered into a knot on
+the top of her head, a high waist, a blue waist-ribbon, and inflated
+sleeves. Handsome, imperious, the corners of the mouth well down, the
+look straight and daring--the Lady Henry of the picture, a bride of
+nineteen, was already formidable. And the old woman sitting beneath it,
+with the strong, white hair, which the ample cap found some difficulty
+even now in taming and confining, the droop of the mouth accentuated,
+the nose more masterful, the double chin grown evident, the light of the
+eyes gone out, breathed pride and will from every feature of her still
+handsome face, pride of race and pride of intellect, combined with a
+hundred other subtler and smaller prides that only an intimate knowledge
+of her could detect. The brow and eyes, so beautiful in the picture,
+were, however, still agreeable in the living woman; if generosity
+lingered anywhere, it was in them.
+
+The door was hardly closed upon the servants when she bent forward.
+
+"Well, have you guessed?"
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked at her thoughtfully as he stirred the sugar in his
+coffee.
+
+"I think so," he said. "She is Lady Rose Delaney's daughter."
+
+Lady Henry gave a sudden laugh.
+
+"I hardly expected you to guess! What helped you?"
+
+"First your own hints. Then the strange feeling I had that I had seen
+the face, or some face just like it, before. And, lastly, at the Foreign
+Office I caught sight, for a moment, of Lord Lackington. That
+finished it."
+
+"Ah!" said Lady Henry, with a nod. "Yes, that likeness is extraordinary.
+Isn't it amazing that that foolish old man has never perceived it?"
+
+"He knows nothing?"
+
+"Oh, nothing! Nobody does. However, that'll do presently. But Lord
+Lackington comes here, mumbles about his music and his water-colors, and
+his flirtations--seventy-four, if you please, last birthday!--talks
+about himself endlessly to Julie or to me--whoever comes handy--and
+never has an inkling, an idea."
+
+"And she?"
+
+"Oh, _she_ knows. I should rather think she does." And Lady Henry pushed
+away her coffee-cup with the ill-suppressed vehemence which any mention
+of her companion seemed to produce in her. "Well, now, I suppose you'd
+like to hear the story."
+
+"Wait a minute. It'll surprise you to hear that I not only knew this
+lady's mother and father, but that I've seen her, herself, before."
+
+"You?" Lady Henry looked incredulous.
+
+"I never told you of my visit to that _ménage_, four-and-twenty years
+ago?"
+
+"Never, that I remember. But if you had I should have forgotten. What
+did they matter to me then? I myself only saw Lady Rose once, so far as
+I remember, before she misconducted herself. And afterwards--well, one
+doesn't trouble one's self about the women that have gone under."
+
+Something lightened behind Sir Wilfrid's straw-colored lashes. He bent
+over his coffee-cup and daintily knocked off the end of his cigarette
+with a beringed little finger.
+
+"The women who have--not been able to pull up?"
+
+Lady Henry paused.
+
+"If you like to put it so," she said, at last. Sir Wilfrid did not raise
+his eyes. Lady Henry took up her strongest glasses from the table and
+put them on. But it was pitifully evident that even so equipped she saw
+but little, and that her strong nature fretted perpetually against the
+physical infirmity that teased it. Nevertheless, some unspoken
+communication passed between them, and Sir Wilfrid knew that he had
+effectually held up a protecting hand for Lady Rose.
+
+"Well, let me tell you my tale first," he said; and gave the little
+reminiscence in full. When he described the child, Lady Henry
+listened eagerly.
+
+"Hm," she said, when he came to an end; "she was jealous, you say, of
+her mother's attentions to you? She watched you, and in the end she took
+possession of you? Much the same creature, apparently, then as now."
+
+"No moral, please, till the tale is done," said Sir Wilfrid, smiling.
+"It's your turn."
+
+Lady Henry's face grew sombre.
+
+[Illustration: "LADY HENRY LISTENED EAGERLY"]
+
+"All very well," she said. "What did your tale matter to you? As for
+mine--"
+
+The substance of hers was as follows, put into chronological order:
+
+Lady Rose had lived some ten years after Dalrymple's death. That time
+she passed in great poverty in some _chambres garnies_ at Bruges, with
+her little girl and an old Madame Le Breton, the maid, housekeeper, and
+general factotum who had served them in the country. This woman, though
+of a peevish, grumbling temper, was faithful, affectionate, and not
+without education. She was certainly attached to little Julie, whose
+nurse she had been during a short period of her infancy. It was natural
+that Lady Rose should leave the child to her care. Indeed, she had no
+choice. An old Ursuline nun, and a kind priest who at the nun's
+instigation occasionally came to see her, in the hopes of converting
+her, were her only other friends in the world. She wrote, however, to
+her father, shortly before her death, bidding him good-bye, and asking
+him to do something for the child. "She is wonderfully like you," so ran
+part of the letter. "You won't ever acknowledge her, I know. That is
+your strange code. But at least give her what will keep her from want,
+till she can earn her living. Her old nurse will take care of her, I
+have taught her, so far. She is already very clever. When I am gone she
+will attend one of the convent schools here. And I have found an honest
+lawyer who will receive and pay out money."
+
+To this letter Lord Lackington replied, promising to come over and see
+his daughter. But an attack of gout delayed him, and, before he was out
+of his room, Lady Rose was dead. Then he no longer talked of coming
+over, and his solicitors arranged matters. An allowance of a hundred
+pounds a year was made to Madame Le Breton, through the "honest lawyer"
+whom Lady Rose had found, for the benefit of "Julie Dalrymple," the
+capital value to be handed over to that young lady herself on the
+attainment of her eighteenth birthday--always provided that neither she
+nor anybody on her behalf made any further claim on the Lackington
+family, that her relationship to them was dropped, and her mother's
+history buried in oblivion.
+
+Accordingly the girl grew to maturity in Bruges. By the lawyer's advice,
+after her mother's death, she took the name of her old _gouvernante_,
+and was known thenceforward as Julie Le Breton. The Ursuline nuns, to
+whose school she was sent, took the precaution, after her mother's
+death, of having her baptized straightway into the Catholic faith, and
+she made her _première communion_ in their church. In the course of a
+few years she became a remarkable girl, the source of many anxieties to
+the nuns. For she was not only too clever for their teaching, and an
+inborn sceptic, but wherever she appeared she produced parties and the
+passions of parties. And though, as she grew older, she showed much
+adroitness in managing those who were hostile to her, she was never
+without enemies, and intrigues followed her.
+
+"I might have been warned in time," said Lady Henry, in whose wrinkled
+cheeks a sharp and feverish color had sprung up as her story approached
+the moment of her own personal acquaintance with Mademoiselle Le Breton.
+"For one or two of the nuns when I saw them in Bruges, before the
+bargain was finally struck, were candid enough. However, now I come to
+the moment when I first set eyes on her. You know my little place in
+Surrey? About a mile from me is a manor-house belonging to an old
+Catholic family, terribly devout and as poor as church-mice. They sent
+their daughters to school in Bruges. One summer holiday these girls
+brought home with them Julie Dalrymple as their quasi-holiday governess.
+It was three years ago. I had just seen Liebreich. He told me that I
+should soon be blind, and, naturally, it was a blow to me."
+
+Sir Wilfrid made a murmur of sympathy.
+
+"Oh, don't pity me! I don't pity other people. This odious body of ours
+has got to wear out sometime--it's in the bargain. Still, just then I
+was low. There are two things I care about--one is talk, with the people
+that amuse me, and the other is the reading of French books. I didn't
+see how I was going to keep my circle here together, and my own mind in
+decent repair, unless I could find somebody to be eyes for me, and to
+read to me. And as I'm a bundle of nerves, and I never was agreeable to
+illiterate people, nor they to me, I was rather put to it. Well, one day
+these girls and their mother came over to tea, and, as you guess, of
+course, they brought Mademoiselle Le Breton with them. I had asked them
+to come, but when they arrived I was bored and cross, and like a sick
+dog in a hole. And then, as you have seen her, I suppose you can guess
+what happened."
+
+"You discovered an exceptional person?"
+
+Lady Henry laughed.
+
+"I was limed, there and then, old bird as I am. I was first struck with
+the girl's appearance--_une belle laide_--with every movement just as it
+ought to be; infinitely more attractive to me than any pink-and-white
+beauty. It turned out that she had just been for a month in Paris
+with another school-fellow. Something she said about a new
+play--suddenly--made me look at her. 'Venez vous asseoir ici,
+mademoiselle, s'il vous plaît--près de moi,' I said to her--I can hear
+my own voice now, poor fool, and see her flush up. Ah!" Lady Henry's
+interjection dropped to a note of rage that almost upset Sir Wilfrid's
+gravity; but he restrained himself, and she resumed: "We talked for two
+hours; it seemed to me ten minutes. I sent the others out to the
+gardens. She stayed with me. The new French books, the theatre, poems,
+plays, novels, memoirs, even politics, she could talk of them all; or,
+rather--for, mark you, that's her gift--she made _me_ talk. It seemed to
+me I had not been so brilliant for months. I was as good, in fact, as I
+had ever been. The difficulty in England is to find any one to keep up
+the ball. She does it to perfection. She never throws to
+win--never!--but so as to leave you all the chances. You make a
+brilliant stroke; she applauds, and in a moment she has arranged you
+another. Oh, it is the most extraordinary gift of conversation--and she
+never says a thing that you want to remember."
+
+There was a silence. Lady Henry's old fingers drummed restlessly on the
+table. Her memory seemed to be wandering angrily among her first
+experiences of the lady they were discussing.
+
+"Well," said Sir Wilfrid, at last, "so you engaged her as _lectrice_,
+and thought yourself very lucky?"
+
+"Oh, don't suppose that I was quite an idiot. I made some inquiries--I
+bored myself to death with civilities to the stupid family she was
+staying with, and presently I made her stay with me. And of course I
+soon saw there was a history. She possessed jewels, laces, little
+personal belongings of various kinds, that wanted explaining. So I laid
+traps for her; I let her also perceive whither my own plans were
+drifting. She did not wait to let me force her hand. She made up her
+mind. One day I found, left carelessly on the drawing-room table, a
+volume of Saint-Simon, beautifully bound in old French morocco, with
+something thrust between the leaves. I opened it. On the fly-leaf was
+written the name Marriott Dalrymple, and the leaves opened, a little
+farther, on a miniature of Lady Rose Delaney. So--"
+
+"Apparently it was _her_ traps that worked," said Sir Wilfrid, smiling.
+Lady Henry returned the smile unwillingly, as one loath to acknowledge
+her own folly.
+
+"I don't know that I was trapped. We both desired to come to close
+quarters. Anyway, she soon showed me books, letters--from Lady Rose,
+from Dalrymple, Lord Lackington--the evidence was complete....
+
+"'Very well,' I said; 'it isn't your fault. All the better if you are
+well born--I am not a person of prejudices. But understand, if you come
+to me, there must be no question of worrying your relations. There are
+scores of them in London. I know them all, or nearly all, and of course
+you'll come across them. But unless you can hold your tongue, don't come
+to me. Julie Dalrymple has disappeared, and I'll be no party to her
+resurrection. If Julie Le Breton becomes an inmate of my house, there
+shall be no raking up of scandals much better left in their graves. If
+you haven't got a proper parentage, consistently thought out, we must
+invent one--'"
+
+"I hope I may some day be favored with it," said Sir Wilfrid.
+
+Lady Henry laughed uncomfortably.
+
+"Oh, I've had to tell lies," she said, "plenty of them."
+
+"What! It was _you_ that told the lies?"
+
+Lady Henry's look flashed.
+
+"The open and honest ones," she said, defiantly.
+
+"Well," said Sir Wilfrid, regretfully, "_some_ sort were indispensable.
+So she came. How long ago?"
+
+"Three years. For the first half of that time I did nothing but plume
+myself on my good fortune. I said to myself that if I had searched
+Europe through I could not have fared better. My household, my friends,
+my daily ways, she fitted into them all to perfection. I told people
+that I had discovered her through a Belgian acquaintance. Every one was
+amazed at her manners, her intelligence. She was perfectly modest,
+perfectly well behaved. The old Duke--he died six months after she came
+to me--was charmed with her. Montresor, Meredith, Lord Robert, all my
+_habitués_ congratulated me. 'Such cultivation, such charm, such
+_savoir-faire!_ Where on earth did you pick up such a treasure? What are
+her antecedents?' etc., etc. So then, of course--"
+
+"I hope no more than were absolutely necessary!" said Sir Wilfrid,
+hastily.
+
+"I had to do it well," said Lady Henry, with decision; "I can't say I
+didn't. That state of things lasted, more or less, about a year and a
+half. And by now, where do you think it has all worked out?"
+
+"You gave me a few hints last night," said Sir Wilfrid, hesitating.
+
+Lady Henry pushed her chair back from the table. Her hands trembled on
+her stick.
+
+"Hints!" she said, scornfully. "I'm long past hints. I told you last
+night--and I repeat--that woman has stripped me of all my friends! She
+has intrigued with them all in turn against me. She has done the same
+even with my servants. I can trust none of them where she is concerned.
+I am alone in my own house. My blindness makes me her tool, her
+plaything. As for my salon, as you call it, it has become hers. I am a
+mere courtesy-figurehead--her chaperon, in fact. I provide the house,
+the footmen, the champagne; the guests are hers. And she has done this
+by constant intrigue and deception--by flattery--by lying!"
+
+The old face had become purple. Lady Henry breathed hard.
+
+"My dear friend," said Sir Wilfrid, quickly, laying a calming hand on
+her arm, "don't let this trouble you so. Dismiss her."
+
+"And accept solitary confinement for the rest of my days? I haven't the
+courage--yet," said Lady Henry, bitterly. "You don't know how I have
+been isolated and betrayed! And I haven't told you the worst of all.
+Listen! Do you know whom she has got into her toils?"
+
+She paused, drawing herself rigidly erect. Sir Wilfrid, looking up
+sharply, remembered the little scene in the Park, and waited.
+
+"Did you have any opportunity last night," said Lady Henry, slowly, "of
+observing her and Jacob Delafield?"
+
+She spoke with passionate intensity, her frowning brows meeting above a
+pair of eyes that struggled to see and could not. But the effect she
+listened for was not produced. Sir Wilfrid drew back uncertainly.
+
+"Jacob Delafield?" he said. "Jacob Delafield? Are you sure?"
+
+"Sure?" cried Lady Henry, angrily. Then, disdaining to support her
+statement, she went on: "He hesitates. But she'll soon make an end of
+that. And do you realize what that means--what Jacob's possibilities
+are? Kindly recollect that Chudleigh has one boy--one sickly,
+tuberculous boy--who might die any day. And Chudleigh himself is a poor
+life. Jacob has more than a good chance--ninety chances out of a
+hundred"--she ground the words out with emphasis--"of inheriting
+the dukedom."
+
+"Good gracious!" said Sir Wilfrid, throwing away his cigarette.
+
+"There!" said Lady Henry, in sombre triumph. "Now you can understand
+what I have brought on poor Henry's family."
+
+A low knock was heard at the door.
+
+"Come in," said Lady Henry, impatiently.
+
+The door opened, and Mademoiselle Le Breton appeared on the threshold,
+carrying a small gray terrier under each arm.
+
+"I thought I had better tell you," she said, humbly, "that I am taking
+the dogs out. Shall I get some fresh wool for your knitting?"
+
+
+
+III
+
+It was nearly four o'clock. Sir Wilfrid had just closed Lady Henry's
+door behind him, and was again walking along Bruton Street.
+
+He was thinking of the little scene of Mademoiselle Le Breton's
+appearance on the threshold of Lady Henry's dining-room; of the insolent
+sharpness with which Lady Henry had given her order upon order--as to
+the dogs, the books for the circulating library, a message for her
+dressmaker, certain directions for the tradesmen, etc., etc.--as though
+for the mere purpose of putting the woman who had dared to be her rival
+in her right place before Sir Wilfrid Bury. And at the end, as she was
+departing, Mademoiselle Le Breton, trusting no doubt to Lady Henry's
+blindness, had turned towards himself, raising her downcast eyes upon
+him suddenly, with a proud, passionate look. Her lips had moved; Sir
+Wilfrid had half risen from his chair. Then, quickly, the door had
+closed upon her.
+
+Sir Wilfrid could not think of it without a touch of excitement.
+
+"Was she reminding me of Gherardtsloo?" he said to himself. "Upon my
+word, I must find some means of conversation with her, in spite of
+Lady Henry."
+
+He walked towards Bond Street, pondering the situation of the two
+women--the impotent jealousy and rancor with which Lady Henry was
+devoured, the domestic slavery contrasted with the social power of
+Mademoiselle Le Breton. Through the obscurity and difficulty of
+circumstance, how marked was the conscience of race in her, and, as he
+also thought, of high intelligence! The old man was deeply interested.
+He felt a certain indulgent pity for his lifelong friend Lady Henry; but
+he could not get Mademoiselle Julie out of his head.
+
+"Why on earth does she stay where she is?"
+
+He had asked the same question of Lady Henry, who had contemptuously
+replied:
+
+"Because she likes the flesh-pots, and won't give them up. No doubt she
+doesn't find my manners agreeable; but she knows very well that she
+wouldn't get the chances she gets in my house anywhere else. I give her
+a foothold. She'll not risk it for a few sour speeches on my part. I may
+say what I like to her--and I intend to say what I like! Besides, you
+watch her, and see whether she's made for poverty. She takes to luxury
+as a fish to water. What would she be if she left me? A little visiting
+teacher, perhaps, in a Bloomsbury lodging. That's not her line at all."
+
+"But somebody else might employ her as you do?" Sir Wilfrid had
+suggested.
+
+"You forget I should be asked for a character," said Lady Henry. "Oh, I
+admit there are possibilities--on her side. That silly goose, Evelyn
+Crowborough, would have taken her in, but I had a few words with
+Crowborough, and he put his foot down. He told his wife he didn't want
+an intriguing foreigner to live with them. No; for the present we are
+chained to each other. I can't get rid of her, and she doesn't want to
+get rid of me. Of course, things might become intolerable for either of
+us. But at present self-interest on both sides keeps us going. Oh, don't
+tell me the thing is odious! I know it. Every day she stays in the house
+I become a more abominable old woman."
+
+A more exacting one, certainly. Sir Wilfrid thought with pity and
+amusement of the commissions with which Mademoiselle Julie had been
+loaded. "She earns her money, any way," he thought. "Those things will
+take her a hard afternoon's work. But, bless my soul!"--he paused in his
+walk--"what about that engagement to Duchess Evelyn that I heard her
+make? Not a word, by-the-way, to Lady Henry about it! Oh, this
+is amusing!"
+
+He went meditatively on his way, and presently turned into his club to
+write some letters. But at five o'clock he emerged, and told a hansom to
+drive him to Grosvenor Square. He alighted at the great red-brick
+mansion of the Crowboroughs, and asked for the Duchess. The magnificent
+person presiding over the hall, an old family retainer, remembered him,
+and made no difficulty about admitting him.
+
+"Anybody with her grace?" he inquired, as the man handed him over to the
+footman who was to usher him up-stairs.
+
+"Only Miss Le Breton and Mr. Delafield, Sir Wilfrid. Her grace told me
+to say 'not at home' this afternoon, but I am sure, sir, she will
+see you."
+
+Sir Wilfrid smiled.
+
+As he entered the outer drawing-room, the Duchess and the group
+surrounding her did not immediately perceive the footman nor himself,
+and he had a few moments in which to take in a charming scene.
+
+A baby girl in a white satin gown down to her heels, and a white satin
+cap, lace-edged and tied under her chin, was holding out her tiny skirt
+with one hand and dancing before the Duchess and Miss Le Breton, who was
+at the piano. The child's other hand held up a morsel of biscuit
+wherewith she directed the movements of her partner, a small black
+spitz, of a slim and silky elegance, who, straining on his hind legs,
+his eager attention fixed upon the biscuit, followed every movement of
+his small mistress; while she, her large blue eyes now solemn, now
+triumphant, her fair hair escaping from her cap in fluttering curls, her
+dainty feet pointed, her dimpled arm upraised, repeated in living grace
+the picture of her great-great-grandmother which hung on the wall in
+front of her, a masterpiece from Reynolds's happiest hours.
+
+Behind Mademoiselle Le Breton stood Jacob Delafield; while the Duchess,
+in a low chair beside them, beat time gayly to the gavotte that
+Mademoiselle Julie was playing and laughed encouragement and applause to
+the child in front of her. She herself, with her cloud of fair hair, the
+delicate pink and white of her skin, the laughing lips and small white
+hands that rose and fell with the baby steps, seemed little more than a
+child. Her pale blue dress, for which she had just exchanged her winter
+walking-costume, fell round her in sweeping folds of lace and silk--a
+French fairy dressed by Wörth, she was possessed by a wild gayety, and
+her silvery laugh held the room.
+
+Beside her, Julie Le Breton, very thin, very tall, very dark, was
+laughing too. The eyes which Sir Wilfrid had lately seen so full of
+pride were now alive with pleasure. Jacob Delafield, also, from behind,
+grinned applause or shouted to the babe, "Brava, Tottie; well done!"
+Three people, a baby, and a dog more intimately pleased with one
+another's society it would have been difficult to discover.
+
+"Sir Wilfrid!"
+
+The Duchess sprang up astonished, and in a moment, to Sir Wilfrid's
+chagrin, the little scene fell to pieces. The child dropped on the
+floor, defending herself and the biscuit as best she could against the
+wild snatches of the dog. Delafield composed his face in a moment to its
+usual taciturnity. Mademoiselle Le Breton rose from the piano.
+
+"No, no!" said Sir Wilfrid, stopping short and holding up a deprecating
+hand. "Too bad! Go on."
+
+"Oh, we were only fooling with baby!" said the Duchess. "It is high time
+she went to her nurse. Sit here, Sir Wilfrid. Julie, will you take the
+babe, or shall I ring for Mrs. Robson?"
+
+"I'll take her," said Mademoiselle Le Breton.
+
+She knelt down by the child, who rose with alacrity. Catching her skirts
+round her, with one eye half laughing, half timorous, turned over her
+shoulder towards the dog, the baby made a wild spring into Mademoiselle
+Julie's arms, tucking up her feet instantly, with a shriek of delight,
+out of the dog's way. Then she nestled her fair head down upon her
+bearer's shoulder, and, throbbing with joy and mischief, was
+carried away.
+
+Sir Wilfrid, hat in hand, stood for a moment watching the pair. A bygone
+marriage uniting the Lackington family with that of the Duchess had just
+occurred to him in some bewilderment. He sat down beside his hostess,
+while she made him some tea. But no sooner had the door of the farther
+drawing-room closed behind Mademoiselle Le Breton, than with a dart of
+all her lively person she pounced upon him.
+
+"Well, so Aunt Flora has been complaining to you?"
+
+Sir Wilfrid's cup remained suspended in his hand. He glanced first at
+the speaker and then at Jacob Delafield.
+
+"Oh, Jacob knows all about it!" said the Duchess, eagerly. "This is
+Julie's headquarters; _we_ are on her staff. _You_ come from the enemy!"
+
+Sir Wilfrid took out his white silk handkerchief and waved it.
+
+"Here is my flag of truce," he said. "Treat me well."
+
+"We are only too anxious to parley with you," said the Duchess,
+laughing. "Aren't we, Jacob?"
+
+Then she drew closer.
+
+"What has Aunt Flora been saying to you?"
+
+Sir Wilfrid paused. As he sat there, apparently studying his boots, his
+blond hair, now nearly gray, carefully parted in the middle above his
+benevolent brow, he might have been reckoned a tame and manageable
+person. Jacob Delafield, however, knew him of old.
+
+"I don't think that's fair," said Sir Wilfrid, at last, looking up. "I'm
+the new-comer; I ought to be allowed the questions."
+
+"Go on," said the Duchess, her chin on her hand. "Jacob and I will
+answer all we know."
+
+Delafield nodded. Sir Wilfrid, looking from one to the other, quickly
+reminded himself that they had been playmates from the cradle--or might
+have been.
+
+"Well, in the first place," he said, slowly, "I am lost in admiration at
+the rapidity with which Mademoiselle Le Breton does business. An hour
+and a half ago"--he looked at his watch--"I stood by while Lady Henry
+enumerated commissions it would have taken any ordinary man-mortal half
+a day to execute."
+
+The Duchess clapped her hands.
+
+"My maid is now executing them," she said, with glee. "In an hour she
+will be back. Julie will go home with everything done, and I shall have
+had nearly two hours of her delightful society. What harm is there
+in that?"
+
+"Where are the dogs?" said Sir Wilfrid, looking round.
+
+"Aunt Flora's dogs? In the housekeeper's room, eating sweet biscuit.
+They adore the groom of the chambers."
+
+"Is Lady Henry aware of this--this division of labor?" said Sir Wilfrid,
+smiling.
+
+"Of course not," said the Duchess, flushing. "She makes Julie's life
+such a burden to her that something has to be done. Now what _has_ Aunt
+Flora been telling you? We were certain she would take you into
+council--she has dropped various hints of it. I suppose she has been
+telling you that Julie has been intriguing against her--taking
+liberties, separating her from her friends, and so on?"
+
+Sir Wilfrid smilingly presented his cup for some more tea.
+
+"I beg to point out," he said, "that I have only been allowed _two_
+questions so far. But if things are to be at all fair and equal, I am
+owed at least six."
+
+The Duchess drew back, checked, and rather annoyed. Jacob Delafield, on
+the other hand, bent forward.
+
+"We are _anxious_, Sir Wilfrid, to tell you all we know," he replied,
+with quiet emphasis.
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked at him. The flame in the young man's eyes burned
+clear and steady--but flame it was. Sir Wilfrid remembered him as a
+lazy, rather somnolent youth; the man's advance in expression, in
+significant power, of itself, told much.
+
+"In the first place, can you give me the history of this lady's
+antecedents?"
+
+He glanced from one to the other.
+
+The Duchess and Jacob Delafield exchanged glances. Then the Duchess
+spoke--uncertainly.
+
+"Yes, we know. She has confided in us. There is nothing whatever to her
+discredit."
+
+Sir Wilfrid's expression changed.
+
+"Ah!" cried the Duchess, bending forward. "You know, too?"
+
+"I knew her father and mother," said Sir Wilfrid, simply.
+
+The Duchess gave a little cry of relief. Jacob Delafield rose, took a
+turn across the room, and came back to Sir Wilfrid.
+
+"Now we can really speak frankly," he said. "The situation has grown
+very difficult, and we did not know--Evelyn and I--whether we had a
+right to explain it. But now that Lady Henry--"
+
+"Oh yes," said Sir Wilfrid, "that's all right. The fact of Mademoiselle
+Le Breton's parentage--"
+
+"Is really what makes Lady Henry so jealous!" cried the Duchess,
+indignantly. "Oh, she's a tyrant, is Aunt Flora! It is because Julie is
+of her own world--of _our_ world, by blood, whatever the law may
+say--that she can't help making a rival out of her, and tormenting her
+morning, noon, and night. I tell you, Sir Wilfrid, what that poor girl
+has gone through no one can imagine but we who have watched it. Lady
+Henry owes her _every_thing this last three years. Where would she have
+been without Julie? She talks of Julie's separating her from her
+friends, cutting her out, imposing upon her, and nonsense of that kind!
+How would she have kept up that salon alone, I should like to know--a
+blind old woman who can't write a note for herself or recognize a face?
+First of all she throws everything upon Julie, is proud of her
+cleverness, puts her forward in every way, tells most unnecessary
+falsehoods about her--Julie has felt _that_ very much--and then when
+Julie has a great success, when people begin to come to Bruton Street,
+for her sake as well as Lady Henry's, then Lady Henry turns against her,
+complains of her to everybody, talks about treachery and disloyalty and
+Heaven knows what, and begins to treat her like the dirt under her feet!
+How can Julie help being clever and agreeable--she _is_ clever and
+agreeable! As Mr. Montresor said to me yesterday, 'As soon as that woman
+comes into a room, my spirits go up!' And why? Because she never thinks
+of herself, she always makes other people show at their best. And then
+Lady Henry behaves like this!" The Duchess threw out her hands in
+scornful reprobation. "And the question is, of course, Can it go on?"
+
+"I don't gather," said Sir Wilfrid, hesitating, "that Lady Henry wants
+immediately to put an end to it."
+
+Delafield gave an angry laugh.
+
+"The point is whether Mademoiselle Julie and Mademoiselle Julie's
+friends can put up with it much longer."
+
+"You see," said the Duchess, eagerly, "Julie is such a loyal,
+affectionate creature. She knows Lady Henry was kind to her, to begin
+with, that she gave her great chances, and that she's getting old and
+infirm. Julie's awfully sorry for her. She doesn't want to leave her all
+alone--to the mercy of her servants--"
+
+"I understand the servants, too, are devoted to Mademoiselle Julie?"
+said Sir Wilfrid.
+
+"Yes, that's another grievance," said Delafield, contemptuously. "Why
+shouldn't they be? When the butler had a child very ill, it was
+Mademoiselle Julie who went to see it in the mews, who took it flowers
+and grapes--"
+
+"Lady Henry's grapes?" threw in Sir Wilfrid.
+
+"What does it matter!" said Delafield, impatiently. "Lady Henry has more
+of everything than she knows what to do with. But it wasn't grapes only!
+It was time and thought and consideration. Then when the younger footman
+wanted to emigrate to the States, it was Mademoiselle Julie who found a
+situation for him, who got Mr. Montresor to write to some American
+friends, and finally sent the lad off, devoted to her, of course, for
+life. I should like to know when Lady Henry would have done that kind of
+thing! Naturally the servants like her--she deserves it."
+
+"I see--I see," said Sir Wilfrid, nodding gently, his eyes on the
+carpet. "A very competent young lady."
+
+Delafield looked at the older man, half in annoyance, half in
+perplexity.
+
+"Is there anything to complain of in that?" he said, rather shortly.
+
+"Oh, nothing, nothing!" said Sir Wilfrid, hastily. "And this word
+intrigue that Lady Henry uses? Has mademoiselle always steered a
+straightforward course with her employer?"
+
+"Oh, well," said the Duchess, shrugging her shoulders, "how can you
+always be perfectly straightforward with such a tyrannical old person!
+She _has_ to be managed. Lately, in order to be sure of every minute of
+Julie's time, she has taken to heaping work upon her to such a
+ridiculous extent that unless I come to the rescue the poor thing gets
+no rest and no amusement. And last summer there was an explosion,
+because Julie, who was supposed to be in Paris for her holiday with a
+school-friend, really spent a week of it with the Buncombes, Lady
+Henry's married niece, who has a place in Kent. The Buncombes knew her
+at Lady Henry's parties, of course. Then they met her in the Louvre,
+took her about a little, were delighted with her, and begged her to come
+and stay with them--they have a place near Canterbury--on the way home.
+They and Julie agreed that it would be best to say nothing to Lady Henry
+about it--she is too absurdly jealous--but then it leaked out,
+unluckily, and Lady Henry was furious."
+
+"I must say," said Delafield, hurriedly, "I always thought frankness
+would have been best there."
+
+"Well, perhaps," said the Duchess, unwillingly, with another shrug. "But
+now what is to be done? Lady Henry really must behave better, or Julie
+can't and sha'n't stay with her. Julie has a great following--hasn't
+she, Jacob? They won't see her harassed to death."
+
+"Certainly not," said Delafield. "At the same time we all see"--he
+turned to Sir Wilfrid--"what the advantages of the present combination
+are. Where would Lady Henry find another lady of Mademoiselle Le
+Breton's sort to help her with her house and her salon? For the last two
+years the Wednesday evenings have been the most brilliant and successful
+things of their kind in London. And, of course, for Mademoiselle Le
+Breton it is a great thing to have the protection of Lady
+Henry's name--"
+
+"A great thing?" cried Sir Wilfrid. "Everything, my dear Jacob!"
+
+"I don't know," said Delafield, slowly. "It may be bought too dear."
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked at the speaker with curiosity. It had been at all
+times possible to rouse Jacob Delafield--as child, as school-boy, as
+undergraduate--from an habitual carelessness and idleness by an act or a
+tale of injustice or oppression. Had the Duchess pressed him into her
+service, and was he merely taking sides for the weaker out of a natural
+bent towards that way of looking at things? Or--
+
+"Well, certainly we must do our best to patch it up," said Sir Wilfrid,
+after a pause. "Perhaps Mademoiselle Le Breton will allow me a word with
+her by-and-by. I think I have still some influence with Lady Henry. But,
+dear goddaughter"--he bent forward and laid his hand on that of the
+Duchess--"don't let the maid do the commissions."
+
+"But I must!" cried the Duchess. "Just think, there is my big bazaar on
+the 16th. You don't know how clever Julie is at such things. I want to
+make her recite--her French is too beautiful! And then she has such
+inventiveness, such a head! Everything goes if she takes it in hand. But
+if I say anything to Aunt Flora, she'll put a spoke in all our wheels.
+She'll hate the thought of anything in which Julie is successful and
+conspicuous. Of course she will!"
+
+"All the same, Evelyn," said Delafield, uncomfortable apparently for the
+second time, "I really think it would be best to let Lady Henry know."
+
+"Well, then, we may as well give it up," said the Duchess, pettishly,
+turning aside.
+
+Delafield, who was still pacing the carpet, suddenly raised his hand in
+a gesture of warning. Mademoiselle Le Breton was crossing the outer
+drawing-room.
+
+"Julie, come here!" cried the Duchess, springing up and running towards
+her. "Jacob is making himself so disagreeable. He thinks we ought to
+tell Lady Henry about the 16th."
+
+The speaker put her arm through Julie Le Breton's, looking up at her
+with a frowning brow. The contrast between her restless prettiness, the
+profusion of her dress and hair, and Julie's dark, lissome strength,
+gowned and gloved in neat, close black, was marked enough.
+
+As the Duchess spoke, Julie looked smiling at Jacob Delafield.
+
+"I am in your hands," she said, gently. "Of course I don't want to keep
+anything from Lady Henry. Please decide for me."
+
+Sir Wilfrid's mouth showed a satirical line. He turned aside and began
+to play with a copy of the _Spectator_.
+
+"Julie," said the Duchess, hesitating, "I hope you won't mind, but we
+have been discussing things a little with Sir Wilfrid. I felt sure Aunt
+Flora had been talking to him."
+
+"Of course," said Julie, "I knew she would." She looked towards Sir
+Wilfrid, slightly drawing herself up. Her manner was quiet, but all her
+movements were somehow charged with a peculiar and interesting
+significance. The force of the character made itself felt through all
+disguises.
+
+In spite of himself, Sir Wilfrid began to murmur apologetic things.
+
+"It was natural, mademoiselle, that Lady Henry should confide in me. She
+has perhaps told you that for many years I have been one of the trustees
+of her property. That has led to her consulting me on a good many
+matters. And evidently, from what she says and what the Duchess says,
+nothing could be of more importance to her happiness, now, in her
+helpless state, than her relations to you."
+
+He spoke with a serious kindness in which the tinge of mocking habitual
+to his sleek and well-groomed visage was wholly lost. Julie Le Breton
+met him with dignity.
+
+"Yes, they are important. But, I fear they cannot go on as they are."
+
+There was a pause. Then Sir Wilfrid approached her:
+
+"I hear you are returning to Bruton Street immediately. Might I be your
+escort?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+The Duchess, a little sobered by the turn events had taken and the
+darkened prospects of her bazaar, protested in vain against this sudden
+departure. Julie resumed her furs, which, as Sir Wilfrid, who was
+curious in such things; happened to notice, were of great beauty, and
+made her farewells. Did her hand linger in Jacob Delafield's? Did the
+look with which that young man received it express more than the
+steadfast support which justice offers to the oppressed? Sir Wilfrid
+could not be sure.
+
+[Illustration: "'INDEED I WILL!' CRIED SIR WILFRID, AND THEY WALKED ON"]
+
+As they stepped out into the frosty, lamp-lit dark of Grosvenor Square,
+Julie Le Breton turned to her companion.
+
+"You knew my mother and father," she said, abruptly. "I remember your
+coming,"
+
+What was in her voice, her rich, beautiful voice? Sir Wilfrid only knew
+that while perfectly steady, it seemed to bring emotion near, to make
+all the aspects of things dramatic.
+
+"Yes, yes," he replied, in some confusion. "I knew her well, from the
+time when she was a girl in the school-room. Poor Lady Rose!"
+
+The figure beside him stood still.
+
+"Then if you were my mother's friend," she said, huskily, "you will hear
+patiently what I have to say, even though you are Lady Henry's trustee."
+
+"Indeed I will!" cried Sir Wilfrid, and they walked on.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"But, first of all," said Mademoiselle Le Breton, looking in some
+annoyance at the brace of terriers circling and barking round them, "we
+must take the dogs home, otherwise no talk will be possible."
+
+"You have no more business to do?"
+
+His companion smiled.
+
+"Everything Lady Henry wants is here," she said, pointing to the bag
+upon her arm which had been handed to her, as Sir Wilfrid remembered,
+after some whispered conversation, in the hall of Crowborough House by
+an elegantly dressed woman, who was no doubt the Duchess's maid.
+
+"Allow me to carry it for you."
+
+"Many thanks," said Mademoiselle Le Breton, firmly retaining it, "but
+those are not the things I mind."
+
+They walked on quickly to Bruton Street. The dogs made conversation
+impossible. If they were on the chain it was one long battle between
+them and their leader. If they were let loose, it seemed to Sir Wilfrid
+that they ranged every area on the march, and attacked all elderly
+gentlemen and most errand-boys.
+
+"Do you always take them out?" he asked, when both he and his companion
+were crimson and out of breath.
+
+"Always."
+
+"Do you like dogs?"
+
+"I used to. Perhaps some day I shall again."
+
+"As for me, I wish they had but one neck!" said Sir Wilfrid, who had but
+just succeeded in dragging Max, the bigger of the two, out of the
+interior of a pastry-cook's hand-cart which had been rashly left with
+doors open for a few minutes in the street, while its responsible
+guardian was gossiping in an adjacent kitchen. Mademoiselle Julie
+meanwhile was wrestling with Nero, the younger, who had dived to the
+very heart of a peculiarly unsavory dust-box, standing near the entrance
+of a mews.
+
+"So you commonly go through the streets of London in this whirlwind?"
+asked Sir Wilfrid, again, incredulous, when at last they had landed
+their charges safe at the Bruton Street door.
+
+"Morning and evening," said Mademoiselle Julie, smiling. Then she
+addressed the butler: "Tell Lady Henry, please, that I shall be at home
+in half an hour."
+
+As they turned westward, the winter streets were gay with lights and
+full of people. Sir Wilfrid was presently conscious that among all the
+handsome and well-dressed women who brushed past them, Mademoiselle Le
+Breton more than held her own. She reminded him now not so much of her
+mother as of Marriott Dalrymple. Sir Wilfrid had first seen this woman's
+father at Damascus, when Dalrymple, at twenty-six, was beginning the
+series of Eastern journeys which had made him famous. He remembered the
+brillance of the youth; the power, physical and mental, which radiated
+from him, making all things easy; the scorn of mediocrity, the
+incapacity for subordination.
+
+"I should like you to understand," said the lady beside him, "that I
+came to Lady Henry prepared to do my very best."
+
+"I am sure of that," said Sir Wilfrid, hastily recalling his thoughts
+from Damascus. "And you must have had a very difficult task."
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I knew, of course, it must be difficult. And as to the drudgery of
+it--the dogs, and that kind of thing--nothing of that sort matters to me
+in the least. But I cannot be humiliated before those who have become my
+friends, entirely because Lady Henry wished it to be so."
+
+"Lady Henry at first showed you every confidence?"
+
+"After the first month or two she put everything into my hands--her
+household, her receptions, her letters, you may almost say her whole
+social existence. She trusted me with all her secrets." ("No, no, my
+dear lady," thought Sir Wilfrid.) "She let me help her with all her
+affairs. And, honestly, I did all I could to make her life easy."
+
+"That I understand from herself."
+
+"Then why," cried Mademoiselle Le Breton, turning round to him with
+sudden passion--"why couldn't Lady Henry leave things alone? Are
+devotion, and--and the kind of qualities she wanted, so common? I said
+to myself that, blind and helpless as she was, she should lose nothing.
+Not only should her household be well kept, her affairs well managed,
+but her salon should be as attractive, her Wednesday evenings as
+brilliant, as ever. The world was deserting her; I helped her to bring
+it back. She cannot live without social success; yet now she hates me
+for what I have done. Is it sane--is it reasonable?"
+
+"She feels, I suppose," said Sir Wilfrid, gravely, "that the success is
+no longer hers."
+
+"So she says. But will you please examine that remark? When her guests
+assemble, can I go to bed and leave her to grapple with them? I have
+proposed it often, but of course it is impossible. And if I am to be
+there I must behave, I suppose, like a lady, not like the housemaid.
+Really, Lady Henry asks too much. In my mother's little flat in Bruges,
+with the two or three friends who frequented it, I was brought up in as
+good society and as good talk as Lady Henry has ever known."
+
+They were passing an electric lamp, and Sir Wilfrid, looking up, was
+half thrilled, half repelled by the flashing energy of the face beside
+him. Was ever such language on the lips of a paid companion before? His
+sympathy for Lady Henry revived.
+
+"Can you really give me no clew to the--to the sources of Lady Henry's
+dissatisfaction?" he said, at last, rather coldly.
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton hesitated.
+
+"I don't want to make myself out a saint," she said, at last, in another
+voice and with a humility which was, in truth, hardly less proud than
+her self-assertion. "I--I was brought up in poverty, and my mother died
+when I was fifteen. I had to defend myself as the poor defend
+themselves--by silence. I learned not to talk about my own affairs. I
+couldn't afford to be frank, like a rich English girl. I dare say,
+sometimes I have concealed things which had been better made plain. They
+were never of any real importance, and if Lady Henry had shown any
+consideration--"
+
+Her voice failed her a little, evidently to her annoyance. They walked
+on without speaking for a few paces. "Never of any real importance?" Sir
+Wilfrid wondered.
+
+Their minds apparently continued the conversation though their lips were
+silent, for presently Julie Le Breton said, abruptly:
+
+"Of course I am speaking of matters where Lady Henry might have some
+claim to information. With regard to many of my thoughts and feelings,
+Lady Henry has no right whatever to my confidence."
+
+"She gives us fair warning," thought Sir Wilfrid.
+
+Aloud he said:
+
+"It is not a question of thoughts and feelings, I understand, but of
+actions."
+
+"Like the visit to the Duncombes'?" said Mademoiselle Le Breton,
+impatiently. "Oh, I quite admit it--that's only one of several instances
+Lady Henry might have brought forward. You see, she led me to make these
+friendships; and now, because they annoy her, I am to break them. But
+she forgets. Friends are too--too new in my life, too precious--"
+
+Again the voice wavered. How it thrilled and penetrated! Sir Wilfrid
+found himself listening for every word.
+
+"No," she resumed. "If it is a question of renouncing the friends I have
+made in her house, or going--it will be going. That may as well be
+quite clear."
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked up.
+
+"Let me ask you one question, mademoiselle."
+
+"Certainly. Whatever you like."
+
+"Have you ever had, have you now, any affection for Lady Henry?"
+
+"Affection? I could have had plenty. Lady Henry is most interesting to
+watch. It is magnificent, the struggles she makes with her infirmities."
+
+Nothing could have been more agreeable than the modulation of these
+words, the passage of the tone from a first note of surprise to its
+grave and womanly close. Again, the same suggestions of veiled and
+vibrating feeling. Sir Wilfrid's nascent dislike softened a little.
+
+"After all," he said, with gentleness, "one must make allowance for old
+age and weakness, mustn't one?"
+
+"Oh, as to that, you can't say anything to me that I am not perpetually
+saying to myself," was her somewhat impetuous reply. "Only there is a
+point when ill-temper becomes not only tormenting to me but degrading to
+herself.... Oh, if you only knew!"--the speaker drew an indignant
+breath. "I can hardly bring myself to speak of such _misères_. But
+everything excites her, everything makes her jealous. It is a grievance
+that I should have a new dress, that Mr. Montresor should send me an
+order for the House of Commons, that Evelyn Crowborough should give me a
+Christmas present. Last Christmas, Evelyn gave me these furs--she is the
+only creature in London from whom I would accept a farthing or the value
+of a farthing."
+
+She paused, then rapidly threw him a question:
+
+"Why, do you suppose, did I take it from her?"
+
+"She is your kinswoman," said Wilfrid, quietly.
+
+"Ah, you knew that! Well, then, mayn't Evelyn be kind to me, though I am
+what I am? I reminded Lady Henry, but she only thought me a mean
+parasite, sponging on a duchess for presents above my station. She said
+things hardly to be forgiven. I was silent. But I have never ceased to
+wear the furs."
+
+With what imperious will did the thin shoulders straighten themselves
+under the folds of chinchilla! The cloak became symbolic, a flag not to
+be struck.
+
+"I never answer back, please understand--never," she went on, hurriedly.
+"You saw to-day how Lady Henry gave me her orders. There is not a
+servant in the house with whom she would dare such a manner. Did I
+resent it?"
+
+"You behaved with great forbearance. I watched you with admiration."
+
+"Ah, _forbearance!_ I fear you don't understand one of the strangest
+elements in the whole case. I am _afraid_ of Lady Henry, mortally
+afraid! When she speaks to me I feel like a child who puts up its hands
+to ward off a blow. My instinct is not merely to submit, but to grovel.
+When you have had the youth that I had, when you have existed, learned,
+amused yourself on sufferance, when you have had somehow to maintain
+yourself among girls who had family, friends, money, name, while you--"
+
+Her voice stopped, resolutely silenced before it broke. Sir Wilfrid
+uncomfortably felt that he had no sympathy to produce worthy of the
+claim that her whole personality seemed to make upon it. But she
+recovered herself immediately.
+
+"Now I think I had better give you an outline of the last six months,"
+she said, turning to him. "Of course it is my side of the matter. But
+you have heard Lady Henry's."
+
+And with great composure she laid before him an outline of the chief
+quarrels and grievances which had embittered the life of the Bruton
+Street house during the period she had named. It was a wretched story,
+and she clearly told it with repugnance and disgust. There was in her
+tone a note of offended personal delicacy, as of one bemired against
+her will.
+
+Evidently, Lady Henry was hardly to be defended. The thing had been
+"odious," indeed. Two women of great ability and different ages, shut up
+together and jarring at every point, the elder furiously jealous and
+exasperated by what seemed to her the affront offered to her high rank
+and her past ascendency by the social success of her dependant, the
+other defending herself, first by the arts of flattery and submission,
+and then, when these proved hopeless, by a social skill that at least
+wore many of the aspects of intrigue--these were the essential elements
+of the situation; and, as her narrative proceeded, Sir Wilfrid admitted
+to himself that it was hard to see any way out of it. As to his own
+sympathies, he did not know what to make of them.
+
+"No. I have been only too yielding," said Mademoiselle Le Breton,
+sorely, when her tale was done. "I am ashamed when I look back on what I
+have borne. But now it has gone too far, and something must be done. If
+I go, frankly, Lady Henry will suffer."
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked at his companion.
+
+"Lady Henry is well aware of it."
+
+"Yes," was the calm reply, "she knows it, but she does not realize it.
+You see, if it comes to a rupture she will allow no half-measures. Those
+who stick to me will have to quarrel with her. And there will be a great
+many who will stick to me."
+
+Sir Wilfrid's little smile was not friendly.
+
+"It is indeed evident," he said, "that you have thought it all out."
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton did not reply. They walked on a few minutes in
+silence, till she said, with a suddenness and in a low tone that
+startled her companion:
+
+"If Lady Henry could ever have felt that she _humbled_ me, that I
+acknowledged myself at her mercy! But she never could. She knows that I
+feel myself as well born as she, that I am _not_ ashamed of my parents,
+that my principles give me a free mind about such things."
+
+"Your principles?" murmured Sir Wilfrid.
+
+"You were right," she turned upon him with a perfectly quiet but most
+concentrated passion. "I have _had_ to think things out. I know, of
+course, that the world goes with Lady Henry. Therefore I must be
+nameless and kinless and hold my tongue. If the world knew, it would
+expect me to hang my head. I _don't!_ I am as proud of my mother as of
+my father. I adore both their memories. Conventionalities of that kind
+mean nothing to me."
+
+"My dear lady--"
+
+"Oh, I don't expect you or any one else to feel with me," said the voice
+which for all its low pitch was beginning to make him feel as though he
+were in the centre of a hail-storm. "You are a man of the world, you
+knew my parents, and yet I understand perfectly that for you, too, I am
+disgraced. So be it! So be it! I don't quarrel with what any one may
+choose to think, but--"
+
+She recaptured herself with difficulty, and there was silence. They were
+walking through the purple February dusk towards the Marble Arch. It was
+too dark to see her face under its delicate veil, and Sir Wilfrid did
+not wish to see it. But before he had collected his thoughts
+sufficiently his companion was speaking again, in a wholly
+different manner.
+
+"I don't know what made me talk in this way. It was the contact with
+some one, I suppose, who had seen us at Gherardtsloo." She raised her
+veil, and he thought that she dashed away some tears. "That never
+happened to me before in London. Well, now, to return. If there is
+a breach--"
+
+"Why should there be a breach?" said Sir Wilfrid. "My dear Miss Le
+Breton, listen to me for a few minutes. I see perfectly that you have a
+great deal to complain of, but I also see that Lady Henry has something
+of a case."
+
+And with a courteous authority and tact worthy of his trade, the old
+diplomat began to discuss the situation.
+
+Presently he found himself talking with an animation, a friendliness, an
+intimacy that surprised himself. What was there in the personality
+beside him that seemed to win a way inside a man's defences in spite of
+him? Much of what she had said had seemed to him arrogant or morbid. And
+yet as she listened to him, with an evident dying down of passion, an
+evident forlornness, he felt in her that woman's weakness and timidity
+of which she had accused herself in relation to Lady Henry, and was
+somehow, manlike, softened and disarmed. She had been talking wildly,
+because no doubt she felt herself in great difficulties. But when it was
+his turn to talk she neither resented nor resisted what he had to say.
+The kinder he was, the more she yielded, almost eagerly at times, as
+though the thorniness of her own speech had hurt herself most, and there
+were behind it all a sad life, and a sad heart that only asked in truth
+for a little sympathy and understanding.
+
+"I shall soon be calling her 'my dear' and patting her hand," thought
+the old man, at last, astonished at himself. For the dejection in her
+attitude and gait began to weigh upon him; he felt a warm desire to
+sustain and comfort her. More and more thought, more and more
+contrivance did he throw into the straightening out of this tangle
+between two excitable women, not, it seemed, for Lady Henry's sake, not,
+surely, for Miss Le Breton's sake. But--ah! those two poor, dead folk,
+who had touched his heart long ago, did he feel the hovering of their
+ghosts beside him in the wintry wind?
+
+At any rate, he abounded in shrewd and fatherly advice, and Mademoiselle
+Le Breton listened with a most flattering meekness.
+
+"Well, now I think we have come to an understanding," he urged,
+hopefully, as they turned down Bruton Street again.
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton sighed.
+
+"It is very kind of you. Oh, I will do my best. But--"
+
+She shook her head uncertainly.
+
+"No--no 'buts,'" cried Sir Wilfrid, cheerfully. "Suppose, as a first
+step," he smiled at his companion, "you tell Lady Henry about
+the bazaar?"
+
+"By all means. She won't let me go. But Evelyn will find some one else."
+
+"Oh, we'll see about that," said the old man, almost crossly. "If you'll
+allow me I'll try my hand."
+
+Julie Le Breton did not reply, but her face glimmered upon him with a
+wistful friendliness that did not escape him, even in the darkness. In
+this yielding mood her voice and movements had so much subdued
+sweetness, so much distinction, that he felt himself more than melting
+towards her.
+
+Then, of a sudden, a thought--a couple of thoughts--sped across him. He
+drew himself rather sharply together.
+
+"Mr. Delafield, I gather, has been a good deal concerned in the whole
+matter?"
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton laughed and hesitated.
+
+"He has been very kind. He heard Lady Henry's language once when she was
+excited. It seemed to shock him. He has tried once or twice to smooth
+her down. Oh, he has been most kind!"
+
+"Has he any influence with her?"
+
+"Not much."
+
+"Do you think well of him?"
+
+He turned to her with a calculated abruptness. She showed a little
+surprise.
+
+"I? But everybody thinks well of him. They say the Duke trusts
+everything to him."
+
+"When I left England he was still a rather lazy and unsatisfactory
+undergraduate. I was curious to know how he had developed. Do you know
+what his chief interests are now?"
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton hesitated.
+
+"I'm really afraid I don't know," she said, at last, smiling, and, as it
+were, regretful. "But Evelyn Crowborough, of course, could tell you all
+about him. She and he are very old friends."
+
+"No birds out of that cover," was Sir Wilfrid's inward comment.
+
+The lamp over Lady Henry's door was already in sight when Sir Wilfrid,
+after some talk of the Montresors, with whom he was going to dine that
+night, carelessly said:
+
+"That's a very good-looking fellow, that Captain Warkworth, whom I saw
+with Lady Henry last night."
+
+"Ah, yes. Lady Henry has made great friends with him," said Mademoiselle
+Julie, readily. "She consults him about her memoir of her husband."
+
+"Memoir of her husband!" Sir Wilfrid stopped short. "Heavens above!
+Memoir of Lord Henry?"
+
+"She is half-way through it. I thought you knew."
+
+"Well, upon my word! Whom shall we have a memoir of next? Henry
+Delafield! Henry Delafield! Good gracious!"
+
+And Sir Wilfrid walked along, slashing at the railings with his stick,
+as though the action relieved him. Julie Le Breton quietly resumed:
+
+"I understand that Lord Henry and Captain Warkworth's father went
+through the Indian Mutiny together, and Captain Warkworth has some
+letters--"
+
+"Oh, I dare say--I dare say," muttered Sir Wilfrid. "What's this man
+home for just now?"
+
+"Well, I _think_ Lady Henry knows," said Mademoiselle Julie, turning to
+him an open look, like one who, once more, would gladly satisfy a
+questioner if they could. "He talks to her a great deal. But why
+shouldn't he come home?"
+
+"Because he ought to be doing disagreeable duty with his regiment
+instead of always racing about the world in search of something to get
+his name up," said Sir Wilfrid, rather sharply. "At least, that's the
+view his brother officers mostly take of him."
+
+"Oh," said Mademoiselle Julie, with amiable vagueness, "is there
+anything particular that you suppose he wants?"
+
+"I am not at all in the secret of his ambitions," said Sir Wilfrid,
+lifting his shoulders. "But you and Lady Henry seemed well acquainted
+with him."
+
+The straw-colored lashes veered her way.
+
+"I had some talk with him in the Park this morning," said Julie Le
+Breton, reflectively. "He wants me to copy his father's letters for Lady
+Henry, and to get her to return the originals as soon as possible. He
+feels nervous when they are out of his hands."
+
+"Hm!" said Sir Wilfrid.
+
+At that moment Lady Henry's door-bell presented itself. The vigor with
+which Sir Wilfrid rang it may, perhaps, have expressed the liveliness of
+his unspoken scepticism. He did not for one moment believe that General
+Warkworth's letters had been the subject of the conversation he had
+witnessed that morning in the Park, nor that filial veneration had had
+anything whatever to say to it.
+
+Julie Le Breton gave him her hand.
+
+"Thank you very much," she said, gravely and softly.
+
+Sir Wilfrid at the moment before had not meant to press it at all. But
+he did press it, aware the while of the most mingled feelings.
+
+"On the contrary, you were very good to allow me this conversation.
+Command me at any time if I can be useful to you and Lady Henry."
+
+Julie Le Breton smiled upon him and was gone.
+
+Sir Wilfrid ran down the steps, chafing at himself.
+
+"She somehow gets round one," he thought, with a touch of annoyance. "I
+wonder whether I made any real impression upon her. Hm! Let's see
+whether Montresor can throw any more light upon her. He seemed to be
+pretty intimate. Her 'principles,' eh? A dangerous view to take, for a
+woman of that _provenance._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour or two later Sir Wilfrid Bury presented himself in the
+Montresors' drawing-room in Eaton Place. He had come home feeling it
+essential to impress upon the cabinet a certain line of action with
+regard to the policy of Russia on the Persian Gulf. But the first person
+he perceived on the hearth-rug, basking before the Minister's ample
+fire, was Lord Lackington. The sight of that vivacious countenance, that
+shock of white hair, that tall form still boasting the spareness and
+almost the straightness of youth, that unsuspecting complacency,
+confused his ideas and made him somehow feel the whole world a little
+topsy-turvy.
+
+Nevertheless, after dinner he got his fifteen minutes of private talk
+with his host, and conscientiously made use of them. Then, after an
+appointment had been settled for a longer conversation on another day,
+both men felt that they had done their duty, and, as it appeared, the
+same subject stirred in both their minds.
+
+"Well, and what did you think of Lady Henry?" said Montresor, with a
+smile, as he lighted another cigarette.
+
+"She's very blind," said Sir Wilfrid, "and more rheumatic. But else
+there's not much change. On the whole she wears wonderfully well."
+
+"Except as to her temper, poor lady!" laughed the Minister. "She has
+really tried all our nerves of late. And the worst of it is that most
+of it falls upon that poor woman who lives with her"--the Minister
+lowered his voice--"one of the most interesting and agreeable creatures
+in the world."
+
+Sir Wilfrid glanced across the table. Lord Lackington was telling
+scandalous tales of his youth to a couple of Foreign Office clerks, who
+sat on either side of him, laughing and spurring him on. The old man's
+careless fluency and fun were evidently contagious; animation reigned
+around him; he was the spoiled child of the dinner, and knew it.
+
+"I gather that you have taken a friendly interest in Miss Le Breton,"
+said Bury, turning to his host.
+
+"Oh, the Duchess and Delafield and I have done our best to protect her,
+and to keep the peace. I am quite sure Lady Henry has poured out her
+grievances to you, hasn't she?"
+
+"Alack, she has!"
+
+"I knew she couldn't hold her tongue to you, even for a day. She has
+really been losing her head over it. And it is a thousand pities."
+
+"So you think all the fault's on Lady Henry's side?"
+
+The Minister gave a shrug.
+
+"At any rate, I have never myself seen anything to justify Lady Henry's
+state of feeling. On the famous Wednesdays, Mademoiselle Julie always
+appears to make Lady Henry her first thought. And in other ways she has
+really worn herself to death for the old lady. It makes one rather
+savage sometimes to see it."
+
+"So in your eyes she is a perfect companion?"
+
+Montresor laughed.
+
+"Oh, as to perfection--"
+
+"Lady Henry accuses her of intrigue. You have seen no traces of it?"
+
+The Minister smiled a little oddly.
+
+"Not as regards Lady Henry. Oh, Mademoiselle Julie is a very astute
+lady."
+
+A ripple from some source of secret amusement spread over the dark-lined
+face.
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"She knows how to help her friends better than most people. I have known
+three men, at least, _made_ by Mademoiselle Le Breton within the last
+two or three years. She has just got a fresh one in tow."
+
+Sir Wilfrid moved a little closer to his host. They turned slightly from
+the table and seemed to talk into their cigars.
+
+"Young Warkworth?" said Bury.
+
+The Minister smiled again and hesitated.
+
+"Oh, she doesn't bother me, she is much too clever. But she gets at me
+in the most amusing, indirect ways. I know perfectly well when she has
+been at work. There are two or three men--high up, you understand--who
+frequent Lady Henry's evenings, and who are her very good friends....
+Oh, I dare say she'll get what she wants," he added, with nonchalance.
+
+"Between you and me, do you suspect any direct interest in the young
+man?"
+
+Montresor shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I don't know. Not necessarily. She loves to feel herself a power--all
+the more, I think, because of her anomalous position. It is very
+curious--at bottom very feminine and amusing--and quite harmless."
+
+"You and others don't resent it?"
+
+"No, not from her," said the Minister, after a pause. "But she is rather
+going it, just now. Three or four batteries have opened upon me at once.
+She must be thinking of little else."
+
+Sir Wilfrid grew a trifle red. He remembered the comedy of the
+door-step. "Is there anything that he particularly wants?" His tone
+assumed a certain asperity.
+
+"Well, as for me, I cannot help feeling that Lady Henry has something to
+say for herself. It is very strange--mysterious even--the kind of
+ascendency this lady has obtained for herself in so short a time."
+
+"Oh, I dare say it's hard for Lady Henry to put up with," mused
+Montresor. "Without family, without connections--"
+
+He raised his head quietly and put on his eye-glasses. Then his look
+swept the face of his companion.
+
+Sir Wilfrid, with a scarcely perceptible yet significant gesture,
+motioned towards Lord Lackington. Mr. Montresor started. The eyes of
+both men travelled across the table, then met again.
+
+"You know?" said Montresor, under his breath.
+
+Sir Wilfrid nodded. Then some instinct told him that he had now
+exhausted the number of the initiated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the men reached the drawing-room, which was rather emptily waiting
+for the "reception" Mrs. Montresor was about to hold in it, Sir Wilfrid
+fell into conversation with Lord Lackington. The old man talked well,
+though flightily, with a constant reference of all topics to his own
+standards, recollections, and friendships, which was characteristic, but
+in him not unattractive. Sir Wilfrid noticed certain new and pitiful
+signs of age. The old man was still a rattle. But every now and then the
+rattle ceased abruptly and a breath of melancholy made itself felt--like
+a chill and sudden gust from some unknown sea.
+
+They were joined presently, as the room filled up, by a young
+journalist--an art critic, who seemed to know Lord Lackington and his
+ways. The two fell eagerly into talk about pictures, especially of an
+exhibition at Antwerp, from which the young man had just returned.
+
+"I looked in at Bruges on the way back for a few hours," said the
+new-comer, presently. "The pictures there are much better seen than they
+used to be. When were you there last?" He turned to Lord Lackington.
+
+"Bruges?" said Lord Lackington, with a start. "Oh, I haven't been there
+for twenty years."
+
+And he suddenly sat down, dangling a paper-knife between his hands, and
+staring at the carpet. His jaw dropped a little. A cloud seemed to
+interpose between him and his companions.
+
+Sir Wilfrid, with Lady Henry's story fresh in his memory, was somehow
+poignantly conscious of the old man. Did their two minds hold the same
+image--of Lady Rose drawing her last breath in some dingy room beside
+one of the canals that wind through Bruges, laying down there the last
+relics of that life, beauty, and intelligence that had once made her the
+darling of the father, who, for some reason still hard to understand,
+had let her suffer and die alone?
+
+
+
+V
+
+On leaving the Montresors, Sir Wilfrid, seeing that it was a fine night
+with mild breezes abroad, refused a hansom, and set out to walk home to
+his rooms in Duke Street, St. James's. He was so much in love with the
+mere streets, the mere clatter of the omnibuses and shimmer of the
+lamps, after his long absence, that every step was pleasure. At the top
+of Grosvenor Place he stood still awhile only to snuff up the soft,
+rainy air, or to delight his eye now with the shining pools which some
+showers of the afternoon had left behind them on the pavement, and now
+with the light veil of fog which closed in the distance of Piccadilly.
+
+"And there are silly persons who grumble about the fogs!" he thought,
+contemptuously, while he was thus yielding himself heart and sense to
+his beloved London.
+
+As for him, dried and wilted by long years of cloudless heat, he drank
+up the moisture and the mist with a kind of physical passion--the noises
+and the lights no less. And when he had resumed his walk along the
+crowded street, the question buzzed within him, whether he must indeed
+go back to his exile, either at Teheran, or nearer home, in some more
+exalted post? "I've got plenty of money; why the deuce don't I give it
+up, and come home and enjoy myself? Only a few more years, after all;
+why not spend them here, in one's own world, among one's own kind?"
+
+It was the weariness of the governing Englishman, and it was answered
+immediately by that other instinct, partly physical, partly moral, which
+keeps the elderly man of affairs to his task. Idleness? No! That way
+lies the end. To slacken the rush of life, for men of his sort, is to
+call on death--death, the secret pursuer, who is not far from each one
+of us. No, no! Fight on! It was only the long drudgery behind, under
+alien suns, together with the iron certainty of fresh drudgery ahead,
+that gave value, after all, to this rainy, this enchanting
+Piccadilly--that kept the string of feeling taut and all its
+notes clear.
+
+"Going to bed, Sir Wilfrid?" said a voice behind him, as he turned down
+St. James's Street.
+
+"Delafield!" The old man faced round with alacrity. "Where have you
+sprung from?"
+
+Delafield explained that he had been dining with the Crowboroughs, and
+was now going to his club to look for news of a friend's success or
+failure in a north-country election.
+
+"Oh, that'll keep!" said Sir Wilfrid. "Turn in with me for half an hour.
+I'm at my old rooms, you know, in Duke Street."
+
+"All right," said the young man, after what seemed to Sir Wilfrid a
+moment of hesitation.
+
+"Are you often up in town this way?" asked Bury, as they walked on.
+"Land agency seems to be a profession with mitigations."
+
+"There is some London business thrown in. We have some large milk depots
+in town that I look after."
+
+There was just a trace of hurry in the young man's voice, and Bury
+surveyed him with a smile.
+
+"No other attractions, eh?"
+
+"Not that I know of. By-the-way, Sir Wilfrid, I never asked you how Dick
+Mason was getting on?"
+
+"Dick Mason? Is he a friend of yours?"
+
+"Well, we were at Eton and Oxford together."
+
+"Were you? I never heard him mention your name."
+
+The young man laughed.
+
+"I don't mean to suggest he couldn't live without me. You've left him in
+charge, haven't you, at Teheran?"
+
+"Yes, I have--worse luck. So you're deeply interested in Dick Mason?"
+
+"Oh, come--I liked him pretty well."
+
+"Hm--I don't much care about him. And I don't somehow believe you do."
+
+And Bury, with a smile, slipped a friendly hand within the arm of his
+companion.
+
+Delafield reddened.
+
+"It's decent, I suppose, to inquire after an old school-fellow?"
+
+"Exemplary. But--there are things more amusing to talk about."
+
+Delafield was silent. Sir Wilfrid's fair mustaches approached his ear.
+
+"I had my interview with Mademoiselle Julie."
+
+"So I suppose. I hope you did some good."
+
+"I doubt it. Jacob, between ourselves, the little Duchess hasn't been a
+miracle of wisdom."
+
+"No--perhaps not," said the other, unwillingly.
+
+"She realizes, I suppose, that they are connected?"
+
+"Of course. It isn't very close. Lady Rose's brother married Evelyn's
+aunt, her mother's sister."
+
+"Yes, that's it. She and Mademoiselle Julie _ought_ to have called the
+same person uncle; but, for lack of certain ceremonies, they don't.
+By-the-way, what became of Lady Rose's younger sister?"
+
+"Lady Blanche? Oh, she married Sir John Moffatt, and has been a widow
+for years. He left her a place in Westmoreland, and she lives there
+generally with her girl."
+
+"Has Mademoiselle Julie ever come across them?"
+
+"No."
+
+"She speaks of them?"
+
+"Yes. We can't tell her much about them, except that the girl was
+presented last year, and went to a few balls in town. But neither she
+nor her mother cares for London."
+
+"Lady Blanche Moffatt--Lady Blanche Moffatt?" said Sir Wilfrid, pausing.
+"Wasn't she in India this winter?"
+
+"Yes. I believe they went out in November and are to be home by April."
+
+"Somebody told me they had met her and the girl at Peshawar and then at
+Simla," said Sir Wilfrid, ruminating. "Now I remember! She's a great
+heiress, isn't she, and pretty to boot? I know! Somebody told me that
+fellow Warkworth had been making up to her."
+
+"Warkworth?" Jacob Delafield stood still a moment, and Sir Wilfrid
+caught a sudden contraction of the brow. "That, of course, was just a
+bit of Indian gossip."
+
+"I don't think so," said Sir Wilfrid, dryly. "My informants were two
+frontier officers--I came from Egypt with them--who had recently been at
+Peshawar; good fellows both of them, not at all given to take young
+ladies' names in vain."
+
+Jacob made no reply. They had let themselves into the Duke Street house
+and were groping their way up the dim staircase to Sir Wilfrid's rooms.
+
+There all was light and comfort. Sir Wilfrid's valet, much the same age
+as himself, hovered round his master, brought him his smoking-coat,
+offered Delafield cigars, and provided Sir Wilfrid, strange to say, with
+a large cup of tea.
+
+"I follow Mr. Gladstone," said Sir Wilfrid, with a sigh of luxury, as he
+sank into an easy-chair and extended a very neatly made pair of legs and
+feet to the blaze. "He seems to have slept the sleep of the just--on a
+cup of tea at midnight--through the rise and fall of cabinets. So I'm
+trying the receipt."
+
+"Does that mean that you are hankering after politics?"
+
+"Heavens! When you come to doddering, Jacob, it's better to dodder in
+the paths you know. I salute Mr. G.'s physique, that's all. Well, now,
+Jacob, do you know anything about this Warkworth?"
+
+"Warkworth?" Delafield withdrew his cigar, and seemed to choose his
+words a little. "Well, I know what all the world knows."
+
+"Hm--you seemed very sure just now that he wasn't going to marry Miss
+Moffatt."
+
+"Sure? I'm not sure of anything," said the young man, slowly.
+
+"Well, what I should like to know," said Sir Wilfrid, cradling his
+teacup in both hands, "is, what particular interest has Mademoiselle
+Julie in that young soldier?"
+
+Delafield looked into the fire.
+
+"Has she any?"
+
+"She seems to be moving heaven and earth to get him what he wants.
+By-the-way, what does he want?"
+
+"He wants the special mission to Mokembe, as I understand," said
+Delafield, after a moment. "But several other people want it too."
+
+"Indeed!" Sir Wilfrid nodded reflectively. "So there is to be one! Well,
+it's about time. The travellers of the other European firms have been
+going it lately in that quarter. Jacob, your mademoiselle also is a bit
+of an intriguer!"
+
+Delafield made a restless movement. "Why do you say that?"
+
+"Well, to say the least of it, frankness is not one of her
+characteristics. I tried to question her about this man. I had seen them
+together in the Park, talking as intimates. So, when our conversation
+had reached a friendly stage, I threw out a feeler or two, just to
+satisfy myself about her. But--"
+
+He pulled his fair mustaches and smiled.
+
+"Well?" said the young man, with a kind of reluctant interrogation.
+
+"She played with me, Jacob. But really she overdid it. For such a clever
+woman, I assure you, she overdid it!"
+
+"I don't see why she shouldn't keep her friendships to herself," said
+Delafield, with sudden heat.
+
+"Oh, so you admit it is a friendship?"
+
+Delafield did not reply. He had laid down his cigar, and with his hands
+on his knees was looking steadily into the fire. His attitude, however,
+was not one of reverie, but rather of a strained listening.
+
+"What is the meaning, Jacob, of a young woman taking so keen an interest
+in the fortunes of a dashing soldier--for, between you and me, I hear
+she is moving heaven and earth to get him this post--and then
+concealing it?"
+
+"Why should she want her kindnesses talked of?" said the young man,
+impetuously. "She was perfectly right, I think, to fence with your
+questions, Sir Wilfrid. It's one of the secrets of her influence that
+she can render a service--and keep it dark."
+
+Sir Wilfrid shook his head.
+
+"She overdid it," he repeated. "However, what do you think of the man
+yourself, Jacob?"
+
+"Well, I don't take to him," said the other, unwillingly. "He isn't my
+sort of man."
+
+"And Mademoiselle Julie--you think nothing but well of her? I don't like
+discussing a lady; but, you see, with Lady Henry to manage, one must
+feel the ground as one can."
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked at his companion, and then stretched his legs a
+little farther towards the fire. The lamp-light shone full on his silky
+eyelashes and beard, on his neatly parted hair, and the diamond on his
+fine left hand. The young man beside him could not emulate his easy
+composure. He fidgeted nervously as he replied, with warmth:
+
+"I think she has had an uncommonly hard time, that she wants nothing but
+what is reasonable, and that if she threw you off the scent, Sir
+Wilfrid, with regard to Warkworth, she was quite within her rights. You
+probably deserved it."
+
+He threw up his head with a quick gesture of challenge. Sir Wilfrid
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I vow I didn't," he murmured. "However, that's all right. What do you
+do with yourself down in Essex, Jacob?"
+
+The lines of the young man's attitude showed a sudden unconscious relief
+from tension. He threw himself back in his chair.
+
+"Well, it's a big estate. There's plenty to do."
+
+"You live by yourself?"
+
+"Yes. There's an agent's house--a small one--in one of the villages."
+
+"How do you amuse yourself? Plenty of shooting, I suppose?"
+
+"Too much. I can't do with more than a certain amount."
+
+"Golfing?"
+
+"Oh yes," said the young man, indifferently. "There's a fair links."
+
+"Do you do any philanthropy, Jacob?"
+
+"I like 'bossing' the village," said Delafield, with a laugh. "It
+pleases one's vanity. That's about all there is to it."
+
+"What, clubs and temperance, that kind of thing? Can you take any real
+interest in the people?"
+
+Delafield hesitated.
+
+"Well, yes," he said, at last, as though he grudged the admission.
+"There's nothing else to take an interest in, is there? By-the-way"--he
+jumped up--"I think I'll bid you good-night, for I've got to go down
+to-morrow in a hurry. I must be off by the first train in the morning."
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Oh, it's only a wretched old man--that two beasts of women have put
+into the workhouse infirmary against his will. I only heard it to-night.
+I must go and get him out."
+
+He looked round for his gloves and stick.
+
+"Why shouldn't he be there?"
+
+"Because it's an infernal shame!" said the other, shortly. "He's an old
+laborer who'd saved quite a lot of money. He kept it in his cottage, and
+the other day it was all stolen by a tramp. He has lived with these two
+women--his sister-in-law and her daughter--for years and years. As long
+as he had money to leave, nothing was too good for him. The shock half
+killed him, and now that he's a pauper these two harpies will have
+nothing to say to nursing him and looking after him. He told me the
+other day he thought they'd force him into the infirmary. I didn't
+believe it. But while I've been away they've gone and done it."
+
+"Well, what'll you do now?"
+
+"Get him out."
+
+"And then?"
+
+Delafield hesitated. "Well, then, I suppose, he can come to my place
+till I can find some decent woman to put him with."
+
+Sir Wilfrid rose.
+
+"I think I'll run down and see you some day. Will there be paupers in
+all the bedrooms?"
+
+Delafield grinned.
+
+"You'll find a rattling good cook and a jolly snug little place, I can
+tell you. Do come. But I shall see you again soon. I must be up next
+week, and very likely I shall be at Lady Henry's on Wednesday."
+
+"All right. I shall see her on Sunday, so I can report."
+
+"Not before Sunday?" Delafield paused. His clear blue eyes looked down,
+dissatisfied, upon Sir Wilfrid.
+
+"Impossible before. I have all sorts of official people to see to-morrow
+and Saturday. And, Jacob, keep the Duchess quiet. She may have to give
+up Mademoiselle Julie for her bazaar."
+
+"I'll tell her."
+
+"By-the-way, is that little person happy?" said Sir Wilfrid, as he
+opened the door to his departing guest. "When I left England she was
+only just married."
+
+"Oh yes, she's happy enough, though Crowborough's rather an ass."
+
+"How--particularly?"
+
+Delafield smiled.
+
+"Well, he's rather a sticky sort of person. He thinks there's something
+particularly interesting in dukes, which makes him a bore."
+
+"Take care, Jacob! Who knows that you won't be a duke yourself some
+day?"
+
+"What _do_ you mean?" The young man glowered almost fiercely upon his
+old friend.
+
+"I hear Chudleigh's boy is but a poor creature," said Sir Wilfrid,
+gravely. "Lady Henry doesn't expect him to live."
+
+"Why, that's the kind that always does live!" cried Delafield, with
+angry emphasis. "And as for Lady Henry, her imagination is a perfect
+charnel-house. She likes to think that everybody's dead or dying but
+herself. The fact is that Mervyn is a good deal stronger this year than
+he was last. Really, Lady Henry--" The tone lost itself in a growl
+of wrath.
+
+"Well, well," said Sir Wilfrid, smiling, "'A man beduked against his
+will,' etcetera. Good-night, my dear Jacob, and good luck to your
+old pauper."
+
+But Delafield turned back a moment on the stairs.
+
+"I say"--he hesitated--"you won't shirk talking to Lady Henry?"
+
+"No, no. Sunday, certainly--honor bright. Oh, I think we shall
+straighten it out."
+
+Delafield ran down the stairs, and Sir Wilfrid returned to his warm room
+and the dregs of his tea.
+
+"Now--is he in love with her, and hesitating for social reasons? Or--is
+he jealous of this fellow Warkworth? Or--has she snubbed him, and both
+are keeping it dark? Not very likely, that, in view of his prospects.
+She must want to regularize her position. Or--is he not in love with
+her at all?"
+
+On which cogitations there fell presently the strokes of many bells
+tolling midnight, and left them still unresolved. Only one positive
+impression remained--that Jacob Delafield had somehow grown, vaguely but
+enormously, in mental and moral bulk during the years since he had left
+Oxford--the years of Bury's Persian exile. Sir Wilfrid had been an
+intimate friend of his dead father, Lord Hubert, and on very friendly
+terms with his lethargic, good-natured mother. She, by-the-way, was
+still alive, and living in London with a daughter. He must go and
+see them.
+
+As for Jacob, Sir Wilfrid had cherished a particular weakness for him
+in the Eton-jacket stage, and later on, indeed, when the lad enjoyed a
+brief moment of glory in the Eton eleven. But at Oxford, to Sir
+Wilfrid's thinking, he had suffered eclipse--had become a somewhat
+heavy, apathetic, pseudo-cynical youth, displaying his mother's inertia
+without her good temper, too slack to keep up his cricket, too slack to
+work for the honor schools, at no time without friends, but an enigma to
+most of them, and, apparently, something of a burden to himself.
+
+And now, out of that ugly slough, a man had somehow emerged, in whom Sir
+Wilfrid, who was well acquainted with the race, discerned the stirring
+of all sorts of strong inherited things, formless still, but struggling
+to expression.
+
+"He looked at me just now, when I talked of his being duke, as his
+father would sometimes look."
+
+His father? Hubert Delafield had been an obstinate, dare-devil, heroic
+sort of fellow, who had lost his life in the Chudleigh salmon river
+trying to save a gillie who had missed his footing. A man much
+hated--and much beloved; capable of the most contradictory actions. He
+had married his wife for money, would often boast of it, and would, none
+the less, give away his last farthing recklessly, passionately, if he
+were asked for it, in some way that touched his feelings. Able, too;
+though not so able as the great Duke, his father.
+
+"Hubert Delafield was never _happy_, that I can remember," thought
+Wilfrid Bury, as he sat over his fire, "and this chap has the same
+expression. That woman in Bruton Street would never do for him--apart
+from all the other unsuitability. He ought to find something sweet and
+restful. And yet I don't know. The Delafields are a discontented lot. If
+you plague them, they are inclined to love you. They want something hard
+to get their teeth in. How the old Duke adored his termagant of a wife!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was late on Sunday afternoon before Sir Wilfrid was able to present
+himself in Lady Henry's drawing-room; and when he arrived there, he
+found plenty of other people in possession, and had to wait for
+his chance.
+
+Lady Henry received him with a brusque "At last," which, however, he
+took with equanimity. He was in no sense behind his time. On Thursday,
+when parting with her, he had pleaded for deliberation. "Let me study
+the situation a little; and don't, for Heaven's sake, let's be too
+tragic about the whole thing."
+
+Whether Lady Henry was now in the tragic mood or no, he could not at
+first determine. She was no longer confined to the inner shrine of the
+back drawing-room. Her chair was placed in the large room, and she was
+the centre of a lively group of callers who were discussing the events
+of the week in Parliament, with the light and mordant zest of people
+well acquainted with the personalities they were talking of. She was
+apparently better in health, he noticed; at any rate, she was more at
+ease, and enjoying herself more than on the previous Wednesday. All her
+social characteristics were in full play; the blunt and careless freedom
+which made her the good comrade of the men she talked with--as good a
+brain and as hard a hitter as they--mingled with the occasional sally or
+caprice which showed her very much a woman.
+
+Very few other women were there. Lady Henry did not want women on
+Sundays, and was at no pains whatever to hide the fact. But Mademoiselle
+Julie was at the tea-table, supported by an old white-haired general, in
+whom Sir Wilfrid recognized a man recently promoted to one of the higher
+posts in the War Office. Tea, however, had been served, and Mademoiselle
+Le Breton was now showing her companion a portfolio of photographs, on
+which the old man was holding forth.
+
+"Am I too late for a cup?" said Sir Wilfrid, after she had greeted him
+with cordiality. "And what are those pictures?"
+
+"They are some photos of the Khaibar and Tirah," said Mademoiselle Le
+Breton. "Captain Warkworth brought them to show Lady Henry."
+
+"Ah, the scene of his exploits," said Sir Wilfrid, after a glance at
+them. "The young man distinguished himself, I understand?"
+
+"Oh, very much so," said General M'Gill, with emphasis. "He showed
+brains, and he had luck."
+
+"A great deal of luck, I hear," said Sir Wilfrid, accepting a piece of
+cake. "He'll get his step up, I suppose. Anything else?"
+
+"Difficult to say. But the good men are always in request," said General
+M'Gill, smiling.
+
+"By-the-way, I heard somebody mention his name last night for this
+Mokembe mission," said Sir Wilfrid, helping himself to tea-cake.
+
+"Oh, that's quite undecided," said the General, sharply. "There is no
+immediate hurry for a week or two, and the government must send the best
+man possible."
+
+"No doubt," said Sir Wilfrid.
+
+It interested him to observe that Mademoiselle Le Breton was no longer
+pale. As the General spoke, a bright color had rushed into her cheeks.
+It seemed to Sir Wilfrid that she turned away and busied herself with
+the photographs in order to hide it.
+
+The General rose, a thin, soldierly figure, with gray hair that drooped
+forward, and two bright spots of red on the cheek-bones. In contrast
+with the expansiveness of his previous manner to Mademoiselle Le Breton,
+he was now a trifle frowning and stiff--the high official once more, and
+great man.
+
+"Good-night, Sir Wilfrid. I must be off."
+
+"How are your sons?" said Sir Wilfrid, as he rose.
+
+"The eldest is in Canada with his regiment."
+
+"And the second?"
+
+"The second is in orders."
+
+"Overworking himself in the East End, as all the young parsons seem to
+be doing?"
+
+"That is precisely what he _has_ been doing. But now, I am thankful to
+say, a country living has been offered him, and his mother and I have
+persuaded him to take it."
+
+"A country living? Where?"
+
+"One of the Duke of Crowborough's Shropshire livings," said the General,
+after what seemed to be an instant's hesitation. Mademoiselle Le Breton
+had moved away, and was replacing the photographs in the drawer of a
+distant bureau.
+
+"Ah, one of Crowborough's? Well, I hope it is a living with something to
+live on."
+
+"Not so bad, as times go," said the General, smiling. "It has been a
+great relief to our minds. There were some chest symptoms; his mother
+was alarmed. The Duchess has been most kind; she took quite a fancy to
+the lad, and--"
+
+"What a woman wants she gets. Well, I hope he'll like it. Good-night,
+General. Shall I look you up at the War Office some morning?"
+
+"By all means."
+
+The old soldier, whose tanned face had shown a singular softness while
+he was speaking of his son, took his leave.
+
+Sir Wilfrid was left meditating, his eyes absently fixed on the graceful
+figure of Mademoiselle Le Breton, who shut the drawer she had been
+arranging and returned to him.
+
+"Do you know the General's sons?" he asked her, while she was preparing
+him a second cup of tea.
+
+"I have seen the younger."
+
+She turned her beautiful eyes upon him. It seemed to Sir Wilfrid that he
+perceived in them a passing tremor of nervous defiance, as though she
+were in some way bracing herself against him. But her self-possession
+was complete.
+
+"Lady Henry seems in better spirits," he said, bending towards her.
+
+She did not reply for a moment. Her eyes dropped. Then she raised them
+again, and gently shook her head without a word. The melancholy energy
+of her expression gave him a moment's thrill.
+
+"Is it as bad as ever?" he asked her, in a whisper.
+
+"It's pretty bad. I've tried to appease her. I told her about the
+bazaar. She said she couldn't spare me, and, of course, I acquiesced.
+Then, yesterday, the Duchess--hush!"
+
+"Mademoiselle!"
+
+Lady Henry's voice rang imperiously through the room.
+
+"Yes, Lady Henry."
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton stood up expectant.
+
+"Find me, please, that number of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ which came
+in yesterday. I can prove it to you in two minutes," she said, turning
+triumphantly to Montresor on her right.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Sir Wilfrid, joining Lady Henry's circle,
+while Mademoiselle Le Breton disappeared into the back drawing-room.
+
+"Oh, nothing," said Montresor, tranquilly. "Lady Henry thinks she has
+caught me out in a blunder--about Favre, and the negotiations at
+Versailles. I dare say she has. I am the most ignorant person alive."
+
+"Then are the rest of us spooks?" said Sir Wilfrid, smiling, as he
+seated himself beside his hostess. Montresor, whose information on most
+subjects was prodigious, laughed and adjusted his eye-glass. These
+battles royal on a date or a point of fact between him and Lady Henry
+were not uncommon. Lady Henry was rarely victorious. This time, however,
+she was confident, and she sat frowning and impatient for the book that
+didn't come.
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton, indeed, returned from the back drawing-room
+empty-handed; left the room apparently to look elsewhere, and came back
+still without the book.
+
+"Everything in this house is always in confusion!" said Lady Henry,
+angrily. "No order, no method anywhere!"
+
+Mademoiselle Julie said nothing. She retreated behind the circle that
+surrounded Lady Henry. But Montresor jumped up and offered her
+his chair.
+
+"I wish I had you for a secretary, mademoiselle," he said, gallantly. "I
+never before heard Lady Henry ask you for anything you couldn't find."
+
+Lady Henry flushed, and, turning abruptly to Bury, began a new topic.
+Julie quietly refused the seat offered to her, and was retiring to an
+ottoman in the background when the door was thrown open and the footman
+announced:
+
+"Captain Warkworth."
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The new-comer drew all eyes as he approached the group surrounding Lady
+Henry. Montresor put up his glasses and bestowed on him a few moments of
+scrutiny, during which the Minister's heavily marked face took on the
+wary, fighting aspect which his department and the House of Commons
+knew. The statesman slipped in for an instant between the trifler coming
+and the trifler gone.
+
+As for Wilfrid Bury, he was dazzled by the young man's good looks.
+"'Young Harry with his beaver up!'" he thought, admiring against his
+will, as the tall, slim soldier paid his respects to Lady Henry, and,
+with a smiling word or two to the rest of those present, took his place
+beside her in the circle.
+
+"Well, have you come for your letters?" said Lady Henry, eying him with
+a grim favor.
+
+"I think I came--for conversation," was Warkworth's laughing reply, as
+he looked first at his hostess and then at the circle.
+
+"Then I fear you won't get it," said Lady Henry, throwing herself back
+in her chair. "Mr. Montresor can do nothing but quarrel and contradict."
+
+Montresor lifted his hands in wonder.
+
+"Had I been Æsop," he said, slyly, "I would have added another touch to
+a certain tale. Observe, please!--even after the Lamb has been devoured
+he is still the object of calumny on the part of the Wolf! Well, well!
+Mademoiselle, come and console me. Tell me what new follies the Duchess
+has on foot."
+
+And, pushing his chair back till he found himself on a level with Julie
+Le Breton, the great man plunged into a lively conversation with her.
+Sir Wilfrid, Warkworth, and a few other _habitués_ endeavored meanwhile
+to amuse Lady Henry. But it was not easy. Her brow was lowering, her
+talk forced. Throughout, Sir Wilfrid perceived in her a strained
+attention directed towards the conversation on the other side of the
+room. She could neither see it nor hear it, but she was jealously
+conscious of it. As for Montresor, there was no doubt an element of
+malice in the court he was now paying to Mademoiselle Julie. Lady Henry
+had been thorny over much during the afternoon; even for her oldest
+friend she had passed bounds; he desired perhaps to bring it home
+to her.
+
+Meanwhile, Julie Le Breton, after a first moment of reserve and
+depression, had been beguiled, carried away. She yielded to her own
+instincts, her own gifts, till Montresor, drawn on and drawn out, found
+himself floating on a stream of talk, which Julie led first into one
+channel and then into another, as she pleased; and all to the flattery
+and glorification of the talker. The famous Minister had come to visit
+Lady Henry, as he had done for many Sundays in many years; but it was
+not Lady Henry, but her companion, to whom his homage of the afternoon
+was paid, who gave him his moment of enjoyment--the moment that would
+bring him there again. Lady Henry's fault, no doubt; but Wilfrid Bury,
+uneasily aware every now and then of the dumb tumult that was raging in
+the breast of the haughty being beside him, felt the pathos of this slow
+discrowning, and was inclined, once more, rather to be sorry for the
+older woman than to admire the younger.
+
+At last Lady Henry could bear it no longer.
+
+"Mademoiselle, be so good as to return his father's letters to Captain
+Warkworth," she said, abruptly, in her coldest voice, just as Montresor,
+dropping his--head thrown back and knees crossed--was about to pour into
+the ears of his companion the whole confidential history of his
+appointment to office three years before.
+
+Julie Le Breton rose at once. She went towards a table at the farther
+end of the large room, and Captain Warkworth followed her. Montresor,
+perhaps repenting himself a little, returned to Lady Henry; and though
+she received him with great coolness, the circle round her, now
+augmented by Dr. Meredith, and another politician or two, was
+reconstituted; and presently, with a conscious effort, visible at least
+to Bury, she exerted herself to hold it, and succeeded.
+
+Suddenly--just as Bury had finished a very neat analysis of the Shah's
+public and private character, and while the applauding laughter of the
+group of intimates amid which he sat told him that his epigrams had been
+good--he happened to raise his eyes towards the distant settee where
+Julie Le Breton was sitting.
+
+His smile stiffened on his lips. Like an icy wave, a swift and tragic
+impression swept through him. He turned away, ashamed of having seen,
+and hid himself, as it were, with relief, in the clamor of amusement
+awakened by his own remarks.
+
+What had he seen? Merely, or mainly, a woman's face. Young Warkworth
+stood beside the sofa, on which sat Lady Henry's companion, his hands in
+his pockets, his handsome head bent towards her. They had been talking
+earnestly, wholly forgetting and apparently forgotten by the rest of the
+room. On his side there was an air of embarrassment. He seemed to be
+choosing his words with difficulty, his eyes on the floor. Julie Le
+Breton, on the contrary, was looking at him--looking with all her soul,
+her ardent, unhappy soul--unconscious of aught else in the wide world.
+
+"Good God! she is in love with him!" was the thought that rushed through
+Sir Wilfrid's mind. "Poor thing! Poor thing!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir Wilfrid outstayed his fellow-guests. By seven o'clock all were gone.
+Mademoiselle Le Breton had retired. He and Lady Henry were left alone.
+
+"Shut the doors!" she said, peremptorily, looking round her as the last
+guest disappeared. "I must have some private talk with you. Well, I
+understand you walked home from the Crowboroughs' the other night
+with--that woman."
+
+She turned sharply upon him. The accent was indescribable. And with a
+fierce hand she arranged the folds of her own thick silk dress, as
+though, for some relief to the stormy feeling within, she would rather
+have torn than smoothed it.
+
+Sir Wilfrid seated himself beside her, knees crossed, finger-tips
+lightly touching, the fair eyelashes somewhat lowered--Calm
+beside Tempest.
+
+"I am sorry to hear you speak so," he said, gravely, after a pause.
+"Yes, I talked with her. She met me very fairly, on the whole. It seemed
+to me she was quite conscious that her behavior had not been always what
+it should be, and that she was sincerely anxious to change it. I did my
+best as a peacemaker. Has she made no signs since--no advances?"
+
+Lady Henry threw out her hand in disdain.
+
+"She confessed to me that she had pledged a great deal of the time for
+which I pay her to Evelyn Crowborough's bazaar, and asked what she was
+to do. I told her, of course, that I would put up with nothing of
+the kind."
+
+"And were more annoyed, alack! than propitiated by her confession?" said
+Sir Wilfrid, with a shrug.
+
+"I dare say," said Lady Henry. "You see, I guessed that it was not
+spontaneous; that you had wrung it out of her."
+
+"What else did you expect me to do?" cried Sir Wilfrid. "I seem, indeed,
+to have jolly well wasted my time."
+
+"Oh no. You were very kind. And I dare say you might have done some
+good. I was beginning to--to have some returns on myself, when the
+Duchess appeared on the scene."
+
+"Oh, the little fool!" ejaculated Sir Wilfrid, under his breath.
+
+"She came, of course, to beg and protest. She offered me her valuable
+services for all sorts of superfluous things that I didn't want--if only
+I would spare her Julie for this ridiculous bazaar. So then my back was
+put up again, and I told her a few home truths about the way in which
+she had made mischief and forced Julie into a totally false position.
+On which she flew into a passion, and said a lot of silly nonsense about
+Julie, that showed me, among other things, that Mademoiselle Le Breton
+had broken her solemn compact with me, and had told her family history
+both to Evelyn and to Jacob Delafield. That alone would be sufficient to
+justify me in dismissing her. _N'est-ce pas?_"
+
+"Oh yes," murmured Sir Wilfrid, "if you want to dismiss her."
+
+"We shall come to that presently," said Lady Henry, shortly. "Imagine,
+please, the kind of difficulties in which these confidences, if they
+have gone any further--and who knows?--may land me. I shall have old
+Lord Lackington--who behaved like a brute to his daughter while she was
+alive, and is, all the same, a _poseur_ from top to toe--walking in here
+one night and demanding his granddaughter--spreading lies, perhaps, that
+I have been ill-treating her. Who can say what absurdities may happen if
+it once gets out that she is Lady Rose's child? I could name half a
+dozen people, who come here habitually, who would consider themselves
+insulted if they knew--what you and I know."
+
+"Insulted? Because her mother--"
+
+"Because her mother broke the seventh commandment? Oh, dear, no! That,
+in my opinion, doesn't touch people much nowadays. Insulted because they
+had been kept in the dark--that's all. Vanity, not morals."
+
+"As far as I can ascertain," said Sir Wilfrid, meditatively, "only the
+Duchess, Delafield, Montresor, and myself are in the secret."
+
+"Montresor!" cried Lady Henry, beside herself. "_Montresor!_ That's new
+to me. Oh, she shall go at once--at once!" She breathed hard.
+
+"Wait a little. Have you had any talk with Jacob?"
+
+"I should think not! Evelyn, of course, brings him in perpetually--Jacob
+this and Jacob that. He seems to have been living in her pocket, and the
+three have been intriguing against me, morning, noon, and night. Where
+Julie has found the time I can't imagine; I thought I had kept her
+pretty well occupied."
+
+Sir Wilfrid surveyed his angry companion and held his peace.
+
+"So you don't know what Jacob thinks?"
+
+"Why should I want to know?" said Lady Henry, disdainfully. "A lad whom
+I sent to Eton and Oxford, when his father couldn't pay his bills--what
+does it matter to me what he thinks?"
+
+"Women are strange folk," thought Sir Wilfrid. "A man wouldn't have said
+that."
+
+Then, aloud:
+
+"I thought you were afraid lest he should want to marry her?"
+
+"Oh, let him cut his throat if he likes!" said Lady Henry, with the
+inconsistency of fury. "What does it matter to me?"
+
+"By-the-way, as to that"--he spoke as though feeling his way--"have you
+never had suspicions in quite another direction?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, I hear a good deal in various quarters of the trouble
+Mademoiselle Le Breton is taking--on behalf of that young soldier who
+was here just now--Harry Warkworth."
+
+Lady Henry laughed impatiently.
+
+"I dare say. She is always wanting to patronize or influence somebody.
+It's in her nature. She's a born _intrigante_. If you knew her as well
+as I do, you wouldn't think much of that. Oh no--make your mind easy.
+It's Jacob she wants--it's Jacob she'll get, very likely. What can an
+old, blind creature like me do to stop it?"
+
+"And as Jacob's wife--the wife perhaps of the head of the family--you
+still mean to quarrel with her?"
+
+"Yes, I _do_ mean to quarrel with her!" and Lady Henry lifted herself in
+her chair, a pale and quivering image of war--"Duchess or no Duchess!
+Did you see the audacious way in which she behaved this
+afternoon?--_how_ she absorbs my guests?--how she allows and encourages
+a man like Montresor to forget himself?--eggs him on to put slights on
+me in my own drawing-room!"
+
+"No, no! You are really unjust," said Sir Wilfrid, laying a kind hand
+upon her arm. "That was not her fault."
+
+"It _is_ her fault that she is what she is!--that her character is such
+that she _forces_ comparisons between us--between _her_ and _me!_--that
+she pushes herself into a prominence that is intolerable, considering
+who and what she is--that she makes me appear in an odious light to my
+old friends. No, no, Wilfrid, your first instinct was the true one. I
+shall have to bring myself to it, whatever it costs. She must take her
+departure, or I shall go to pieces, morally and physically. To be in a
+temper like this, at my age, shortens one's life--you know that."
+
+"And you can't subdue the temper?" he asked, with a queer smile.
+
+"No, I can't! That's flat. She gets on my nerves, and I'm not
+responsible. _C'est fini_."
+
+"Well," he said, slowly, "I hope you understand what it means?"
+
+"Oh, I know she has plenty of friends!" she said, defiantly. But her old
+hands trembled on her knee.
+
+"Unfortunately they were and are yours. At least," he entreated, "don't
+quarrel with everybody who may sympathize with her. Let them take what
+view they please. Ignore it--be as magnanimous as you can."
+
+"On the contrary!" She was now white to the lips. "Whoever goes with her
+gives me up. They must choose--once for all."
+
+"My dear friend, listen to reason."
+
+And, drawing his chair close to her, he argued with her for half an
+hour. At the end of that time her gust of passion had more or less
+passed away; she was, to some extent, ashamed of herself, and, as he
+believed, not far from tears.
+
+"When I am gone she will think of what I have been saying," he assured
+himself, and he rose to take his leave. Her look of exhaustion
+distressed him, and, for all her unreason, he felt himself astonishingly
+in sympathy with her. The age in him held out secret hands to the age in
+her--as against encroaching and rebellious youth.
+
+Perhaps it was the consciousness of this mood in him which at last
+partly appeased her.
+
+"Well, I'll try again. I'll _try_ to hold my tongue," she granted him,
+sullenly. "But, understand, she, sha'n't go to that bazaar!"
+
+"That's a great pity," was his naïve reply. "Nothing would put you in a
+better position than to give her leave."
+
+"I shall do nothing of the kind," she vowed. "And now good-night,
+Wilfrid--good-night. You're a very good fellow, and if I _can_ take your
+advice, I will."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lady Henry sat alone in her brightly lighted drawing-room for some time.
+She could neither read nor write nor sew, owing to her blindness, and in
+the reaction from her passion of the afternoon she felt herself very old
+and weary.
+
+But at last the door opened and Julie Le Breton's light step approached.
+
+"May I read to you?" she said, gently.
+
+Lady Henry coldly commanded the _Observer_ and her knitting.
+
+She had no sooner, however, begun to knit than her very acute sense of
+touch noticed something wrong with the wool she was using.
+
+"This is not the wool I ordered," she said, fingering it carefully. "You
+remember, I gave you a message about it on Thursday? What did they say
+about it at Winton's?"
+
+Julie laid down the newspaper and looked in perplexity at the ball of
+wool.
+
+"I remember you gave me a message," she faltered.
+
+"Well, what did they say?"
+
+"I suppose that was all they had."
+
+Something in the tone struck Lady Henry's quick ears. She raised a
+suspicious face.
+
+"Did you ever go to Winton's at all?" she said, quickly.
+
+[Illustration: "LADY HENRY GASPED. SHE FELL BACK INTO HER CHAIR"]
+
+"I am so sorry. The Duchess's maid was going there," said Julie,
+hurriedly, "and she went for me. I thought I had given her your message
+most carefully."
+
+"Hm," said Lady Henry, slowly. "So you didn't go to Winton's. May I ask
+whether you went to Shaw's, or to Beatson's, or the Stores, or any of
+the other places for which I gave you commissions?" Her voice cut like
+a knife.
+
+Julie hesitated. She had grown very white. Suddenly her face settled and
+steadied.
+
+"No," she said, calmly. "I meant to have done all your commissions. But
+I was persuaded by Evelyn to spend a couple of hours with her, and her
+maid undertook them."
+
+Lady Henry flushed deeply.
+
+"So, mademoiselle, unknown to me, you spent two hours of my time amusing
+yourself at Crowborough House. May I ask what you were doing there?"
+
+"I was trying to help the Duchess in her plans for the bazaar."
+
+"Indeed? Was any one else there? Answer me, mademoiselle."
+
+Julie hesitated again, and again spoke with a kind of passionate
+composure.
+
+"Yes. Mr. Delafield was there."
+
+"So I supposed. Allow me to assure you, mademoiselle"--Lady Henry rose
+from her seat, leaning on her stick; surely no old face was ever more
+formidable, more withering--"that whatever ambitions you may cherish,
+Jacob Delafield is not altogether the simpleton you imagine. I know him
+better than you. He will take some time before he really makes up his
+mind to marry a woman of your disposition--and your history."
+
+Julie Le Breton also rose.
+
+"I am afraid, Lady Henry, that here, too, you are in the dark," she
+said, quietly, though her thin arm shook against her dress. "I shall not
+marry Mr. Delafield. But it is because--I have refused him twice."
+
+Lady Henry gasped. She fell back into her chair, staring at her
+companion.
+
+"You have--refused him?"
+
+"A month ago, and last year. It is horrid of me to say a word. But you
+forced me."
+
+Julie was now leaning, to support herself, on the back of an old French
+chair. Feeling and excitement had blanched her no less than Lady Henry,
+but her fine head and delicate form breathed a will so proud, a dignity
+so passionate, that Lady Henry shrank before her.
+
+"Why did you refuse him?"
+
+Julie shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"That, I think, is my affair. But if--I had loved him--I should not have
+consulted your scruples, Lady Henry."
+
+"That's frank," said Lady Henry. "I like that better than anything
+you've said yet. You are aware that he _may_ inherit the dukedom of
+Chudleigh?"
+
+"I have several times heard you say so," said the other, coldly.
+
+Lady Henry looked at her long and keenly. Various things that Wilfrid
+Bury had said recurred to her. She thought of Captain Warkworth.
+She wondered.
+
+Suddenly she held out her hand.
+
+"I dare say you won't take it, mademoiselle. I suppose I've been
+insulting you. But--you have been playing tricks with me. In a good many
+ways, we're quits. Still, I confess, I admire you a good deal. Anyway, I
+offer you my hand. I apologize for my recent remarks. Shall we bury the
+hatchet, and try and go on as before?"
+
+Julie Le Breton turned slowly and took the hand--without unction.
+
+"I make you angry," she said, and her voice trembled, "without knowing
+how or why."
+
+Lady Henry gulped.
+
+"Oh, it mayn't answer," she said, as their hands dropped. "But we may as
+well have one more trial. And, mademoiselle, I shall be delighted that
+you should assist the Duchess with her _bazaar_."
+
+Julie shook her head.
+
+"I don't think I have any heart for it," she said, sadly; and then, as
+Lady Henry sat silent, she approached.
+
+"You look very tired. Shall I send your maid?"
+
+That melancholy and beautiful voice laid a strange spell on Lady Henry.
+Her companion appeared to her, for a moment, in a new light--as a
+personage of drama or romance. But she shook off the spell.
+
+"At once, please. Another day like this would put an end to me."
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Julie le Breton was sitting alone in her own small sitting-room. It was
+the morning of the Tuesday following her Sunday scene with Lady Henry,
+and she was busy with various household affairs. A small hamper of
+flowers, newly arrived from Lady Henry's Surrey garden, and not yet
+unpacked, was standing open on the table, with various empty
+flower-glasses beside it. Julie was, at the moment, occupied with the
+"Stores order" for the month, and Lady Henry's cook-housekeeper had but
+just left the room after delivering an urgent statement on the need for
+"relining" a large number of Lady Henry's copper saucepans.
+
+The room was plain and threadbare. It had been the school-room of
+various generations of Delafields in the past. But for an observant eye
+it contained a good many objects which threw light upon its present
+occupant's character and history. In a small bookcase beside the fire
+were a number of volumes in French bindings. They represented either the
+French classics--Racine, Bossuet, Châteaubriand, Lamartine--which had
+formed the study of Julie's convent days, or those other books--George
+Sand, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, Mazzini, Leopardi, together with
+the poets and novelists of revolutionary Russia or Polish nationalism or
+Irish rebellion--which had been the favorite reading of both Lady Rose
+and her lover. They were but a hundred in all; but for Julie Le Breton
+they stood for the bridge by which, at will, memory and dreamful pity
+might carry her back into that vanished life she had once shared with
+her parents--those strange beings, so calm and yet so passionate in
+their beliefs, so wilful and yet so patient in their deeds, by whose
+acts her own experience was still wholly conditioned. In her little room
+there were no portraits of them visible. But on a side-table stood a
+small carved triptych. The oblong wings, which were open, contained
+photographs of figures from one of the great Bruges Memlings. The centre
+was covered by two wooden leaves delicately carved, and the leaves were
+locked. The inquisitive housemaid who dusted the room had once tried to
+open them.--in vain.
+
+On a stand near the fire lay two or three yellow volumes--some recent
+French essays, a volume of memoirs, a tale of Bourget's, and so forth.
+These were flanked by Sir Henry Maine's _Popular Government_, and a
+recent brilliant study of English policy in Egypt--both of them with the
+name "Richard J. Montresor" on the title-page. The last number of Dr.
+Meredith's paper, _The New Rambler_, was there also; and, with the
+paper-knife still in its leaves, the journal of the latest French
+traveller in Mokembe, a small "H.W." inscribed in the top right-hand
+corner of its gray cover.
+
+Julie finished her Stores order with a sigh of relief. Then she wrote
+half a dozen business notes, and prepared a few checks for Lady Henry's
+signature. When this was done the two dachshunds, who had been lying on
+the rug spying out her every movement, began to jump upon her.
+
+But Julie laughed in their faces. "It's raining," she said, pointing to
+the window--"_raining!_ So there! Either you won't go out at all, or
+you'll go with John."
+
+John was the second footman, whom the dogs hated. They returned
+crestfallen to the rug and to a hungry waiting on Providence. Julie took
+up a letter on foreign paper which had reached her that morning, glanced
+at the door, and began to reread its closely written sheets. It was from
+an English diplomat on a visit to Egypt, a man on whom the eyes of
+Europe were at that moment fixed. That he should write to a woman at
+all, on the subjects of the letter, involved a compliment _hors ligne_;
+that he should write with this ease, this abandonment, was indeed
+remarkable. Julie flushed a little as she read. But when she came to the
+end she put it aside with a look of worry. "I _wish_ he'd write to Lady
+Henry," was her thought. "She hasn't had a line from him for weeks. I
+shouldn't wonder if she suspects already. When any one talks of Egypt, I
+daren't open my lips."
+
+For fear of betraying the very minute and first-hand information that
+was possessed by Lady Henry's companion? With a smile and a shrug she
+locked the letter away in one of the drawers of her writing-table, and
+took up an envelope which had lain beneath it. From this--again with a
+look round her--she half drew out a photograph. The grizzled head and
+spectacled eyes of Dr. Meredith emerged. Julie's expression softened;
+her eyebrows went up a little; then she slightly shook her head, like
+one who protests that if something has gone wrong, it
+isn't--isn't--their fault. Unwillingly she looked at the last words of
+the letter:
+
+     "So, remember, I can give you work if you want it, and paying
+     work. I would rather give you my life and my all. But these,
+     it seems, are commodities for which you have no use. So be
+     it. But if you refuse to let me serve you, when the time
+     comes, in such ways as I have suggested in this letter, then,
+     indeed, you would be unkind--I would almost dare to say
+     ungrateful! Yours always
+
+     "F.M."
+
+This letter also she locked away. But her hand lingered on the last of
+all. She had read it three times already, and knew it practically by
+heart. So she left the sheets undisturbed in their envelope. But she
+raised the whole to her lips, and pressed it there, while her eyes, as
+they slowly filled with tears, travelled--unseeing--to the wintry street
+beyond the window. Eyes and face wore the same expression as Wilfrid
+Bury had surprised there--the dumb utterance of a woman hard pressed,
+not so much by the world without as by some wild force within.
+
+In that still moment the postman's knock was heard in the street
+outside. Julie Le Breton started, for no one whose life is dependent on
+a daily letter can hear that common sound without a thrill. Then she
+smiled sadly at herself. "_My_ joy is over for to-day!" And she turned
+away with the letter in her hand.
+
+But she did not place it in the same drawer with the others. She moved
+across to the little carved triptych, and, after listening a moment to
+the sounds in the house, she opened its closed doors with a gold key
+that hung on her watch-chain and had been hidden in the bosom of
+her dress.
+
+The doors fell open. Inside, on a background of dark velvet, hung two
+miniatures, lightly framed in gold and linked together by a graceful
+scroll-work in gold. They were of fine French work, and they represented
+a man and woman, both handsome, young, and of a remarkable distinction
+of aspect. The faces, nevertheless, hardly gave pleasure. There was in
+each of them a look at once absent and eager--the look of those who have
+cared much and ardently for "man," and very little, comparatively,
+for men.
+
+The miniatures had not been meant for the triptych, nor the triptych for
+them. It had been adapted to them by loving hands; but there was room
+for other things in the velvet-lined hollow, and a packet of letters was
+already reposing there. Julie slipped the letter of the morning inside
+the elastic band which held the packet; then she closed and locked the
+doors, returning the key to its place in her dress. Both the lock and
+hinges of this little hiding-place were well and strongly made, and when
+the wings also were shut and locked one saw nothing but a massively
+framed photograph of the Bruges belfry resting on a wooden support.
+
+She had hardly completed her little task when there was a sudden noise
+of footsteps in the passage outside.
+
+"Julie!" said a light voice, subdued to a laughing whisper. "May I come
+in?"
+
+The Duchess stood on the threshold, her small, shell-pink face emerging
+from a masterly study in gray, presented by a most engaging costume.
+
+Julie, in surprise, advanced to meet her visitor, and the old butler,
+who was Miss Le Breton's very good friend, quickly and discreetly shut
+the door upon the two ladies.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" said the Duchess, throwing herself into Julie's arms. "I
+came up so quietly! I told Hutton not to disturb Lady Henry, and I just
+crept up-stairs, holding my skirts. Wasn't it heroic of me to put my
+poor little head into the lion's den like this? But when I got your
+letter this morning saying you couldn't come to me, I vowed I would just
+see for myself how you were, and whether there was anything left of you.
+Oh, you poor, pale thing!"
+
+And drawing Julie to a chair, the little Duchess sat down beside her,
+holding her friend's hands and studying her face.
+
+"Tell me what's been happening--I believe you've been crying! Oh, the
+old wretch!"
+
+"You're quite mistaken," said Julie, smiling. "Lady Henry says I may
+help you with the bazaar."
+
+"No!" The Duchess threw up her hands in amazement. "How have you managed
+that?"
+
+"By giving in. But, Evelyn, I'm not coming."
+
+"Oh, Julie!" The Duchess threw herself back in her chair and fixed a
+pair of very blue and very reproachful eyes on Miss Le Breton.
+
+"No, I'm not coming. If I'm to stay here, even for a time, I mustn't
+provoke her any more. She says I may come, but she doesn't mean it."
+
+"She couldn't mean anything civil or agreeable. How has she been
+behaving--since Sunday?"
+
+Julie looked uncertain.
+
+"Oh, there is an armed truce. I was made to have a fire in my bedroom
+last night. And Hutton took the dogs out yesterday."
+
+The Duchess laughed.
+
+"And there was quite a scene on Sunday? You don't tell me much about it
+in your letter. But, Julie"--her voice dropped to a whisper--"was
+anything said about Jacob?"
+
+Julie looked down. A bitterness crept into her face.
+
+"Yes. I can't forgive myself. I was provoked into telling the truth."
+
+"You did! Well? I suppose Aunt Flora thought it was all your fault that
+he proposed, and an impertinence that you refused?"
+
+"She was complimentary at the time," said Julie, half smiling. "But
+since--No, I don't feel that she is appeased."
+
+"Of course not. Affronted, more likely."
+
+There was a silence. The Duchess was looking at Julie, but her thoughts
+were far away. And presently she broke out, with the _étourderie_ that
+became her:
+
+"I wish I understood it myself, Julie. I know you like him."
+
+"Immensely. But--we should fight!"
+
+Miss Le Breton looked up with animation.
+
+"Oh, that's not a reason," said the Duchess, rather annoyed.
+
+"It's _the_ reason. I don't know--there is something of _iron_ in Mr.
+Delafield;" and Julie emphasized the words with a shrug which was almost
+a shiver. "And as I'm not in love with him, I'm afraid of him."
+
+"That's the best way of being in love," cried the Duchess. "And then,
+Julie"--she paused, and at last added, naïvely, as she laid her little
+hands on her friend's knee--"haven't you got _any_ ambitions?"
+
+"Plenty. Oh, I should like very well to play the duchess, with you to
+instruct me," said Julie, caressing the hands. "But I must choose my
+duke. And till the right one appears, I prefer my own wild ways."
+
+"Afraid of Jacob Delafield? How odd!" said the Duchess, with her chin on
+her hands.
+
+"It may be odd to you," said Julie, with vivacity. "In reality, it's not
+in the least odd. There's the same quality in him that there is in Lady
+Henry--something that beats you down," she added, under her breath.
+"There, that's enough about Mr. Delafield--quite enough."
+
+And, rising, Julie threw up her arms and clasped her hands above her
+head. The gesture was all strength and will, like the stretching of a
+sea-bird's wings.
+
+The Duchess looked at her with eyes that had begun to waver.
+
+"Julie, I heard such an odd piece of news last night."
+
+Julie turned.
+
+"You remember the questions you asked me about Aileen Moffatt?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Well, I saw a man last night who had just come home from Simla. He saw
+a great deal of her, and he says that she and her mother were adored in
+India. They were thought so quaint and sweet--unlike other people--and
+the girl so lovely, in a sort of gossamer way. And who do you think was
+always about with them--at Peshawar first, and then at Simla--so that
+everybody talked? Captain Warkworth! My man believed there was an
+understanding between them."
+
+Julie had begun to fill the flower-glasses with water and unpack the
+flower-basket. Her back was towards the Duchess. After a moment she
+replied, her hands full of forced narcissuses:
+
+"Well, that would be a _coup_ for him."
+
+"I should think so. She is supposed to have half a million in coal-mines
+alone, besides land. Has Captain Warkworth ever said anything to you
+about them?"
+
+"No. He has never mentioned them."
+
+The Duchess reflected, her eyes still on Julie's back.
+
+"Everybody wants money nowadays. And the soldiers are just as bad as
+anybody else. They don't _look_ money, as the City men do--that's why we
+women fall in love with them--but they _think_ it, all the same."
+
+Julie made no reply. The Duchess could see nothing of her. But the
+little lady's face showed the flutter of one determined to venture yet a
+little farther on thin ice.
+
+"Julie, I've done everything you've asked me. I sent a card for the 20th
+to that _rather_ dreadful woman, Lady Froswick. I was very clever with
+Freddie about that living; and I've talked to Mr. Montresor. But, Julie,
+if you don't mind, I really should like to know why you're so keen
+about it?"
+
+The Duchess's cheeks were by now one flush. She had a romantic affection
+for Julie, and would not have offended her for the world.
+
+Julie turned round. She was always pale, and the Duchess saw nothing
+unusual.
+
+"Am I so keen?"
+
+"Julie, you have done everything in the world for this man since he came
+home."
+
+"Well, he interested me," said Julie, stepping back to look at the
+effect of one of the vases. "The first evening he was here, he saved me
+from Lady Henry--twice. He's alone in the world, too, which attracts
+me. You see, I happen to know what it's like. An only son, and an
+orphan, and no family interest to push him--"
+
+"So you thought you'd push him? Oh, Julie, you're a darling--but you're
+rather a wire-puller, aren't you?"
+
+Julie smiled faintly.
+
+"Well, perhaps I like to feel, sometimes, that I have a little power. I
+haven't much else."
+
+The Duchess seized one of her hands and pressed it to her cheek.
+
+"You have power, because every one loves and admires you. As for me, I
+would cut myself in little bits to please you.... Well, I only hope,
+when he's married his heiress, if he does marry her, they'll remember
+what they owe to you."
+
+Did she feel the hand lying in her own shake? At any rate, it was
+brusquely withdrawn, and Julie walked to the end of the table to fetch
+some more flowers.
+
+"I don't want any gratitude," she said, abruptly, "from any one. Well,
+now, Evelyn, you understand about the bazaar? I wish I could, but
+I can't."
+
+"Yes, I understand. Julie!" The Duchess rose impulsively, and threw
+herself into a chair beside the table where she could watch the face and
+movements of Mademoiselle Le Breton. "Julie, I want so much to talk to
+you--about _business_. You're not to be offended. Julie, _if_ you leave
+Lady Henry, how will you manage?"
+
+"How shall I live, you mean?" said Julie, smiling at the euphemism in
+which this little person, for whom existence had rained gold
+and flowers since her cradle, had enwrapped the hard facts of
+bread-and-butter--facts with which she was so little acquainted that
+she approached them with a certain delicate mystery.
+
+"You must have some money, you know, Julie," said the Duchess, timidly,
+her upraised face and Paris hat well matched by the gay poinsettias, the
+delicate eucharis and arums with which the table was now covered.
+
+"I shall earn some," said Julie, quietly.
+
+"Oh, but, Julie, you can't be bothered with any other tiresome old
+lady!"
+
+"No. I should keep my freedom. But Dr. Meredith has offered me work, and
+got me a promise of more."
+
+The Duchess opened her eyes.
+
+"Writing! Well, of course, we all know you can do anything you want to
+do. And you won't let anybody help you at all?"
+
+"I won't let anybody give me money, if that's what you mean," said
+Julie, smiling. But it was a smile without accent, without gayety.
+
+The Duchess, watching her, said to herself, "Since I came in she is
+changed--quite changed."
+
+"Julie, you're horribly proud!"
+
+Julie's face contracted a little.
+
+"How much 'power' should I have left, do you think--how much
+self-respect--if I took money from my friends?"
+
+"Well, not money, perhaps. But, Julie, you know all about Freddie's
+London property. It's abominable how much he has. There are always a few
+houses he keeps in his own hands. If Lady Henry _does_ quarrel with you,
+and we could lend you a little house--for a time--_wouldn't_ you take
+it, Julie?"
+
+Her voice had the coaxing inflections of a child. Julie hesitated.
+
+"Only if the Duke himself offered it," she said, finally, with a brusque
+stiffening of her whole attitude.
+
+The Duchess flushed and stood up.
+
+"Oh, well, that's all right," she said, but no longer in the same voice.
+"Remember, I have your promise. Good-bye, Julie, you darling!... Oh,
+by-the-way, what an idiot I am! Here am I forgetting the chief thing I
+came about. Will you come with me to Lady Hubert to-night? Do! Freddie's
+away, and I hate going by myself."
+
+"To Lady Hubert's?" said Julie, starting a little. "I wonder what Lady
+Henry would say?"
+
+"Tell her Jacob won't be there," said the Duchess, laughing. "Then she
+won't make any difficulties."
+
+"Shall I go and ask her?"
+
+"Gracious! let me get out of the house first. Give her a message from me
+that I will come and see her to-morrow morning. We've got to make it up,
+Freddie says; so the sooner it's over, the better. Say all the civil
+things you can to her about to-night, and wire me this afternoon. If
+all's well, I come for you at eleven."
+
+The Duchess rustled away. Julie was left standing by the table, alone.
+Her face was very still, but her eyes shone, her teeth pressed her lip.
+Unconsciously her hand closed upon a delicate blossom of eucharis and
+crushed it.
+
+"I'll go," she said, to herself. "Yes, I'll go."
+
+Her letter of the morning, as it happened, had included the following
+sentences:
+
+"I think to-night I must put in an appearance at the Hubert Delafields',
+though I own that neither the house nor the son of the house is very
+much to my liking. But I hear that he has gone back to the country. And
+there are a few people who frequent Lady Hubert, who might just now
+be of use."
+
+Lady Henry gave her consent that Mademoiselle Le Breton should accompany
+the Duchess to Lady Hubert's party almost with effusion. "It will be
+very dull," she said. "My sister-in-law makes a desert and calls it
+society. But if you want to go, go. As to Evelyn Crowborough, I am
+engaged to my dentist to-morrow morning."
+
+When at night this message was reported to the Duchess, as she and Julie
+were on their way to Rutland Gate, she laughed.
+
+"How much leek shall I have to swallow? What's to-morrow? Wednesday.
+Hm--cards in the afternoon; in the evening I appear, sit on a stool at
+Lady Henry's feet, and look at you through my glasses as though I had
+never seen you before. On Thursday I leave a French book; on Friday I
+send the baby to see her. Goodness, what a time it takes!" said the
+Duchess, raising her very white and very small shoulders. "Well, for my
+life, I mustn't fail to-morrow night."
+
+At Lady Hubert's they found a very tolerable, not to say lively,
+gathering, which quite belied Lady Henry's slanders. There was not the
+same conscious brilliance, the same thrill in the air, as pertained to
+the gatherings in Bruton Street. But there was a more solid social
+comfort, such as befits people untroubled by the certainty that the
+world is looking on. The guests of Bruton Street laughed, as well-bred
+people should, at the estimation in which Lady Henry's salon was held,
+by those especially who did not belong to it. Still, the mere knowledge
+of this outside estimate kept up a certain tension. At Lady Hubert's
+there was no tension, and the agreeable nobodies who found their way in
+were not made to blush for the agreeable nothings of their conversation.
+
+Lady Hubert herself made for ease--partly, no doubt, for stupidity. She
+was fair, sleepy, and substantial. Her husband had spent her fortune,
+and ruffled all the temper she had. The Hubert Delafields were now,
+however, better off than they had been--investments had recovered--and
+Lady Hubert's temper was once more placid, as Providence had meant it to
+be. During the coming season it was her firm intention to marry her
+daughter, who now stood beside her as she received her guests--a blonde,
+sweet-featured girl, given, however, so it was said, to good works, and
+not at all inclined to trouble herself overmuch about a husband.
+
+The rooms were fairly full; and the entry of the Duchess and
+Mademoiselle Le Breton was one of the incidents of the evening, and
+visibly quickened the pulses of the assembly. The little Dresden-china
+Duchess, with her clothes, her jewels, and her smiles, had been, since
+her marriage, one of the chief favorites of fashion. She had been
+brought up in the depths of the country, and married at eighteen. After
+six years she was not in the least tired of her popularity or its
+penalties. All the life in her dainty person, her glancing eyes, and
+small, smiling lips rose, as it were, to meet the stir that she evoked.
+She vaguely saw herself as Titania, and played the part with childish
+glee. And like Titania, as she had more than once ruefully reflected,
+she was liable to be chidden by her lord.
+
+But the Duke was on this particular evening debating high subjects in
+the House of Lords, and the Duchess was amusing herself. Sir Wilfrid
+Bury, who arrived not long after his goddaughter, found her the centre
+first of a body-guard of cousins, including among them apparently a
+great many handsome young men, and then of a small crowd, whose vaguely
+smiling faces reflected the pleasure that was to be got, even at a
+distance, out of her young and merry beauty.
+
+Julie Le Breton was not with her. But in the next room Sir Wilfrid soon
+perceived the form and face which, in their own way, exacted quite as
+much attention from the world as those of the Duchess. She was talking
+with many people, and, as usual, he could not help watching her. Never
+yet had he seen her wide, black eyes more vivid than they were to-night.
+Now, as on his first sight of her, he could not bring himself to call
+them beautiful. Yet beautiful they were, by every canon of form and
+color. No doubt it was something in their expression that offended his
+own well-drilled instincts.
+
+He found himself thinking suspicious thoughts about most of the
+conversations in which he saw her engaged. Why was she bestowing those
+careful smiles on that intolerable woman, Lady Froswick? And what an
+acquaintance she seemed to have among these elderly soldiers, who might
+at all times be reckoned on at Lady Hubert's parties! One gray-haired
+veteran after another recalled himself to her attention, got his few
+minutes with her, and passed on smiling. Certain high officials, too,
+were no less friendly. Her court, it seemed to him, was mainly composed
+of the middle-aged; to-night, at any rate, she left the young to the
+Duchess. And it was on the whole a court of men. The women, as he now
+perceived, were a trifle more reserved. There was not, indeed, a trace
+of exclusion. They were glad to see her; glad, he thought, to be noticed
+by her. But they did not yield themselves--or so he fancied--with the
+same wholeness as their husbands.
+
+"How old is she?" he asked himself. "About nine-and-twenty?... Jacob's
+age--or a trifle older."
+
+After a time he lost sight of her, and in the amusement of his own
+evening forgot her. But as the rooms were beginning to thin he walked
+through them, looking for a famous collection of miniatures that
+belonged to Lady Hubert. English family history was one of his hobbies,
+and he was far better acquainted with the Delafield statesmen, and the
+Delafield beauties of the past, than were any of their modern
+descendants. Lady Hubert's Cosways and Plimers had made a lively
+impression upon him in days gone by, and he meant to renew acquaintance
+with them.
+
+But they had been moved from the room in which he remembered them, and
+he was led on through a series of drawing-rooms, now nearly empty, till
+on the threshold of the last he paused suddenly.
+
+A lady and gentleman rose from a sofa on which they had been sitting.
+Captain Warkworth stood still. Mademoiselle Le Breton advanced to the
+new-comer.
+
+"Is it very late?" she said, gathering up her fan and gloves. "We have
+been looking at Lady Hubert's miniatures. That lady with the muff"--she
+pointed to the case which occupied a conspicuous position in the
+room--"is really wonderful. Can you tell me, Sir Wilfrid, where the
+Duchess is?"
+
+"No, but I can help you find her," said that gentleman, forgetting the
+miniatures and endeavoring to look at neither of his companions.
+
+"And I must rush," said Captain Warkworth, looking at his watch. "I told
+a man to come to my rooms at twelve. Heavens!"
+
+He shook hands with Miss Le Breton and hurried away.
+
+Sir Wilfrid and Julie moved on together. That he had disturbed a most
+intimate and critical conversation was somehow borne in upon Sir
+Wilfrid. But kind and even romantic as was the old man's inmost nature,
+his feelings were not friendly.
+
+"How does the biography get on?" he asked his companion, with a smile.
+
+A bright flush appeared in Mademoiselle Le Breton's cheek.
+
+"I think Lady Henry has dropped it."
+
+"Ah, well, I don't imagine she will regret it;" he said, dryly.
+
+She made no reply. He mentally accused himself for a brute, and then
+shook off the charge. Surely a few pin-pricks were her desert! That she
+should defend her own secrets was, as Delafield had said, legitimate
+enough. But when a man offers you his services, you should not befool
+him beyond a certain point.
+
+She must be aware of what he was thinking. He glanced at her curiously;
+at the stately dress gleaming with jet, which no longer affected
+anything of the girl; at the fine but old-fashioned necklace of pearls
+and diamonds--no doubt her mother's--which clasped her singularly
+slender throat. At any rate, she showed nothing. She began to talk again
+of the Delafield miniatures, using her fan the while with graceful
+deliberation; and presently they found the Duchess.
+
+"Is she an adventuress, or is she not?" thought Bury, as his hansom
+carried him away from Rutland Gate. "If she marries Jacob, it will be a
+queer business."
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Meanwhile the Duchess had dropped Julie Le Breton at Lady Henry's door.
+Julie groped her way up-stairs through the sleeping house. She found her
+room in darkness, and she turned on no light. There was still a last
+glimmer of fire, and she sank down by it, her long arms clasped round
+her knees, her head thrown back as though she listened still to words
+in her ears.
+
+"Oh, such a child! Such a dear, simple-minded child! Report engaged her
+to at least ten different people at Simla. She had a crowd of cavaliers
+there--I was one of them. The whole place adored her. She is a very rare
+little creature, but well looked after, I can tell you--a long array of
+guardians in the background."
+
+How was it possible not to trust that aspect and that smile? Her mind
+travelled back to the autumn days when she had seen them first; reviewed
+the steps, so little noticed at first, so rapid lately and full of fate,
+by which she had come into this bondage wherein she stood. She saw the
+first appearance of the young soldier in Lady Henry's drawing-room; her
+first conversation with him; and all the subtle development of that
+singular relation between them, into which so many elements had entered.
+The flattering sense of social power implied both in the homage of this
+young and successful man, and in the very services that she, on her
+side, was able to render him; impulsive gratitude for that homage, at a
+time when her very soul was smarting under Lady Henry's contemptuous
+hostility; and then the sweet advances of a "friendship" that was to
+unite them in a bond, secret and unique, a bond that took no account of
+the commonplaces of love and marriage, the link of equal and kindred
+souls in a common struggle with hard and sordid circumstance.
+
+"I have neither family nor powerful friends," he had written to her a
+few weeks after their first meeting; "all that I have won, I have won
+for myself. Nobody ever made 'interest' for me but you. You, too, are
+alone in the world. You, too, have to struggle for yourself. Let us
+unite our forces--cheer each other, care for each other--and keep our
+friendship a sacred secret from the world that would misunderstand it. I
+will not fail you, I will give you all my confidence; and I will try and
+understand that noble, wounded heart of yours, with its memories, and
+all those singular prides and isolations that have been imposed on it by
+circumstance. I will not say, let me be your brother; there is something
+_banal_ in that; 'friend' is good enough for us both; and there is
+between us a community of intellectual and spiritual interest which will
+enable us to add new meaning even to that sacred word. I will write to
+you every day; you shall know all that happens to me; and whatever
+grateful devotion can do to make your life smoother shall be done."
+
+Five months ago was it, that that letter was written?
+
+Its remembered phrases already rang bitterly in an aching heart. Since
+it reached her, she had put out all her powers as a woman, all her
+influence as an intelligence, in the service of the writer.
+
+And now, here she sat in the dark, tortured by a passion of which she
+was ashamed, before which she was beginning to stand helpless in a kind
+of terror. The situation was developing, and she found herself wondering
+how much longer she would be able to control herself or it. Very
+miserably conscious, too, was she all the time that she was now playing
+for a reward that was secretly, tacitly, humiliatingly denied her. How
+could a poor man, with Harry Warkworth's ambitions, think for a moment
+of marriage with a woman in her ambiguous and dependent position? Her
+common-sense told her that the very notion was absurd. And yet, since
+the Duchess's gossip had given point and body to a hundred vague
+suspicions, she was no longer able to calm, to master herself.
+
+Suddenly a thought of another kind occurred to her. It added to her
+smart that Sir Wilfrid, in their meeting at Lady Hubert's, had spoken to
+her and looked at her with that slight touch of laughing contempt. There
+had been no insincerity in that emotion with which she had first
+appealed to him as her mother's friend; she did truly value the old
+man's good opinion. And yet she had told him lies.
+
+"I can't help it," she said to herself, with a little shiver. The story
+about the biography had been the invention of a moment. It had made
+things easy, and it had a small foundation in the fact that Lady Henry
+had talked vaguely of using the letters lent her by Captain Warkworth
+for the elucidation--perhaps in a _Nineteenth Century_ article--of
+certain passages in her husband's Indian career.
+
+Jacob Delafield, too. There also it was no less clear to her than to Sir
+Wilfrid that she had "overdone it." It was true, then, what Lady Henry
+said of her--that she had an overmastering tendency to intrigue--to a
+perpetual tampering with the plain fact?
+
+"Well, it is the way in which such people as I defend themselves," she
+said, obstinately, repeating to herself what she had said to Sir
+Wilfrid Bury.
+
+And then she set against it, proudly, that disinterestedness of which,
+as she vowed to herself, no one but she knew the facts. It was true,
+what she had said to the Duchess and to Sir Wilfrid. Plenty of people
+would give her money, would make her life comfortable, without the need
+for any daily slavery. She would not take it. Jacob Delafield would
+marry her, if she lifted her finger; and she would not lift it. Dr.
+Meredith would marry her, and she had said him nay. She hugged the
+thought of her own unknown and unapplauded integrity. It comforted her
+pride. It drew a veil over that wounding laughter which had gleamed for
+a moment through those long lashes of Sir Wilfrid Bury.
+
+Last of all, as she sank into her restless sleep, came the remembrance
+that she was still under Lady Henry's roof. In the silence of the night
+the difficulties of her situation pressed upon and tormented her. What
+was she to do? Whom was she to trust?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dixon, how is Lady Henry?"
+
+"Much too ill to come down-stairs, miss. She's very much put out; in
+fact, miss (the maid lowered her voice), you hardly dare go near her.
+But she says herself it would be absurd to attempt it."
+
+"Has Hatton had any orders?"
+
+"Yes, miss. I've just told him what her ladyship wishes. He's to tell
+everybody that Lady Henry's very sorry, and hoped up to the last moment
+to be able to come down as usual."
+
+"Has Lady Henry all she wants, Dixon? Have you taken her the evening
+papers?"
+
+"Oh yes, miss. But if you go in to her much her ladyship says you're
+disturbing her; and if you don't go, why, of course, everybody's
+neglecting her."
+
+"Do you think I may go and say good-night to her, Dixon?"
+
+The maid hesitated.
+
+"I'll ask her, miss--I'll certainly ask her."
+
+The door closed, and Julie was left alone in the great drawing-room of
+the Bruton Street house. It had been prepared as usual for the
+Wednesday--evening party. The flowers were fresh; the chairs had been
+arranged as Lady Henry liked to have them; the parquet floors shone
+under the electric light; the Gainsboroughs seemed to look down from the
+walls with a gay and friendly expectancy.
+
+For herself, Julie had just finished her solitary dinner, still buoyed
+up while she was eating it by the hope that Lady Henry would be able to
+come down. The bitter winds of the two previous days, however, had much
+aggravated her chronic rheumatism. She was certainly ill and suffering;
+but Julie had known her make such heroic efforts before this to keep her
+Wednesdays going that not till Dixon appeared with her verdict did she
+give up hope.
+
+So everybody would be turned away. Julie paced the drawing-room a
+solitary figure amid its lights and flowers--solitary and dejected. In a
+couple of hours' time all her particular friends would come to the door,
+and it would be shut against them. "Of course, expect me to-night," had
+been the concluding words of her letter of the morning. Several people
+also had announced themselves for this evening whom it was extremely
+desirable she should see. A certain eminent colonel, professor at the
+Staff College, was being freely named in the papers for the Mokembe
+mission. Never was it more necessary for her to keep all the threads of
+her influence in good working order. And these Wednesday evenings
+offered her the occasions when she was most successful, most at her
+ease--especially whenever Lady Henry was not well enough to leave the
+comparatively limited sphere of the back drawing-room.
+
+Moreover, the gatherings themselves ministered to a veritable craving in
+Julie Le Breton--the craving for society and conversation. She shared it
+with Lady Henry, but in her it was even more deeply rooted. Lady Henry
+had ten talents in the Scriptural sense--money, rank, all sorts of
+inherited bonds and associations. Julie Le Breton had but this one.
+Society was with her both an instinct and an art. With the subtlest and
+most intelligent ambition she had trained and improved her natural gift
+for it during the last few years. And now, to the excitement of society
+was added the excitement of a new and tyrannous feeling, for which
+society was henceforth a mere weapon to be used.
+
+She fumed and fretted for a while in silence. Every now and then she
+would pause in front of one of the great mirrors of the room, and look
+at the reflection of her tall thinness and the trailing satin of
+her gown.
+
+"The girl--so pretty, in a gossamer sort of way," The words echoed in
+her mind, and vaguely, beside her own image in the glass, there rose a
+vision of girlhood--pale, gold hair, pink cheeks, white frock--and she
+turned away, miserable, from that conscious, that intellectual
+distinction with which, in general, she could persuade herself to be
+very fairly satisfied.
+
+Hutton, the butler, came in to look at the fire.
+
+"Will you be sitting here to-night, miss?"
+
+"Oh no, Hutton. I shall go back to the library. I think the fire in my
+own room is out."
+
+"I had better put out these lights, anyway," said the man, looking round
+the brilliant room.
+
+"Oh, certainly," said Julie, and she began to assist him to do so.
+
+Suddenly a thought occurred to her.
+
+"Hutton!" She went up to him and spoke in a lower tone. "If the Duchess
+of Crowborough comes to-night, I should very much like to see her, and I
+know she wants to see me. Do you think it could possibly disturb Lady
+Henry if you were to show her into the library for twenty minutes?"
+
+The man considered.
+
+"I don't think there could be anything heard up-stairs, miss. I should,
+of course, warn her grace that her ladyship was ill."
+
+"Well, then, Hutton, please ask her to come in," said Miss Le Breton,
+hurriedly. "And, Hutton, Dr. Meredith and Mr. Montresor, you know how
+disappointed they'll be not to find Lady Henry at home?"
+
+"Yes, miss. They'll want to know how her ladyship is, no doubt. I'll
+tell them you're in the library. And Captain Warkworth, miss?--he's
+never missed a Wednesday evening for weeks."
+
+"Oh, well, if he comes--you must judge for yourself, Hutton," said Miss
+Le Breton, occupying herself with the electric switches. "I should like
+to tell them all--the old friends--how Lady Henry is."
+
+The butler's face was respectful discretion itself.
+
+"Of course, miss. And shall I bring tea and coffee?"
+
+"Oh no," said Miss Le Breton, hastily; and then, after reflection,
+"Well, have it ready; but I don't suppose anybody will ask for it. Is
+there a good fire in the library?"
+
+"Oh yes, miss. I thought you would be coming down there again. Shall I
+take some of these flowers down? The room looks rather bare, if
+anybody's coming in."
+
+Julie colored a little.
+
+"Well, you might--not many. And, Hutton, you're sure we can't disturb
+Lady Henry?"
+
+Hutton's expression was not wholly confident.
+
+"Her ladyship's very quick of hearing, miss. But I'll shut those doors
+at the foot of the back stairs, and I'll ask every one to come
+in quietly."
+
+"Thank you, Hutton--thank you. That'll be very good of you. And,
+Hutton--"
+
+"Yes, miss." The man paused with a large vase of white arums in his
+hand.
+
+"You'll say a word to Dixon, won't you? If anybody comes in, there'll be
+no need to trouble Lady Henry about it. I can tell her to-morrow."
+
+"Very good, miss. Dixon will be down to her supper presently."
+
+The butler departed. Julie was left alone in the now darkened room,
+lighted only by one lamp and the bright glow of the fire. She caught her
+breath--suddenly struck with the audacity of what she had been doing.
+Eight or ten of these people certainly would come in--eight or ten of
+Lady Henry's "intimates." If Lady Henry discovered it--after this
+precarious truce between them had just been patched up!
+
+Julie made a step towards the door as though to recall the butler, then
+stopped herself. The thought that in an hour's time Harry Warkworth
+might be within a few yards of her, and she not permitted to see him,
+worked intolerably in heart and brain, dulling the shrewd intelligence
+by which she was ordinarily governed. She was conscious, indeed, of some
+profound inner change. Life had been difficult enough before the Duchess
+had said those few words to her. But since!
+
+Suppose he had deceived her at Lady Hubert's party! Through all her
+mounting passion her acute sense of character did not fail her. She
+secretly knew that it was quite possible he had deceived her. But the
+knowledge merely added to the sense of danger which, in this case, was
+one of the elements of passion itself.
+
+"He must have money--of course he must have money," she was saying,
+feverishly, to herself. "But I'll find ways. Why should he marry
+yet--for years? It would be only hampering him."
+
+Again she paused before the mirrored wall; and again imagination evoked
+upon the glass the same white and threatening image--her own near
+kinswoman--the child of her mother's sister! How strange! Where was the
+little gossamer creature now--in what safe haven of money and family
+affection, and all the spoiling that money brings? From the climbing
+paths of her own difficult and personal struggle Julie Le Breton looked
+down with sore contempt on such a degenerate ease of circumstance. She
+had heard it said that the mother and daughter were lingering abroad for
+a time on their way home from India. Yet was the girl all the while
+pining for England, thinking not of her garden, her horse, her pets, but
+only of this slim young soldier who in a few minutes, perhaps, would
+knock at Lady Henry's door, in quest of Aileen Moffatt's unknown,
+unguessed-of cousin? These thoughts sent wild combative thrills through
+Julie's pulses. She turned to one of the old French clocks. How much
+longer now--till he came?
+
+"Her ladyship would like to see you, miss."
+
+The voice was Dixon's, and Julie turned hurriedly, recalling all her
+self-possession. She climbed some steep stairs, still unmodernized, to
+Lady Henry's floor. That lady slept at the back of the house, so as to
+be out of noise. Her room was an old-fashioned apartment, furnished
+about the year Queen Victoria came to the throne, with furniture,
+chintzes, and carpet of the most approved early Victorian pattern. What
+had been ugly then was dingy now; and its strong mistress, who had known
+so well how to assimilate and guard the fine decorations and noble
+pictures of the drawing-rooms, would not have a thing in it touched. "It
+suits me," she would say, impatiently, when her stout sister-in-law
+pleaded placidly for white paint and bright colors. "If it's ugly, so
+am I."
+
+Fierce, certainly, and forbidding she was on this February evening. She
+lay high on her pillow, tormented by her chronic bronchitis and by
+rheumatic pain, her brows drawn together, her vigorous hands clasped
+before her in an evident tension, as though she only restrained herself
+with difficulty from defying maid, doctor, and her own sense
+of prudence.
+
+"Well, you have dressed?" she said, sharply, as Julie Le Breton entered
+her room.
+
+"I did not get your message till I had finished dinner. And I dressed
+before dinner."
+
+Lady Henry looked her up and down, like a cat ready to pounce.
+
+"You didn't bring me those letters to sign?"
+
+"No, I thought you were not fit for it."
+
+"I said they were to go to-night. Kindly bring them at once."
+
+Julie brought them. With groans and flinchings that she could not
+repress, Lady Henry read and signed them. Then she demanded to be read
+to. Julie sat down, trembling. How fast the hands of Lady Henry's clock
+were moving on!
+
+Mercifully, Lady Henry was already somewhat sleepy, partly from
+weakness, partly from a dose of bromide.
+
+"I hear nothing," she said, putting out an impatient hand. "You should
+raise your voice. I didn't mean you to shout, of course. Thank
+you--that'll do. Good-night. Tell Hutton to keep the house as quiet as
+he can. People must knock and ring, I suppose; but if all the doors are
+properly shut it oughtn't to bother me. Are you going to bed?"
+
+"I shall sit up a little to write some letters. But--I sha'n't be
+late."
+
+"Why should you be late?" said Lady Henry, tartly, as she turned away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Julie made her way down-stairs with a beating heart. All the doors were
+carefully shut behind her. When she reached the hall it was already
+half-past ten o'clock. She hurried to the library, the large panelled
+room behind the dining-room. How bright Hutton had made it look! Up shot
+her spirits. With a gay and dancing step she went from chair to chair,
+arranging everything instinctively as she was accustomed to do in the
+drawing-room. She made the flowers less stiff; she put on another light;
+she drew one table forward and pushed its fellow back against the wall.
+What a charming old room, after all! What a pity Lady Henry so seldom
+used it! It was panelled in dark oak, while the drawing-room was white.
+But the pictures, of which there were two or three, looked even better
+here than up-stairs. That beautiful Lawrence--a "red boy" in gleaming
+satin--that pair of Hoppners, fine studies in blue, why, who had ever
+seen them before? And another light or two would show them still better.
+
+A loud knock and ring. Julie held her breath. Ah! A distant voice in the
+hall. She moved to the fire, and stood quietly reading an evening paper.
+
+"Captain Warkworth would be glad if you would see him for a few minutes,
+miss. He would like to ask you himself about her ladyship."
+
+"Please ask him to come in, Hutton."
+
+Hutton effaced himself, and the young man entered, Then Julie raised her
+voice.
+
+"Remember, please, Hutton, that I _particularly_ want to see the
+Duchess."
+
+Hutton bowed and retired. Warkworth came forward.
+
+"What luck to find you like this!"
+
+He threw her one look--Julie knew it to be a look of scrutiny--and then,
+as she held out her hand, he stooped and kissed it.
+
+"He wants to know that my suspicions are gone," she thought. "At any
+rate, he should believe it."
+
+"The great thing," she said, with her finger to her lip, "is that Lady
+Henry should hear nothing."
+
+She motioned her somewhat puzzled guest to a seat on one side of the
+fire, and, herself, fell into another opposite. A wild vivacity was in
+her face and manner.
+
+"Isn't this amusing? Isn't the room charming? I think I should receive
+very well"--she looked round her--"in my own house."
+
+"You would receive well in a garret--a stable," he said. "But what is
+the meaning of this? Explain."
+
+"Lady Henry is ill and is gone to bed. That made her very cross--poor
+Lady Henry! She thinks I, too, am in bed. But you see--you forced your
+way in--didn't you?--to inquire with greater minuteness after Lady
+Henry's health."
+
+She bent towards him, her eyes dancing.
+
+"Of course I did. Will there presently be a swarm on my heels, all
+possessed with a similar eagerness, or--?"
+
+He drew his chair, smiling, a little closer to her. She, on the
+contrary, withdrew hers.
+
+"There will, no doubt, be six or seven," she said, demurely, "who will
+want personal news. But now, before they come"--her tone changed--"is
+there anything to tell me?"
+
+"Plenty," he said, drawing a letter out of his pocket. "Your writ, my
+dear lady, runs as easily in the City as elsewhere." And he held up
+an envelope.
+
+She flushed.
+
+"You have got your allotment? But I knew you would. Lady Froswick
+promised."
+
+"And a large allotment, too," he said, joyously. "I am the envy of all
+my friends. Some of them have got a few shares, and have already sold
+them--grumbling. I keep mine three days more on the best advice--the
+price may go higher yet. But, anyway, there"--he shook the
+envelope--"there it is--deliverance from debt--peace of mind for the
+first time since I was a lad at school--the power of going, properly
+fitted out and equipped, to Africa--_if_ I go--and not like a
+beggar--all in that bit of paper, and all the work of--some one you and
+I know. Fairy godmother! tell me, please, how to say a proper
+thank you."
+
+The young soldier dropped his voice. Those blue eyes which had done him
+excellent service in many different parts of the globe were fixed with
+brilliance on his companion; the lines of a full-lipped mouth quivered
+with what seemed a boyish pleasure. The comfort of money relief was
+never acknowledged more frankly or more handsomely.
+
+Julie hurriedly repressed him. Did she feel instinctively that there are
+thanks which it sometimes humiliates a man to remember, lavishly as he
+may have poured them out at the moment--thanks which may easily count in
+the long run, not for, but against, the donor? She rather haughtily
+asked what she had done but say a chance word to Lady Froswick? The
+shares had to be allotted to somebody. She was glad, of course, very
+glad, if he were relieved from anxiety....
+
+So did she free herself and him from a burdensome gratitude; and they
+passed to discussing the latest chances of the Mokembe appointment. The
+Staff-College Colonel was no doubt formidable; the Commander-in-Chief,
+who had hitherto allowed himself to be much talked to on the subject of
+young Warkworth's claims by several men in high place--General M'Gill
+among them--well known in Lady Henry's drawing-room, was perhaps
+inclining to the new suggestion, which was strongly supported by
+important people in Egypt; he had one or two recent appointments on his
+conscience not quite of the highest order, and the Staff-College man, in
+addition to a fine military record, was virtue, poverty, and industry
+embodied; was nobody's cousin, and would, altogether, produce a
+good effect.
+
+Could anything more be done, and fresh threads set in motion?
+
+They bandied names a little, Julie quite as subtly and minutely informed
+as the man with regard to all the sources of patronage. New devices,
+fresh modes of approach revealed themselves to the woman's quick brain.
+Yet she did not chatter about them; still less parade her own resources.
+Only, in talking with her, dead walls seemed to give way; vistas of hope
+and possibility opened in the very heart of discouragement. She found
+the right word, the right jest, the right spur to invention or effort;
+while all the time she was caressing and appeasing her companion's
+self-love--placing it like a hot-house plant in an atmosphere of
+expansion and content--with that art of hers, which, for the ambitious
+and irritable man, more conscious of the kicks than of the kisses of
+fortune, made conversation with her an active and delightful pleasure.
+
+"I don't know how it is," Warkworth presently declared; "but after I
+have been talking to you for ten minutes the whole world seems changed.
+The sky was ink, and you have turned it rosy. But suppose it is all
+mirage, and you the enchanter?"
+
+He smiled at her--consciously, superabundantly. It was not easy to keep
+quite cool with Julie Le Breton; the self-satisfaction she could excite
+in the man she wished to please recoiled upon the woman offering the
+incense. The flattered one was apt to be foolishly responsive.
+
+"That is my risk," she said, with a little shrug. "If I make you
+confident, and nothing comes of it--"
+
+"I hope I shall know how to behave myself," cried Warkworth. "You see,
+you hardly understand--forgive me!--your own personal effect. When
+people are face to face with you, they want to please you, to say what
+will please you, and then they go away, and--"
+
+"Resolve not to be made fools of?" she said, smiling. "But isn't that
+the whole art--when you're guessing what will happen--to be able to
+strike the balance of half a dozen different attractions?"
+
+"Montresor as the ocean," said Warkworth, musing, "with half a dozen
+different forces tugging at him? Well, dear lady, be the moon to these
+tides, while this humble mortal looks on--and hopes."
+
+He bent forward, and across the glowing fire their eyes met. She looked
+so cool, so handsome, so little yielding at that moment, that, in
+addition to gratitude and nattered vanity, Warkworth was suddenly
+conscious of a new stir in the blood. It begat, however, instant recoil.
+Wariness!--let that be the word, both for her sake and his own. What had
+he to reproach himself with so far? Nothing. He had never offered
+himself as the lover, as the possible husband. They were both _esprits
+faits_--they understood each other. As for little Aileen, well, whatever
+had happened, or might happen, that was not his secret to give away. And
+a woman in Julie Le Breton's position, and with her intelligence, knows
+very well what the difficulties of her case are. Poor Julie! If she had
+been Lady Henry, what a career she would have made for herself! He was
+very curious as to her birth and antecedents, of which he knew little or
+nothing; with him she had always avoided the subject. She was the child,
+he understood, of English parents who had lived abroad; Lady Henry had
+come across her by chance. But there must be something in her past to
+account for this distinction, this ease with which she held her own in
+what passes as the best of English society.
+
+Julie soon found herself unwilling to meet the gaze fixed upon her. She
+flushed a little and began to talk of other things.
+
+"Everybody, surely, is unusually late. It will be annoying, indeed, if
+the Duchess doesn't come."
+
+"The Duchess is a delicious creature, but not for me," said Warkworth,
+with a laugh. "She dislikes me. Ah, now then for the fray!"
+
+For the outer bell rang loudly, and there were steps in the hall.
+
+"Oh, Julie"--in swept a white whirlwind with the smallest white satin
+shoes twinkling in front of it--"how clever of you--you naughty angel!
+Aunt Flora in bed--and you down here! And I who came prepared for such a
+dose of humble-pie! What a relief! Oh, how do you do?"
+
+The last words were spoken in quite another tone, as the Duchess, for
+the first time perceiving the young officer on the more shaded side of
+the fireplace, extended to him a very high wrist and a very stiff hand.
+Then she turned again to Julie.
+
+"My dear, there's a small mob in the hall. Mr. Montresor--and General
+Somebody--and Jacob--and Dr. Meredith with a Frenchman. Oh, and old Lord
+Lackington, and Heaven knows who! Hutton told me I might come in, so I
+promised to come first and reconnoitre. But what's Hutton to do? You
+really must take a line. The carriages are driving up at a fine rate."
+
+"I'll go and speak to Hutton," said Julie.
+
+And she hurried into the hall.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+When Miss Le Breton reached the hall, a footman was at the outer door
+reciting Lady Henry's excuses as each fresh carriage drove up; while in
+the inner vestibule, which was well screened from the view of the
+street, was a group of men, still in their hats and over-coats, talking
+and laughing in subdued voices.
+
+Julie Le Breton came forward. The hats were removed, and the tall,
+stooping form of Montresor advanced.
+
+"Lady Henry is _so_ sorry," said Julie, in a soft, lowered voice. "But I
+am sure she would like me to give you her message and to tell you how
+she is. She would not like her old friends to be alarmed. Would you come
+in for a moment? There is a fire in the library. Mr. Delafield, don't
+you think that would be best?... Will you tell Hutton not to let in
+_anybody_ else?"
+
+She looked at him uncertainly, as though appealing to him, as a relation
+of Lady Henry's, to take the lead.
+
+"By all means," said that young man, after perhaps a moment's
+hesitation, and throwing off his coat.
+
+"Only _please_ make no noise!" said Miss Le Breton, turning to the
+group. "Lady Henry might be disturbed."
+
+Every one came in, as it were, on tiptoe. In each face a sense of the
+humor of the situation fought with the consciousness of its dangers. As
+soon as Montresor saw the little Duchess by the fire, he threw up his
+hands in relief.
+
+"I breathe again," he said, greeting her with effusion. "Duchess, where
+thou goest, I may go. But I feel like a boy robbing a hen-roost. Let me
+introduce my friend, General Fergus. Take us both, pray, under your
+protection!"
+
+"On the contrary," said the Duchess, as she returned General Fergus's
+bow, "you are both so magnificent that no one would dare to
+protect you."
+
+For they were both in uniform, and the General was resplendent with
+stars and medals.
+
+"We have been dining with royalty." said Montresor. "We want some
+relaxation."
+
+He put on his eye-glasses, looked round the room, and gently rubbed his
+hands.
+
+"How very agreeable this is! What a charming room! I never saw it
+before. What are we doing here? Is it a party? Why shouldn't it be?
+Meredith, have you introduced M. du Bartas to the Duchess? Ah, I see--"
+
+For Julie Le Breton was already conversing with the distinguished
+Frenchman wearing the rosette of the Legion of Honor in his button-hole,
+who had followed Dr. Meredith into the room. As Montresor spoke,
+however, she came forward, and in a French which was a joy to the ear,
+she presented M. du Bartas, a tall, well-built Norman with a fair
+mustache, first to the Duchess and then to Lord Lackington and Jacob.
+
+"The director of the French Foreign Office," said Montresor, in an aside
+to the Duchess. "He hates us like poison. But if you haven't already
+asked him to dinner--I warned you last week he was coming--pray do
+it at once!"
+
+Meanwhile the Frenchman, his introductions over, looked curiously round
+the room, studied its stately emptiness, the books on the walls under a
+trellis-work, faintly gilt, the three fine pictures; then his eyes
+passed to the tall and slender lady who had addressed him in such
+perfect French, and to the little Duchess in her flutter of lace and
+satin, the turn of her small neck, and the blaze of her jewels. "These
+Englishwomen overdo their jewels," he thought, with distaste. "But they
+overdo everything. That is a handsome fellow, by-the-way, who was with
+_la petite fée_ when we arrived."
+
+And his shrewd, small eyes travelled from Warkworth to the Duchess, his
+mind the while instinctively assuming some hidden relation between them.
+
+Meanwhile, Montresor was elaborately informing himself as to Lady Henry.
+
+"This is the first time for twenty years that I have not found her on a
+Wednesday evening," he said, with a sudden touch of feeling which became
+him. "At our age, the smallest break in the old habit--"
+
+He sighed, and then quickly threw off his depression.
+
+"Nonsense! Next week she will be scolding us all with double energy.
+Meanwhile, may we sit down, mademoiselle? Ten minutes? And, upon my
+word, the very thing my soul was longing for--a cup of coffee!"
+
+For at the moment Hutton and two footmen entered with trays containing
+tea and coffee, lemonade and cakes.
+
+"Shut the door, Hutton, _please_," Mademoiselle Le Breton implored, and
+the door was shut at once.
+
+"We mustn't, _mustn't_ make any noise!" she said, her finger on her
+lip, looking first at Montresor and then at Delafield. The group
+laughed, moved their spoons softly, and once more lowered their voices.
+
+But the coffee brought a spirit of festivity. Chairs were drawn up. The
+blazing fire shone out upon a semicircle of people representing just
+those elements of mingled intimacy and novelty which go to make
+conversation. And in five minutes Mademoiselle Le Breton was leading it
+as usual. A brilliant French book had recently appeared dealing with
+certain points of the Egyptian question in a manner so interesting,
+supple, and apparently impartial that the attention of Europe had been
+won. Its author had been formerly a prominent official of the French
+Foreign Office, and was now somewhat out of favor with his countrymen.
+Julie put some questions about him to M. du Bartas.
+
+The Frenchman feeling himself among comrades worthy of his steel, and
+secretly pricked by the presence of an English cabinet minister,
+relinquished the half-disdainful reserve with which he had entered, and
+took pains. He drew the man in question, _en silhouette_, with a hostile
+touch so sure, an irony so light, that his success was instant
+and great.
+
+Lord Lackington woke up. Handsome, white-haired dreamer that he was, he
+had been looking into the fire, half--smiling, more occupied, in truth,
+with his own thoughts than with his companions. Delafield had brought
+him in; he did not exactly know why he was there, except that he liked
+Mademoiselle Le Breton, and often wondered how the deuce Lady Henry had
+ever discovered such an interesting and delightful person to fill such
+an uncomfortable position. But this Frenchman challenged and excited
+him. He, too, began to talk French, and soon the whole room was talking
+it, with an advantage to Julie Le Breton which quickly made itself
+apparent. In English she was a link, a social conjunction; she eased all
+difficulties, she pieced all threads. But in French her tongue was
+loosened, though never beyond the point of grace, the point of delicate
+adjustment to the talkers round her.
+
+So that presently, and by insensible gradations, she was the queen of
+the room. The Duchess in ecstasy pinched Jacob Delafield's wrist, and
+forgetting all that she ought to have remembered, whispered,
+rapturously, in his ear, "Isn't she enchanting--Julie--to-night?" That
+gentleman made no answer. The Duchess, remembering, shrank back, and
+spoke no more, till Jacob looked round upon her with a friendly smile
+which set her tongue free again.
+
+M. du Bartas, meanwhile, began to consider this lady in black with more
+and more attention. The talk glided into a general discussion of the
+Egyptian position. Those were the days before Arabi, when elements of
+danger and of doubt abounded, and none knew what a month might bring
+forth. With perfect tact Julie guided the conversation, so that all
+difficulties, whether for the French official or the English statesman,
+were avoided with a skill that no one realized till each separate rock
+was safely passed. Presently Montresor looked from her to Du Bartas with
+a grin. The Frenchman's eyes were round with astonishment. Julie had
+been saying the lightest but the wisest things; she had been touching
+incidents and personalities known only to the initiated with a
+restrained gayety which often broke down into a charming shyness, which
+was ready to be scared away in a moment by a tone--too serious or too
+polemical--which jarred with the general key of the conversation, which
+never imposed itself, and was like the ripple on a summer sea. But the
+summer sea has its depths, and this modest gayety was the mark of an
+intimate and first-hand knowledge.
+
+"Ah, I see," thought Montresor, amused. "P---- has been writing to her,
+the little minx. He seems to have been telling her all the secrets. I
+think I'll stop it. Even she mayn't quite understand what should and
+shouldn't be said before this gentleman."
+
+So he gave the conversation a turn, and Mademoiselle Le Breton took the
+hint at once. She called others to the front--it was like a change of
+dancers in the ballet--while she rested, no less charming as a listener
+than as a talker, her black eyes turning from one to another and radiant
+with the animation of success.
+
+But one thing--at last--she had forgotten. She had forgotten to impose
+any curb upon the voices round her. The Duchess and Lord Lackington were
+sparring like a couple of children, and Montresor broke in from time to
+time with his loud laugh and gruff throat voice. Meredith, the
+Frenchman, Warkworth, and General Fergus were discussing a grand review
+which had been held the day before. Delafield had moved round to the
+back of Julie's chair, and she was talking to him, while all the time
+her eyes were on General Fergus and her brain was puzzling as to how she
+was to secure the five minutes' talk with him she wanted. He was one of
+the intimates of the Commander-in-Chief. She herself had suggested to
+Montresor, of course in Lady Henry's name, that he should be brought to
+Bruton Street some Wednesday evening.
+
+Presently there was a little shifting of groups. Julie saw that
+Montresor and Captain Warkworth were together by the fireplace, that the
+young man with his hands held out to the blaze and his back to her was
+talking eagerly, while Montresor, looking outward into the room, his
+great black head bent a little towards his companion, was putting sharp
+little questions from time to time, with as few words as might be. Julie
+understood that an important conversation was going on--that Montresor,
+whose mind various friends of hers had been endeavoring to make up for
+him, was now perhaps engaged in making it up for himself.
+
+With a quickened pulse she turned to find General Fergus beside her.
+What a frank and soldierly countenance!--a little roughly cut, with a
+strong mouth slightly underhung, and a dogged chin, the whole lit by
+eyes that were the chosen homes of truth, humanity, and will. Presently
+she discovered, as they drew their chairs a little back from the circle,
+that she, too, was to be encouraged to talk about Warkworth. The General
+was, of course, intimately 'acquainted with his professional record; but
+there were certain additional Indian opinions--a few incidents in the
+young man's earlier career, including, especially, a shooting expedition
+of much daring in the very district to which the important Mokembe
+mission was now to be addressed, together with some quotations from
+private letters of her own, or Lady Henry's, which Julie, with her usual
+skill, was able to slip into his ear, all on the assumption, delicately
+maintained, that she was merely talking of a friend of Lady Henry's, as
+Lady Henry herself would have talked, to much better effect, had she
+been present.
+
+The General gave her a grave and friendly attention. Few men had done
+sterner or more daring feats in the field. Yet here he sat, relaxed,
+courteous, kind, trusting his companions simply, as it was his instinct
+to trust all women. Julie's heart beat fast. What an exciting, what an
+important evening!...
+
+Suddenly there was a voice in her ear.
+
+"Do you know, I think we ought to clear out. It must be close on
+midnight."
+
+She looked up, startled, to see Jacob Delafield. His expression--of
+doubt or discomfort--recalled her at once to the realities of her own
+situation.
+
+But before she could reply, a sound struck on her ear. She sprang to her
+feet.
+
+"What was that?" she said.
+
+A voice was heard in the hall.
+
+Julie Le Breton caught the chair behind her, and Delafield saw her turn
+pale. But before she or he could speak again, the door of the library
+was thrown open.
+
+"Good Heavens!" said Montresor, springing to his feet. "Lady Henry!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+M. du Bartas lifted astonished eyes. On the threshold of the room stood
+an old lady, leaning heavily on two sticks. She was deathly pale, and
+her fierce eyes blazed upon the scene before her. Within the bright,
+fire-lit room the social comedy was being played at its best; but here
+surely was Tragedy--or Fate. Who was she? What did it mean?
+
+The Duchess rushed to her, and fell, of course, upon the one thing she
+should not have said.
+
+"Oh, Aunt Flora, dear Aunt Flora! But we thought you were too ill to
+come down!"
+
+"So I perceive," said Lady Henry, putting her aside. "So you, and this
+lady"--she pointed a shaking finger at Julie--"have held my reception
+for me. I am enormously obliged. You have also"--she looked at the
+coffee-cups--"provided my guests with refreshment. I thank you. I trust
+my servants have given you satisfaction.
+
+"Gentlemen"--she turned to the rest of the company, who stood
+stupefied--"I fear I cannot ask you to remain with me longer. The hour
+is late, and I am--as you see--indisposed. But I trust, on some future
+occasion, I may have the honor--"
+
+She looked round upon them, challenging and defying them all.
+
+Montresor went up to her.
+
+"My dear old friend, let me introduce to you M. du Bartas, of the French
+Foreign Office."
+
+At this appeal to her English hospitality and her social chivalry, Lady
+Henry looked grimly at the Frenchman.
+
+"M. du Bartas, I am charmed to make your acquaintance. With your leave,
+I will pursue it when I am better able to profit by it. To-morrow I will
+write to you to propose another meeting--should my health allow."
+
+"Enchanté, madame," murmured the Frenchman, more embarrassed than he had
+ever been in his life. "Permettez--moi de vous faire mes plus sincères
+excuses."
+
+"Not at all, monsieur, you owe me none."
+
+Montresor again approached her.
+
+"Let me tell you," he said, imploringly, "how this has happened--how
+innocent we all are--"
+
+"Another time, if you please," she said, with a most cutting calm. "As I
+said before, it is late. If I had been equal to entertaining you"--she
+looked round upon them all--"I should not have told my butler to make my
+excuses. As it is, I must beg you to allow me to bid you good-night.
+Jacob, will you kindly get the Duchess her cloak? Good-night.
+Good-night. As you see"--she pointed to the sticks which supported
+her--"I have no hands to-night. My infirmities have need of them."
+
+Montresor approached her again, in real and deep distress.
+
+"Dear Lady Henry--"
+
+"Go!" she said, under her breath, looking him in the eyes, and he turned
+and went without a word. So did the Duchess, whimpering, her hand in
+Delafield's arm. As she passed Julie, who stood as though turned to
+stone, she made a little swaying movement towards her.
+
+"Dear Julie!" she cried, imploringly.
+
+But Lady Henry turned.
+
+"You will have every opportunity to-morrow," she said. "As far as I am
+concerned, Miss Le Breton will have no engagements."
+
+Lord Lackington quietly said, "Good-night, Lady Henry," and, without
+offering to shake hands, walked past her. As he came to the spot where
+Julie Le Breton stood, that lady made a sudden, impetuous movement
+towards him. Strange words were on her lips, a strange expression
+in her eyes.
+
+"_You_ must help me," she said, brokenly. "It is my right!"
+
+Was that what she said? Lord Lackington looked at her in astonishment.
+He did not see that Lady Henry was watching them with eagerness, leaning
+heavily on her sticks, her lips parted in a keen expectancy.
+
+Then Julie withdrew.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she said, hurriedly. "I beg your pardon.
+Good-night."
+
+Lord Lackington hesitated. His face took a puzzled expression. Then he
+held out his hand, and she placed hers in it mechanically.
+
+"It will be all right," he whispered, kindly. "Lady Henry will soon be
+herself again. Shall I tell the butler to call for some one--her maid?"
+
+Julie shook her head, and in another moment he, too, was gone. Dr.
+Meredith and General Fergus stood beside her. The General had a keen
+sense of humor, and as he said good-night to this unlawful hostess,
+whose plight he understood no more than his own, his mouth twitched with
+repressed laughter. But Dr. Meredith did not laugh. He pressed Julie's
+hand in both of his. Looking behind him, he saw that Jacob Delafield,
+who had just returned from the hall, was endeavoring to appease Lady
+Henry. He bent towards Julie.
+
+"Don't deceive yourself," he said, quickly, in a low voice; "this is the
+end. Remember my letter. Let me hear to-morrow."
+
+As Dr. Meredith left the room, Julie lifted her eyes. Only Jacob
+Delafield and Lady Henry were left.
+
+Harry Warkworth, too, was gone--without a word? She looked round her
+piteously. She could not remember that he had spoken--that he had bade
+her farewell. A strange pang convulsed her. She scarcely heard what Lady
+Henry was saying to Jacob Delafield. Yet the words were emphatic enough.
+
+"Much obliged to you, Jacob. But when I want your advice in my household
+affairs, I will ask it. You and Evelyn Crowborough have meddled a good
+deal too much in them already. Good-night. Hutton will get you a cab."
+
+And with a slight but imperious gesture, Lady Henry motioned towards the
+door. Jacob hesitated, then quietly took his departure. He threw Julie a
+look of anxious appeal as he went out. But she did not see it; her
+troubled gaze was fixed on Lady Henry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That lady eyed her companion with composure, though by now even the old
+lips were wholly blanched.
+
+"There is really no need for any conversation between us, Miss Le
+Breton," said the familiar voice. "But if there were, I am not to-night,
+as you see, in a condition to say it. So--when you came up to say
+good-night to me--you had determined on this adventure? You had been
+good enough, I see, to rearrange my room--to give my servants
+your orders."
+
+Julie stood stonily erect. She made her dry lips answer as best they
+could.
+
+"We meant no harm," she said, coldly. "It all came about very simply. A
+few people came in to inquire after you. I regret they should have
+stayed talking so long."
+
+Lady Henry smiled in contempt.
+
+"You hardly show your usual ability by these remarks. The room you stand
+in"--she glanced significantly at the lights and the chairs--"gives you
+the lie. You had planned it all with Hutton, who has become your tool,
+before you came to me. Don't contradict. It distresses me to hear you.
+Well, now we part."
+
+"Of course. Perhaps to-morrow you will allow me a few last words?"
+
+"I think not. This will cost me dear," said Lady Henry, her white lips
+twitching. "Say them now, mademoiselle."
+
+"You are suffering." Julie made an uncertain step forward. "You ought to
+be in bed."
+
+"That has nothing to do with it. What was your object to-night?"
+
+"I wished to see the Duchess--"
+
+"It is not worth while to prevaricate. The Duchess was not your first
+visitor."
+
+Julie flushed.
+
+"Captain Warkworth arrived first; that was a mere chance."
+
+"It was to see him that you risked the whole affair. You have used my
+house for your own intrigues."
+
+Julie felt herself physically wavering under the lash of these
+sentences. But with a great effort she walked towards the fireplace,
+recovered her gloves and handkerchief, which were on the mantel-piece,
+and then turned slowly to Lady Henry.
+
+"I have done nothing in your service that I am ashamed of. On the
+contrary, I have borne what no one else would have borne. I have devoted
+myself to you and your interests, and you have trampled upon and
+tortured me. For you I have been merely a servant, and an inferior--"
+
+Lady Henry nodded grimly.
+
+"It is true," she said, interrupting, "I was not able to take your
+romantic view of the office of companion."
+
+"You need only have taken a human view," said Julie, in a voice that
+pierced; "I was alone, poor--worse than motherless. You might have done
+what you would with me. A little indulgence, and I should have been your
+devoted slave. But you chose to humiliate and crush me; and in return,
+to protect myself, I, in defending myself, have been led, I admit it,
+into taking liberties. There is no way out of it. I shall, of course,
+leave you to-morrow morning."
+
+"Then at last we understand each other," said Lady Henry, with a laugh.
+"Good-night, Miss Le Breton."
+
+She moved heavily on her sticks. Julie stood aside to let her pass. One
+of the sticks slipped a little on the polished floor. Julie, with a cry,
+ran forward, but Lady Henry fiercely motioned her aside.
+
+"Don't touch me! Don't come near me!"
+
+She paused a moment to recover breath and balance. Then she resumed her
+difficult walk. Julie followed her.
+
+"Kindly put out the electric lights," said Lady Henry, and Julie obeyed.
+
+They entered the hall in which one little light was burning. Lady Henry,
+with great difficulty, and panting, began to pull herself up the stairs.
+
+"Oh, _do_ let me help you!" said Julie, in an agony. "You will kill
+yourself. Let me at least call Dixon."
+
+"You will do nothing of the kind," said Lady Henry, indomitable, though
+tortured by weakness and rheumatism. "Dixon is in my room, where I bade
+her remain. You should have thought of the consequences of this before
+you embarked upon it. If I were to die in mounting these stairs, I would
+not let you help me."
+
+"Oh!" cried Julie, as though she had been struck, and hid her eyes with
+her hand.
+
+Slowly, laboriously, Lady Henry dragged herself from step to step. As
+she turned the corner of the staircase, and could therefore be no longer
+seen from below, some one softly opened the door of the dining-room and
+entered the hall.
+
+Julie looked round her, startled. She saw Jacob Delafield, who put his
+finger to his lip.
+
+Moved by a sudden impulse, she bowed her head on the banister of the
+stairs against which she was leaning and broke into stifled sobs.
+
+Jacob Delafield came up to her and took her hand. She felt his own
+tremble, and yet its grasp was firm and supporting.
+
+"Courage!" he said, bending over her. "Try not to give way. You will
+want all your fortitude."
+
+"Listen!" She gasped, trying vainly to control herself, and they both
+listened to the sounds above them in the dark house--the labored breath,
+the slow, painful step.
+
+"Oh, she wouldn't let me help her. She said she would rather die.
+Perhaps I have killed her. And I could--I could--yes, I _could_ have
+loved her."
+
+She was in an anguish of feeling--of sharp and penetrating remorse.
+
+Jacob Delafield held her hand close in his, and when at last the sounds
+had died in the distance he lifted it to his lips.
+
+"You know that I am your friend and servant," he said, in a queer,
+muffled voice. "You promised I should be."
+
+She tried to withdraw her hand, but only feebly. Neither physically nor
+mentally had she the strength to repulse him. If he had taken her in his
+arms, she could hardly have resisted. But he did not attempt to conquer
+more than her hand. He stood beside her, letting her feel the whole
+mute, impetuous offer of his manhood--thrown at her feet to do what she
+would with.
+
+Presently, when once more she moved away, he said to her, in a whisper:
+
+"Go to the Duchess to-morrow morning, as soon as you can get away. She
+told me to say that--Hutton gave me a little note from her. Your home
+must be with her till we can all settle what is best. You know very well
+you have devoted friends. But now good-night. Try to sleep. Evelyn and I
+will do all we can with Lady Henry."
+
+Julie drew herself out of his hold. "Tell Evelyn I will come to see her,
+at any rate, as soon as I can put my things together. Good-night."
+
+And she, too, dragged herself up-stairs sobbing, starting at every
+shadow. All her nerve and daring were gone. The thought that she must
+spend yet another night under the roof of this old woman who hated her
+filled her with terror. When she reached her room she locked her door
+and wept for hours in a forlorn and aching misery.
+
+
+
+X
+
+The Duchess was in her morning-room. On the rug, in marked and, as it
+seemed to her plaintive eyes, brutal contrast with the endless
+photographs of her babies and women friends which crowded her
+mantel-piece, stood the Duke, much out of temper. He was a powerfully
+built man, some twenty years older than his wife, with a dark
+complexion, enlivened by ruddy cheeks and prominent, red lips. His eyes
+were of a cold, clear gray; his hair very black, thick, and wiry. An
+extremely vigorous person, more than adequately aware of his own
+importance, tanned and seasoned by the life of his class, by the
+yachting, hunting, and shooting in which his own existence was largely
+spent, slow in perception, and of a sulky temper--so one might have read
+him at first sight. But these impressions only took you a certain way in
+judging the character of the Duchess's husband.
+
+As to the sulkiness, there could be no question on this particular
+morning--though, indeed, his ill-humor deserved a more positive and
+energetic name.
+
+"You have got yourself and me," he was declaring, "into a most
+disagreeable and unnecessary scrape. This letter of Lady Henry's"--he
+held it up--"is one of the most annoying that I have received for many a
+day. Lady Henry seems to me perfectly justified. You _have_ been
+behaving in a quite unwarrantable way. And now you tell me that this
+woman, who is the cause of it all, of whose conduct I thoroughly and
+entirely disapprove, is coming to stay here, in my house, whether I like
+it or not, and you expect me to be civil to her. If you persist, I shall
+go down to Brackmoor till she is pleased to depart. I won't countenance
+the thing at all, and, whatever you may do, _I_ shall apologize to
+Lady Henry."
+
+"There's nothing to apologize for," cried the drooping Duchess, plucking
+up a little spirit. "Nobody meant any harm. Why shouldn't the old
+friends go in to ask after her? Hutton--that old butler that has been
+with Aunt Flora for twenty years--_asked_ us to come in."
+
+"Then he did what he had no business to do, and he deserves to be
+dismissed at a day's notice. Why, Lady Henry tells me that it was a
+regular party--that the room was all arranged for it by that most
+audacious young woman--that the servants were ordered about--that it
+lasted till nearly midnight, and that the noise you all made positively
+woke Lady Henry out of her sleep. Really, Evelyn, that you should have
+been mixed up in such an affair is more unpalatable to me than I can
+find words to describe." And he paced, fuming, up and down before her.
+
+"Anybody else than Aunt Flora would have laughed," said the Duchess,
+defiantly. "And I declare, Freddie, I won't be scolded in such a tone.
+Besides, if you only knew--"
+
+She threw back her head and looked at him, her cheeks flushed, her lips
+quivering with a secret that, once out, would perhaps silence him at
+once--would, at any rate, as children do when they give a shake to their
+spillikins, open up a number of new chances in the game.
+
+"If I only knew what?"
+
+The Duchess pulled at the hair of the little spitz on her lap without
+replying.
+
+"What is there to know that I don't know?" insisted the Duke. "Something
+that makes the matter still worse, I suppose?"
+
+"Well, that depends," said the Duchess, reflectively. A gleam of
+mischief had slipped into her face, though for a moment the tears had
+not been far off.
+
+The Duke looked at his watch.
+
+"Don't keep me here guessing riddles longer than you can help," he said,
+impatiently. "I have an appointment in the City at twelve, and I want to
+discuss with you the letter that must be written to Lady Henry."
+
+"That's your affair," said the Duchess. "I haven't made up my mind yet
+whether I mean to write at all. And as for the riddle, Freddie, you've
+seen Miss Le Breton?"
+
+"Once. I thought her a very pretentious person," said the Duke, stiffly.
+
+"I know--you didn't get on. But, Freddie, didn't she remind you of
+somebody?"
+
+The Duchess was growing excited. Suddenly she jumped up; the little
+spitz rolled off her lap; she ran to her husband and took him by the
+fronts of his coat.
+
+"Freddie, you'll be very much astonished." And suddenly releasing him,
+she began to search among the photographs on the mantel-piece. "Freddie,
+you know who that is?" She held up a picture.
+
+"Of course I know. What on earth has that got to do with the subject we
+have been discussing?"
+
+"Well, it has a good deal to do with it," said the Duchess, slowly.
+"That's my uncle, George Chantrey, isn't it, Lord Lackington's second
+son, who married mamma's sister? Well--oh, you won't like it, Freddie,
+but you've got to know--that's--Julie's uncle, too!"
+
+"What in the name of fortune do you mean?" said the Duke, staring at
+her.
+
+His wife again caught him by the coat, and, so imprisoning him, she
+poured out her story very fast, very incoherently, and with a very
+evident uncertainty as to what its effect might be.
+
+And indeed the effect was by no means easy to determine. The Duke was
+first incredulous, then bewildered by the very mixed facts which she
+poured out upon him. He tried to cross-examine her _en route_, but he
+gained little by that; she only shook him a little, insisting the more
+vehemently on telling the story her own way. At last their two
+impatiences had nearly come to a dead-lock. But the Duke managed to free
+himself physically, and so regained a little freedom of mind.
+
+"Well, upon my word," he said, as he resumed his march up and
+down--"upon my word!" Then, as he stood still before her, "You say she
+is Marriott Dalrymple's daughter?"
+
+"And Lord Lackington's granddaughter." said the Duchess, panting a
+little from her exertions. "And, oh, what a blind bat you were not to
+see it at once--from the likeness!"
+
+"As if one had any right to infer such a thing from a likeness!" said
+the Duke, angrily. "Really, Evelyn, your talk is most--most unbecoming.
+It seems to me that Mademoiselle Le Breton has already done you harm.
+All that you have told me, supposing it to be true--oh, of course, I
+know you believe it to be true--only makes me"--he stiffened his
+back--"the more determined to break off the connection between her and
+you. A woman of such antecedents is not a fit companion for my wife,
+independently of the fact that she seems to be, in herself, an
+intriguing and dangerous character."
+
+"How could she help her antecedents?" cried the Duchess.
+
+"I didn't say she could help them. But if they are what you say, she
+ought--well, she ought to be all the more careful to live in a modest
+and retired way, instead of, as I understand, making herself the rival
+of Lady Henry. I never heard anything so preposterous--so--so indecent!
+She shows no proper sense, and, as for you, I deeply regret you should
+have been brought into any contact with such a disgraceful story."
+
+"Freddie!" The Duchess went into a helpless, half-hysterical fit of
+laughter.
+
+But the Duke merely expanded, as it seemed, still further--to his utmost
+height and bulk. "Oh, dear," thought the Duchess, in despair, "now he is
+going to be like his mother!" Her strictly Evangelical mother-in-law,
+with whom the Duke had made his bachelor home for many years, had been
+the scourge of her early married life; and though for Freddie's sake she
+had shed a few tears over her death, eighteen months before this date,
+the tears--as indeed the Duke had thought at the time--had been only too
+quickly dried.
+
+There could be no question about it, the Duke was painfully like his
+mother as he replied:
+
+"I fear that your education, Evelyn, has led you to take such things far
+more lightly than you ought. I am old-fashioned. Illegitimacy with me
+_does_ carry a stigma, and the sins of the fathers _are_ visited upon
+the children. At any rate, we who occupy a prominent social place have
+no right to do anything which may lead others to think lightly of God's
+law. I am sorry to speak plainly, Evelyn. I dare say you don't like
+these sentiments, but you know, at least, that I am quite honest in
+expressing them."
+
+The Duke turned to her, not without dignity. He was and had been from
+his boyhood a person of irreproachable morals--earnest and religious
+according to his lights, a good son, husband, and father. His wife
+looked at him with mingled feelings.
+
+"Well, all I know is," she said, passionately beating her little foot on
+the carpet before her, "that, by all accounts, the only thing to do with
+Colonel Delaney was to run away from him."
+
+The Duke shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You don't expect me to be much moved by a remark of that kind? As to
+this lady, your story does not affect me in her favor in the smallest
+degree. She has had her education; Lord Lackington gives her one hundred
+pounds a year; if she is a self-respecting woman she will look after
+herself. I _don't_ want to have her here, and I beg you won't invite
+her. A couple of nights, perhaps--I don't mind that--but not
+for longer."
+
+"Oh, as to that, you may be very sure she won't stay here unless you're
+very particularly nice to her. There'll be plenty of people
+glad--enchanted--to have her! I don't care about that, but what I _do_
+want is"--the Duchess looked up with calm audacity--"that you should
+find her a house."
+
+The Duke paused in his walk and surveyed his wife with amazement.
+
+"Evelyn, are you _quite_ mad?"
+
+"Not in the least. You have more houses than you know what to do with,
+and a _great_ deal more money than anybody in the world ought to have.
+If they ever do set up the guillotine at Hyde Park Corner, we shall be
+among the first--we ought to be!"
+
+"What is the good of talking nonsense like this, Evelyn?" said the Duke,
+once more consulting his watch. "Let's go back to the subject of my
+letter to Lady Henry."
+
+"It's most excellent sense!" cried the Duchess, springing up. "You
+_have_ more houses than you know what to do with; and you have one house
+in particular--that little place at the back of Cureton Street where
+Cousin Mary Leicester lived so long--which is in your hands still, I
+know, for you told me so last week--which is vacant and
+furnished--Cousin Mary left you the furniture, as if we hadn't got
+enough!--and it would be the _very_ thing for Julie, if only you'd lend
+it to her till she can turn round."
+
+The Duchess was now standing up, confronting her lord, her hands
+grasping the chair behind her, her small form alive with eagerness and
+the feminine determination to get her own way, by fair means or foul.
+
+"Cureton Street!" said the Duke, almost at the end of his tether. "And
+how do you propose that this young woman is to live--in Cureton Street,
+or anywhere else?"
+
+"She means to write," said the Duchess, shortly. "Dr. Meredith has
+promised her work."
+
+"Sheer lunacy! In six months time you'd have to step in and pay all her
+bills."
+
+"I should like to see anybody dare to propose to Julie to pay her
+bills!" cried the Duchess, with scorn. "You see, the great pity is,
+Freddie, that you don't know anything at all about her. But that
+house--wasn't it made out of a stable? It has got six rooms, I
+know--three bedrooms up-stairs, and two sitting-rooms and a kitchen
+below. With one good maid and a boy Julie could be perfectly
+comfortable. She would earn four hundred pounds--Dr. Meredith has
+promised her--she has one hundred pounds a year of her own. She would
+pay no rent, of course. She would have just enough to live on, poor,
+dear thing! And she would be able to gather her old friends
+round her when she wanted them. A cup of tea and her delightful
+conversation--that's all they'd ever want."
+
+"Oh, go on--go on!" said the Duke, throwing himself exasperated into an
+arm-chair; "the ease with which you dispose of my property on behalf of
+a young woman who has caused me most acute annoyance, who has embroiled
+us with a near relation for whom I have a very particular respect! _Her
+friends_, indeed! Lady Henry's friends, you mean. Poor Lady Henry tells
+me in this letter that her circle will be completely scattered. This
+mischievous woman in three years has destroyed what it has taken Lady
+Henry nearly thirty to build up. Now look here, Evelyn"--the Duke sat up
+and slapped his knee--"as to this Cureton Street plan, I will do nothing
+of the kind. You may have Miss Le Breton here for two or three nights if
+you like--I shall probably go down to the country--and, of course, I
+have no objection to make if you wish to help her find another
+situation--"
+
+"Another situation!" cried the Duchess, beside herself. "Freddie, you
+really are impossible! Do you understand that I regard Julie Le Breton
+as _my relation_, whatever you may say--that I love her dearly--that
+there are fifty people with money and influence ready to help her if you
+won't, because she is one of the most charming and distinguished women
+in London--that you ought to be _proud_ to do her a service--that I want
+you to have the _honor_ of it--there! And if you won't do this little
+favor for me--when I ask and beg it of you--I'll make you remember it
+for a very long time to come--you may be sure of that!"
+
+And his wife turned upon him as an image of war, her fair hair ruffling
+about her ears, her cheeks and eyes brilliant with anger--and
+something more.
+
+The Duke rose in silent ferocity and sought for some letters which he
+had left on the mantel-piece.
+
+"I had better leave you to come to your senses by yourself, and as
+quickly as possible," he said, as he put them into his pockets. "No good
+can come of any more discussion of this sort."
+
+The Duchess said nothing. She looked out of the window busily, and bit
+her lip. Her silence served her better than her speech, for suddenly the
+Duke looked round, hesitated, threw down a book he carried, walked up to
+her, and took her in his arms.
+
+"You are a very foolish child," he declared, as he held her by main
+force and kissed away her tears. "You make me lose my temper--and waste
+my time--for nothing."
+
+"Not at all," said the sobbing Duchess, trying to push herself away, and
+denying him, as best she could, her soft, flushed face. "You don't, or
+you won't, understand! I was--I was very fond of Uncle George Chantrey.
+_He_ would have helped Julie if he were alive. And as for you, you're
+Lord Lackington's godson, and you're always preaching what he's done for
+the army, and what the nation owes him--and--and--"
+
+"Does he know?" said the Duke, abruptly, marvelling at the irrelevance
+of these remarks.
+
+"No, not a word. Only six people in London know--Aunt Flora, Sir Wilfrid
+Bury"--the Duke made an exclamation--"Mr. Montresor, Jacob, you, and I."
+
+"Jacob!" said the Duke. "What's he got to do with it?"
+
+The Duchess suddenly saw her opportunity, and rushed upon it.
+
+"Only that he's madly in love with her, that's all. And, to my
+knowledge, she has refused him both last year and this. Of course,
+naturally, if you won't do anything to help her, she'll probably marry
+him--simply as a way out."
+
+"Well, of all the extraordinary affairs!"
+
+The Duke released her, and stood bewildered. The Duchess watched him in
+some excitement. He was about to speak, when there was a sound in the
+anteroom. They moved hastily apart. The door was thrown open, and the
+footman announced, "Miss Le Breton."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Julie Le Breton entered, and stood a moment on the threshold, looking,
+not in embarrassment, but with a certain hesitation, at the two persons
+whose conversation she had disturbed. She was pale with sleeplessness;
+her look was sad and weary. But never had she been more composed, more
+elegant. Her closely fitting black cloth dress; her strangely expressive
+face, framed by a large hat, very simple, but worn as only the woman of
+fashion knows how; her miraculous yet most graceful slenderness; the
+delicacy of her hands; the natural dignity of her movements--these
+things produced an immediate, though, no doubt, conflicting impression
+upon the gentleman who had just been denouncing her. He bowed, with an
+involuntary deference which he had not at all meant to show to Lady
+Henry's insubordinate companion, and then stood frowning.
+
+But the Duchess ran forward, and, quite heedless of her husband, threw
+herself into her friend's arms.
+
+"Oh, Julie, is there anything left of you? I hardly slept a wink for
+thinking of you. What did that old--oh, I forgot--do you know my
+husband? Freddie, this is my _great_ friend, Miss Le Breton."
+
+The Duke bowed again, silently. Julie looked at him, and then, still
+holding the Duchess by the hand, she approached him, a pair of very fine
+and pleading eyes fixed upon his face.
+
+"You have probably heard from Lady Henry, have you not?" she said,
+addressing him. "In a note I had from her this morning she told me she
+had written to you. I could not help coming to-day, because Evelyn has
+been so kind. But--is it your wish that I should come here?"
+
+The Christian name slipped out unawares, and the Duke winced at it. The
+likeness to Lord Lackington--it was certainly astonishing. There ran
+through his mind the memory of a visit paid long ago to his early home
+by Lord Lackington and two daughters, Rose and Blanche. He, the Duke,
+had then been a boy home from school. The two girls, one five or six
+years older than the other, had been the life and charm of the party. He
+remembered hunting with Lady Rose.
+
+But the confusion in his mind had somehow to be mastered, and he made an
+effort.
+
+"I shall be glad if my wife is able to be of any assistance to you, Miss
+Le Breton," he said, coldly; "but it would not be honest if I were to
+conceal my opinion--so far as I have been able to form it--that Lady
+Henry has great and just cause of complaint."
+
+"You are quite right--quite right," said Julie, almost with eagerness.
+"She has, indeed."
+
+The Duke was taken by surprise. Imperious as he was, and stiffened by a
+good many of those petty prides which the spoiled children of the world
+escape so hardly, he found himself hesitating--groping for his words.
+
+The Duchess meanwhile drew Julie impulsively towards a chair.
+
+"Do sit down. You look so tired."
+
+But Julie's gaze was still bent upon the Duke. She restrained her
+friend's eager hand, and the Duke collected himself. _He_ brought a
+chair, and Julie seated herself.
+
+"I am deeply, deeply distressed about Lady Henry," she said, in a low
+voice, by which the Duke felt himself most unwillingly penetrated. "I
+don't--oh no, indeed, I don't defend last night. Only--my position has
+been very difficult lately. I wanted very much to see the
+Duchess--and--it was natural--wasn't it?--that the old friends should
+like to be personally informed about Lady Henry's illness? But, of
+course, they stayed too long; it was my fault--I ought to have
+prevented it."
+
+She paused. This stern-looking man, who stood with his back to the
+mantel-piece regarding her, Philistine though he was, had yet a
+straight, disinterested air, from which she shrank a little. Honestly,
+she would have liked to tell him the truth. But how could she? She did
+her best, and her account certainly was no more untrue than scores of
+narratives of social incident which issue every day from lips the most
+respected and the most veracious. As for the Duchess, she thought it the
+height of candor and generosity. The only thing she could have wished,
+perhaps, in her inmost heart, was that she had _not_ found Julie alone
+with Harry Warkworth. But her loyal lips would have suffered torments
+rather than accuse or betray her friend.
+
+The Duke meanwhile went through various phases of opinion as Julie laid
+her story before him. Perhaps he was chiefly affected by the tone of
+quiet independence--as from equal to equal--in which she addressed him.
+His wife's cousin by marriage; the granddaughter of an old and intimate
+friend of his own family; the daughter of a man known at one time
+throughout Europe, and himself amply well born--all these facts, warm,
+living, and still efficacious, stood, as it were, behind this manner of
+hers, prompting and endorsing it. But, good Heavens! was illegitimacy to
+be as legitimacy?--to carry with it no stains and penalties? Was vice to
+be virtue, or as good? The Duke rebelled.
+
+"It is a most unfortunate affair, of that there can be no doubt," he
+said, after a moment's silence, when Julie had brought her story to an
+end; and then, more sternly, "I shall certainly apologize for my wife's
+share in it."
+
+"Lady Henry won't be angry with the Duchess long," said Julie Le Breton.
+"As for me"--her voice sank--"my letter this morning was returned to me
+unopened."
+
+There was an uncomfortable pause; then Julie resumed, in another tone:
+
+"But what I am now chiefly anxious to discuss is, how can we save Lady
+Henry from any further pain or annoyance? She once said to me in a fit
+of anger that if I left her in consequence of a quarrel, and any of her
+old friends sided with me, she would never see them again."
+
+"I know," said the Duke, sharply. "Her salon will break up. She already
+foresees it."
+
+"But why?--why?" cried Julie, in a most becoming distress. "Somehow, we
+must prevent it. Unfortunately I must live in London. I have the offer
+of work here--journalist's work which cannot be done in the country or
+abroad. But I would do all I could to shield Lady Henry."
+
+"What about Mr. Montresor?" said the Duke, abruptly. Montresor had been
+the well-known Châteaubriand to Lady Henry's Madame Récamier for more
+than a generation.
+
+Julie turned to him with eagerness.
+
+"Mr. Montresor wrote to me early this morning. The letter reached me at
+breakfast. In Mrs. Montresor's name and his own, he asked me to stay
+with them till my plans developed. He--he was kind enough to say he felt
+himself partly responsible for last night."
+
+"And you replied?" The Duke eyed her keenly.
+
+Julie sighed and looked down.
+
+"I begged him not to think any more of me in the matter, but to write at
+once to Lady Henry. I hope he has done so."
+
+"And so you refused--excuse these questions--Mrs. Montresor's
+invitation?"
+
+The working of the Duke's mind was revealed in his drawn and puzzled
+brows.
+
+"Certainly." The speaker looked at him with surprise. "Lady Henry would
+never have forgiven that. It could not be thought of. Lord Lackington
+also"--but her voice wavered.
+
+"Yes?" said the Duchess, eagerly, throwing herself on a stool at Julie's
+feet and looking up into her face.
+
+"He, too, has written to me. He wants to help me. But--I can't let him."
+
+The words ended in a whisper. She leaned back in her chair, and put her
+handkerchief to her eyes. It was very quietly done, and very touching.
+The Duchess threw a lightning glance at her husband; and then,
+possessing herself of one of Julie's hands, she kissed it and
+murmured over it.
+
+"Was there ever such a situation?" thought the Duke, much shaken. "And
+she has already, if Evelyn is to be believed, refused the chance--the
+practical certainty--of being Duchess of Chudleigh!"
+
+He was a man with whom a _gran rifiuto_ of this kind weighed heavily.
+His moral sense exacted such things rather of other people than himself.
+But, when made, he could appreciate them.
+
+After a few turns up and down the room, he walked up to the two women.
+
+"Miss Le Breton," he said, in a far more hurried tone than was usual to
+him, "I cannot approve--and Evelyn ought not to approve--of much that
+has taken place during your residence with Lady Henry. But I understand
+that your post was not an easy one, and I recognize the forbearance of
+your present attitude. Evelyn is much distressed about it all. On the
+understanding that you will do what you can to soften this breach for
+Lady Henry, I shall be, glad if you will allow me to come partially to
+your assistance."
+
+Julie looked up gravely, her eyebrows lifting. The Duke found himself
+reddening as he went on.
+
+"I have a little house near here--a little furnished house--Evelyn will
+explain to you. It happens to be vacant. If you will accept a loan of
+it, say for six months"--the Duchess frowned--"you will give me
+pleasure. I will explain my action to Lady Henry, and endeavor to soften
+her feelings."
+
+He paused. Miss Le Breton's face was grateful, touched with emotion, but
+more than hesitating.
+
+"You are very good. But I have no claim upon you at all. And I can
+support myself."
+
+A touch of haughtiness slipped into her manner as she gently rose to her
+feet. "Thank God, I did not offer her money!" thought the Duke,
+strangely perturbed.
+
+"Julie, dear Julie," implored the Duchess. "It's such a tiny little
+place, and it is quite musty for want of living in. Nobody has set foot
+in it but the caretaker for two years, and it would be really a kindness
+to us to go and live there--wouldn't it, Freddie? And there's all the
+furniture just as it was, down to the bellows and the snuffers. If you'd
+only use it and take care of it; Freddie hasn't liked to sell it,
+because it's all old family stuff, and he was very fond of Cousin Mary
+Leicester. Oh, do say yes, Julie! They shall light the fires, and I'll
+send in a few sheets and things, and you'll feel as though you'd been
+there for years. Do, Julie!"
+
+Julie shook her head.
+
+"I came here," she said, in a voice that was still unsteady, "to ask for
+advice, not favors. But it's very good of you."
+
+And with trembling fingers she began to refasten her veil.
+
+"Julie!--where are you going?" cried the Duchess "You're staying here."
+
+"Staying here?" said Julie, turning round upon her. "Do you think I
+should be a burden upon you, or any one?"
+
+"But, Julie, you told Jacob you would come."
+
+"I have come. I wanted your sympathy, and your counsel. I wished also to
+confess myself to the Duke, and to point out to him how matters could be
+made easier for Lady Henry."
+
+The penitent, yet dignified, sadness of her manner and voice completed
+the discomfiture--the temporary discomfiture--of the Duke.
+
+"Miss Le Breton," he said, abruptly, coming to stand beside her, "I
+remember your mother."
+
+Julie's eyes filled. Her hand still held her veil, but it paused in its
+task.
+
+"I was a small school-boy when she stayed with us," resumed the Duke.
+"She was a beautiful girl. She let me go out hunting with her. She was
+very kind to me, and I thought her a kind of goddess. When I first heard
+her story, years afterwards, it shocked me awfully. For her sake,
+accept my offer. I don't think lightly of such actions as your
+mother's--not at all. But I can't bear to think of her daughter alone
+and friendless in London."
+
+Yet even as he spoke he seemed to be listening to another person. He did
+not himself understand the feelings which animated him, nor the strength
+with which his recollections of Lady Rose had suddenly invaded him.
+
+Julie leaned her arms on the mantel-piece, and hid her face. She had
+turned her back to them, and they saw that she was crying softly.
+
+The Duchess crept up to her and wound her arms round her.
+
+"You will, Julie!--you will! Lady Henry has turned you out-of-doors at a
+moment's notice. And it was a great deal my fault. You _must_ let us
+help you!"
+
+Julie did not answer, but, partially disengaging herself, and without
+looking at him, she held out her hand to the Duke.
+
+He pressed it with a cordiality that amazed him.
+
+"That's right--that's right. Now, Evelyn, I leave you to make the
+arrangements. The keys shall be here this afternoon. Miss Le Breton, of
+course, stays here till things are settled. As for me, I must really be
+off to my meeting. One thing, Miss Le Breton--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I think," he said, gravely, "you ought to reveal yourself to Lord
+Lackington."
+
+She shrank.
+
+"You'll let me take my own time for that?" was her appealing reply.
+
+"Very well--very well. We'll speak of it again."
+
+And he hurried away. As he descended his own stairs astonishment at what
+he had done rushed upon him and overwhelmed him.
+
+"How on earth am I ever to explain the thing to Lady Henry?"
+
+And as he went citywards in his cab, he felt much more guilty than his
+wife had ever done. What _could_ have made him behave in this
+extraordinary, this preposterous way? A touch of foolish
+romance--immoral romance--of which he was already ashamed? Or the one
+bare fact that this woman had refused Jacob Delafield?
+
+
+
+XI
+
+"Here it is," said the Duchess, as the carriage stopped. "Isn't it an
+odd little place?"
+
+And as she and Julie paused on the pavement, Julie looked listlessly at
+her new home. It was a two-storied brick house, built about 1780. The
+front door boasted a pair of Ionian columns and a classical canopy or
+pediment. The windows had still the original small panes; the _mansarde_
+roof, with its one dormer, was untouched. The little house had rather
+deep eaves; three windows above; two, and the front door, below. It wore
+a prim, old-fashioned air, a good deal softened and battered, however,
+by age, and it stood at the corner of two streets, both dingily quiet,
+and destined, no doubt, to be rebuilt before long in the general
+rejuvenation of Mayfair.
+
+As the Duchess had said, it occupied the site of what had once--about
+1740--been the westerly end of a mews belonging to houses in Cureton
+Street, long since pulled down. The space filled by these houses was now
+occupied by one great mansion and its gardens. The rest of the mews had
+been converted into three-story houses of a fair size, looking south,
+with a back road between them and the gardens of Cureton House. But at
+the southwesterly corner of what was now Heribert Street, fronting west
+and quite out of line and keeping with the rest, was this curious little
+place, built probably at a different date and for some special family
+reason. The big planes in the Cureton House gardens came close to it and
+overshadowed it; one side wall of the house, in fact, formed part of the
+wall of the garden.
+
+The Duchess, full of nervousness, ran up the steps, put in the key
+herself, and threw open the door. An elderly Scotchwoman, the caretaker,
+appeared from the back and stood waiting to show them over.
+
+"Oh, Julie, perhaps it's _too_ queer and musty!" cried the Duchess,
+looking round her in some dismay. "I thought, you know, it would be a
+little out-of-the-way and quaint--unlike other people--just what you
+ought to have. But--"
+
+"I think it's delightful," said Julie, standing absently before a case
+of stuffed birds, somewhat moth-eaten, which took up a good deal of
+space in the little hall. "I love stuffed birds."
+
+The Duchess glanced at her uneasily. "What is she thinking about?" she
+wondered. But Julie roused herself.
+
+"Why, it looks as though everything here had gone to sleep for a hundred
+years," she said, gazing in astonishment at the little hall, with its
+old clock, its two or three stiff hunting-pictures, its drab-painted
+walls, its poker-work chest.
+
+And the drawing-room! The caretaker had opened the windows. It was a
+mild March day, and there were misty sun-gleams stealing along the lawns
+of Cureton House. None entered the room itself, for its two
+semi-circular windows looked north over the gardens. Yet it was not
+uncheerful. Its faded curtains of blue rep, its buff walls, on which the
+pictures and miniatures in their tarnished gilt frames were arranged at
+intervals in stiff patterns and groups; the Italian glass, painted with
+dilapidated Cupids, over the mantel-piece; the two or three Sheraton
+arm-chairs and settees, covered with threadbare needle-work from the
+days of "Evelina"; a carpet of old and well-preserved Brussels--blue
+arabesques on a white ground; one or two pieces of old satin-wood
+furniture, very fine and perfect; a heavy centre-table, its cloth
+garnished with some early Victorian wool-work, and a pair of pink glass
+vases; on another small table close by, of a most dainty and
+spindle-legged correctness, a set of Indian chessmen under a glass
+shade; and on another a collection of tiny animals, stags and dogs for
+the most part, deftly "pinched" out of soft paper, also under glass, and
+as perfect as when their slender limbs were first fashioned by Cousin
+Mary Leicester's mother, somewhere about the year that Marie Antoinette
+mounted the scaffold. These various elements, ugly and beautiful,
+combined to make a general effect--clean, fastidious, frugal, and
+refined--that was, in truth, full of a sort of acid charm.
+
+"Oh, I like it! I like it so much!" cried Julie, throwing herself down
+into one of the straight-backed arm-chairs and looking first round the
+walls and then through the windows to the gardens outside.
+
+"My dear," said the Duchess, flitting from one thing to another,
+frowning and a little fussed, "those curtains won't do at all. I must
+send some from home."
+
+"No, no, Evelyn. Not a thing shall be changed. You shall lend it me just
+as it is or not at all. What a character it has! I _taste_ the person
+who lived here."
+
+"Cousin Mary Leicester?" said the Duchess. "Well, she was rather an
+oddity. She was Low Church, like my mother-in-law; but, oh, so much
+nicer! Once I let her come to Grosvenor Square and speak to the servants
+about going to church. The groom of the chambers said she was 'a dear
+old lady, and if she were _his_ cousin he wouldn't mind her being a bit
+touched,' My maid said she had no idea poke-bonnets could be so _sweet_.
+It made her understand what the Queen looked like when she was young.
+And none of them have ever been to church since that I can make out.
+There was one very curious thing about Cousin Mary Leicester," added the
+Duchess, slowly--"she had second sight. She _saw_ her old mother, in
+this room, once or twice, after she had been dead for years. And she saw
+Freddie once, when he was away on a long voyage--"
+
+"Ghosts, too!" said Julie, crossing her hands before her with a little
+shiver--"that completes it."
+
+"Sixty years," said the Duchess, musing. "It was a long time--wasn't
+it?--to live in this little house, and scarcely ever leave it. Oh, she
+had quite a circle of her own. For many years her funny little sister
+lived here, too. And there was a time, Freddie says, when there was
+almost a rivalry between them and two other famous old ladies who lived
+in Bruton Street--what _was_ their name? Oh, the Miss Berrys! Horace
+Walpole's Miss Berrys. All sorts of famous people, I believe, have sat
+in these chairs. But the Miss Berrys won."
+
+"Not in years? Cousin Mary outlived them."
+
+"Ah, but she was dead long before she died," said the Duchess as she
+came to perch on the arm of Julie's chair, and threw her arm round her
+friend's neck. "After her little sister departed this life she became a
+very silent, shrivelled thing--except for her religion--and very few
+people saw her. She took a fancy to me--which was odd, wasn't it, when
+I'm such a worldling?--and she let me come in and out. Every morning she
+read the Psalms and Lessons, with her old maid, who was just her own
+age--in this very chair. And two or three times a month Freddie would
+slip round and read them with her--you know Freddie's very religious.
+And then she'd work at flannel petticoats for the poor, or something of
+that kind, till lunch. Afterwards she'd go and read the Bible to people
+in the workhouse or in hospital. When she came home, the butler brought
+her the _Times_; and sometimes you'd find her by the fire, straining her
+old eyes over 'a little Dante.' And she always dressed for
+dinner--everything was quite smart--and her old butler served her.
+Afterwards her maid played dominoes or spillikins with her--all her life
+she never touched a card--and they read a chapter, and Cousin Mary
+played a hymn on that funny little old piano there in the corner, and at
+ten they all went to bed. Then, one morning, the maid went in to wake
+her, and she saw her dear sharp nose and chin against the light, and her
+hands like that, in front of her--and--well, I suppose, she'd gone to
+play hymns in heaven--dear Cousin Mary! Julie, isn't it strange the kind
+of lives so many of us have to lead? Julie"--the little Duchess laid her
+cheek against her friend's--"do you believe in another life?"
+
+"You forget I'm a Catholic," said Julie, smiling rather doubtfully.
+
+"_Are_ you, Julie? I'd forgotten."
+
+"The good nuns at Bruges took care of that."
+
+"Do you ever go to mass?"
+
+"Sometimes."
+
+"Then you're not a good Catholic, Julie?"
+
+"No," said Julie, after a pause, "not at all. But it sometimes catches
+hold of me."
+
+The old clock in the hall struck. The Duchess sprang up.
+
+"Oh, Julie, I have got to be at Clarisse's by four. I _promised_ her I'd
+go and settle about my Drawing-room dress to-day. Let's see the rest of
+the house."
+
+And they went rapidly through it. All of it was stamped with the same
+character, representing, as it were, the meeting-point between an
+inherited luxury and a personal asceticism. Beautiful chairs, or
+cabinets transported sixty years before from one of the old Crowborough
+houses in the country to this little abode, side by side with things the
+cheapest and the commonest--all that Cousin Mary Leicester could ever
+persuade herself to buy with her own money. For all the latter part of
+her life she had been half a mystic and half a great lady, secretly
+hating the luxury from which she had not the strength to free herself,
+dressing ceremoniously, as the Duchess had said, for a solitary dinner,
+and all the while going in sore remembrance of a Master who "had not
+where to lay his head."
+
+At any rate, there was an ample supply of household stuff for a single
+woman and her maids. In the china cupboard there were still the
+old-fashioned Crown Derby services, the costly cut glass, the Leeds and
+Wedgewood dessert dishes that Cousin Mary Leicester had used for half a
+century. The caretaker produced the keys of the iron-lined plate
+cupboard, and showed its old-world contents, clean and in order.
+
+"Why, Julie! If we'd only ordered the dinner I might have come to dine
+with you to-night!" cried the Duchess, enjoying and peering into
+everything like a child with its doll's house. "And the
+linen--gracious!" as the doors of another cupboard were opened to her.
+"But now I remember, Freddie said nothing was to be touched till he made
+up his mind what to do with the little place. Why, there's everything!"
+
+And they both looked in astonishment at the white, fragrant rows, at the
+worn monogram in the corners of the sheets, at the little bags of
+lavender and pot-pourri ranged along the shelves.
+
+Suddenly Julie turned away and sat down by an open window, carrying her
+eyes far from the house and its stores.
+
+"It is too much, Evelyn," she said, sombrely. "It oppresses me. I don't
+think I can live up to it."
+
+"Julie!" and again the little Duchess came to stand caressingly beside
+her. "Why, you must have sheets--and knives and forks! Why should you
+get ugly new ones, when you can use Cousin Mary's? She would have loved
+you to have them."
+
+"She would have hated me with all her strength," said Miss Le Breton,
+probably with much truth.
+
+The two were silent a little. Through Julie's stormy heart there swept
+longings and bitternesses inexpressible. What did she care for the
+little house and all its luxuries! She was sorry that she had fettered
+herself with it.... Nearly four o'clock in the afternoon, and no
+letter--not a word!
+
+"Julie," said the Duchess, softly, in her ear, "you know you can't live
+here alone. I'm afraid Freddie would make a fuss."
+
+"I've thought of that," said Julie, wearily. "But, shall we really go on
+with it, Evelyn?"
+
+The Duchess looked entreaty. Julie repented, and, drawing her friend
+towards her, rested her head against the chinchilla cloak.
+
+"I'm tired, I suppose," she said, in a low voice. "Don't think me an
+ungrateful wretch. Well, there's my foster-sister and her child."
+
+"Madame Bornier and the little cripple girl?" cried the Duchess.
+"Excellent! Where are they?"
+
+"Léonie is in the French Governesses' Home, as it happens, looking out
+for a situation, and the child is in the Orthopædic Hospital. They've
+been straightening her foot. It's wonderfully better, and she's nearly
+ready to come out."
+
+"Are they nice, Julie?"
+
+"Thérèse is an angel--you must be the one thing or the other,
+apparently, if you're a cripple. And as for Léonie--well, if she comes
+here, nobody need be anxious about my finances. She'd count every crust
+and cinder. We couldn't keep any English servant; but we could get a
+Belgian one."
+
+"But is she nice?" repeated the Duchess.
+
+"I'm used to her," said Julie, in the same inanimate voice.
+
+Suddenly the clock in the hall below struck four.
+
+"Heavens!" cried the Duchess. "You don't know how Clarisse keeps you to
+your time. Shall I go on, and send the carriage back for you?"
+
+"Don't trouble about me. I should like to look round me here a little
+longer."
+
+"You'll remember that some of our fellow-criminals may look in after
+five? Dr. Meredith and Lord Lackington said, as we were getting away
+last night--oh, how that doorstep of Aunt Flora's burned my shoes!--that
+they should come round. And Jacob is coming; he'll stay and dine. And,
+Julie, I've asked Captain Warkworth to dine to-morrow night."
+
+"Have you? That's noble of you--for you don't like him."
+
+"I don't know him!" cried the Duchess, protesting. "If you like him--of
+course it's all right. Was he--was he very agreeable last night?" she
+added, slyly.
+
+"What a word to apply to anybody or anything connected with last night!"
+
+"Are you very sore, Julie?"
+
+"Well, on this very day of being turned out it hurts. I wonder who is
+writing Lady Henry's letters for her this afternoon?"
+
+"I hope they are not getting written," said the Duchess, savagely; "and
+that she's missing you abominably. Good-bye--_au revoir!_ If I am twenty
+minutes late with Clarisse, I sha'n't get any fitting, duchess or
+no duchess."
+
+And the little creature hurried off; not so fast, however, but that she
+found time to leave a number of parting instructions as to the house
+with the Scotch caretaker, on her way to her carriage.
+
+Julie rose and made her way down to the drawing-room again. The
+Scotchwoman saw that she wanted to be alone and left her.
+
+The windows were still open to the garden outside. Julie examined the
+paths, the shrubberies, the great plane-trees; she strained her eyes
+towards the mansion itself. But not much of it could be seen. The little
+house at the corner had been carefully planted out.
+
+What wealth it implied--that space and size, in London! Evidently the
+house was still shut up. The people who owned it were now living the
+same cumbrous, magnificent life in the country which they would soon
+come up to live in the capital. Honors, parks, money, birth--all were
+theirs, as naturally as the sun rose. Julie envied and hated the big
+house and all it stood for; she flung a secret defiance at this coveted
+and elegant Mayfair that lay around her, this heart of all that is
+recognized, accepted, carelessly sovereign in our "materialized"
+upper class.
+
+And yet all the while she knew that it was an unreal and passing
+defiance. She would not be able in truth to free herself from the
+ambition to live and shine in this world of the English rich and well
+born. For, after all, as she told herself with rebellious passion, it
+was or ought to be her world. And yet her whole being was sore from the
+experiences of these three years with Lady Henry--from those, above all,
+of the preceding twenty-four hours. She wove no romance about herself.
+"I should have dismissed myself long ago," she would have said,
+contemptuously, to any one who could have compelled the disclosure of
+her thoughts. But the long and miserable struggle of her self-love with
+Lady Henry's arrogance, of her gifts with her circumstances; the
+presence in this very world, where she had gained so marked a personal
+success, of two clashing estimates of herself, both of which she
+perfectly understood--the one exalting her, the other merely implying
+the cool and secret judgment of persons who see the world as it
+is--these things made a heat and poison in her blood.
+
+She was not good enough, not desirable enough, to be the wife of the man
+she loved. Here was the plain fact that stung and stung.
+
+Jacob Delafield had thought her good enough! She still felt the pressure
+of his warm, strong fingers, the touch of his kiss upon her hand. What a
+paradox was she living in! The Duchess might well ask: why, indeed, had
+she refused Jacob Delafield--that first time? As to the second refusal,
+that needed no explanation, at least for herself. When, upon that winter
+day, now some six weeks past, which had beheld Lady Henry more than
+commonly tyrannical, and her companion more than commonly weary and
+rebellious, Delafield's stammered words--as he and she were crossing
+Grosvenor Square in the January dusk--had struck for the second time
+upon her ear, she was already under Warkworth's charm. But before--the
+first time? She had come to Lady Henry firmly determined to marry as
+soon and as well as she could--to throw off the slur on her life--to
+regularize her name and place in the world. And then the possible heir
+of the Chudleighs proposes to her--and she rejects him!
+
+It was sometimes difficult for her now to remember all the whys and
+wherefores of this strange action of which she was secretly so proud.
+But the explanation was in truth not far from that she had given to the
+Duchess. The wild strength in her own nature had divined and shrunk from
+a similar strength in Delafield's. Here, indeed, one came upon the fact
+which forever differentiated her from the adventuress, had Sir Wilfrid
+known. She wanted money and name; there were days when she hungered for
+them. But she would not give too reckless a price for them. She was a
+personality, a soul--not a vulgar woman--not merely callous or greedy.
+She dreaded to be miserable; she had a thirst for happiness, and the
+heart was, after all, stronger than the head.
+
+Jacob Delafield? No! Her being contracted and shivered at the thought of
+him. A will tardily developed, if all accounts of his school and college
+days were true, but now, as she believed, invincible; a mystic; an
+ascetic; a man under whose modest or careless or self-mocking ways she,
+with her eye for character, divined the most critical instincts, and a
+veracity, iron, scarcely human--a man before whom one must be always
+posing at one's best--that was a personal risk too great to take for a
+Julie Le Breton.
+
+Unless, indeed, if it came to this--that one must think no more of
+love--but only of power--why, then--
+
+A ring at the door, resounding through the quiet side street. After a
+minute the Scotchwoman opened the drawing-room door.
+
+"Please, miss, is this meant for you?"
+
+Julie took the letter in astonishment. Then through the door she saw a
+man standing in the hall and recognized Captain Warkworth's
+Indian servant.
+
+"I don't understand him," said the Scotchwoman, shaking her head.
+
+Julie went out to speak with him. The man had been sent to Crowborough
+House with instructions to inquire for Miss Le Breton and deliver his
+note. The groom of the chambers, misinterpreting the man's queer
+English, and thinking the matter urgent--the note was marked
+"immediate"--had sent him after the ladies to Heribert Street.
+
+The man was soon feed and dismissed, and Miss Le Breton took the letter
+back to the drawing-room.
+
+So, after all, he had not failed; there on her lap was her daily letter.
+Outside the scanty March sun, now just setting, was touching the garden
+with gold. Had it also found its way into Julie's eyes?
+
+Now for his explanation:
+
+     "First, how and where are you? I called in Bruton Street at
+     noon. Hutton told me you had just gone to Crowborough House.
+     Kind--no, wise little Duchess! She honors herself in
+     sheltering you.
+
+     "I could not write last night--I was too uncertain, too
+     anxious. All I said might have jarred. This morning came your
+     note, about eleven. It was angelic to think so kindly and
+     thoughtfully of a friend--angelic to write such a letter at
+     such a time. You announced your flight to Crowborough House,
+     but did not say when, so I crept to Bruton Street, seeing
+     Lady Henry in every lamp-post, got a few clandestine words
+     with Hutton, and knew, at least, what had happened to
+     you--outwardly and visibly.
+
+     "Last night did you think me a poltroon to vanish as I did?
+     It was the impulse of a moment. Mr. Montresor had pulled me
+     into a corner of the room, away from the rest of the party,
+     nominally to look at a picture, really that I might answer a
+     confidential question he had just put to me with regard to a
+     disputed incident in the Afridi campaign. We were in the dark
+     and partly behind a screen. Then the door opened. I confess
+     the sight of Lady Henry paralyzed me. A great, murderous,
+     six-foot Afridi--that would have been simple enough. But a
+     woman--old and ill and furious--with that Medusa's face--no!
+     My nerves suddenly failed me. What right had I in her house,
+     after all? As she advanced into the room, I slipped out
+     behind her. General Fergus and M. du Bartas joined me in the
+     hall. We walked to Bond Street together. They were divided
+     between laughter and vexation. I should have laughed--if I
+     could have forgotten you.
+
+     "But what could I have done for you, dear lady, if I had
+     stayed out the storm? I left you with three or four devoted
+     adherents, who had, moreover, the advantage over me of either
+     relationship or old acquaintance with Lady Henry. Compared to
+     them, I could have done nothing to shield you. Was it not
+     best to withdraw? Yet all the way home I accused myself
+     bitterly. Nor did I feel, when I reached home, that one who
+     had not grasped your hand under fire had any right to rest or
+     sleep. But anxiety for you, regrets for myself, took care of
+     that; I got my deserts.
+
+     "After all, when the pricks and pains of this great wrench
+     are over, shall we not all acknowledge that it is best the
+     crash should have come? You have suffered and borne too much.
+     Now we shall see you expand in a freer and happier life. The
+     Duchess has asked me to dinner to-morrow--the note has just
+     arrived--so that I shall soon have the chance of hearing from
+     you some of those details I so much want to know. But before
+     then you will write?
+
+     "As for me, I am full of alternate hopes and fears. General
+     Fergus, as we walked home, was rather silent and bearish--I
+     could not flatter myself that he had any friendly intentions
+     towards me in his mind. But Montresor was more than kind, and
+     gave me some fresh opportunities of which I was very glad to
+     avail myself. Well, we shall know soon.
+
+     "You told me once that if, or when, this happened, you would
+     turn to your pen, and that Dr. Meredith would find you
+     openings. That is not to be regretted, I think. You have
+     great gifts, which will bring you pleasure in the using. I
+     have got a good deal of pleasure out of my small ones. Did
+     you know that once, long ago, when I was stationed at
+     Gibraltar, I wrote a military novel?
+
+     "No, I don't pity you because you will need to turn your
+     intellect to account. You will be free, and mistress of your
+     fate. That, for those who, like you and me, are the 'children
+     of their works,' as the Spaniards say, is much.
+
+     "Dear friend--kind, persecuted friend!--I thought of you in
+     the watches of the night--I think of you this morning. Let me
+     soon have news of you."
+
+Julie put the letter down upon her knee. Her face stiffened. Nothing
+that she had ever received from him yet had rung so false.
+
+Grief? Complaint? No! Just a calm grasp of the game--a quick playing of
+the pieces--so long as the game was there to play. If he was appointed
+to this mission, in two or three weeks he would be gone--to the heart of
+Africa. If not--
+
+Anyway, two or three weeks were hers. Her mind seemed to settle and
+steady itself.
+
+She got up and went once more carefully through the house, giving her
+attention to it. Yes, the whole had character and a kind of charm. The
+little place would make, no doubt, an interesting and distinguished
+background for the life she meant to put into it. She would move in at
+once--in three days at most. Ways and means were for the moment not
+difficult. During her life with Lady Henry she had saved the whole of
+her own small _rentes_. Three hundred pounds lay ready to her hand in
+an investment easily realized. And she would begin to earn at once.
+
+Thérèse--that should be her room--the cheerful, blue-papered room with
+the south window. Julie felt a strange rush of feeling as she thought of
+it. How curious that these two--Léonie and little Thérèse--should be
+thus brought back into her life! For she had no doubt whatever that they
+would accept with eagerness what she had to offer. Her foster-sister had
+married a school-master in one of the Communal schools of Bruges while
+Julie was still a girl at the convent. Léonie's lame child had been much
+with her grandmother, old Madame Le Breton. To Julie she had been at
+first unwelcome and repugnant. Then some quality in the frail creature
+had unlocked the girl's sealed and often sullen heart.
+
+While she had been living with Lady Henry, these two, the mother and
+child, had been also in London; the mother, now a widow, earning her
+bread as an inferior kind of French governess, the child boarded out
+with various persons, and generally for long periods of the year in
+hospital or convalescent home. To visit her in her white hospital
+bed--to bring her toys and flowers, or merely kisses and chat--had been,
+during these years, the only work of charity on Julie's part which had
+been wholly secret, disinterested, and constant.
+
+
+
+XII
+
+It was a somewhat depressed company that found its straggling way into
+the Duchess's drawing-room that evening between tea and dinner.
+
+Miss Le Breton did not appear at tea. The Duchess believed that, after
+her inspection of the house in Heribert Street, Julie had gone on to
+Bloomsbury to find Madame Bornier. Jacob Delafield was there, not much
+inclined to talk, even as Julie's champion. And, one by one, Lady
+Henry's oldest _habitués_, the "criminals" of the night before,
+dropped in.
+
+Dr. Meredith arrived with a portfolio containing what seemed to be
+proof-sheets.
+
+"Miss Le Breton not here?" he said, as he looked round him.
+
+The Duchess explained that she might be in presently. The great man sat
+down, his portfolio carefully placed beside him, and drank his tea under
+what seemed a cloud of preoccupation.
+
+Then appeared Lord Lackington and Sir Wilfrid Bury. Montresor had sent a
+note from the House to say that if the debate would let him he would
+dash up to Grosvenor Square for some dinner, but could only stay
+an hour.
+
+"Well, here we are again--the worst of us!" said the Duchess, presently,
+with a sigh of bravado, as she handed Lord Lackington his cup of tea
+and sank back in her chair to enjoy her own.
+
+"Speak for yourselves, please," said Sir Wilfrid's soft, smiling voice,
+as he daintily relieved his mustache of some of the Duchess's cream.
+
+"Oh, that's all very well," said the Duchess, throwing up a hand in mock
+annoyance; "but why weren't you there?"
+
+"I knew better."
+
+"The people who keep out of scrapes are not the people one loves," was
+the Duchess's peevish reply.
+
+"Let him alone," said Lord Lackington, coming for some more tea-cake.
+"He will get his deserts. Next Wednesday he will be _tête-à-tête_ with
+Lady Henry."
+
+"Lady Henry is going to Torquay to-morrow," said Sir Wilfrid, quietly.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+There was a general chorus of interrogation, amid which the Duchess made
+herself heard.
+
+"Then you've seen her?"
+
+"To-day, for twenty minutes--all she was able to bear. She was ill
+yesterday. She is naturally worse to-day. As to her state of mind--"
+
+The circle of faces drew eagerly nearer.
+
+"Oh, it's war," said Sir Wilfrid, nodding--"undoubtedly war--upon the
+Cave--if there is a Cave."
+
+"Well, poor things, we must have something to shelter us!" cried the
+Duchess. "The Cave is being aired to-day."
+
+The interrogating faces turned her way. The Duchess explained the
+situation, and drew the house in Heribert Street--with its Cyclops-eye
+of a dormer window, and its Ionian columns--on the tea-cloth with
+her nail.
+
+"Ah," said Sir Wilfrid, crossing his knees reflectively. "Ah, that makes
+it serious."
+
+"Julie must have a place to live in," said the Duchess, stiffly.
+
+"I suppose Lady Henry would reply that there are still a few houses in
+London which do not belong to her kinsman, the Duke of Crowborough."
+
+"Not perhaps to be had for the lending, and ready to step into at a
+day's notice," said Lord Lackington, with his queer smile, like the play
+of sharp sunbeams through a mist. "That's the worst of our class. The
+margin between us and calamity is too wide. We risk too little. Nobody
+goes to the workhouse."
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked at him curiously. "Do I catch your meaning?" he said,
+dropping his voice; "is it that if there had been no Duchess, and no
+Heribert Street, Miss Le Breton would have managed to put up with
+Lady Henry?"
+
+Lord Lackington smiled again. "I think it probable.... As it is,
+however, we are all the gainers. We shall now see Miss Julie at her ease
+and ours."
+
+"You have been for some time acquainted with Miss Le Breton?"
+
+"Oh, some time. I don't exactly remember. Lady Henry, of course, is an
+old friend of mine, as she is of yours. Sometimes she is rude to me.
+Then I stay away. But I always go back. She and I can discuss things and
+people that nobody else recollects--no, as far as that's concerned,
+you're not in it, Bury. Only this winter, somehow, I have often gone
+round to see Lady Henry, and have found Miss Le Breton instead so
+attractive--"
+
+"Precisely," said Sir Wilfrid, laughing; "the whole case in a nutshell."
+
+"What puzzles me," continued his companion, in a musing voice, "is how
+she can be so English as she is--with her foreign bringing up. She has a
+most extraordinary instinct for people--people in London--and their
+relations. I have never known her make a mistake. Yet it is only five
+years since she began to come to England at all; and she has lived but
+three with Lady Henry. It was clear, I thought, that neither she nor
+Lady Henry wished to be questioned. But, do you, for instance--I have no
+doubt Lady Henry tells you more than she tells me--do you know anything
+of Mademoiselle Julie's antecedents?"
+
+Sir Wilfrid started. Through his mind ran the same reflection as that to
+which the Duke had given expression in the morning--"_she ought to
+reveal herself!_" Julie Le Breton had no right to leave this old man in
+his ignorance, while those surrounding him were in the secret. Thereby
+she made a spectacle of her mother's father--made herself and him the
+sport of curious eyes. For who could help watching them--every movement,
+every word? There was a kind of indelicacy in it.
+
+His reply was rather hesitating. "Yes, I happen to know something. But I
+feel sure Miss Le Breton would prefer to tell you herself. Ask her.
+While she was with Lady Henry there were reasons for silence--"
+
+"But, of course, I'll ask her," said his companion, eagerly, "if you
+suppose that I may. A more hungry curiosity was never raised in a human
+breast than in mine with regard to this dear lady. So charming,
+handsome, and well bred--and so forlorn! That's the paradox of it. The
+personality presupposes a _milieu_--else how produce it? And there is no
+_milieu_, save this little circle she has made for herself through Lady
+Henry.... Ah, and you think I may ask her? I will--that's flat--I will!"
+
+And the old man gleefully rubbed his hands, face and form full of the
+vivacity of his imperishable youth.
+
+"Choose your time and place," said Sir Wilfrid, hastily. "There are very
+sad and tragic circumstances--"
+
+Lord Lackington looked at him and nodded gayly, as much as to say, "You
+distrust me with the sex? Me, who have had the whip-hand of them since
+my cradle!"
+
+Suddenly the Duchess interrupted. "Sir Wilfrid, you have seen Lady
+Henry; which did she mind most--the coming-in or the coffee?"
+
+Bury returned, smiling, to the tea-table.
+
+"The coming-in would have been nothing if it had led quickly to the
+going-out. It was the coffee that ruined you."
+
+"I see," said the Duchess, pouting--"it meant that it was possible for
+us to enjoy ourselves without Lady Henry. That was the offence."
+
+"Precisely. It showed that you _were_ enjoying yourselves. Otherwise
+there would have been no lingering, and no coffee."
+
+"I never knew coffee so fatal before," sighed the Duchess. "And now"--it
+was evident that she shrank from the answer to her own question--"she is
+really irreconcilable?"
+
+"Absolutely. Let me beg you to take it for granted."
+
+"She won't see any of us--not me?"
+
+Sir Wilfrid hesitated.
+
+"Make the Duke your ambassador."
+
+The Duchess laughed, and flushed a little.
+
+"And Mr. Montresor?"
+
+"Ah," said Sir Wilfrid in another tone, "that's not to be lightly spoken
+of."
+
+"You don't mean--"
+
+"How many years has that lasted?" said Sir Wilfrid, meditatively.
+
+"Thirty, I think--if not more. It was Lady Henry who told him of his
+son's death, when his wife daren't do it."
+
+There was a silence. Montresor had lost his only son, a subaltern in the
+Lancers, in the action of Alumbagh, on the way to the relief of Lucknow.
+
+Then the Duchess broke out:
+
+"I know that you think in your heart of hearts that Julie has been in
+fault, and that we have all behaved abominably!"
+
+"My dear lady," said Sir Wilfrid, after a moment, "in Persia we believe
+in fate; I have brought the trick home."
+
+"Yes, yes, that's it!" exclaimed Lord Lackington--it! When Lady Henry
+wanted a companion--and fate brought her Miss Le Breton--"
+
+"Last night's coffee was already drunk," put in Sir Wilfrid.
+
+Meredith's voice, raised and a trifle harsh, made itself heard.
+
+"Why you should dignify an ugly jealousy by fine words I don't know. For
+some women--women like our old friend--gratitude is hard. That is the
+moral of this tale."
+
+"The only one?" said Sir Wilfrid, not without a mocking twist of the
+lip.
+
+"The only one that matters. Lady Henry had found, or might have found, a
+daughter--"
+
+"I understand she bargained for a companion."
+
+"Very well. Then she stands upon her foolish rights, and loses both
+daughter and companion. At seventy, life doesn't forgive you a blunder
+of that kind."
+
+Sir Wilfrid silently shook his head. Meredith threw back his blanched
+mane of hair, his deep eyes kindling under the implied contradiction.
+
+"I am an old comrade of Lady Henry's," he said, quickly. "My record,
+you'll find, comes next to yours, Bury. But if Lady Henry is determined
+to make a quarrel of this, she must make it. I regret nothing."
+
+"What madness has seized upon all these people?" thought Bury, as he
+withdrew from the discussion. The fire, the unwonted fire, in Meredith's
+speech and aspect, amazed him. From the corner to which he had retreated
+he studied the face of the journalist. It was a face subtly and strongly
+lined by much living--of the intellectual, however, rather than the
+physical sort; breathing now a studious dignity, the effect of the broad
+sweep of brow under the high-peaked lines of grizzled hair, and now
+broken, tempestuous, scornful, changing with the pliancy of an actor.
+The head was sunk a little in the shoulders, as though dragged back by
+its own weight. The form which it commanded had the movements of a man
+no less accustomed to rule in his own sphere than Montresor himself.
+
+To Sir Wilfrid the famous editor was still personally mysterious, after
+many years of intermittent acquaintance. He was apparently unmarried; or
+was there perhaps a wife, picked up in a previous state of existence,
+and hidden away with her offspring at Clapham or Hornsey or Peckham?
+Bury could remember, years before, a dowdy old sister, to whom Lady
+Henry had been on occasion formally polite. Otherwise, nothing. What
+were the great man's origins and antecedents--his family, school,
+university? Sir Wilfrid did not know; he did not believe that any one
+knew. An amazing mastery of the German, and, it was said, the Russian
+tongues, suggested a foreign education; but neither on this ground nor
+any other connected with his personal history did Meredith encourage the
+inquirer. It was often reported that he was of Jewish descent, and there
+were certain traits, both of feature and character, that lent support to
+the notion. If so, the strain was that of Heine or Disraeli, not the
+strain of Commerce.
+
+At any rate, he was one of the most powerful men of his day--the owner,
+through _The New Rambler_, of an influence which now for some fifteen
+years had ranked among the forces to be reckoned with. A man in whom
+politics assumed a tinge of sombre poetry; a man of hatreds, ideals,
+indignations, yet of habitually sober speech. As to passions, Sir
+Wilfrid could have sworn that, wife or no wife, the man who could show
+that significance of mouth and eye had not gone through life without
+knowing the stress and shock of them.
+
+Was he, too, beguiled by this woman?--_he, too?_ For a little behind
+him, beside the Duchess, sat Jacob Delafield; and, during his painful
+interview that day with Lady Henry, Sir Wilfrid had been informed of
+several things with regard to Jacob Delafield he had not known before.
+So she had refused him--this lady who was now the heart of this
+whirlwind? Permanently? Lady Henry had poured scorn on the notion. She
+was merely sure of him; could keep him in a string to play with as she
+chose. Meanwhile the handsome soldier was metal more attractive. Sir
+Wilfrid reflected, with an inward shrug, that, once let a woman give
+herself to such a fury as possessed Lady Henry, and there did not seem
+to be much to choose between her imaginings and those of the most vulgar
+of her sex.
+
+So Jacob could be played with--whistled on and whistled off as Miss Le
+Breton chose? Yet his was not a face that suggested it, any more than
+the face of Dr. Meredith. The young man's countenance was gradually
+changing its aspect for Sir Wilfrid, in a somewhat singular way, as old
+impressions of his character died away and new ones emerged. The face,
+now, often recalled to Bury a portrait by some Holbeinesque master,
+which he had seen once in the Basle Museum and never forgotten. A large,
+thin-lipped mouth that, without weakness, suggested patience; the long
+chin of a man of will; nose, bluntly cut at the tip, yet in the nostril
+and bridge most delicate; grayish eyes, with a veil of reverie drawn, as
+it were, momentarily across them, and showing behind the veil a kind of
+stern sweetness; fair hair low on the brow, which was heavy, and made a
+massive shelter for the eyes. So looked the young German who had perhaps
+heard Melanchthon; so, in this middle nineteenth century, looked Jacob
+Delafield. No, anger makes obtuse; that, no doubt, was Lady Henry's
+case. At any rate, in Delafield's presence her theory did not
+commend itself.
+
+But if Delafield had not echoed them, the little Duchess had received
+Meredith's remarks with enthusiasm.
+
+"Regret! No, indeed! Why should we regret anything, except that Julie
+has been miserable so long? She _has_ had a bad time. Every day and all
+day. Ah, you don't know--none of you. You haven't seen all the little
+things as I have."
+
+"The errands, and the dogs," said Sir William, slyly.
+
+The Duchess threw him a glance half conscious, half resentful, and went
+on:
+
+"It has been one small torture after another. Even when a person's old
+you can't bear more than a certain amount, can you? You oughtn't to. No,
+let's be thankful it's all over, and Julie--our dear, delightful
+Julie--who has done everybody in this room all sorts of kindnesses,
+hasn't she?"
+
+An assenting murmur ran round the circle.
+
+"Julie's _free_! Only she's _very_ lonely. We must see to that, mustn't
+we? Lady Henry can buy another companion to-morrow--she will. She has
+heaps of money and heaps of friends, and she'll tell her own story to
+them all. But Julie has only us. If we desert her--"
+
+"Desert her!" said a voice in the distance, half amused, half
+electrical. Bury thought it was Jacob's.
+
+"Of course we sha'n't desert her!" cried the Duchess. "We shall rally
+round her and carry her through. If Lady Henry makes herself
+disagreeable, then we'll fight. If not, we'll let her cool down. Oh,
+Julie, darling--here you are!"
+
+The Duchess sprang up and caught her entering friend by the hand.
+
+"And here are we," with a wave round the circle. "This is your
+court--your St. Germain."
+
+"So you mean me to die in exile," said Julie, with a quavering smile, as
+she drew off her gloves. Then she looked at her friends. "Oh, how good
+of you all to come! Lord Lackington!" She went up to him impetuously,
+and he, taken by surprise, yielded his hands, which she took in both
+hers. "It was foolish, I know, but you don't think it was so _bad_,
+do you?"
+
+She gazed up at him wistfully. Her lithe form seemed almost to cling to
+the old man. Instinctively, Jacob, Meredith, Sir Wilfrid Bury withdrew
+their eyes. The room held its breath. As for Lord Lackington, he colored
+like a girl.
+
+"No, no; a mistake, perhaps, for all of us; but more ours than yours,
+mademoiselle--much more! Don't fret. Indeed, you look as if you hadn't
+slept, and that mustn't be. You must think that, sooner or later, it was
+bound to come. Lady Henry will soften in time, and you will know so well
+how to meet her. But now we have your future to think of. Only sit down.
+You mustn't look so tired. Where have you been wandering?"
+
+And with a stately courtesy, her hand still in his, he took her to a
+chair and helped her to remove her heavy cloak.
+
+"My future!" She shivered as she dropped into her seat.
+
+How weary and beaten-down she looked--the heroine of such a turmoil! Her
+eyes travelled from face to face, shrinking--unconsciously appealing. In
+the dim, soft color of the room, her white face and hands, striking
+against her black dress, were strangely living and significant. They
+spoke command--through weakness, through sex. For that, in spite of
+intellectual distinction, was, after all, her secret. She breathed
+femininity--the old common spell upon the blood.
+
+"I don't know why you're all so kind to me," she murmured. "Let me
+disappear. I can go into the country and earn my living there. Then I
+shall be no more trouble."
+
+Unseen himself, Sir Wilfrid surveyed her. He thought her a consummate
+actress, and revelled in each new phase.
+
+The Duchess, half laughing, half crying, began to scold her friend.
+Delafield bent over Julie Le Breton's chair.
+
+"Have you had some tea?"
+
+The smile in his eyes provoked a faint answer in hers. While she was
+declaring that she was in no need whatever of physical sustenance,
+Meredith advanced with his portfolio. He looked the editor merely, and
+spoke with a business-like brevity.
+
+"I have brought the sheets of the new Shelley book, Miss Le Breton. It
+is due for publication on the 22d. Kindly let me have your review within
+a week. It may run to two columns--possibly even two and a half. You
+will find here also the particulars of one or two other things--let me
+know, please, what you will undertake."
+
+Julie put out a languid hand for the portfolio.
+
+"I don't think you ought to trust me."
+
+"What do you want of her?" said Lord Lackington, briskly. "'Chatter
+about Harriet?' I could write you reams of that myself. I once saw
+Harriet."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Meredith, with whom the Shelley cult was a deep-rooted passion, started
+and looked round; then sharply repressed the eagerness on his tongue and
+sat down by Miss Le Breton, with whom, in a lowered voice, he began to
+discuss the points to be noticed in the sheets handed over to her. No
+stronger proof could he have given of his devotion to her. Julie knew
+it, and, rousing herself, she met him with a soft attention and
+docility; thus tacitly relinquishing, as Bury noticed with amusement,
+all talk of "disappearance."
+
+Only with himself, he suspected, was the fair lady ill at ease. And,
+indeed, it was so. Julie, by her pallor, her humility, had thrown
+herself, as it were, into the arms of her friends, and each was now
+vying with the other as to how best to cheer and console her. Meanwhile
+her attention was really bent upon her critic--her only critic in this
+assembly; and he discovered various attempts to draw him into
+conversation. And when Lord Lackington, discomfited by Meredith, had
+finished discharging his literary recollections upon him, Sir Wilfrid
+became complaisant; Julie slipped in and held him.
+
+Leaning her chin on both hands, she bent towards him, fixing him with
+her eyes. And in spite of his antagonism he no longer felt himself
+strong enough to deny that the eyes were beautiful, especially with this
+tragic note in them of fatigue and pain.
+
+"Sir Wilfrid"--she spoke in low entreaty--"you _must_ help me to prevent
+any breach between Lady Henry and Mr. Montresor."
+
+He looked at her gayly.
+
+"I fear," he said, "you are too late. That point is settled, as I
+understand from herself."
+
+"Surely not--so soon!"
+
+"There was an exchange of letters this morning."
+
+"Oh, but you can prevent it--you must!" She clasped her hands.
+
+"No," he said, slowly, "I fear you must accept it. Their relation was a
+matter of old habit. Like other things old and frail, it bears shock and
+disturbance badly."
+
+She sank back in her chair, raising her hands and letting them fall with
+a gesture of despair.
+
+One little stroke of punishment--just one! Surely there was no cruelty
+in that. Sir Wilfrid caught the Horatian lines dancing through his head:
+
+     "Just oblige me and touch
+       With your wand that minx Chloe--
+     But don't hurt her much!"
+
+Yet here was Jacob interposing!--Jacob, who had evidently been watching
+his mild attempt at castigation, no doubt with disapproval. Lover or no
+lover--what did the man expect? Under his placid exterior, Sir Wilfrid's
+mind was, in truth, hot with sympathy for the old and helpless.
+
+Delafield bent over Miss Le Breton.
+
+"You will go and rest? Evelyn advises it."
+
+She rose to her feet, and most of the party rose, too.
+
+"Good-bye--good-bye," said Lord Lackington, offering her a cordial hand.
+"Rest and forget. Everything blows over. And at Easter you must come to
+me in the country. Blanche will be with me, and my granddaughter
+Aileen, if I can tempt them away from Italy. Aileen's a little fairy;
+you'd be charmed with her. Now mind, that's a promise. You must
+certainly come."
+
+The Duchess had paused in her farewell nothings with Sir Wilfrid to
+observe her friend. Julie, with her eyes on the ground, murmured thanks;
+and Lord Lackington, straight as a dart to-night, carrying his
+seventy-five years as though they were the merest trifle, made a stately
+and smiling exit. Julie looked round upon the faces left. In her own
+heart she read the same judgment as in their eyes: "_The old man
+must know!_"
+
+The Duke came into the drawing-room half an hour later in quest of his
+wife. He was about to leave town by a night train for the north, and his
+temper was, apparently, far from good.
+
+The Duchess was stretched on the sofa in the firelight, her hands behind
+her head, dreaming. Whether it was the sight of so much ease that jarred
+on the Duke's ruffled nerves or no, certain it is that he inflicted a
+thorny good-bye. He had seen Lady Henry, he said, and the reality was
+even worse than he had supposed. There was absolutely nothing to be said
+for Miss Le Breton, and he was ashamed of himself to have been so weakly
+talked over in the matter of the house. His word once given, of course,
+there was an end of it--for six months. After that, Miss Le Breton must
+provide for herself. Meanwhile, Lady Henry refused to receive the
+Duchess, and would be some time before she forgave himself. It was all
+most annoying, and he was thankful to be going away, for, Lady Rose or
+no Lady Rose, he really could not have entertained the lady with
+civility.
+
+"Oh, well, never mind, Freddie," said the Duchess, springing up. "She'll
+be gone before you come back, and I'll look after her."
+
+The Duke offered a rather sulky embrace, walked to the door, and came
+back.
+
+"I really very much dislike this kind of gossip," he said, stiffly, "but
+perhaps I had better say that Lady Henry believes that the affair with
+Delafield was only one of several. She talks of a certain Captain
+Warkworth--"
+
+"Yes," said the Duchess, nodding. "I know; but he sha'n't have Julie."
+
+Her smile completed the Duke's annoyance.
+
+"What have you to do with it? I beg, Evelyn--I insist--that you leave
+Miss Le Breton's love affairs alone."
+
+"You forget, Freddie, that she is my _friend_."
+
+The little creature fronted him, all wilfulness and breathing hard, her
+small hands clasped on her breast.
+
+With an angry exclamation the Duke departed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At half-past eight a hansom dashed up to Crowborough House. Montresor
+emerged.
+
+He found the two ladies and Jacob Delafield just beginning dinner, and
+stayed with them an hour; but it was not an hour of pleasure. The great
+man was tired with work and debate, depressed also by the quarrel with
+his old friend. Julie did not dare to put questions, and guiltily shrank
+into herself. She divined that a great price was being paid on her
+behalf, and must needs bitterly ask whether anything that she could
+offer or plead was worth it--bitterly suspect, also, that the query had
+passed through other minds than her own.
+
+After dinner, as Montresor rose with the Duchess to take his leave,
+Julie got a word with him in the corridor.
+
+"You will give me ten minutes' talk?" she said, lifting her pale face to
+him. "You mustn't, mustn't quarrel with Lady Henry because of me."
+
+He drew himself up, perhaps with a touch of haughtiness.
+
+"Lady Henry could end it in a moment. Don't, I beg of you, trouble your
+head about the matter. Even as an old friend, one must be allowed one's
+self-respect."
+
+"But mayn't I--"
+
+"Nearly ten o'clock!" he cried, looking at his watch. "I must be off
+this moment. So you are going to the house in Heribert Street? I
+remember Lady Mary Leicester perfectly. As soon as you are settled, tell
+me, and I will present myself. Meanwhile "--he smiled and bent his black
+head towards her--"look in to-morrow's papers for some interesting
+news."
+
+He sprang into his hansom and was gone.
+
+Julie went slowly up-stairs. Of course she understood. The long intrigue
+had reached its goal, and within twelve hours the _Times_ would announce
+the appointment of Captain Warkworth, D.S.O., to the command of the
+Mokembe military mission. He would have obtained his heart's
+desire--through her.
+
+How true were those last words, perhaps only Julie knew. She looked back
+upon all the manoeuvres and influences she had brought to bear--flattery
+here, interest or reciprocity there, the lures of Crowborough House, the
+prestige of Lady Henry's drawing-room. Wheel by wheel she had built up
+her cunning machine, and the machine had worked. No doubt the last
+completing touch had been given the night before. Her culminating
+offence against Lady Henry--the occasion of her disgrace and
+banishment--had been to Warkworth the stepping-stone of fortune.
+
+What "gossamer girl" could have done so much? She threw back her head
+proudly and heard the beating of her heart.
+
+Lady Henry was fiercely forgotten. She opened the drawing-room door,
+absorbed in a counting of the hours till she and Warkworth should meet.
+
+Then, amid the lights and shadows of the Duchess's drawing-room, Jacob
+Delafield rose and came towards her. Her exaltation dropped in a moment.
+Some testing, penetrating influence seemed to breathe from this man,
+which filled her with a moral discomfort, a curious restlessness. Did he
+guess the nature of her feeling for Warkworth? Was he acquainted with
+the efforts she had been making for the young soldier? She could not be
+sure; he had never given her the smallest sign. Yet she divined that few
+things escaped him where the persons who touched his feelings were
+concerned. And Evelyn--the dear chatterbox--certainly suspected.
+
+"How tired you are!" he said to her, gently. "What a day it has been for
+you! Evelyn is writing letters. Let me bring you the papers--and please
+don't talk."
+
+She submitted to a sofa, to an adjusted light, to the papers on her
+knee. Then Delafield withdrew and took up a book.
+
+She could not rest, however; visions of the morrow and of Warkworth's
+triumphant looks kept flashing through her. Yet all the while
+Delafield's presence haunted her--she could not forget him, and
+presently she addressed him.
+
+"Mr. Delafield!"
+
+He heard the low voice and came.
+
+"I have never thanked you for your goodness last night. I do thank you
+now--most earnestly."
+
+"You needn't. You know very well what I would do to serve you if I
+could."
+
+"Even when you think me in the wrong?" said Julie, with a little,
+hysterical laugh.
+
+Her conscience smote her. Why provoke this intimate talk--wantonly--with
+the man she had made suffer? Yet her restlessness, which was partly
+nervous fatigue, drove her on.
+
+Delafield flushed at her words.
+
+"How have I given you cause to say that?"
+
+"Oh, you are very transparent. One sees that you are always troubling
+yourself about the right and wrong of things."
+
+"All very well for one's self," said Delafield, trying to laugh. "I hope
+I don't seem to you to be setting up as a judge of other people's right
+and wrong?"
+
+"Yes, yes, you do!" she said, passionately. Then, as he winced, "No, I
+don't mean that. But you do judge--it is in your nature--and other
+people feel it."
+
+"I didn't know I was such a prig," said Delafield, humbly. "It is true I
+am always puzzling over things."
+
+Julie was silent. She was indeed secretly convinced that he no more
+approved the escapade of the night before than did Sir Wilfrid Bury.
+Through the whole evening she had been conscious of a watchful anxiety
+and resistance on his part. Yet he had stood by her to the end--so
+warmly, so faithfully.
+
+He sat down beside her, and Julie felt a fresh pang of remorse, perhaps
+of alarm. Why had she called him to her? What had they to do with each
+other? But he soon reassured her. He began to talk of Meredith, and the
+work before her--the important and glorious work, as he naïvely termed
+it, of the writer.
+
+And presently he turned upon her with sudden feeling.
+
+"You accused me, just now, of judging what I have no business to judge.
+If you think that I regret the severance of your relation with Lady
+Henry, you are quite, quite mistaken. It has been the dream of my life
+this last year to see you free--mistress of your own life. It--it made
+me mad that you should be ordered about like a child--dependent upon
+another person's will."
+
+She looked at him curiously.
+
+"I know. That revolts you always--any form of command? Evelyn tells me
+that you carry it to curious lengths with your servants and laborers."
+
+He drew back, evidently disconcerted.
+
+"Oh, I try some experiments. They generally break down."
+
+"You try to do without servants, Evelyn says, as much as possible."
+
+"Well, if I do try, I don't succeed," he said, laughing. "But"--his eyes
+kindled--"isn't it worth while, during a bit of one's life, to escape,
+if one can, from some of the paraphernalia in which we are all
+smothered? Look there! What right have I to turn my fellow-creatures
+into bedizened automata like that?"
+
+And he threw out an accusing hand towards the two powdered footmen, who
+were removing the coffee-cups and making up the fire in the next room,
+while the magnificent groom of the chambers stood like a statue,
+receiving some orders from the Duchess.
+
+Julie, however, showed no sympathy.
+
+"They are only automata in the drawing-room. Down-stairs they are as
+much alive as you or I."
+
+"Well, let us put it that I prefer other kinds of luxury," said
+Delafield. "However, as I appear to have none of the qualities necessary
+to carry out my notions, they don't get very far."
+
+"You would like to shake hands with the butler?" said Julie, musing. "I
+knew a case of that kind. But the butler gave warning."
+
+Delafield laughed.
+
+"Perhaps the simpler thing would be to do without the butler."
+
+"I am curious," she said, smiling--"very curious. Sir Wilfrid, for
+instance, talks of going down to stay with you?"
+
+"Why not? He'd come off extremely well. There's an ex-butler, and an
+ex-cook of Chudleigh's settled in the village. When I have a visitor,
+they come in and take possession. We live like fighting-cocks."
+
+"So nobody knows that, in general, you live like a workman?"
+
+Delafield looked impatient.
+
+"Somebody seems to have been cramming Evelyn with ridiculous tales, and
+she's been spreading them. I must have it out with her."
+
+"I expect there is a good deal in them," said Julie. Then, unexpectedly,
+she raised her eyes and gave him a long and rather strange look. "Why
+do you dislike having servants and being waited upon so much, I wonder?
+Is it--you won't be angry?--that you have such a strong will, and you do
+these things to tame it?"
+
+Delafield made a sudden movement, and Julie had no sooner spoken the
+words than she regretted them.
+
+"So you think I should have made a jolly tyrannical slave-owner?" said
+Delafield, after a moment's pause.
+
+Julie bent towards him with a charming look of appeal--almost of
+penitence. "On the contrary, I think you would have been as good to your
+slaves as you are to your friends."
+
+His eyes met hers quietly.
+
+"Thank you. That was kind of you. And as to giving orders, and getting
+one's way, don't suppose I let Chudleigh's estate go to ruin! It's
+only"--he hesitated--"the small personal tyrannies of every day that I'd
+like to minimize. They brutalize half the fellows I know."
+
+"You'll come to them," said Julie, absently. Then she colored, suddenly
+remembering the possible dukedom that awaited him.
+
+His brow contracted a little, as though he understood. He made no reply.
+Julie, with her craving to be approved--to say what pleased--could not
+leave it there.
+
+"I wish I understood," she said, softly, after a moment, "what, or who
+it was that gave you these opinions."
+
+Getting still no answer, she must perforce meet the gray eyes bent upon
+her, more expressively, perhaps, than their owner knew. "That you shall
+understand," he said, after a minute, in a voice which was singularly
+deep and full, "whenever you choose to ask."
+
+Julie shrank and drew back.
+
+"Very well," she said, trying to speak lightly. "I'll hold you to that.
+Alack! I had forgotten a letter I must write."
+
+And she pretended to write it, while Delafield buried himself in the
+newspapers.
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+Julie's curiosity--passing and perfunctory as it was--concerning the
+persons and influences that had worked upon Jacob Delafield since his
+college days, was felt in good earnest by not a few of Delafield's
+friends. For he was a person rich in friends, reserved as he generally
+was, and crotchety as most of them thought him. The mixture of
+self-evident strength and manliness in his physiognomy with something
+delicate and evasive, some hindering element of reflection or doubt, was
+repeated in his character. On the one side he was a robust, healthy
+Etonian, who could ride, shoot, and golf like the rest of his kind, who
+used the terse, slangy ways of speech of the ordinary Englishman, who
+loved the land and its creatures, and had a natural hatred for a
+poacher; and on another he was a man haunted by dreams and spiritual
+voices, a man for whom, as he paced his tired horse homeward after a
+day's run, there would rise on the grays and purples of the winter dusk
+far-shining "cities of God" and visions of a better life for man. He
+read much poetry, and the New Testament spoke to him imperatively,
+though in no orthodox or accustomed way. Ruskin, and the earlier work of
+Tolstoy, then just beginning to take hold of the English mind, had
+affected his thought and imagination, as the generation before him had
+been affected by Carlyle, Emerson, and George Sand.
+
+This present phase of his life, however, was the outcome of much that
+was turbulent and shapeless in his first youth. He seemed to himself to
+have passed through Oxford under a kind of eclipse. All that he could
+remember of two-thirds of his time there was an immoderate amount of
+eating, drinking, and sleeping. A heavy animal existence, disturbed by
+moments of unhappiness and remorse, or, at best, lightened by intervals
+and gleams of friendship with two or three men who tried to prod him out
+of his lethargy, and cherished what appeared, to himself in particular,
+a strange and unreasonable liking for him. Such, to his own thinking,
+had been his Oxford life, up to the last year of his residence there.
+
+Then, when he was just making certain of an ignominious failure in the
+final schools, he became more closely acquainted with one of the college
+tutors, whose influence was to be the spark which should at last fire
+the clay. This modest, heroic, and learned man was a paralyzed invalid,
+owing to an accident in the prime of life. He had lost the use of his
+lower limbs--"dead from the waist down." Yet such was the strength of
+his moral and intellectual life that he had become, since the
+catastrophe, one of the chief forces of his college. The invalid-chair
+on which he wheeled himself, recumbent, from room to room, and from
+which he gave his lectures, was, in the eyes of Oxford, a symbol not of
+weakness, but of touching and triumphant victory. He gave himself no
+airs of resignation or of martyrdom. He simply lived his life--except
+during those crises of weakness or pain when his friends were shut
+out--as though it were like any other life, save only for what he made
+appear an insignificant physical limitation. Scholarship, college
+business or college sports, politics and literature--his mind, at
+least, was happy, strenuous, and at home in them all. To have pitied him
+would have been a mere impertinence. While in his own heart, which never
+grieved over himself, there were treasures of compassion for the weak,
+the tempted, and the unsuccessful, which spent themselves in secret,
+simple ways, unknown to his most intimate friends.
+
+This man's personality it was which, like the branch of healing on
+bitter waters, presently started in Jacob Delafield's nature obscure
+processes of growth and regeneration. The originator of them knew little
+of what was going on. He was Delafield's tutor for Greats, in the
+ordinary college routine; Delafield took essays to him, and occasionally
+lingered to talk. But they never became exactly intimate. A few
+conversations of "pith and moment"; a warm shake of the hand and a keen
+look of pleasure in the blue eyes of the recumbent giant when, after one
+year of superhuman but belated effort, Delafield succeeded in obtaining
+a second class; a little note of farewell, affectionate and regretful,
+when Delafield left the university; an occasional message through a
+common friend--Delafield had little more than these to look back upon,
+outside the discussions of historical or philosophical subjects which
+had entered into their relation as pupil and teacher.
+
+And now the paralyzed tutor was dead, leaving behind him a volume of
+papers on classical subjects, the reputation of an admirable scholar,
+and the fragrance of a dear and honored name. His pupils had been many;
+they counted among the most distinguished of England's youth; and all of
+them owed him much. Few people thought of Delafield when the list of
+them was recited; and yet, in truth, Jacob's debt was greater than any;
+for he owed this man nothing less than his soul.
+
+No doubt the period at Oxford had been rather a period of obscure
+conflict than of mere idleness and degeneracy, as it had seemed to be.
+But it might easily have ended in physical and moral ruin, and, as it
+was--thanks to Courtenay--Delafield went out to the business of life, a
+man singularly master of himself, determined to live his own life for
+his own ends.
+
+In the first place, he was conscious, like many other young men of his
+time, of a strong repulsion towards the complexities and artificialities
+of modern society. As in the forties, a time of social stir was rising
+out of a time of stagnation. Social settlements were not yet founded,
+but the experiments which led to them were beginning. Jacob looked at
+the life of London, the clubs and the country-houses, the normal life of
+his class, and turned from it in aversion. He thought, sometimes, of
+emigrating, in search of a new heaven and a new earth, as men emigrated
+in the forties.
+
+But his mother and sister were alone in the world--his mother a somewhat
+helpless being, his sister still very young and unmarried. He could not
+reconcile it to his conscience to go very far from them.
+
+He tried the bar, amid an inner revolt that only increased with time.
+And the bar implied London, and the dinners and dances of London, which,
+for a man of his family, the probable heir to the lands and moneys of
+the Chudleighs, were naturally innumerable. He was much courted, in
+spite, perhaps because, of his oddities; and it was plain to him that
+with only a small exercise of those will-forces he felt accumulating
+within him, most of the normal objects of ambition were within his
+grasp. The English aristocratic class, as we all know, is no longer
+exclusive. It mingles freely with the commoner world on apparently equal
+terms. But all the while its personal and family cohesion is perhaps
+greater than ever. The power of mere birth, it seemed to Jacob, was
+hardly less in the England newly possessed of household suffrage than in
+the England of Charles James Fox's youth, though it worked through other
+channels. And for the persons in command of this power, a certain
+_appareil de vie_ was necessary, taken for granted. So much income, so
+many servants, such and such habits--these things imposed themselves.
+Life became a soft and cushioned business, with an infinity of layers
+between it and any hard reality--a round pea in a silky pod.
+
+And he meanwhile found himself hungry to throw aside these tamed and
+trite forms of existence, and to penetrate to the harsh, true, simple
+things behind. His imagination and his heart turned towards the
+primitive, indispensable labors on which society rests--the life of the
+husbandman, the laborer, the smith, the woodman, the builder; he dreamed
+the old, enchanted dream of living with nature; of becoming the brother
+not of the few, but of the many. He was still reading in chambers,
+however, when his first cousin, the Duke, a melancholy semi-invalid, a
+widower, with an only son tuberculous almost from his birth, arrived
+from abroad. Jacob was brought into new contact with him. The Duke liked
+him, and offered him the agency of his Essex property. Jacob accepted,
+partly that he might be quit of the law, partly that he might be in the
+country and among the poor, partly for reasons, or ghosts of reasons,
+unavowed even to himself. The one terror that haunted his life was the
+terror of the dukedom. This poor, sickly lad, the heir, with whom he
+soon made warm friends, and the silent, morbid Duke, with the face of
+Charles V. at St. Just--he became, in a short time, profoundly and
+pitifully attached to them. It pleased him to serve them; above all did
+it please him to do all he could, and to incite others to do all they
+could, to keep these two frail persons cheered and alive. His own
+passionate dread lest he should suddenly find himself in their place,
+gave a particular poignancy to the service he was always ready to render
+them of his best.
+
+The Duke's confidence in him had increased rapidly. Delafield was now
+about to take over the charge of another of the Duke's estates, in the
+Midlands, and much of the business connected with some important London
+property was also coming into his hands. He had made himself a good man
+of business where another's interests were concerned, and his dreams did
+no harm to the Duke's revenues. He gave, indeed, a liberal direction to
+the whole policy of the estate, and, as he had said to Julie, the Duke
+did not forbid experiments.
+
+As to his own money, he gave it away as wisely as he could, which is,
+perhaps, not saying very much for the schemes and Quixotisms of a young
+man of eight-and-twenty. At any rate, he gave it away--to his mother and
+sister first, then to a variety of persons and causes. Why should he
+save a penny of it? He had some money of his own, besides his income
+from the Duke. It was disgusting that he should have so much, and that
+it should be, apparently, so very easy for him to have indefinitely
+more if he wanted it.
+
+He lived in a small cottage, in the simplest, plainest way compatible
+with his work and with the maintenance of two decently furnished rooms
+for any friend who might chance to visit him. He read much and thought
+much. But he was not a man of any commanding speculative or analytic
+ability. It would have been hard for him to give any very clear or
+logical account of himself and his deepest beliefs. Nevertheless, with
+every year that passed he became a more remarkable _character_--his will
+stronger, his heart gentler. In the village where he lived they wondered
+at him a good deal, and often laughed at him. But if he had left them,
+certainly the children and the old people would have felt as though the
+sun had gone out.
+
+In London he showed little or nothing of his peculiar ways and pursuits;
+was, in fact, as far as anybody knew--outside half a dozen friends--just
+the ordinary, well-disposed young man, engaged in a business that every
+one understood. With Lady Henry, his relations, apart from his sympathy
+with Julie Le Breton, had been for some time rather difficult. She made
+gratitude hard for one of the most grateful of men. When the
+circumstances of the Hubert Delafields had been much straitened, after
+Lord Hubert's death, Lady Henry had come to their aid, and had, in
+particular, spent fifteen hundred pounds on Jacob's school and college
+education. But there are those who can make a gift burn into the bones
+of those who receive it. Jacob had now saved nearly the whole sum, and
+was about to repay her. Meanwhile his obligation, his relationship, and
+her age made it natural, or rather imperative, that he should be often
+in her house; but when he was with her the touch of arrogant brutality
+in her nature, especially towards servants and dependants, roused him
+almost to fury. She knew it, and would often exercise her rough tongue
+merely for the pleasure of tormenting him.
+
+No sooner, therefore, had he come to know the fragile, distinguished
+creature whom Lady Henry had brought back with her one autumn as her
+companion than his sympathies were instantly excited, first by the mere
+fact that she was Lady Henry's dependant, and then by the confidence, as
+to her sad story and strange position, which she presently reposed in
+him and his cousin Evelyn. On one or two occasions, very early in his
+acquaintance with her, he was a witness of some small tyranny of Lady
+Henry's towards her. He saw the shrinking of the proud nature, and the
+pain thrilled through his own nerves as though the lash had touched
+himself. Presently it became a joy to him whenever he was in town to
+conspire with Evelyn Crowborough for her pleasure and relief. It was the
+first time he had ever conspired, and it gave him sometimes a slight
+shock to see how readily these two charming women lent themselves, on
+occasion, to devices that had the aspect of intrigue, and involved a
+good deal of what, in his own case, he would have roundly dubbed lying.
+And, in truth, if he had known, they did not find him a convenient ally,
+and he was by no means always in their confidence.
+
+Once, about six months after Julie's arrival in Bruton Street, he met
+her on a spring morning crossing Kensington Gardens with the dogs. She
+looked startlingly white and ill, and when he spoke to her with eager
+sympathy her mouth quivered and her dark eyes clouded with tears. The
+sight produced an extraordinary effect on a man large-hearted and
+simple, for whom women still moved in an atmosphere of romance. His
+heart leaped within him as she let herself be talked with and comforted.
+And when her delicate hand rested in his as they said good-bye, he was
+conscious of feelings--wild, tumultuous feelings--to which, in his walk
+homeward through the spring glades of the park, he gave
+impetuous course.
+
+Romantic, indeed, the position was, for romance rests on contrast.
+Jacob, who knew Julie Le Breton's secret, was thrilled or moved by the
+contrasts of her existence at every turn. Her success and her
+subjection; the place in Lady Henry's circle which Lady Henry had, in
+the first instance, herself forced her to take, contrasted with the
+shifts and evasions, the poor, tortuous ways by which, alas! she must
+often escape Lady Henry's later jealousy; her intellectual strength and
+her most feminine weaknesses; these things stirred and kept up in Jacob
+a warm and passionate pity. The more clearly he saw the specks in her
+glory, the more vividly did she appear to him a princess in distress,
+bound by physical or moral fetters not of her own making. None of the
+well-born, well-trained damsels who had been freely thrown across his
+path had so far beguiled him in the least. Only this woman of doubtful
+birth and antecedents, lonely, sad, and enslaved amid what people called
+her social triumphs, stole into his heart--beautified by what he chose
+to consider her misfortunes, and made none the less attractive by the
+fact that as he pursued, she retreated; as he pressed, she grew cold.
+
+When, indeed, after their friendship had lasted about a year, he
+proposed to her and she refused him, his passion, instead of cooling,
+redoubled. It never occurred to him to think that she had done a strange
+thing from the worldly point of view--that would have involved an
+appreciation of himself, as a prize in the marriage market, he would
+have loathed to make. But he was one of the men for whom resistance
+enhances the value of what they desire, and secretly he said to himself,
+"Persevere!" When he was repelled or puzzled by certain aspects of her
+character, he would say to himself:
+
+"It is because she is alone and miserable. Women are not meant to be
+alone. What soft, helpless creatures they are!--even when intellectually
+they fly far ahead of us. If she would but put her hand in mine I would
+so serve and worship her, she would have no need for these strange
+things she does--the doublings and ruses of the persecuted." Thus the
+touches of falsity that repelled Wilfrid Bury were to Delafield's
+passion merely the stains of rough travel on a fair garment.
+
+But she refused him, and for another year he said no more. Then, as
+things got worse and worse for her, he spoke again--ambiguously--a word
+or two, thrown out to sound the waters. Her manner of silencing him on
+this second occasion was not what it had been before. His suspicions
+were aroused, and a few days later he divined the Warkworth affair.
+
+When Sir Wilfrid Bury spoke to him of the young officer's relations to
+Mademoiselle Le Breton, Delafield's stiff defence of Julie's
+prerogatives in the matter masked the fact that he had just gone through
+a week of suffering, wrestling his heart down in country lanes; a week
+which had brought him to somewhat curious results.
+
+In the first place, as with Sir Wilfrid, he stood up stoutly for her
+rights. If she chose to attach herself to this man, whose business was
+it to interfere? If he was worthy and loved her, Jacob himself would see
+fair play, would be her friend and supporter.
+
+But the scraps of gossip about Captain Warkworth which the Duchess--who
+had disliked the man at first sight--gathered from different quarters
+and confided to Jacob were often disquieting. It was said that at Simla
+he had entrapped this little heiress, and her obviously foolish and
+incapable mother, by devices generally held to be discreditable; and it
+had taken two angry guardians to warn him off. What was the state of the
+case now no one exactly knew; though it was shrewdly suspected that the
+engagement was only dormant. The child was known to have been in love
+with him; in two years more she would be of age; her fortune was
+enormous, and Warkworth was a poor and ambitious man.
+
+There was also an ugly tale of a civilian's wife in a hill station,
+referring to a date some years back; but Delafield did not think it
+necessary to believe it.
+
+As to his origins--there again, Delafield, making cautious inquiries,
+came across some unfavorable details, confided to him by a man of
+Warkworth's own regiment. His father had retired from the army
+immediately after the Mutiny, broken in health, and much straitened in
+means. Himself belonging to a family of the poorer middle class, he had
+married late, a good woman not socially his equal, and without fortune.
+They settled in the Isle of Wight, on his half-pay, and harassed by a
+good many debts. Their two children, Henry and Isabella, were then
+growing up, and the parents' hopes were fixed upon their promising and
+good-looking son. With difficulty they sent him to Charterhouse and a
+"crammer." The boy coveted a "crack" regiment; by dint of mustering all
+the money and all the interest they could, they procured him his heart's
+desire. He got unpardonably into debt; the old people's resources were
+lessening, not expanding; and ultimately the poor father died broken
+down by the terror of bankruptcy for himself and disgrace for Henry. The
+mother still survived, in very straitened circumstances.
+
+"His sister," said Delafield's informant, "married one of the big London
+tailors, whom she met first on the Ryde pier. I happen to know the
+facts, for my father and I have been customers of his for years, and one
+day, hearing that I was in Warkworth's regiment, he told me some stories
+of his brother-in-law in a pretty hostile tone. His sister, it appears,
+has often financed him of late. She must have done. How else could he
+have got through? Warkworth may be a fine, showy fellow when there's
+fighting about. In private life he's one of the most self-indulgent dogs
+alive. And yet he's ashamed of the sister and her husband, and turns his
+back on them whenever he can. Oh, he's not a person of nice feeling, is
+Warkworth--but, mark my words, he'll be one of the most successful men
+in the army."
+
+There was one side. On the other was to be set the man's brilliant
+professional record; his fine service in this recent campaign; the
+bull-dog defence of an isolated fort, which insured the safety of most
+important communications; contempt of danger, thirst, exposure; the
+rescue of a wounded comrade from the glacis of the fort, under a
+murderous fire; facts, all of them, which had fired the public
+imagination and brought his name to the front. No such acts as these
+could have been done by any mere self-indulgent pretender.
+
+Delafield reserved his judgment. He set himself to watch. In his inmost
+heart there was a strange assumption of the right to watch, and, if need
+be, to act. Julie's instinct had told her truly. Delafield, the
+individualist, the fanatic for freedom--he, also, had his instinct of
+tyranny. She should not destroy herself, the dear, weak, beloved woman!
+He would prevent it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus, during these hours of transition, Delafield thought much of Julie.
+Julie, on the other hand, had no sooner said good-night to him after the
+conversation described in the last chapter than she drove him from her
+thoughts--one might have said, with vehemence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _Times_ of the following morning duly contained the announcement of
+the appointment of Captain Warkworth, D.S.O., of the Queen's Grays, to
+the command of the military mission to Mokembe recently determined on by
+her Majesty's government. The mission would proceed to Mokembe as soon
+as possible, but of two officers who on the ground of especial knowledge
+would form part of it, under Captain Warkworth's command, one was at
+present in Canada and the other at the Cape. It would, therefore, hardly
+be possible for the mission to start from the coast for the interior
+before the beginning of May. In the same paper certain promotions and
+distinctions on account of the recent Mahsud campaign were reprinted
+from the _Gazette_. Captain Henry Warkworth's brevet majority was
+among them.
+
+The _Times_ leader on the announcement pointed out that the mission
+would be concerned with important frontier questions, still more with
+the revival of the prestige of England in regions where a supine
+government had allowed it to wither unaccountably. Other powers had been
+playing a filching and encroaching game at the expense of the British
+lion in these parts, and it was more than time that he should open his
+sleepy eyes upon what was going on. As to the young officer who was to
+command the mission, the great journal made a few civil though guarded
+remarks. His record in the recent campaign was indeed highly
+distinguished; still it could hardly be said that, take it as a whole,
+his history so far gave him a claim to promotion so important as that
+which he had now obtained.
+
+Well, now he had his chance. English soldiers had a way of profiting by
+such chances. The _Times_ courteously gave him the benefit of the doubt,
+prophesying that he would rise to the occasion and justify the choice of
+his superiors.
+
+The Duchess looked over Julie's shoulder as she read.
+
+"Schemer," she said, as she dropped a kiss on the back of Julie's neck,
+"I hope you're satisfied. The _Times_ doesn't know what to make of it."
+
+Julie put down the paper with a glowing cheek.
+
+"They'll soon know," she said, quietly.
+
+"Julie, do you believe in him so much?"
+
+"What does it matter what I think? It is not I who have appointed him."
+
+"Not so sure," laughed the Duchess. "As if he would have had a chance
+without you. Whom did he know last November when you took him up?"
+
+Julie moved to and fro, her hands behind her. The tremor on her lip, the
+light in her eye showed her sense of triumph.
+
+"What have I done," she said, laughing, "but push a few stones out of
+the way of merit?"
+
+"Some of them were heavy," said the Duchess, making a little face. "Need
+I invite Lady Froswick any more?"
+
+Julie threw her arms about her.
+
+"Evelyn, what a darling you've been! Now I'll never worry you again."
+
+"Oh, for some people I would do ten times as much!" cried the Duchess.
+"But, Julie, I wish I knew why you think so well of this man. I--I don't
+always hear very nice things about him."
+
+"I dare say not," said Julie, flushing. "It is easy to hate success."
+
+"No, come, we're not as mean as that!" cried the Duchess. "I vow that
+all the heroes I've ever known had a ripping time. Julie"--she kissed
+her friend impulsively--"Julie, don't like him too much. I don't think
+he's good enough."
+
+"Good enough for what?" said Julie's bitter voice. "Make yourself easy
+about Captain Warkworth, Evelyn; but please understand--_anything_ is
+good enough for me. Don't let your dear head be troubled about my
+affairs. They are never serious, and nothing counts--except," she added,
+recklessly, "that I get a little amusement by the way."
+
+"Julie," cried the Duchess, "as if Jacob--"
+
+Julie frowned and released herself; then she laughed.
+
+"Nothing that one ever says about ordinary mortals applies to Mr.
+Delafield. He is, of course, _hors concours_."
+
+"Julie!"
+
+"It is you, Evelyn, who make me _méchante_. I could be grateful--and
+excellent friends with that young man--in my own way."
+
+The Duchess sighed, and held her tongue with difficulty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the successful hero arrived that night for dinner he found a
+solitary lady in the drawing-room.
+
+Was this, indeed, Julie Le Breton--this soft, smiling vision in white?
+
+He expected to have found a martyr, pale and wan from the shock of the
+catastrophe which had befallen her, and, even amid the intoxication of
+his own great day, he was not easy as to how she might have taken his
+behavior on the fatal night. But here was some one, all joy, animation,
+and indulgence--a glorified Julie who trod on air. Why? Because
+good-fortune had befallen her friend? His heart smote him. He had never
+seen her so touching, so charming. Since the incubus of Lady Henry's
+house and presence had been removed she seemed to have grown years
+younger. A white muslin dress of her youth, touched here and there by
+the Duchess's maid, replaced the familiar black satin. When Warkworth
+first saw her he paused unconsciously in surprise.
+
+Then he advanced to meet her, broadly smiling, his blue eyes dancing.
+
+"You got my note this morning?"
+
+"Yes," she said, demurely. "You were much too kind, and much--much too
+absurd. I have done nothing."
+
+"Oh, nothing, of course." Then, after a moment: "Are you going to tie me
+to that fiction, or am I to be allowed a little decent sincerity? You
+know perfectly well that you have done it all. There, there; give me
+your hand."
+
+She gave it, shrinking, and he kissed it joyously.
+
+"Isn't it jolly!" he said, with a school-boy's delight as he released
+her hand. "I saw Lord M---- this morning." He named the Prime Minister.
+"Very civil, indeed. Then the Commander-in-Chief--and Montresor gave me
+half an hour. It is all right. They are giving me a capital staff.
+Excellent fellows, all of them. Oh, you'll see, I shall pull it
+through--I shall pull it through. By George! it is a chance!"
+
+And he stood radiant, rubbing his hands over the blaze.
+
+The Duchess came in accompanied by an elderly cousin of the Duke's, a
+white-haired, black-gowned spinster, Miss Emily Lawrence--one of those
+single women, travelled, cultivated, and good, that England produces in
+such abundance.
+
+"Well, so you're going," said the Duchess, to Warkworth. "And I hear
+that we ought to think you a lucky man."
+
+"Indeed you ought, and you must," he said, gayly. "If only the climate
+will behave itself. The blackwater fever has a way of killing you in
+twenty-four hours if it gets hold of you; but short of that--"
+
+"Oh, you will be quite safe," said the Duchess. "Let me introduce you to
+Miss Lawrence. Emily, this is Captain Warkworth."
+
+The elderly lady gave a sudden start. Then she quietly put on her
+spectacles and studied the young soldier with a pair of intelligent
+gray eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nothing could have been more agreeable than Warkworth at dinner. Even
+the Duchess admitted as much. He talked easily, but not too much, of the
+task before him; told amusing tales of his sporting experience of years
+back in the same regions which were now to be the scene of his mission;
+discussed the preparations he would have to make at Denga, the coast
+town, before starting on his five weeks' journey to the interior; drew
+the native porter and the native soldier, not to their advantage, and
+let fall, by the way, not a few wise or vivacious remarks as to the
+races, resources, and future of this illimitable and mysterious
+Africa--this cavern of the unknown, into which the waves of white
+invasion, one upon another, were now pressing fast and ceaselessly,
+towards what goal, only the gods knew.
+
+A few other men were dining; among them two officers from the staff of
+the Commander-in-Chief. Warkworth, much their junior, treated them with
+a skilful deference; but through the talk that prevailed his military
+competence and prestige appeared plainly enough, even to the women. His
+good opinion of himself was indeed sufficiently evident; but there was
+no crude vainglory. At any rate, it was a vainglory of youth, ability,
+and good looks, ratified by these budding honors thus fresh upon him,
+and no one took it amiss.
+
+When the gentlemen returned to the drawing-room, Warkworth and Julie
+once more found themselves together, this time in the Duchess's little
+sitting-room at the end of the long suite of rooms.
+
+"When do you go?" she asked him, abruptly.
+
+"Not for about a month." He mentioned the causes of delay.
+
+"That will bring you very late--into the worst of the heat?" Her voice
+had a note of anxiety.
+
+"Oh, we shall all be seasoned men. And after the first few days we shall
+get into the uplands."
+
+"What do your home people say?" she asked him, rather shyly. She knew,
+in truth, little about them.
+
+"My mother? Oh, she will be greatly pleased. I go down to the Isle of
+Wight for a day or two to see her to-morrow. But now, dear lady, that is
+enough of my wretched self. You--do you stay on here with the Duchess?"
+
+She told him of the house in Heribert Street. He listened with
+attention.
+
+"Nothing could be better. You will have a most distinguished little
+setting of your own, and Lady Henry will repent at leisure. You won't
+be lonely?"
+
+"Oh no!" But her smile was linked with a sigh.
+
+He came nearer to her.
+
+"You should never be lonely if I could help it," he said, in a low
+voice.
+
+"When people are nameless and kinless," was her passionate reply, in the
+same undertone as his, "they must be lonely."
+
+He looked at her with eagerness. She lay back in the firelight, her
+beautiful brow and eyes softly illuminated. He felt within him a sudden
+snapping of restraints. Why--why refuse what was so clearly within his
+grasp? Love has many manners--many entrances--and many exits.
+
+"When will you tell me all that I want to know about you?" he said,
+bending towards her with tender insistence. "There is so much I have
+to ask."
+
+"Oh, some time," she said, hurriedly, her pulses quickening. "Mine is
+not a story to be told on a great day like this."
+
+He was silent a moment, but his face spoke for him.
+
+"Our friendship has been a beautiful thing, hasn't it?" he said, at
+last, in a voice of emotion. "Look here!" He thrust his hand into his
+breast-pocket and half withdrew it. "Do you see where I carry
+your letters?"
+
+"You shouldn't--they are not worthy."
+
+"How charming you are in that dress--in that light! I shall always see
+you as you are to-night."
+
+A silence. Excitement mounted in their veins. Suddenly he stooped and
+kissed her hands. They looked into each other's eyes, and the seconds
+passed like hours.
+
+Presently, in the nearer drawing-room, there was a sound of approaching
+voices and they moved apart.
+
+"Julie, Emily Lawrence is going," said the Duchess's voice, pitched in
+what seemed to Julie a strange and haughty note. "Captain Warkworth,
+Miss Lawrence thinks that you and she have common friends--Lady Blanche
+Moffatt and her daughter."
+
+Captain Warkworth murmured some conventionality, and passed into the
+next drawing-room with Miss Lawrence.
+
+Julie rose to her feet, the color dying out of her face, her passionate
+eyes on the Duchess, who stood facing her friend, guiltily pale, and
+ready to cry.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+On the morning following these events, Warkworth went down to the Isle
+of Wight to see his mother. On the journey he thought much of Julie.
+They had parted awkwardly the night before. The evening, which had
+promised so well, had, after all, lacked finish and point. What on earth
+had that tiresome Miss Lawrence wanted with him? They had talked of
+Simla and the Moffatts. The conversation had gone in spurts, she looking
+at him every now and then with eyes that seemed to say more than her
+words. All that she had actually said was perfectly insignificant and
+trivial. Yet there was something curious in her manner, and when the
+time came for him to take his departure she had bade him a frosty
+little farewell.
+
+She had described herself once or twice as a _great_ friend of Lady
+Blanche Moffatt. Was it possible?
+
+But if Lady Blanche, whose habits of sentimental indiscretion were
+ingrained, _had_ gossiped to this lady, what then? Why should he be
+frowned on by Miss Lawrence, or anybody else? That malicious talk at
+Simla had soon exhausted itself. His present appointment was a
+triumphant answer to it all. His slanderers--including Aileen's
+ridiculous guardians--could only look foolish if they pursued the matter
+any further. What "trap" was there--what _mésalliance_? A successful
+soldier was good enough for anybody. Look at the first Lord Clyde, and
+scores besides.
+
+The Duchess, too. Why had she treated him so well at first, and so
+cavalierly after dinner? Her manners were really too uncertain.
+
+What was the matter, and why did she dislike him? He pondered over it a
+good deal, and with much soreness of spirit. Like many men capable of
+very selfish or very cruel conduct, he was extremely sensitive, and took
+keen notice of the fact that a person liked or disliked him.
+
+If the Duchess disliked him it could not be merely on account of the
+Simla story, even though the old maid might conceivably have given her a
+jaundiced account. The Duchess knew nothing of Aileen, and was little
+influenced, so far as he had observed her, by considerations of abstract
+justice or propriety, affecting persons whom she had never seen.
+
+No, she was Julie's friend, the little wilful lady, and it was for Julie
+she ruffled her feathers, like an angry dove.
+
+So his thoughts had come back to Julie, though, indeed, it seemed to him
+that they were never far from her. As he looked absently from the train
+windows on the flying landscape, Julie's image hovered between him and
+it--a magic sun, flooding soul and senses with warmth. How
+unconsciously, how strangely his feelings had changed towards her! That
+coolness of temper and nerve he had been able to preserve towards her
+for so long was, indeed, breaking down. He recognized the danger, and
+wondered where it would lead him. What a fascinating, sympathetic
+creature!--and, by George! what she had done for him!
+
+Aileen! Aileen was a little sylph, a pretty child-angel, white-winged
+and innocent, who lived in a circle of convent thoughts, knowing nothing
+of the world, and had fallen in love with him as the first man who had
+ever made love to her. But this intelligent, full-blooded woman, who
+could understand at a word, or a half word, who had a knowledge of
+affairs which many a high-placed man might envy, with whom one never had
+a dull moment--this courted, distinguished Julie Le Breton--his mind
+swelled with half-guilty pride at the thought that for six months he had
+absorbed all her energies, that a word from him could make her smile or
+sigh, that he could force her to look at him with eyes so melting and so
+troubled as those with which she had given him her hands--her slim,
+beautiful hands--that night in Grosvenor Square.
+
+How freedom became her! Dependency had dropped from her, like a cast-off
+cloak, and beside her fresh, melancholy charm, the airs and graces of a
+child of fashion and privilege like the little Duchess appeared almost
+cheap and trivial. Poor Julie! No doubt some social struggle was before
+her. Lady Henry was strong, after all, in this London world, and the
+solider and stupider people who get their way in the end were not, she
+thought, likely to side with Lady Henry's companion in a quarrel where
+the facts of the story were unquestionably, at first sight, damaging to
+Miss Le Breton. Julie would have her hours of bitterness and
+humiliation; and she would conquer by boldness, if she conquered at
+all--by originality, by determining to live her own life. That would
+preserve for her the small circle, if it lost her the large world. And
+the small circle was what she lived for, what she ought, at any rate,
+to live for.
+
+It was not likely she would marry. Why should she desire it? From any
+blundering tragedy a woman of so acute a brain would, of course, know
+how to protect herself. But within the limits of her life, why should
+she refuse herself happiness, intimacy, love?
+
+His heart beat fast; his thoughts were in a whirl. But the train was
+nearing Portsmouth, and with an effort he recalled his mind to the
+meeting with his mother, which was then close upon him.
+
+He spent nearly a week in the little cottage at Sea View, and Mrs.
+Warkworth got far more pleasure than usual, poor lady, out of his visit.
+She was a thin, plain woman, not devoid of either ability or character.
+But life had gone hardly with her, and since her husband's death what
+had been reserve had become melancholy. She had always been afraid of
+her only son since they had sent him to Charterhouse, and he had become
+so much "finer" than his parents. She knew that he must consider her a
+very ignorant and narrow-minded person; when he was with her she was
+humiliated in her own eyes, though as soon as he was gone she resumed
+what was in truth a leading place among her own small circle.
+
+She loved him, and was proud of him; yet at the bottom of her heart she
+had never absolved him from his father's death. But for his
+extravagance, and the misfortunes he had brought upon them, her old
+general would be alive still--pottering about in the spring sunshine,
+spudding the daisies from the turf, or smoking his pipe beneath the
+thickening trees. Silently her heart still yearned and hungered for the
+husband of her youth; his son did not replace him.
+
+Nevertheless, when he came down to her with this halo of glory upon him,
+and smoked up and down her small garden through the mild spring days,
+gossiping to her of all the great things that had befallen him,
+repeating to her, word for word, his conversation with the Prime
+Minister, and his interview with the Commander-in-Chief, or making her
+read all the letters of congratulation he had received, her mother's
+heart thawed within her as it had not done for long. Her ears told her
+that he was still vain and a boaster; her memory held the indelible
+records of his past selfishness; but as he walked beside her, his fair
+hair blown back from his handsome brow, and eyes that were so much
+younger than the rest of the face, his figure as spare and boyish now as
+when he had worn the colors of the Charterhouse eleven, she said to
+herself, in that inward and unsuspected colloquy she was always holding
+with her own heart about him, that if his father could have seen him now
+he would have forgiven him everything. According to her secret
+Evangelical faith, God "deals" with every soul he has created--through
+joy or sorrow, through good or evil fortune. He had dealt with herself
+through anguish and loss. Henry, it seemed, was to be moulded through
+prosperity. His good fortune was already making a better man of him.
+
+Certainly he was more affectionate and thoughtful than before. He would
+have liked to give her money, of which he seemed to have an unusual
+store; but she bade him keep what he had for his own needs. Her own
+little bit of money, saved from the wreck of their fortunes, was enough
+for her. Then he went into Ryde and brought her back a Shetland shawl
+and a new table-cloth for her little sitting-room, which she accepted
+with a warmer kiss than she had given him for years.
+
+He left her on a bright, windy morning which flecked the blue Solent
+with foam and sent the clouds racing to westward. She walked back along
+the sands, thinking anxiously of the African climate and the desert
+hard-ships he was going to face. And she wondered what significance
+there might be in the fact that he had written twice during his stay
+with her to a Miss Le Breton, whose name, nevertheless, he had not
+mentioned in their conversations. Well, he would marry soon, she
+supposed, and marry well, in circles out of her ken. With the common
+prejudice of the English middle class, she hoped that if this Miss Le
+Breton were his choice, she might be only French in name and not
+in blood.
+
+Meanwhile, Warkworth sped up to London in high spirits, enjoying the
+comforts of a good conscience.
+
+He drove first to his club, where a pile of letters awaited him--some
+letters of congratulation, others concerned with the business of his
+mission. He enjoyed the first, noticing jealously who had and who had
+not written to him; then he applied himself to the second. His mind
+worked vigorously and well; he wrote his replies in a manner that
+satisfied him. Then throwing himself into a chair, with a cigar, he gave
+himself up to the close and shrewd planning of the preparations
+necessary for his five weeks' march, or to the consideration of two or
+three alternative lines of action which would open before him as soon as
+he should find himself within the boundaries of Mokembe. Some five years
+before, the government of the day had sent a small expedition to this
+Debatable Land, which had failed disastrously, both from the diplomatic
+and the military points of view. He went backward and forward to the
+shelves of the fine "Service" library which surrounded him, taking down
+the books and reports which concerned this expedition. He buried himself
+in them for an hour, then threw them aside with contempt. What blunders
+and short-sight everywhere! The general public might well talk of the
+stupidity of English officers. And blunders so easily avoided, too! It
+was sickening. He felt within himself a fulness of energy and
+intelligence, a perspicacity of brain which judged mistakes of this kind
+unpardonable.
+
+As he was replacing some of the books he had been using in the shelves,
+the club began to fill up with men coming in to lunch. A great many
+congratulated him; and a certain number who of old had hardly professed
+to know him greeted him with cordiality. He found himself caught in a
+series of short but flattering conversations, in which he bore himself
+well--neither over-discreet nor too elate. "I declare that fellow's
+improved," said one man, who might certainly have counted as Warkworth's
+enemy the week before, to his companion at table. "The government's been
+beastly remiss so far. Hope he'll pull it off. Ripping chance, anyway.
+Though what they gave it to him for, goodness knows! There were a dozen
+fellows, at least, did as well as he in the Mahsud business. And the
+Staff-College man had a thousand times more claim."
+
+Nevertheless, Warkworth felt the general opinion friendly, a little
+surprised, no doubt, but showing that readiness to believe in the man
+coming to the front, which belongs much more to the generous than to the
+calculating side of the English character. Insensibly his mental and
+moral stature rose. He exchanged a few words on his way out with one of
+the most distinguished members of the club, a man of European
+reputation, whom he had seen the week before in the Commander-in-Chief's
+room at the War Office. The great man spoke to him with marked
+friendliness, and Warkworth walked on air as he went his way.
+Potentially he felt himself the great man's equal; the gates of life
+seemed to be opening before him.
+
+And with the rise of fortune came a rush of magnanimous resolution. No
+more shady episodes; no more mean devices; no more gambling, and no more
+debt. _Major_ Warkworth's sheet was clean, and it should remain so. A
+man of his prospects must run straight.
+
+He felt himself at peace with all the world. By-the-way, just time to
+jump into a cab and get to Park Crescent in time for his sister's
+luncheon. His last interview with his brother-in-law had not been
+agreeable. But now--he felt for the check-book in his pocket--he was in
+a position to repay at least half the last sum of money which Bella had
+lent him. He would go and give it her now, and report news of the
+mother. And if the two chicks were there--why, he had a free hour and he
+would take them to the Zoo--he vowed he would!--give them something
+pleasant to remember their uncle by.
+
+And a couple of hours later a handsome, soldierly man might have been
+seen in the lion-house at the Zoo, leading a plump little girl by either
+hand. Rose and Katie Mullins enjoyed a golden time, and started a
+wholly new adoration for the uncle who had so far taken small notice of
+them, and was associated in their shrewd, childish minds rather with
+tempests at home than buns abroad. But this time buns, biscuits,
+hansom-drives and elephant-rides were showered upon them by an uncle who
+seemed to make no account of money, while his gracious and captivating
+airs set their little hearts beating in a common devotion.
+
+"Now go home--go home, little beggars!" said that golden gentleman, as
+he packed them into a hansom and stood on the step to accept a wet kiss
+on his mustache from each pink mouth. "Tell your mother all about it,
+and don't forget your uncle Harry. There's a shilling for each of you.
+Don't you spend it on sweets. You're quite fat enough already.
+Good-bye!"
+
+"That's the hardest work I've done for many a long day," he said to
+himself, with a sigh of relief, as the hansom drove away. "I sha'n't
+turn nurse-maid when other trades fail. But they're nice little kids
+all the same.
+
+"Now, then, Cox's--and the City"--he ran over the list of his
+engagements for the afternoon--"and by five o'clock shall I find my fair
+lady--at home--and established? Where on earth is Heribert Street?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He solved the question, for a few minutes after five he was on Miss Le
+Breton's doorstep. A quaint little house--and a strange parlor-maid! For
+the door was opened to him by a large-eyed, sickly child, who looked at
+him with the bewilderment of one trying to follow out instructions still
+strange to her.
+
+[Illustration: "HE ENTERED UPON A MERRY SCENE"]
+
+"Yes, sir, Miss Le Breton is in the drawing-room," she said, in a
+sweet, deliberate voice with a foreign accent, and she led the way
+through the hall.
+
+Poor little soul--what a twisted back, and what a limp! She looked about
+fourteen, but was probably older. Where had Julie discovered her?
+
+Warkworth looked round him at the little hall with its relics of
+country-house sports and amusements; his eye travelled through an open
+door to the little dining-room and the Russell pastels of Lady Mary's
+parents, as children, hanging on the wall. The _character_ of the little
+dwelling impressed itself at once. Smiling; he acknowledged its
+congruity with Julie. Here was a lady who fell on her feet!
+
+The child, leading him, opened the door to the left.
+
+"Please walk in, sir," she said, shyly, and stood aside.
+
+As the door opened, Warkworth was conscious of a noise of tongues.
+
+So Julie was not alone? He prepared his manner accordingly.
+
+He entered upon a merry scene. Jacob Delafield was standing on a chair,
+hanging a picture, while Dr. Meredith and Julie, on either side,
+directed or criticised the operation. Meredith carried picture-cord and
+scissors; Julie the hammer and nails. Meredith was expressing the
+profoundest disbelief in Jacob's practical capacities; Jacob was
+defending himself hotly; and Julie laughed at both.
+
+Towards the other end of the room stood the tea-table, between the fire
+and an open window. Lord Lackington sat beside it, smiling to himself,
+and stroking a Persian kitten. Through the open window the twinkling
+buds on the lilacs in the Cureton House garden shone in the still
+lingering sun. A recent shower had left behind it odors of earth and
+grass. Even in this London air they spoke of the spring--the spring
+which already in happier lands was drawing veils of peach and cherry
+blossom, over the red Sienese earth or the green terraces of Como. The
+fire crackled in the grate. The pretty, old-fashioned room was fragrant
+with hyacinth and narcissus; Julie's books lay on the tables; Julie's
+hand and taste were already to be felt everywhere. And Lord Lackington
+with the kitten, beside the fire, gave the last touch of home and
+domesticity.
+
+"So I find you established?" said Warkworth, smiling, to the lady with
+the nails, while Delafield nodded to him from the top of the steps and
+Meredith ceased to chatter.
+
+"I haven't a hand, I fear," said Julie. "Will you have some tea? Ah,
+Léonie, tu vas en faire de nouveau, n'est-ce pas, pour ce monsieur?"
+
+A little woman in black, with a shawl over her shoulders, had just
+glided into the room. She had a small, wrinkled face, bright eyes, and a
+much-flattened nose.
+
+"Tout de suite, monsieur," she said, quickly, and disappeared with the
+teapot. Warkworth guessed, of course, that she was Madame Bornier, the
+foster-sister--the "Propriety" of this _ménage_.
+
+"Can't I help?" he said to Julie, with a look at Delafield.
+
+"It's just done," she said, coldly, handing a nail to Delafield. "_Just_
+a trifle more to the right. Ecco! Perfection!"
+
+"Oh, you spoil him," said Meredith, "And not one word of praise for
+me!"
+
+"What have you done?" she said, laughing. "Tangled the cord--that's
+all!"
+
+Warkworth turned away. His face, so radiant as he entered, had settled
+into sharp, sudden lines. What was the meaning of this voice, this
+manner? He remembered that to his three letters he had received no word
+of reply. But he had interpreted that to mean that she was in the throes
+of moving and could find no time to write.
+
+As he neared the tea-table, Lord Lackington looked up. He greeted the
+new-comer with the absent stateliness he generally put on when his mind
+was in a state of confusion as to a person's identity.
+
+"Well, so they're sending you to D----? There'll be a row there before
+long. Wish you joy of the missionaries!"
+
+"No, not D----," said Warkworth, smiling. "Nothing so amusing. Mokembe's
+my destination."
+
+"Oh, Mokembe!" said Lord Lackington, a little abashed. "That's where
+Cecil Ray, Lord R's second son, was killed last year--lion-hunting? No,
+it was of fever that he died. By-the-way, a vile climate!"
+
+"In the plains, yes," said Warkworth, seating himself. "As to the
+uplands, I understand they are to be the Switzerland of Africa."
+
+Lord Lackington did not appear to listen.
+
+"Are you a homoeopath?" he said, suddenly, rising to his full and
+immense stature and looking down with eagerness on Warkworth.
+
+"No. Why?"
+
+"Because it's your only chance, for those parts. If Cecil Ray had had
+their medicines with him he'd be alive now. Look here; when do you
+start?" The speaker took out his note-book.
+
+"In rather less than a month I start for Denga."
+
+"All right. I'll send you a medicine-case--from Epps. If you're ill,
+take 'em."
+
+"You're very good."
+
+"Not at all. It's my hobby--one of the last." A broad, boyish smile
+flashed over the handsome old face. "Look at me; I'm seventy-five, and I
+can tire out my own grandsons at riding and shooting. That comes of
+avoiding all allopathic messes like the devil. But the allopaths are
+such mean fellows they filch all our ideas."
+
+The old man was off. Warkworth submitted to five minutes' tirade,
+stealing a glance sometimes at the group of Julie, Meredith, and
+Delafield in the farther window--at the happy ease and fun that seemed
+to prevail in it. He fiercely felt himself shut out and trampled on.
+
+Suddenly, Lord Lackington pulled up, his instinct for declamation
+qualified by an equally instinctive dread of boring or being bored.
+"What did you think of Montresor's statement?" he said, abruptly,
+referring to a batch of army reforms that Montresor the week before had
+endeavored to recommend to a sceptical House of Commons.
+
+"All very well, as far as it goes," said Warkworth, with a shrug.
+
+"Precisely! We English want an army and a navy; we don't like it when
+those fellows on the Continent swagger in our faces, and yet we won't
+pay either for the ships or the men. However, now that they've done away
+with purchase--Gad! I could fight them in the streets for the way in
+which they've done it!--now that they've turned the army into an
+examination-shop, tempered with jobbery, whatever we do, we shall go to
+the deuce. So it don't matter."
+
+"You were against the abolition?"
+
+"I was, sir--with Wellington and Raglan and everybody else of any
+account. And as for the violence, the disgraceful violence with which it
+was carried--"
+
+"Oh no, no," said Warkworth, laughing. "It was the Lords who behaved
+abominably, and it'll do a deal of good."
+
+Lord Lackington's eyes flashed.
+
+"I've had a long life," he said, pugnaciously. "I began as a middy in
+the American war of 1812, that nobody remembers now. Then I left the sea
+for the army. I knocked about the world. I commanded a brigade in
+the Crimea--"
+
+"Who doesn't remember that?" said Warkworth, smiling.
+
+The old man acknowledged the homage by a slight inclination of his
+handsome head.
+
+"And you may take my word for it that this new system will not give you
+men worth _a tenth part_ of those fellows who bought and bribed their
+way in under the old. The philosophers may like it, or lump it, but
+so it is."
+
+Warkworth dissented strongly. He was a good deal of a politician,
+himself a "new man," and on the side of "new men." Lord Lackington
+warmed to the fight, and Warkworth, with bitterness in his
+heart--because of that group opposite--was nothing loath to meet him.
+But presently he found the talk taking a turn that astonished him. He
+had entered upon a drawing-room discussion of a subject which had, after
+all, been settled, if only by what the Tories were pleased to call the
+_coup d'état_ of the Royal Warrant, and no longer excited the passions
+of a few years back. What he had really drawn upon himself was a
+hand-to-hand wrestle with a man who had no sooner provoked contradiction
+than he resented it with all his force, and with a determination to
+crush the contradictor.
+
+Warkworth fought well, but with a growing amazement at the tone and
+manner of his opponent. The old man's eyes darted war-flames under his
+finely arched brows. He regarded the younger with a more and more
+hostile, even malicious air; his arguments grew personal, offensive; his
+shafts were many and barbed, till at last Warkworth felt his face
+burning and his temper giving way.
+
+"What _are_ you talking about?" said Julie Le Breton, at last, rising
+and coming towards them.
+
+Lord Lackington broke off suddenly and threw himself into his chair.
+
+Warkworth rose from his.
+
+"We had better have been handing nails," he said, "but you wouldn't give
+us any work." Then, as Meredith and Delafield approached, he seized the
+opportunity of saying, in a low voice:
+
+"Am I not to have a word?"
+
+She turned with composure, though it seemed to him she was very pale.
+
+"Have you just come back from the Isle of Wight?"
+
+"This morning." He looked her in the eyes. "You got my letters?"
+
+"Yes, but I have had no time for writing. I hope you found your mother
+well."
+
+"Very well, thank you. You have been hard at work?"
+
+"Yes, but the Duchess and Mr. Delafield have made it all easy."
+
+And so on, a few more insignificant questions and answers.
+
+"I must go," said Delafield, coming up to them, "unless there is any
+more work for me to do. Good-bye, Major, I congratulate you. They have
+given you a fine piece of work."
+
+Warkworth made a little bow, half ironical. Confound the fellow's grave
+and lordly ways! He did not want his congratulations.
+
+He lingered a little, sorely, full of rage, yet not knowing how to go.
+
+Lord Lackington's eyes ceased to blaze, and the kitten ventured once
+more to climb upon his knee. Meredith, too, found a comfortable
+arm-chair, and presently tried to beguile the kitten from his neighbor.
+Julie sat erect between them, very silent, her thin, white hands on her
+lap, her head drooped a little, her eyes carefully restrained from
+meeting Warkworth's. He meanwhile leaned against the mantel-piece,
+irresolute.
+
+Meredith, it was clear, made himself quite happy and at home in the
+little drawing-room. The lame child came in and took a stool beside him.
+He stroked her head and talked nonsense to her in the intervals of
+holding forth to Julie on the changes necessary in some proofs of his
+which he had brought back. Lord Lackington, now quite himself again,
+went back to dreams, smiling over them, and quite unaware that the
+kitten had been slyly ravished from him. The little woman in black sat
+knitting in the background. It was all curiously intimate and domestic,
+only Warkworth had no part in it.
+
+"Good-bye, Miss Le Breton," he said, at last, hardly knowing his own
+voice. "I am dining out."
+
+She rose and gave him her hand. But it dropped from his like a thing
+dead and cold. He went out in a sudden suffocation of rage and pain; and
+as he walked in a blind haste to Cureton Street, he still saw her
+standing in the old-fashioned, scented room, so coldly graceful, with
+those proud, deep eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he had gone, Julie moved to the window and looked out into the
+gathering dusk. It seemed to her as if those in the room must hear the
+beating of her miserable heart.
+
+When she rejoined her companions, Dr. Meredith had already risen and was
+stuffing various letters and papers into his pockets with a view to
+departure.
+
+"Going?" said Lord Lackington. "You shall see the last of me, too,
+Mademoiselle Julie."
+
+And he stood up. But she, flushing, looked at him with a wistful smile.
+
+"Won't you stay a few minutes? You promised to advise me about Thérèse's
+drawings."
+
+"By all means."
+
+Lord Lackington sat down again. The lame child, it appeared, had some
+artistic talent, which Miss Le Breton wished to cultivate. Meredith
+suddenly found his coat and hat, and, with a queer look at Julie,
+departed in a hurry.
+
+"Thérèse, darling," said Julie, "will you go up-stairs, please, and
+fetch me that book from my room that has your little drawings
+inside it?"
+
+The child limped away on her errand. In spite of her lameness she moved
+with wonderful lightness and swiftness, and she was back again quickly
+with a calf-bound book in her hand.
+
+"Léonie!" said Julie, in a low voice, to Madame Bornier.
+
+The little woman looked up startled, nodded, rolled up her knitting in a
+moment, and was gone.
+
+"Take the book to his lordship, Thérèse," she said, and then, instead of
+moving with the child, she again walked to the window, and, leaning her
+head against it, looked out. The hand hanging against her dress trembled
+violently.
+
+"What did you want me to look at, my dear?" said Lord Lackington, taking
+the book in his hand and putting on his glasses.
+
+But the child was puzzled and did not know. She gazed at him silently
+with her sweet, docile look.
+
+"Run away, Thérèse, and find mother," said Julie, from the window.
+
+The child sped away and closed the door behind her.
+
+Lord Lackington adjusted his glasses and opened the book. Two or three
+slips of paper with drawings upon them fluttered out and fell on the
+table beneath. Suddenly there was a cry. Julie turned round, her
+lips parted.
+
+Lord Lackington walked up to her.
+
+"Tell me what this means," he said, peremptorily. "How did you come by
+it?"
+
+It was a volume of George Sand. He pointed, trembling, to the name and
+date on the fly-leaf--"Rose Delaney, 1842."
+
+"It is mine," she said, softly, dropping her eyes.
+
+"But how--how, in God's name, did you come by it?"
+
+"My mother left it to me, with all her other few books and possessions."
+
+There was a pause. Lord Lackington came closer.
+
+"Who was your mother?" he said, huskily.
+
+The words in answer were hardly audible. Julie stood before him like a
+culprit, her beautiful head humbly bowed.
+
+Lord Lackington dropped the book and stood bewildered.
+
+"Rose's child?" he said--"Rose's child?"
+
+Then, approaching her, he placed his hand on her arm.
+
+"Let me look at you," he commanded.
+
+Julie raised her eyes to him, and at the same time dumbly held out to
+him a miniature she had been keeping hidden in her hand. It was one of
+the miniatures from the locked triptych.
+
+He took it, looked from the pictured to the living face, then, turning
+away with a groan, he covered his face with his hands and fell again
+into the chair from which he had risen.
+
+Julie hurried to him. Her own eyes were wet with tears. After a moment's
+hesitation she knelt down beside him.
+
+"I ought to ask your pardon for not having told you before," she
+murmured.
+
+It was some time before Lord Lackington looked up. When at last his
+hands dropped, the face they uncovered was very white and old.
+
+"So you," he said, almost in a whisper, "are the child she wrote to me
+about before she died?"
+
+Julie made a sign of assent.
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Twenty-nine."
+
+"_She_ was thirty-two when I saw her last."
+
+There was a silence. Julie lifted one of his hands and kissed it. But he
+took no notice.
+
+"You know that I was going to her, that I should have reached her in
+time"--the words seemed wrung from him--"but that I was myself
+dangerously ill?"
+
+"I know. I remember it all."
+
+"Did she speak of me?"
+
+"Not often. She was very reserved, you remember. But not long before she
+died--she seemed half asleep--I heard her say, 'Papa!--Blanche!' and
+she smiled."
+
+Lord Lackington's face contracted, and the slow tears of old age stood
+in his eyes.
+
+"You are like her in some ways," he said, brusquely, as though to cover
+his emotion; "but not very like her."
+
+"She always thought I was like you."
+
+A cloud came over Lord Lackington's face. Julie rose from her knees and
+sat beside him. He lost himself a few moments amid the painful ghosts of
+memory. Then, turning to her abruptly, he said:
+
+"You have wondered, I dare say, why I was so hard--why, for seventeen
+years, I cast her off?"
+
+"Yes, often. You could have come to see us without anybody knowing.
+Mother loved you very much."
+
+Her voice was low and sad. Lord Lackington rose, fidgeted restlessly
+with some of the small ornaments on the mantel-piece, and at last
+turned to her.
+
+"She brought dishonor," he said, in the same stifled voice, "and the
+women of our family have always been stainless. But that I could have
+forgiven. After a time I should have resumed relations--private
+relations--with her. But it was your father who stood in the way. I was
+then--I am now--you saw me with that young fellow just now--quarrelsome
+and hot-tempered. It is my nature." He drew himself up obstinately. "I
+can't help it. I take great pains to inform myself, then I cling to my
+opinions tenaciously, and in argument my temper gets the better of me.
+Your father, too, was hot-tempered. He came, with my consent, once to
+see me--after your mother had left her husband--to try and bring about
+some arrangement between us. It was the Chartist time. He was a Radical,
+a Socialist of the most extreme views. In the course of our conversation
+something was said that excited him. He went off at score. I became
+enraged, and met him with equal violence. We had a furious argument,
+which ended in each insulting the other past forgiveness. We parted
+enemies for life. I never could bring myself to see him afterwards, nor
+to run the risk of seeing him. Your mother took his side and espoused
+his opinions while he lived. After his death, I suppose, she was too
+proud and sore to write to me. I wrote to her once--it was not the
+letter it might have been. She did not reply till she felt herself
+dying. That is the explanation of what, no doubt, must seem strange
+to you."
+
+[Illustration: "'FOR MY ROSE'S CHILD,' HE SAID, GENTLY"]
+
+He turned to her almost pleadingly. A deep flush had replaced the pallor
+of his first emotion, as though in the presence of these primal
+realities of love, death, and sorrow which she had recalled to him, his
+old quarrel, on a political difference, cut but a miserable figure.
+
+"No," she said, sadly, "not very strange. I understood my father--my
+dear father," she added, with soft, deliberate tenderness.
+
+Lord Lackington was silent a little, then he threw her a sudden,
+penetrating look.
+
+"You have been in London three years. You ought to have told me before."
+
+It was Julie's turn to color.
+
+"Lady Henry bound me to secrecy."
+
+"Lady Henry did wrong," he said, with emphasis. Then he asked,
+jealously, with a touch of his natural irascibility, "Who else has been
+in the secret?"
+
+"Four people, at most--the Duchess, first of all. I couldn't help it,"
+she pleaded. "I was so unhappy with Lady Henry."
+
+"You should have come to me. It was my right."
+
+"But"--she dropped her head--"you had made it a condition that I should
+not trouble you."
+
+He was silenced; and once more he leaned against the mantel-piece and
+hid his face from her, till, by a secret impulse, both moved. She rose
+and approached him; he laid his hands on her arms. With his persistent
+instinct for the lovely or romantic he perceived, with sudden pleasure,
+the grave, poetic beauty of her face and delicate form. Emotion had
+softened away all that was harsh; a quivering charm hovered over the
+features. With a strange pride, and a sense of mystery, he recognized
+his daughter and his race.
+
+"For my Rose's child," he said, gently, and, stooping, he kissed her on
+the brow. She broke out into weeping, leaning against his shoulder,
+while the old man comforted and soothed her.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+After the long conversation between herself and Lord Lackington which
+followed on the momentous confession of her identity, Julie spent a
+restless and weary evening, which passed into a restless and weary
+night. Was she oppressed by this stirring of old sorrows?--haunted
+afresh by her parents' fate?
+
+Ah! Lord Lackington had no sooner left her than she sank motionless into
+her chair, and, with the tears excited by the memories of her mother
+still in her eyes, she gave herself up to a desperate and sombre
+brooding, of which Warkworth's visit of the afternoon was, in truth, the
+sole cause, the sole subject.
+
+Why had she received him so? She had gone too far--much too far. But,
+somehow, she had not been able to bear it--that buoyant, confident air,
+that certainty of his welcome. No! She would show him that she was _not_
+his chattel, to be taken or left on his own terms. The, careless
+good-humor of his blue eyes was too much, after those days she had
+passed through.
+
+He, apparently, to judge from his letters to her from the Isle of Wight,
+had been conscious of no crisis whatever. Yet he must have seen from the
+little Duchess's manner, as she bade farewell to him that night at
+Crowborough House, that something was wrong. He must have realized that
+Miss Lawrence was an intimate friend of the Moffatts, and that--Or was
+he really so foolish as to suppose that his quasi-engagement to this
+little heiress, and the encouragement given him, in defiance of the
+girl's guardians, by her silly and indiscreet mother, were still hidden
+and secret matters?--that he could still conceal them from the world,
+and deny them to Julie?
+
+Her whole nature was sore yet from her wrestle with the Duchess on that
+miserable evening.
+
+"Julie, I can't help it! I know it's impertinent--but--Julie,
+darling!--do listen! What business has that man to make love to you as
+he does, when all the time--Yes, he does make love to you--he does!
+Freddie had a most ill-natured letter from Lady Henry this morning. Of
+course he had--and of course she'll write that kind of letter to as many
+people as she can. And it wouldn't matter a bit, if--But, you see, you
+_have_ been moving heaven and earth for him! And now his manner to you"
+(while the sudden flush burned her cheek, Julie wondered whether by
+chance the Duchess had seen anything of the yielded hands and the kiss)
+"and that ill-luck of his being the first to arrive, last night, at Lady
+Henry's! Oh, Julie, he's a wretch--_he is!_ Of course he is in love with
+you. That's natural enough. But all the time--listen, that nice woman
+told me the whole story--he's writing regularly to that little girl. She
+and her mother, in spite of the guardians, regard it as an engagement
+signed and sealed, and all his friends believe he's _quite_ determined
+to marry her because of the money. You may think me an odious little
+meddler, Julie, if you like, but I vow I could stab him to the heart,
+with all the pleasure in life!"
+
+And neither the annoyance, nor the dignity, nor the ridicule of the
+supposed victim--not Julie's angry eyes, nor all her mocking words from
+tremulous lips--had availed in the least to silence the tumult of
+alarmed affection in the Duchess's breast. Her Julie had been flouted
+and trifled with; and if she was so blind, so infatuated, as not to see
+it, she should at least be driven to realize what other people
+felt about it.
+
+So she had her say, and Julie had been forced, willy-nilly, upon
+discussion and self-defence--nay, upon a promise also. Pale, and stiffly
+erect, yet determined all the same to treat it as a laughing matter, she
+had vouchsafed the Duchess some kind of assurance that she would for the
+future observe a more cautious behavior towards Warkworth. "He is my
+_friend_, and whatever any one may say, he shall remain so," she had
+said, with a smiling stubbornness which hid something before which the
+little Duchess shrank. "But, of course, if I can do anything to please
+you, Evelyn--you know I like to please you."
+
+But she had never meant, she had never promised to forswear his society,
+to ban him from the new house. In truth she would rather have left home
+and friends and prospects, at one stroke, rather than have pledged
+herself to anything of the sort. Evelyn should never bind her to that.
+
+Then, during his days of absence, she had passed through wave after wave
+of feeling, while all the time to the outer eye she was occupied with
+nothing but the settlement into Lady Mary's strange little house. She
+washed, dusted, placed chairs and tables. And meanwhile a wild
+expectancy of his first letter possessed her. Surely there would be some
+anxiety in it, some fear, some disclosure of himself, and of the
+struggle in his mind between interest and love?
+
+Nothing of the kind. His first letter was the letter of one sure of his
+correspondent, sure of his reception and of his ground; a happy and
+intimate certainty shone through its phrases; it was the letter, almost,
+of a lover whose doubts are over.
+
+The effect of it was to raise a tempest, sharp and obscure, in Julie's
+mind. The contrast between the _pose_ of the letter and the sly reality
+behind bred a sudden anguish of jealousy, concerned not so much with
+Warkworth as with this little, unknown creature, who, without any
+effort, any desert--by the mere virtue of money and blood--sat waiting
+in arrogant expectancy till what she desired should come to her. How was
+it possible to feel any compunction towards her? Julie felt none.
+
+As to the rest of Miss Lawrence's gossip--that Warkworth was supposed to
+have "behaved badly," to have led the pretty child to compromise herself
+with him at Simla in ways which Simla society regarded as inadmissible
+and "bad form"; that the guardians had angrily intervened, and that he
+was under a promise, habitually broken by the connivance of the girl's
+mother, not to see or correspond with the heiress till she was
+twenty-one, in other words, for the next two years--what did these
+things matter to her? Had she ever supposed that Warkworth, in regard to
+money or his career, was influenced by any other than the ordinary
+worldly motives? She knew very well that he was neither saint nor
+ascetic. These details--or accusations--did not, properly speaking,
+concern her at all. She had divined and accepted his character, in all
+its average human selfishness and faultiness, long ago. She loved him
+passionately in spite of it--perhaps, if the truth were known,
+because of it.
+
+As for the marrying, or rather the courting, for money, that excited in
+her no repulsion whatever. Julie, in her own way, was a great romantic;
+but owing to the economic notions of marriage, especially the whole
+conception of the _dot_, prevailing in the French or Belgian minds amid
+whom she had passed her later girlhood, she never dreamed for a moment
+of blaming Warkworth for placing money foremost in his plans of
+matrimony. She resembled one of the famous _amoureuses_ of the
+eighteenth century, who in writing to the man she loved but could not
+marry, advises him to take a wife to mend his fortunes, and proposes to
+him various tempting morsels--_une jeune personne_, sixteen, with
+neither father nor mother, only a brother. "They will give her on her
+marriage thirteen thousand francs a year, and the aunt will be quite
+content to keep her and look after her for some time." And if that won't
+do--"I know a man who would be only too happy to have you for a
+son-in-law; but his daughter is only eleven; she is an only child,
+however, and she will be _very_ rich. You know, _mon ami_, I desire your
+happiness above all things; how to procure it--there lies the chief
+interest of my life."
+
+This notion of things, more or less disguised, was to Julie customary
+and familiar; and it was no more incompatible in her with the notions
+and standards of high sentiment, such as she might be supposed to have
+derived from her parents, than it is in the Latin races generally.
+
+No doubt it had been mingled in her, especially since her settlement in
+Lady Henry's house, with the more English idea of "falling in love"--the
+idea which puts personal choice first in marriage, and makes the matter
+of dowry subordinate to that mysterious election and affinity which the
+Englishman calls "love." Certainly, during the winter, Julie had hoped
+to lead Warkworth to marry her. As a poor man, of course, he must have
+money. But her secret feeling had been that her place in society, her
+influence with important people, had a money value, and that he would
+perceive this.
+
+Well, she had been a mere trusting fool, and he had deceived her. There
+was his crime--not in seeking money and trusting to money. He had told
+her falsehoods and misled her. He was doing it still. His letter implied
+that he loved her? Possibly. It implied to Julie's ear still more
+plainly that he stood tacitly and resolutely by Aileen Moffatt and her
+money, and that all he was prepared to offer to the dear friend of his
+heart was a more or less ambiguous relation, lasting over two years
+perhaps--till his engagement might be announced.
+
+A dumb and bitter anger mounted within her. She recalled the manner in
+which he had evaded her first questions, and her opinion became very
+much that of the Duchess. She had, indeed, been mocked, and treated like
+a child. So she sent no answer to his first letter, and when his second
+came she forbade herself to open it. It lay there on her writing-table.
+At night she transferred it to the table beside her bed, and early in
+the spring dawn her groping fingers drew it trembling towards her and
+slipped it under her pillow. By the time the full morning had come she
+had opened it, read and reread it--had bathed it, indeed, with
+her tears.
+
+But her anger persisted, and when Warkworth appeared on her threshold it
+flamed into sudden expression. She would make him realize her friends,
+her powerful friends--above all, she would make him realize Delafield.
+
+Well, now it was done. She had repelled her lover. She had shown herself
+particularly soft and gracious to Delafield. Warkworth now would break
+with her--might, perhaps, be glad of the chance to return safely and
+without further risks to his heiress.
+
+She sat on in the dark, thinking over every word, every look. Presently
+Thérèse stole in.
+
+"Mademoiselle, le souper sera bientôt prêt."
+
+Julie rose wearily, and the child slipped a thin hand into hers.
+
+"J'aime tant ce vieux monsieur," she said, softly. "Je l'aime tant!"
+
+Julie started. Her thoughts had wandered far, indeed, from Lord
+Lackington.
+
+As she went up-stairs to her little room her heart reproached her. In
+their interview the old man had shown great sweetness of feeling, a
+delicate and remorseful tenderness, hardly to have been looked for in a
+being so fantastic and self-willed. The shock of their conversation had
+deepened the lines in a face upon which age had at last begun to make
+those marks which are not another beauty, but the end of beauty. When
+she had opened the door for him in the dusk, Julie had longed, indeed,
+to go with him and soothe his solitary evening. His unmarried son,
+William, lived with him intermittently; but his wife was dead. Lady
+Blanche seldom came to town, and, for the most part, he lived alone in
+the fine house in St. James's Square, of which she had heard her
+mother talk.
+
+He liked her--had liked her from the first. How natural that she should
+tend and brighten his old age--how natural, and how impossible! He was
+not the man to brave the difficulties and discomforts inseparable from
+the sudden appearance of an illegitimate granddaughter in his household,
+and if he had been, Julie, in her fierce, new-born independence, would
+have shrunk from such a step. But she had been drawn to him; her heart
+had yearned to her kindred.
+
+No; neither love nor kindred were for her. As she entered the little,
+bare room over the doorway, which she had begun to fill with books and
+papers, and all the signs of the literary trade, she miserably bid
+herself be content with what was easily and certainly within her grasp.
+The world was pleased to say that she had a remarkable social talent.
+Let her give her mind to the fight with Lady Henry, and prove whether,
+after all, the salon could not be acclimatized on English soil. She had
+the literary instinct and aptitude, and she must earn money. She looked
+at her half-written article, and sighed to her books to save her.
+
+That evening Thérèse, who adored her, watched her with a wistful and
+stealthy affection. Her idol was strangely sad and pale. But she asked
+no questions. All she could do was to hover about "mademoiselle" with
+soft, flattering services, till mademoiselle went to bed, and then to
+lie awake herself, quietly waiting till all sounds in the room opposite
+had died away, and she might comfort her dumb and timid devotion with
+the hope that Julie slept.
+
+Sleep, however, or no sleep, Julie was up early next day. Before the
+post arrived she was already dressed, and on the point of descending to
+the morning coffee, which, in the old, frugal, Bruges fashion, she and
+Léonie and the child took in the kitchen together. Lady Henry's opinion
+of her as a soft and luxurious person dependent on dainty living was, in
+truth, absurdly far from the mark. After those years of rich food and
+many servants in Lady Henry's household, she had resumed the penurious
+Belgian ways at once, without effort--indeed, with alacrity. In the
+morning she helped Léonie and Thérèse with the housework. Her quick
+fingers washed and rubbed and dusted. In less than a week she knew every
+glass and cup in Cousin Mary Leicester's well-filled china cupboard, and
+she and Thérèse between them kept the two sitting-rooms spotless. She
+who had at once made friends and tools of Lady Henry's servants,
+disdained, so it appeared, to be served beyond what was absolutely
+necessary in her own house. A charwoman, indeed, came in the morning for
+the roughest work, but by ten o'clock she was gone, and Julie, Madame
+Bornier, and the child remained in undisputed possession. Little,
+flat-nosed, silent Madame Bornier bought and brought in all they ate.
+She denounced the ways, the viands, the brigand's prices of English
+_fournisseurs_, but it seemed to Julie, all the same, that she handled
+them with a Napoleonic success. She bought as the French poor buy, so
+far as the West End would let her, and Julie had soon perceived that
+their expenditure, even in this heart of Mayfair, would be incredibly
+small. Whereby she felt herself more and more mistress of her fate. By
+her own unaided hands would she provide for herself and her household.
+Each year there should be a little margin, and she would owe no man
+anything. After six months, if she could not afford to pay the Duke a
+fair rent for his house--always supposing he allowed her to remain in
+it--she would go elsewhere.
+
+As she reached the hall, clad in an old serge dress, which was a
+survival from Bruges days, Thérèse ran up to her with the letters.
+
+Julie looked through them, turned and went back to her room. She had
+expected the letter which lay on the top, and she must brace herself
+to read it.
+
+It began abruptly:
+
+     "You will hardly wonder that I should write at once to ask if
+     you have no explanation to give me of your manner of this
+     afternoon. Again and again I go over what happened, but no
+     light comes. It was as though you had wiped out all the six
+     months of our friendship; as though I had become for you once
+     more the merest acquaintance. It is impossible that I can
+     have been mistaken. You meant to make me--and
+     others?--clearly understand--what? That I no longer deserved
+     your kindness--that you had broken altogether with the man on
+     whom you had so foolishly bestowed it?
+
+     "My friend, what have I done? How have I sinned? Did that
+     sour lady, who asked me questions she had small business to
+     ask, tell you tales that have set your heart against me? But
+     what have incidents and events that happened, or may have
+     happened, in India, got to do with our friendship, which grew
+     up for definite reasons and has come to mean so much--has it
+     not?--to both of us? I am not a model person, Heaven
+     knows!--very far from it. There are scores of things in my
+     life to be ashamed of. And please remember that last year I
+     had never seen you; if I had, much might have gone
+     differently.
+
+     "But how can I defend myself? I owe you so much. Ought not
+     that, of itself, to make you realize how great is your power
+     to hurt me, and how small are my powers of resistance? The
+     humiliations you can inflict upon me are infinite, and I have
+     no rights, no weapons, against you.
+
+     "I hardly know what I am saying. It is very late, and I am
+     writing this after a dinner at the club given me by two or
+     three of my brother officers. It was a dinner in my honor, to
+     congratulate me on my good fortune. They are good fellows,
+     and it should have been a merry time. But my half hour in
+     your room had killed all power of enjoyment for me. They
+     found me a wretched companion, and we broke up early. I came
+     home through the empty streets, wishing myself, with all my
+     heart, away from England--facing the desert. Let me just say
+     this. It is not of good omen that now, when I want all my
+     faculties at their best, I should suddenly find myself
+     invaded by this distress and despondency. You have some
+     responsibility now in my life and career; if you would, you
+     cannot get rid of it. You have not increased the chances of
+     your friend's success in his great task.
+
+     "You see how I restrain myself. I could write as madly as I
+     feel--violently and madly. But of set purpose we pitched our
+     relation in a certain key and measure; and I try, at least,
+     to keep the measure, if the music and the charm must go. But
+     why, in God's name, should they go? Why have you turned
+     against me? You have listened to slanderers; you have
+     secretly tried me by tests that are not in the bargain, and
+     you have judged and condemned me without a hearing, without a
+     word. I can tell you I am pretty sore.
+
+     "I will come and see you no more in company for the present.
+     You gave me a footing with you, which has its own dignity.
+     I'll guard it; not even from you will I accept anything else.
+     But--unless, indeed, the grove is cut down and the bird flown
+     forever--let me come when you are alone. Then charge me with
+     what you will. I am an earthy creature, struggling through
+     life as I best can, and, till I saw you, struggling often, no
+     doubt, in very earthy ways. I am not a philosopher, nor an
+     idealist, with expectations, like Delafield. This
+     rough-and-tumble world is all I know. It's good enough for
+     me--good enough to love a friend in, as--I vow to God,
+     Julie!--I have loved you.
+
+     "There, it's out, and you must put up with it. I couldn't
+     help it. I am too miserable.
+
+     "But--
+
+     "But I won't write any more. I shall stay in my rooms till
+     twelve o'clock. You owe me promptness."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Julie put down the letter.
+
+She looked round her little study with a kind of despair--the despair
+perhaps of the prisoner who had thought himself delivered, only to find
+himself caught in fresh and stronger bonds. As for ambition, as for
+literature--here, across their voices, broke this voice of the senses,
+this desire of "the moth for the star." And she was powerless to resist
+it. Ah, why had he not accepted his dismissal--quarrelled with her at
+once and forever?
+
+She understood the letter perfectly--what it offered, and what it
+tacitly refused. An intimate and exciting friendship--for two years. For
+two years he was ready to fill up such time as he could spare from his
+clandestine correspondence with her cousin, with this romantic,
+interesting, but unprofitable affection. And then?
+
+She fell again upon his letter. Ah, but there was a new note in it--a
+hard, strained note, which gave her a kind of desperate joy. It seemed
+to her that for months she had been covetously listening for it in vain.
+
+She was beginning to be necessary to him; he had _suffered_--through
+her. Never before could she say that to herself. Pleasure she had given
+him, but not pain; and it is pain that is the test and consecration of--
+
+Of what?... Well, now for her answer. It was short.
+
+     "I am very sorry you thought me rude. I was tired with
+     talking and unpacking, and with literary work--housework,
+     too, if the truth were known. I am no longer a fine lady, and
+     must slave for myself. The thought, also, of an interview
+     with Lord Lackington which faced me, which I went through as
+     soon as you, Dr. Meredith, and Mr. Delafield had gone,
+     unnerved me. You were good to write to me, and I am grateful
+     indeed. As to your appointment, and your career, you owe no
+     one anything. Everything is in your own hands. I rejoice in
+     your good fortune, and I beg that you will let no false ideas
+     with regard to me trouble your mind.
+
+     "This afternoon at five, if you can forgive me, you will find
+     me. In the early afternoon I shall be in the British Museum,
+     for my work's sake."
+
+She posted her letter, and went about her daily housework, oppressed the
+while by a mental and moral nausea. As she washed and tidied and dusted,
+a true housewife's love growing up in her for the little house and its
+charming, old-world appointments--a sort of mute relation between her
+and it, as though it accepted her for mistress, and she on her side
+vowed it a delicate and prudent care--she thought how she could have
+delighted in this life which had opened upon her had it come to her a
+year ago. The tasks set her by Meredith were congenial and within her
+power. Her independence gave her the keenest pleasure. The effort and
+conquests of the intellect--she had the mind to love them, to desire
+them; and the way to them was unbarred.
+
+What plucked her back?
+
+A tear fell upon the old china cup that she was dusting. A sort of
+maternal element had entered into her affection for Warkworth during the
+winter. She had upheld him and fought for him. And now, like a mother,
+she could not tear the unworthy object from her heart, though all the
+folly of their pseudo-friendship and her secret hopes lay bare
+before her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Warkworth came at five.
+
+He entered in the dusk; a little pale, with his graceful head thrown
+back, and that half-startled, timid look in his wide, blue eyes--that
+misleading look--which made him the boy still, when he chose.
+
+Julie was standing near the window as he came in. As she turned and saw
+him there, a flood of tenderness and compunction swept over her. He was
+going away. What if she never saw him again?
+
+She shuddered and came forward rapidly, eagerly. He read the meaning of
+her movement, her face; and, wringing her hands with a violence that
+hurt her, he drew a long breath of relief.
+
+"Why--why"--he said, under his breath--"have you made me so unhappy?"
+
+The blood leaped in her veins. These, indeed, were new words in a new
+tone.
+
+"Don't let us reproach each other," she said. "There is so much to say.
+Sit down."
+
+To-day there were no beguiling spring airs. The fire burned merrily in
+the grate; the windows were closed.
+
+A scent of narcissus--the Duchess had filled the tables with
+flowers--floated in the room. Amid its old-fashioned and distinguished
+bareness--tempered by flowers, and a litter of foreign books--Julie
+seemed at last to have found her proper frame. In her severe black
+dress, opening on a delicate vest of white, she had a muselike grace;
+and the wreath made by her superb black hair round the fine intelligence
+of her brow had never been more striking. Her slender hands busied
+themselves with Cousin Mary Leicester's tea-things; and every movement
+had in Warkworth's eyes a charm to which he had never yet been sensible,
+in this manner, to this degree.
+
+"Am I really to say no more of yesterday?" he said, looking at her
+nervously.
+
+Her flush, her gesture, appealed to him.
+
+"Do you know what I had before me--that day--when you came in?" she
+said, softly.
+
+"No. I cannot guess. Ah, you said something about Lord Lackington?"
+
+She hesitated. Then her color deepened.
+
+"You don't know my story. You suppose, don't you, that I am a Belgian
+with English connections, whom Lady Henry met by chance? Isn't that how
+you explain me?"
+
+Warkworth had pushed aside his cup.
+
+"I thought--"
+
+He paused in embarrassment, but there was a sparkle of astonished
+expectancy in his eyes.
+
+"My mother"--she looked away into the blaze of the fire, and her voice
+choked a little--"my mother was Lord Lackington's daughter."
+
+"Lord Lackington's daughter?" echoed Warkworth, in stupefaction. A rush
+of ideas and inferences sped through his mind. He thought of Lady
+Blanche--things heard in India--and while he stared at her in an
+agitated silence the truth leaped to light.
+
+"Not--not Lady Rose Delaney?" he said, bending forward to her.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"My father was Marriott Dalrymple. You will have heard of him. I should
+be Julie Dalrymple, but--they could never marry--because of
+Colonel Delaney."
+
+Her face was still turned away.
+
+All the details of that famous scandal began to come back to him. His
+companion, her history, her relations to others, to himself, began to
+appear to him in the most astonishing new lights. So, instead of the
+mere humble outsider, she belonged all the time to the best English
+blood? The society in which he had met her was full of her kindred. No
+doubt the Duchess knew--and Montresor.... He was meshed in a net of
+thoughts perplexing and confounding, of which the total result was
+perhaps that she appeared to him as she sat there, the slender outline
+so quiet and still, more attractive and more desirable than ever. The
+mystery surrounding her in some way glorified her, and he dimly
+perceived that so it must have been for others.
+
+"How did you ever bear the Bruton Street life?" he said, presently, in
+a low voice of wonder. "Lady Henry knew?"
+
+"Oh yes!"
+
+"And the Duchess?"
+
+"Yes. She is a connection of my mother's."
+
+Warkworth's mind went back to the Moffatts. A flush spread slowly over
+the face of the young officer. It was indeed an extraordinary imbroglio
+in which he found himself.
+
+"How did Lord Lackington take it?" he asked, after a pause.
+
+"He was, of course, much startled, much moved. We had a long talk.
+Everything is to remain just the same. He wishes to make me an
+allowance, and, if he persists, I suppose I can't hurt him by refusing.
+But for the present I have refused. It is more amusing to earn one's own
+living." She turned to him with a sharp brightness in her black eyes.
+"Besides, if Lord Lackington gives me money, he will want to give me
+advice. And I would rather advise myself."
+
+Warkworth sat silent a moment. Then he took a great resolve.
+
+"I want to speak to you," he said, suddenly, putting out his hand to
+hers, which lay on her knee.
+
+She turned to him, startled.
+
+"I want to have no secrets from you," he said, drawing his breath
+quickly. "I told you lies one day, because I thought it was my duty to
+tell lies. Another person was concerned. But now I can't. Julie!--you'll
+let me call you so, won't you? The name is already"--he hesitated; then
+the words rushed out--"part of my life! Julie, it's quite true, there is
+a kind of understanding between your little cousin Aileen and me. At
+Simla she attracted me enormously. I lost my head one day in the woods,
+when she--whom we were all courting--distinguished me above two or three
+other men who were there. I proposed to her upon a sudden impulse, and
+she accepted me. She is a charming, soft creature. Perhaps I wasn't
+justified. Perhaps she ought to have had more chance of seeing the
+world. Anyway, there was a great row. Her guardians insisted that I had
+behaved badly. They could not know all the details of the matter, and I
+was not going to tell them. Finally I promised to withdraw for
+two years."
+
+He paused, anxiously studying her face. It had grown very white, and, he
+thought, very cold. But she quickly rose, and, looking down upon
+him, said:
+
+"Nothing of that is news to me. Did you think it was?"
+
+And moving to the tea-table, she began to make provision for a fresh
+supply of tea.
+
+Both words and manner astounded him. He, too, rose and followed her.
+
+"How did you first guess?" he said, abruptly.
+
+"Some gossip reached me." She looked up with a smile. "That's what
+generally happens, isn't it?"
+
+"There are no secrets nowadays," he said, sorely. "And then, there was
+Miss Lawrence?"
+
+"Yes, there was Miss Lawrence."
+
+"Did you think badly of me?"
+
+"Why should I? I understand Aileen is very pretty, and--"
+
+"And will have a large fortune. You understand that?" he said, trying to
+carry it off lightly.
+
+"The fact is well known, isn't it?"
+
+He sat down, twisting his hat between his hands. Then with an
+exclamation he dashed it on the floor, and, rising, he bent over Julie,
+his hands in his pockets.
+
+"Julie," he said, in a voice that shook her, "don't, for God's sake,
+give me up! I have behaved abominably, but don't take your friendship
+from me. I shall soon be gone. Our lives will go different ways. That
+was settled--alack!--before we met. I am honorably bound to that poor
+child. She cares for me, and I can't get loose. But these last months
+have been happy, haven't they? There are just three weeks left. At
+present the strongest feeling in my heart is--" He paused for his word,
+and he saw that she was looking through the window to the trees of the
+garden, and that, still as she was, her lip quivered.
+
+"What shall I say?" he resumed, with emotion. "It seems to me our case
+stands all by itself, alone in the world. We have three weeks--give them
+to me. Don't let's play at cross purposes any more. I want to be
+sincere--I want to hide nothing from you in these days. Let us throw
+aside convention and trust each other, as friends may, so that when I go
+we may say to each other, 'Well, it was worth the pain. These have been
+days of gold--we shall get no better if we live to be a hundred.'"
+
+She turned her face to him in a tremulous amazement and there were tears
+on her cheek. Never had his aspect been so winning. What he proposed
+was, in truth, a mean thing; all the same, he proposed it nobly.
+
+It was in vain that something whispered in her ear: "This girl to whom
+he describes himself as 'honorably bound' has a fortune of half a
+million. He is determined to have both her money and my heart." Another
+inward voice, tragically generous, dashed down the thought, and, at the
+moment, rightly; for as he stood over her, breathless and imperious, to
+his own joy, to his own exaltation, Warkworth was conscious of a new
+sincerity flowing in a tempestuous and stormy current through all the
+veins of being.
+
+With a sombre passion which already marked an epoch in their relation,
+and contained within itself the elements of new and unforeseen
+developments, she gazed silently into his face. Then, leaning back in
+her chair, she once more held out to him both her hands.
+
+He gave an exclamation of joy, kissed the hands tenderly, and sat down
+beside her.
+
+"Now, then, all your cares, all your thoughts, all your griefs are to be
+mine--till fate call us. And I have a thousand things to tell you, to
+bless you for, to consult you about. There is not a thought in my mind
+that you shall not know--bad, good, and indifferent--if you care to turn
+out the rag-bag. Shall I begin with the morning--my experiences at the
+club, my little nieces at the Zoo?" He laughed, but suddenly grew
+serious again. "No, your story first; you owe it me. Let me know all
+that concerns you. Your past, your sorrows, ambitions--everything."
+
+He bent to her imperiously. With a faint, broken smile, her hands still
+in his, she assented. It was difficult to begin, then difficult to
+control the flood of memory; and it had long been dark when Madame
+Bornier, coming in to light the lamp and make up the fire, disturbed an
+intimate and searching conversation, which had revealed the two natures
+to each other with an agitating fulness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet the results of this memorable evening upon Julie Le Breton were
+ultimately such as few could have foreseen.
+
+When Warkworth had left her, she went to her own room and sat for a long
+while beside the window, gazing at the dark shrubberies of the Cureton
+House garden, at the few twinkling, distant lights.
+
+The vague, golden hopes she had cherished through these past months of
+effort and scheming were gone forever. Warkworth would marry Aileen
+Moffatt, and use her money for an ambitious career. After these weeks
+now lying before them--weeks of dangerous intimacy, dangerous
+emotion--she and he would become as strangers to each other. He would be
+absorbed by his profession and his rich marriage. She would be left
+alone to live her life.
+
+A sudden terror of her own weakness overcame her. No, she could not be
+alone. She must place a barrier between herself and this--this strange
+threatening of illimitable ruin that sometimes rose upon her from the
+dark. "I have no prejudices," she had said to Sir Wilfrid. There were
+many moments when she felt a fierce pride in the element of lawlessness,
+of defiance, that seemed to be her inheritance from her parents. But
+to-night she was afraid of it.
+
+Again, if love was to go, _power_, the satisfaction of ambition,
+remained. She threw a quick glance into the future--the future beyond
+these three weeks. What could she make of it? She knew well that she was
+not the woman to resign herself to a mere pining obscurity.
+
+Jacob Delafield? Was it, after all, so impossible?
+
+For a few minutes she set herself deliberately to think out what it
+would mean to marry him; then suddenly broke down and wept, with
+inarticulate cries and sobs, with occasional reminiscences of her old
+convent's prayers, appeals half conscious, instinctive, to a God only
+half believed.
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+Delafield was walking through the Park towards Victoria Gate. A pair of
+beautiful roans pulled up suddenly beside him, and a little figure with
+a waving hand bent to him from a carriage.
+
+"Jacob, where are you off to? Let me give you a lift?"
+
+The gentleman addressed took off his hat.
+
+"Much obliged to you, but I want some exercise. I say, where did Freddie
+get that pair?"
+
+"I don't know, he doesn't tell me. Jacob, you must get in. I want to
+speak to you."
+
+Rather unwillingly, Delafield obeyed, and away they sped.
+
+"J'ai un tas de choses à vous dire," she said, speaking low, and in
+French, so as to protect herself from the servants in front. "Jacob, I'm
+_very_ unhappy about Julie."
+
+Delafield frowned uncomfortably.
+
+"Why? Hadn't you better leave her alone?"
+
+"Oh, of course, I know you think me a chatterbox. I don't care. You
+_must_ let me tell you some fresh news about her. It _isn't_ gossip, and
+you and I are her best friends. Oh, Freddie's so disagreeable about her.
+Jacob, you've got to help and advise a little. Now, do listen. It's your
+duty--your downright catechism duty."
+
+And she poured into his reluctant ear the tale which Miss Emily
+Lawrence nearly a fortnight before had confided to her.
+
+"Of course," she wound up, "you'll say it's only what we knew or guessed
+long ago. But you see, Jacob, we didn't _know_. It might have been just
+gossip. And then, besides"--she frowned and dropped her voice till it
+was only just audible--"this horrid man hadn't made our Julie so--so
+conspicuous, and Lady Henry hadn't turned out such a toad--and,
+altogether, Jacob, I'm dreadfully worried."
+
+"Don't be," said Jacob, dryly.
+
+"And what a creature!" cried the Duchess, unheeding. "They say that poor
+Moffatt child will soon have fretted herself ill, if the guardians don't
+give way about the two years."
+
+"What two years?"
+
+"The two years that she must wait--till she is twenty-one. Oh, Jacob,
+you know that!" exclaimed the Duchess, impatient with him. "I've told
+you scores of times."
+
+"I'm not in the least interested in Miss Moffatt's affairs."
+
+"But you ought to be, for they concern Julie," cried the Duchess. "Can't
+you imagine what kind of things people are saying? Lady Henry has spread
+it about that it was all to see him she bribed the Bruton Street
+servants to let her give the Wednesday party as usual--that she had been
+flirting with him abominably for months, and using Lady Henry's name in
+the most impertinent ways. And now, suddenly, everybody seems to know
+_something_ about this Indian engagement. You may imagine it doesn't
+look very well for our poor Julie. The other night at Chatton House I
+was furious. I made Julie go. I wanted her to show herself, and keep up
+her friends. Well, it was _horrid_! One or two old frights, who used to
+be only too thankful to Julie for reminding Lady Henry to invite them,
+put their noses in the air and behaved odiously. And even some of the
+nicer ones seemed changed--I could see Julie felt it."
+
+"Nothing of all that will do her any real harm," said Jacob, rather
+contemptuously.
+
+"Well, no. I know, of course, that her real friends will never forsake
+her--never, never! But, Jacob"--the Duchess hesitated, her charming
+little face furrowed with thought--"if only so much of it weren't true.
+She herself--"
+
+"Please, Evelyn," said Delafield, with decision, "don't tell me anything
+she may have said to you."
+
+The Duchess flushed.
+
+"I shouldn't have betrayed any confidence," she said, proudly. "And I
+must consult with some one who cares about her. Dr. Meredith lunched
+with me to-day, and he said a few words to me afterwards. He's quite
+anxious, too--and unhappy. Captain Warkworth's always there--always!
+Even I have been hardly able to see her the last few days. Last Sunday
+they took the little lame child and went into the country for the
+whole day--"
+
+"Well, what is there to object to in that?" cried Jacob.
+
+"I didn't say there was anything to object to," said the Duchess,
+looking at him with eyes half angry, half perplexed. "Only it's so
+unlike her. She had promised to be at home that afternoon for several
+old friends, and they found her flown, without a word. And think how
+sweet Julie is always about such things--what delicious notes she
+writes, how she hates to put anybody out or disappoint them! And now,
+not a word of excuse to anybody. And she looks so _ill_--so white, so
+fixed--like a person in a dream which she can't shake off. I'm just
+miserable about her. And I hate, _hate_ that man--engaged to her own
+cousin all the time!" cried the little Duchess, under her breath, as she
+passionately tore some violets at her waist to pieces and flung them out
+of the carriage. Then she turned to Jacob.
+
+"But, of course, if you don't care twopence about all this, Jacob, it's
+no good talking to you!"
+
+Her taunt fell quite unnoticed. Jacob turned to her with smiling
+composure.
+
+"You have forgotten, my dear Evelyn, all this time, that Warkworth goes
+away--to mid-Africa--in little more than two weeks."
+
+"I wish it was two minutes," said the Duchess, fuming.
+
+Delafield made no reply for a while. He seemed to be studying the effect
+of a pale shaft of sunlight which had just come stealing down through
+layers of thin gray cloud to dance upon the Serpentine. Presently, as
+they left the Serpentine behind them, he turned to his companion with
+more apparent sympathy.
+
+"We can't do anything, Evelyn, and we've no right whatever to talk of
+alarm, or anxiety--to _talk_ of it, mind! It's--it's disloyal. Forgive
+me," he added, hastily, "I know you don't gossip. But it fills me with
+rage that other people should be doing it."
+
+The brusquerie of his manner disconcerted the little lady beside him.
+She recovered herself, however, and said, with a touch of sarcasm,
+tempered by a rather trembling lip:
+
+"Your rage won't prevent their gossiping, Mr. Jacob, I thought, perhaps,
+your _friendship_ might have done something to stop it--to--to influence
+Julie," she added, uncertainly.
+
+"My friendship, as you call it, is of no use whatever," he said,
+obstinately. "Warkworth will go away, and if you and others do their
+best to protect Miss Le Breton, talk will soon die out. Behave as if you
+had never heard the man's name before--stare the people down. Why, good
+Heavens! you have a thousand arts! But, of course, if the little flame
+is to be blown into a blaze by a score of so-called friends--"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+The Duchess did not take his rebukes kindly, not having, in truth,
+deserved them.
+
+"You are rude and unkind, Jacob," she said, almost with the tears in her
+eyes. "And you don't understand--it is because I myself am so anxious--"
+
+"For that reason, play the part with all your might," he said,
+unyieldingly. "Really, even you and I oughtn't to talk of it any more.
+But there _is_ one thing I want very much to know about Miss Le Breton."
+
+He bent towards her, smiling, though in truth he was disgusted with
+himself, vexed with her, and out of tune with all the world.
+
+The Duchess made a little face.
+
+"All very well, but after such a lecture as you have indulged in, I
+think I prefer not to say any more about Julie."
+
+"Do. I'm ashamed of myself--except that I don't retract one word, not
+one. Be kind, all the same, and tell me--if you know--has she spoken to
+Lord Lackington?"
+
+The Duchess still frowned, but a few more apologetic expressions on his
+part restored a temper that had always a natural tendency to peace.
+Indeed, Jacob's _boutades_ never went long unpardoned. An only child
+herself, he, her first cousin, had played the part of brother in her
+life, since the days when she first tottered in long frocks, and he had
+never played it in any mincing fashion. His words were often blunt. She
+smarted and forgave--much more quickly than she forgave her husband. But
+then, with him, she was in love.
+
+So she presently vouchsafed to give Jacob the news that Lord Lackington
+at last knew the secret--that he had behaved well--had shown much
+feeling, in fact--so that poor Julie--
+
+But Jacob again cut short the sentimentalisms, the little touching
+phrases in which the woman delighted.
+
+"What is he going to do for her?" he said, impatiently. "Will he make
+any provision for her? Is there any way by which she can live in his
+house--take care of him?"
+
+The Duchess shook her head.
+
+"At seventy-five one can't begin to explain a thing as big as that.
+Julie perfectly understands, and doesn't wish it."
+
+"But as to money?" persisted Jacob.
+
+"Julie says nothing about money. How odd you are, Jacob! I thought that
+was the last thing needful in your eyes."
+
+Jacob did not reply. If he had, he would probably have said that what
+was harmful or useless for men might be needful for women--for the
+weakness of women. But he kept silence, while the vague intensity of the
+eyes, the pursed and twisted mouth, showed that his mind was full
+of thoughts.
+
+Suddenly he perceived that the carriage was nearing Victoria Gate. He
+called to the coachman to stop, and jumped out.
+
+"Good-bye, Evelyn. Don't bear me malice. You're a good friend," he said
+in her ear--"a real good friend. But don't let people talk to you--not
+even elderly ladies with the best intentions. I tell you it will be a
+fight, and one of the best weapons is"--he touched his lips
+significantly, smiled at her, and was gone.
+
+The Duchess passed out of the Park. Delafield turned as though in the
+direction of the Marble Arch, but as soon as the carriage was out of
+sight he paused and quickly retraced his steps towards Kensington
+Gardens. Here, in this third week of March, some of the thorns and
+lilacs were already in leaf. The grass was springing, and the chatter of
+many sparrows filled the air. Faint patches of sun flecked the ground
+between the trees, and blue hazes, already redeemed from the dreariness
+of winter, filled the dim planes of distance and mingled with the low,
+silvery clouds. He found a quiet spot, remote from nursery-maids and
+children, and there he wandered to and fro, indefinitely, his hands
+behind his back. All the anxieties for which he had scolded his cousin
+possessed him, only sharpened tenfold; he was in torture, and he
+was helpless.
+
+However, when at last he emerged from his solitude, and took a hansom to
+the Chudleigh estate office in Spring Gardens, he resolutely shook off
+the thoughts which had been weighing upon him. He took his usual
+interest in his work, and did it with his usual capacity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Towards five o'clock in the afternoon, Delafield found himself in
+Cureton Street. As he turned down Heribert Street he saw a cab in front
+of him. It stopped at Miss Le Breton's door, and Warkworth jumped out.
+The door was quickly opened to him, and he went in without having turned
+his eyes towards the man at the far corner of the street.
+
+Delafield paused irresolute. Finally he walked back to his club in
+Piccadilly, where he dawdled over the newspapers till nearly seven.
+
+Then he once more betook himself to Heribert Street.
+
+"Is Miss Le Breton at home?"
+
+Thérèse looked at him with a sudden flickering of her clear eyes.
+
+"I think so, sir," she said, with soft hesitation, and she slowly led
+him across the hall.
+
+The drawing-room door opened. Major Warkworth emerged.
+
+"Ah, how do you do?" he said, shortly, staring in a kind of bewilderment
+as he saw Delafield. Then he hurriedly looked for his hat, ran down the
+stairs, and was gone.
+
+"Announce me, please," said Delafield, peremptorily, to the little girl.
+"Tell Miss Le Breton that I am here." And he drew back from the open
+door of the drawing-room. Thérèse slipped in, and reappeared.
+
+"Please to walk in, sir," she said, in her shy, low voice, and Delafield
+entered. From the hall he had caught one involuntary glimpse of Julie,
+standing stiff and straight in the middle of the room, her hands clasped
+to her breast--a figure in pain. When he went in, she was in her usual
+seat by the fire, with her embroidery frame in front of her.
+
+"May I come in? It is rather late."
+
+"Oh, by all means! Do you bring me any news of Evelyn? I haven't seen
+her for three days."
+
+He seated himself beside her. It was hard, indeed, for him to hide all
+signs of the tumult within. But he held a firm grip upon himself.
+
+"I saw Evelyn this afternoon. She complained that you had had no time
+for her lately."
+
+Julie bent over her work. He saw that her fingers were so unsteady that
+she could hardly make them obey her.
+
+"There has been a great deal to do, even in this little house. Evelyn
+forgets; she has an army of servants; we have only our hands and
+our time."
+
+She looked up, smiling. He made no reply, and the smile died from her
+face, suddenly, as though some one had blown out a light. She returned
+to her work, or pretended to. But her aspect had left him inwardly
+shaken. The eyes, disproportionately large and brilliant, were of an
+emphasis almost ghastly, the usually clear complexion was flecked and
+cloudy, the mouth dry-lipped. She looked much older than she had done a
+fortnight before. And the fact was the more noticeable because in her
+dress she had now wholly discarded the touch of stateliness--almost
+old-maidishness--which had once seemed appropriate to the position of
+Lady Henry's companion. She was wearing a little gown of her youth, a
+blue cotton, which two years before had been put aside as too slight
+and juvenile. Never had the form within it seemed so girlish, so
+appealing. But the face was heart-rending.
+
+After a pause he moved a little closer to her.
+
+"Do you know that you are looking quite ill?"
+
+"Then my looks are misleading. I am very well."
+
+"I am afraid I don't put much faith in that remark. When do you mean to
+take a holiday?"
+
+"Oh, very soon. Léonie, my little housekeeper, talks of going to Bruges
+to wind up all her affairs there and bring back some furniture that she
+has warehoused. I may go with her. I, too, have some property stored
+there. I should go and see some old friends--the _soeurs_, for instance,
+with whom I went to school. In the old days I was a torment to them, and
+they were tyrants to me. But they are quite nice to me now--they give me
+_patisserie_, and stroke my hands and spoil me."
+
+And she rattled on about the friends she might revisit, in a hollow,
+perfunctory way, which set him on edge.
+
+"I don't see that anything of that kind will do you any good. You want
+rest of mind and body. I expect those last scenes with Lady Henry cost
+you more than you knew. There are wounds one does not notice at
+the time--"
+
+"Which afterwards bleed inwardly?" She laughed. "No, no, I am not
+bleeding for Lady Henry. By-the-way, what news of her?"
+
+"Sir Wilfrid told me to-day that he had had a letter. She is at Torquay,
+and she thinks there are too many curates at Torquay. She is not at all
+in a good temper."
+
+Julie looked up.
+
+"You know that she is trying to punish me. A great many people seem to
+have been written to."
+
+"That will blow over."
+
+"I don't know. How confident I was at one time that, if there was a
+breach, it would be Lady Henry that would suffer! It makes me hot to
+remember some things I said--to Sir Wilfrid, in particular. I see now
+that I shall not be troubled with society in this little house."
+
+"It is too early for you to guess anything of that kind."
+
+"Not at all! London is pretty full. The affair has made a noise. Those
+who meant to stand by me would have called, don't you think?"
+
+The quivering bitterness of her face was most pitiful in Jacob's eyes.
+
+"Oh, people take their time," he said, trying to speak lightly.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"It's ridiculous that I should care. One's self-love, I suppose--_that_
+bleeds! Evelyn has made me send out cards for a little house-warming.
+She said I must. She made me go to that smart party at Chatton House the
+other night. It was a great mistake. People turned their backs on me.
+And this, too, will be a mistake--and a failure."
+
+"You were kind enough to send me a card."
+
+"Yes--and you must come?"
+
+She looked at him with a sudden nervous appeal, which made another tug
+on his self-control.
+
+"Of course I shall come."
+
+"Do you remember your own saying--that awful evening--that I had devoted
+friends? Well, we shall soon see."
+
+"That depends only on yourself," he replied, with gentle deliberation.
+
+She started--threw him a doubtful look.
+
+"If you mean that I must take a great deal of trouble, I am afraid I
+can't. I am too tired."
+
+And she sank back in her chair.
+
+The sigh that accompanied the words seemed to him involuntary,
+unconscious.
+
+"I didn't mean that--altogether," he said, after a moment.
+
+She moved restlessly.
+
+"Then, really, I don't know what you meant. I suppose all friendship
+depends on one's self."
+
+She drew her embroidery frame towards her again, and he was left to
+wonder at his own audacity. "Do you know," she said, presently, her eyes
+apparently busy with her silks, "that I have told Lord Lackington?"
+
+"Yes. Evelyn gave me that news. How has the old man behaved?"
+
+"Oh, very well--most kindly. He has already formed a habit, almost, of
+'dropping in' upon me at all hours. I have had to appoint him times and
+seasons, or there would be no work done. He sits here and raves about
+young Mrs. Delaray--you know he is painting her portrait, for the famous
+series?--and draws her profile on the backs of my letters. He recites
+his speeches to me; he asks my advice as to his fights with his tenants
+or his miners. In short, I'm adopted--I'm almost the real thing."
+
+She smiled, and then again, as she turned over her silks, he heard her
+sigh--a long breath of weariness. It was strange and terrible in his
+ear--the contrast between this unconscious sound, drawn as it were from
+the oppressed heart of pain, and her languidly, smiling words.
+
+"Has he spoken to you of the Moffatts?" he asked her, presently, not
+looking at her.
+
+A sharp crimson color rushed over her face.
+
+"Not much. He and Lady Blanche are not great friends. And I have made
+him promise to keep my secret from her till I give him leave to
+tell it."
+
+"It will have to be known to her some time, will it not?"
+
+"Perhaps," she said, impatiently. "Perhaps, when I can make up my mind."
+
+Then she pushed aside her frame and would talk no more about Lord
+Lackington. She gave him, somehow, the impression of a person
+suffocating, struggling for breath and air. And yet her hand was icy,
+and she presently went to the fire, complaining of the east wind; and as
+he put on the coal he saw her shiver.
+
+"Shall I force her to tell me everything?" he thought to himself.
+
+Did she divine the obscure struggle in his mind? At any rate she seemed
+anxious to cut short their _tête-à-tête_. She asked him to come and look
+at some engravings which the Duchess had sent round for the
+embellishment of the dining-room. Then she summoned Madame Bornier, and
+asked him a number of questions on Léonie's behalf, with reference to
+some little investment of the ex-governess's savings, which had been
+dropping in value. Meanwhile, as she kept him talking, she leaned
+herself against the lintel of the door, forgetting every now and then
+that any one else was there, and letting the true self appear, like some
+drowned thing floating into sight. Delafield disposed of Madame
+Bornier's affairs, hardly knowing what he said, but showing in truth his
+usual conscience and kindness. Then when Léonie was contented, Julie saw
+the little cripple crossing the hall, and called to her.
+
+"Ah, ma chérie! How is the poor little foot?"
+
+And turning to Delafield, she explained volubly that Thérèse had given
+herself a slight twist on the stairs that morning, pressing the child to
+her side the while with a tender gesture. The child nestled against her.
+
+"Shall maman keep back supper?" Thérèse half whispered, looking at
+Delafield.
+
+"No, no, I must go!" cried Delafield, rousing himself and looking for
+his hat.
+
+"I would ask you to stay," said Julie, smiling, "just to show off
+Léonie's cooking; but there wouldn't be enough for a great big man. And
+you're probably dining with dukes."
+
+Delafield disclaimed any such intention, and they went back to the
+drawing-room to look for his hat and stick. Julie still had her arm
+round Thérèse and would not let the child go. She clearly avoided being
+left alone with him; and yet it seemed, even to his modesty, that she
+was loath to see him depart. She talked first of her little _ménage_, as
+though proud of their daily economies and contrivances; then of her
+literary work and its prospects; then of her debt to Meredith. Never
+before had she thus admitted him to her domestic and private life. It
+was as though she leaned upon his sympathy, his advice, his mere
+neighborhood. And her pale, changed face had never seemed to him so
+beautiful--never, in fact, truly beautiful till now. The dying down of
+the brilliance and energy of the strongly marked character, which had
+made her the life of the Bruton Street salon, into this mildness, this
+despondency, this hidden weariness, had left her infinitely more lovely
+in his eyes. But how to restrain himself much longer from taking the
+sad, gracious woman in his arms and coercing her into sanity and
+happiness!
+
+At last he tore himself away.
+
+"You won't forget Wednesday?" she said to him, as she followed him into
+the hall.
+
+"No. Is there anything else that you wish--that I could do?"
+
+"No, nothing. But if there is I will ask."
+
+Then, looking up, she shrank from something in his face--something
+accusing, passionate, profound.
+
+He wrung her hand.
+
+"Promise that you will ask."
+
+She murmured something, and he turned away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She came back alone into the drawing-room.
+
+"Oh, what a good man!" she said, sighing. "What a good man!"
+
+And then, all in a moment, she was thankful that he was gone--that she
+was alone with and mistress of her pain.
+
+The passion and misery which his visit had interrupted swept back upon
+her in a rushing swirl, blinding and choking every sense. Ah, what a
+scene, to which his coming had put an end--scene of bitterness, of
+recrimination, not restrained even by this impending anguish
+of parting!
+
+It came as a close to a week during which she and Warkworth had been
+playing the game which they had chosen to play, according to its
+appointed rules--the delicacies and restraints of friendship masking,
+and at the same time inflaming, a most unhappy, poisonous, and growing
+love. And, finally, there had risen upon them a storm-wave of
+feeling--tyrannous, tempestuous--bursting in reproach and agitation,
+leaving behind it, bare and menacing, the old, ugly facts, unaltered and
+unalterable.
+
+Warkworth was little less miserable than herself. That she knew. He
+loved her, as it were, to his own anger and surprise. And he suffered in
+deserting her, more than he had ever suffered yet through any human
+affection.
+
+But his purpose through it all remained stubbornly fixed; that, also,
+she knew. For nearly a year Aileen Moffatt's fortune and Aileen
+Moffatt's family connections had entered into all his calculations of
+the future. Only a few more years in the army, then retirement with
+ample means, a charming wife, and a seat in Parliament. To jeopardize a
+plan so manifestly desirable, so easy to carry out, so far-reaching in
+its favorable effects upon his life, for the sake of those hard and
+doubtful alternatives in which a marriage with Julie would involve him,
+never seriously entered his mind. When he suffered he merely said to
+himself, steadily, that time would heal the smart for both of them.
+
+"Only one thing would be absolutely fatal for all of us--that I should
+break with Aileen."
+
+Julie read these obscure processes in Warkworth's mind with perfect
+clearness. She was powerless to change them; but that afternoon she had,
+at any rate, beaten her wings against the bars, and the exhaustion and
+anguish of her revolt, her reproaches, were still upon her.
+
+The spring night had fallen. The room was hot, and she threw a window
+open. Some thorns in the garden beneath had thickened into leaf. They
+rose in a dark mass beneath the window. Overhead, beyond the haze of the
+great city, a few stars twinkled, and the dim roar of London life beat
+from all sides upon this quiet corner which still held Lady Mary's
+old house.
+
+Julie's eyes strained into the darkness; her head swam with weakness and
+weariness. Suddenly she gave a cry--she pressed her hands to her heart.
+Upon the darkness outside there rose a face, so sharply drawn, so
+life-like, that it printed itself forever upon the quivering tissues of
+the brain. It was Warkworth's face, not as she had seen it last, but in
+some strange extremity of physical ill--drawn, haggard, in a cold
+sweat--the eyes glazed, the hair matted, the parched lips open as though
+they cried for help. She stood gazing. Then the eyes turned, and the
+agony in them looked out upon her.
+
+Her whole sense was absorbed by the phantom; her being hung upon it.
+Then, as it faded on the quiet trees, she tottered to a chair and hid
+her face. Common sense told her that she was the victim of her own tired
+nerves and tortured fancy. But the memory of Cousin Mary Leicester's
+second sight, of her "visions" in this very room, crept upon her and
+gripped her heart. A ghostly horror seized her of the room, the house,
+and her own tempestuous nature. She groped her way out, in blind and
+hurrying panic--glad of the lamp in the hall, glad of the sounds in the
+house, glad, above all, of Thérèse's thin hands as they once more stole
+lovingly round her own.
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+The Duchess and Julie were in the large room of Burlington House. They
+had paused before a magnificent Turner of the middle period, hitherto
+unseen by the public, and the Duchess was reading from the catalogue in
+Julie's ear.
+
+She had found Julie alone in Heribert Street, surrounded by books and
+proofs, endeavoring, as she reported, to finish a piece of work for Dr.
+Meredith. Distressed by her friend's pale cheeks, the Duchess had
+insisted on dragging her from the prison-house and changing the current
+of her thoughts. Julie, laughing, hesitating, indignant, had at last
+yielded--probably in order to avoid another _tête-à-tête_ and another
+scene with the little, impetuous lady, and now the Duchess had her safe
+and was endeavoring to amuse her.
+
+But it was not easy. Julie, generally so instructed and sympathetic, so
+well skilled in the difficult art of seeing pictures with a friend,
+might, to-day, never have turned a phrase upon a Constable or a Romney
+before. She tried, indeed, to turn them as usual; but the Duchess,
+sharply critical and attentive where her beloved Julie was concerned,
+perceived the difference acutely! Alack, what languor, what fatigue!
+Evelyn became more and more conscious of an inward consternation.
+
+"But, thank goodness, he goes to-morrow--the villain! And when that's
+over, it will be all right."
+
+Julie, meanwhile, knew that she was observed, divined, and pitied. Her
+pride revolted, but it could wring from her nothing better than a
+passive resistance. She could prevent Evelyn from expressing her
+thoughts; she could not so command her own bodily frame that the Duchess
+should not think. Days of moral and mental struggle, nights of waking,
+combined with the serious and sustained effort of a new profession, had
+left their mark. There are, moreover, certain wounds to self-love and
+self-respect which poison the whole being.
+
+"Julie! you _must_ have a holiday!" cried the Duchess, presently, as
+they sat down to rest.
+
+Julie replied that she, Madame Bornier, and the child were going to
+Bruges for a week.
+
+"Oh, but that won't be comfortable enough! I'm sure I could arrange
+something. Think of all our tiresome houses--eating their heads off!"
+
+Julie firmly refused. She was going to renew old friendships at Bruges;
+she would be made much of; and the prospect was as pleasant as any one
+need wish.
+
+"Well, of course, if you have made up your mind. When do you go?"
+
+"In three or four days--just before the Easter rush. And you?"
+
+"Oh, we go to Scotland to fish. We must, of course, be killing
+something. How long, darling, will you be away?"
+
+"About ten days." Julie pressed the Duchess's little hand in
+acknowledgment of the caressing word and look.
+
+"By-the-way, didn't Lord Lackington invite you? Ah, there he is!"
+
+And suddenly, Lord Lackington, examining with fury a picture of his own
+which some rascally critic had that morning pronounced to be "Venetian
+school" and not the divine Giorgione himself, lifted an angry
+countenance to find the Duchess and Julie beside him.
+
+The start which passed through him betrayed itself. He could not yet see
+Julie with composure. But when he had pressed her hand and inquired
+after her health, he went back to his grievance, being indeed rejoiced
+to have secured a pair of listeners.
+
+"Really, the insolence of these fellows in the press! I shall let the
+Academy know what I think of it. Not a rag of mine shall they ever see
+here again. Ears and little fingers, indeed! Idiots and owls!"
+
+Julie smiled. But it had to be explained to the Duchess that a wise man,
+half Italian, half German, had lately arisen who proposed to judge the
+authenticity of a picture by its ears, assisted by any peculiarities of
+treatment in the little fingers.
+
+"What nonsense!" said the Duchess, with a yawn. "If I were an artist, I
+should always draw them different ways."
+
+"Well, not exactly," said Lord Lackington, who, as an artist himself,
+was unfortunately debarred from statements of this simplicity. "But the
+_ludicrous_ way in which these fools overdo their little discoveries!"
+
+And he walked on, fuming, till the open and unmeasured admiration of the
+two ladies for his great Rembrandt, the gem of his collection, now
+occupying the place of honor in the large room of the Academy, restored
+him to himself.
+
+"Ah, even the biggest ass among them holds his tongue about that!" he
+said, exultantly. "But, hallo! What does that call itself?" He looked at
+a picture in front of him, then at the catalogue, then at the Duchess.
+
+"That picture is ours," said the Duchess. "Isn't it a dear? It's a
+Leonardo da Vinci."
+
+"Leonardo fiddlesticks!" cried Lord Lackington. "Leonardo, indeed! What
+absurdity! Really, Duchess, you should tell Crowborough to be more
+careful about his things. We mustn't give handles to these fellows."
+
+"What do you mean?" said the Duchess, offended. "If it isn't a Leonardo,
+pray what is it?"
+
+"Why, a bad school copy, of course!" said Lord Lackington, hotly. "Look
+at the eyes"--he took out a pencil and pointed--"look at the neck, look
+at the fingers!"
+
+The Duchess pouted.
+
+"Oh!" she said. "Then there is something in fingers!"
+
+Lord Lackington's face suddenly relaxed. He broke into a shout of
+laughter, _bon enfant_ that he was; and the Duchess laughed, too; but
+under cover of their merriment she, mindful of quite other things, drew
+him a little farther away from Julie.
+
+"I thought you had asked her to Nonpareil for Easter?" she said, in his
+ear, with a motion of her pretty head towards Julie in the distance.
+
+"Yes, but, my dear lady, Blanche won't come home! She and Aileen put it
+off, and put it off. Now she says they mean to spend May in
+Switzerland--may perhaps be away the whole summer! I had counted on
+them for Easter. I am dependent on Blanche for hostess. It is really too
+bad of her. Everything has broken down, and William and I (he named his
+youngest son) are going to the Uredales' for a fortnight."
+
+Lord Uredale, his eldest son, a sportsman and farmer, troubled by none
+of his father's originalities, reigned over the second family "place,"
+in Herefordshire, beside the Wye.
+
+"Has Aileen any love affairs yet?" said the Duchess, abruptly, raising
+her face to his.
+
+Lord Lackington looked surprised.
+
+"Not that I know of. However, I dare say they wouldn't tell me. I'm a
+sieve, I know. Have you heard of any? Tell me." He stooped to her with
+roguish eagerness. "I like to steal a march on Blanche."
+
+So he knew nothing--while half their world was talking! It was very
+characteristic, however. Except for his own hobbies, artistic, medical,
+or military, Lord Lackington had walked through life as a Johnny
+Head-in-Air, from his youth till now. His children had not trusted him
+with their secrets, and he had never discovered them for himself.
+
+"Is there any likeness between Julie and Aileen?" whispered the Duchess.
+
+Lord Lackington started. Both turned their eyes towards Julie, as she
+stood some ten yards away from them, in front of a refined and
+mysterious profile of the cinque-cento--some lady, perhaps, of the
+d'Este or Sforza families, attributed to Ambrogio da Predis. In her
+soft, black dress, delicately folded and draped to hide her excessive
+thinness, her small toque fitting closely over her wealth of hair, her
+only ornaments a long and slender chain set with uncut jewels which Lord
+Lackington had brought her the day before, and a bunch of violets which
+the Duchess had just slipped into her belt, she was as rare and delicate
+as the picture. But she turned her face towards them, and Lord
+Lackington made a sudden exclamation.
+
+"No! Good Heavens, no! Aileen was a dancing-sprite when I saw her last,
+and this poor girl!--Duchess, why does she look like that? So sad, so
+bloodless!"
+
+He turned upon her impetuously, his face frowning and disturbed.
+
+The Duchess sighed.
+
+"You and I have just got to do all we can for her," she said, relieved
+to see that Julie had wandered farther away, as though it pleased her to
+be left to herself.
+
+"But I would do anything--everything!" cried Lord Lackington. "Of
+course, none of us can undo the past. But I offered yesterday to make
+full provision for her. She has refused. She has the most Quixotic
+notions, poor child!"
+
+"No, let her earn her own living yet awhile. It will do her good.
+But--shall I tell you secrets?" The Duchess looked at him, knitting her
+small brows.
+
+"Tell me what I ought to know--no more," he said, gravely, with a
+dignity contrasting oddly with his school-boy curiosity in the matter of
+little Aileen's lover.
+
+The Duchess hesitated. Just in front of her was a picture of the
+Venetian school representing St. George, Princess Saba, and the dragon.
+The princess, a long and slender victim, with bowed head and fettered
+hands, reminded her of Julie. The dragon--perfidious, encroaching
+wretch!--he was easy enough of interpretation. But from the blue
+distance, thank Heaven! spurs the champion. Oh, ye heavenly powers, give
+him wings and strength! "St. George--St. George to the rescue!"
+
+"Well," she said, slowly, "I can tell you of some one who is very
+devoted to Julie--some one worthy of her. Come with me."
+
+And she took him away into the next room, still talking in his ear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they returned, Lord Lackington was radiant. With a new eagerness he
+looked for Julie's distant figure amid the groups scattered about the
+central room. The Duchess had sworn him to secrecy, indeed; and he meant
+to be discretion itself. But--Jacob Delafield! Yes, that, indeed, would
+be a solution. His pride was acutely pleased; his affection--of which he
+already began to feel no small store for this charming woman of his own
+blood, this poor granddaughter _de la main gauche_--was strengthened and
+stimulated. She was sad now and out of spirits, poor thing, because, no
+doubt, of this horrid business with Lady Henry, to whom, by-the-way, he
+had written his mind. But time would see to that--time--gently and
+discreetly assisted by himself and the Duchess. It was impossible that
+she should finally hold out against such a good fellow--impossible, and
+most unreasonable. No. Rose's daughter would be brought back safely to
+her mother's world and class, and poor Rose's tragedy would at last work
+itself out for good. How strange, romantic, and providential!
+
+In such a mood did he now devote himself to Julie. He chattered about
+the pictures; he gossiped about their owners; he excused himself for
+the absence of "that gad-about Blanche"; he made her promise him a
+Whitsuntide visit instead, and whispered in her ear, "You shall have
+_her_ room"; he paid her the most handsome and gallant attentions,
+natural to the man of fashion _par excellence_, mingled with something
+intimate, brusque, capricious, which marked her his own, and of the
+family. Seventy-five!--with that step, that carriage of the shoulders,
+that vivacity! Ridiculous!
+
+And Julie could not but respond.
+
+Something stole into her heart that had never yet lodged there. She must
+love the old man--she did. When he left her for the Duchess her eyes
+followed him--her dark-rimmed, wistful eyes.
+
+"I must be off," said Lord Lackington, presently, buttoning up his coat.
+"This, ladies, has been dalliance. I now go to my duties. Read me in the
+_Times_ to-morrow. I shall make a rattling speech. You see, I shall
+rub it in."
+
+"Montresor?" said the Duchess.
+
+Lord Lackington nodded. That afternoon he proposed to strew the floor of
+the House of Lords with the _débris_ of Montresor's farcical reforms.
+
+Suddenly he pulled himself up.
+
+"Duchess, look round you, at those two in the doorway. Isn't it--by
+George, it is!--Chudleigh and his boy!"
+
+"Yes--yes, it is," said the Duchess, in some excitement. "Don't
+recognize them. Don't speak to him. Jacob implored me not."
+
+And she hurried her companions along till they were well out of the
+track of the new-comers; then on the threshold of another room she
+paused, and, touching Julie on the arm, said, in a whisper:
+
+"Now look back. That's Jacob's Duke, and his poor, poor boy!"
+
+Julie threw a hurried glance towards the two figures; but that glance
+impressed forever upon her memory a most tragic sight.
+
+A man of middle height, sallow, and careworn, with jet-black hair and
+beard, supported a sickly lad, apparently about seventeen, who clung to
+his arm and coughed at intervals. The father moved as though in a dream.
+He looked at the pictures with unseeing, lustreless eyes, except when
+the boy asked him a question. Then he would smile, stoop his head and
+answer, only to resume again immediately his melancholy passivity. The
+boy, meanwhile, his lips gently parted over his white teeth, his blue
+eyes wide open and intent upon the pictures, his emaciated cheeks deeply
+flushed, wore an aspect of patient suffering, of docile dependence,
+peculiarly touching.
+
+It was evident the father and son thought of none but each other. From
+time to time the man would make the boy rest on one of the seats in the
+middle of the room, and the boy would look up and chatter to his
+companion standing before him. Then again they would resume their walk,
+the boy leaning on his father. Clearly the poor lad was marked for
+death; clearly, also, he was the desire of his father's heart.
+
+"The possessor, and the heir, of perhaps the finest houses and the most
+magnificent estates in England," said Lord Lackington, with a shrug of
+pity. "And Chudleigh would gladly give them all to keep that
+boy alive."
+
+Julie turned away. Strange thoughts had been passing and repassing
+through her brain.
+
+Then, with angry loathing, she flung her thoughts from her. What did the
+Chudleigh inheritance matter to her? That night she said good-bye to the
+man she loved. These three miserable, burning weeks were done. Her
+heart, her life, would go with Warkworth to Africa and the desert. If at
+the beginning of this period of passion--so short in prospect, and, to
+look back upon, an eternity--she had ever supposed that power or wealth
+could make her amends for the loss of her lover, she was in no mood to
+calculate such compensations to-day. Parting was too near, the anguish
+in her veins too sharp.
+
+"Jacob takes them to Paris to-morrow," said the Duchess to Lord
+Lackington. "The Duke has heard of some new doctor."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour or two later, Sir Wilfrid Bury, in the smoking-room of his club,
+took out a letter which he had that morning received from Lady Henry
+Delafield and gave it a second reading.
+
+     "So I hear that mademoiselle's social prospects are not,
+     after all, so triumphant as both she and I imagined. I gave
+     the world credit for more fools than it seems actually to
+     possess; and she--well, I own I am a little puzzled. Has she
+     taken leave of her senses? I am told that she is constantly
+     seen with this man; that in spite of all denials there can be
+     no doubt of his engagement to the Moffatt girl; and that _en
+     somme_ she has done herself no good by the whole affair. But,
+     after all, poor soul, she is disinterested. She stands to
+     gain nothing, as I understand; and she risks a good deal.
+     From this comfortable distance, I really find something
+     touching in her behavior.
+
+     "She gives her first 'Wednesday,' I understand, to-morrow.
+     'Mademoiselle Le Breton at home!' I confess I am curious. By
+     all means go, and send me a full report. Mr. Montresor and
+     his wife will certainly be there. He and I have been
+     corresponding, of course. He wishes to persuade me that he
+     feels himself in some way responsible for mademoiselle's
+     position, and for my dismissal of her; that I ought to allow
+     him in consequence full freedom of action. I cannot see
+     matters in the same light. But, as I tell him, the change
+     will be all to his advantage. He exchanges a fractious old
+     woman, always ready to tell him unpleasant truths, for one
+     who has made flattery her _métier_. If he wants quantity she
+     will give it him. Quality he can dispense with--as I have
+     seen for some time past.
+
+     "Lord Lackington has written me an impertinent letter. It
+     seems she has revealed herself, and _il s'en prend à moi_,
+     because I kept the secret from him, and because I have now
+     dared to dismiss his granddaughter. I am in the midst of a
+     reply which amuses me. He is to cast off his belongings as he
+     pleases; but when a lady of the Chantrey blood--no matter how
+     she came by it--condescends to enter a paid employment,
+     legitimate or illegitimate, she must be treated _en reine_,
+     or Lord L. will know the reason why. 'Here is one hundred
+     pounds a year, and let me hear no more of you,' he says to
+     her at sixteen. Thirteen years later I take her in, respect
+     his wishes, and keep the secret. She misbehaves herself, and
+     I dismiss her. Where is the grievance? He himself made her a
+     _lectrice_, and now complains that she is expected to do her
+     duty in that line of life. He himself banished her from the
+     family, and now grumbles that I did not at once foist her
+     upon him. He would like to escape the odium of his former
+     action by blaming me; but I am not meek, and I shall make him
+     regret his letter.
+
+     "As for Jacob Delafield, don't trouble yourself to write me
+     any further news of him. He has insulted me lately in a way I
+     shall not soon forgive--nothing to do, however, with the lady
+     who says she refused him. Whether her report be veracious or
+     no matters nothing to me, any more than his chances of
+     succeeding to the Captain's place. He is one of the ingenious
+     fools who despise the old ways of ruining themselves, and in
+     the end achieve it as well as the commoner sort. He owes me a
+     good deal, and at one time it pleased me to imagine that he
+     was capable both of affection and gratitude. That is the
+     worst of being a woman; we pass from one illusion to another;
+     love is only the beginning; there are a dozen to come after.
+
+     "You will scold me for a bitter tongue. Well, my dear
+     Wilfrid, I am not gay here. There are too many women, too
+     many church services, and I see too much of my doctor. I pine
+     for London, and I don't see why I should have been driven out
+     of it by an _intrigante_.
+
+     "Write to me, my dear Wilfrid. I am not quite so bad as I
+     paint myself; say to yourself she has arthritis, she is
+     sixty-five, and her new companion reads aloud with a twang;
+     then you will only wonder at my moderation."
+
+Sir Wilfrid returned the letter to his pocket. That day, at luncheon
+with Lady Hubert, he had had the curiosity to question Susan Delafield,
+Jacob's fair-haired sister, as to the reasons for her brother's quarrel
+with Lady Henry.
+
+It appeared that being now in receipt of what seemed to himself, at any
+rate, a large salary as his cousin's agent, he had thought it his duty
+to save up and repay the sums which Lady Henry had formerly spent upon
+his education.
+
+His letter enclosing the money had reached that lady during the first
+week of her stay at Torquay. It was, no doubt, couched in terms less
+cordial or more formal than would have been the case before Miss Le
+Breton's expulsion. "Not that he defends her altogether," said Susan
+Delafield, who was herself inclined to side with Lady Henry; "but as
+Lady Henry has refused to see him since, it was not much good being
+friendly, was it?"
+
+Anyway, the letter and its enclosure had completed a breach already
+begun. Lady Henry had taken furious offence; the check had been
+insultingly returned, and had now gone to swell the finances of a
+London hospital.
+
+Sir Wilfrid was just reflecting that Jacob's honesty had better have
+waited for a more propitious season, when, looking up, he saw the War
+Minister beside him, in the act of searching for a newspaper.
+
+"Released?" said Bury, with a smile.
+
+"Yes, thank Heaven. Lackington is, I believe, still pounding at me in
+the House of Lords. But that amuses him and doesn't hurt me."
+
+"You'll carry your resolutions?"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes, with no trouble at all," said the Minister, almost with
+sulkiness, as he threw himself into a chair and looked with distaste at
+the newspaper he had taken up.
+
+Sir Wilfrid surveyed him.
+
+"We meet to-night?" he said, presently.
+
+"You mean in Heribert Street? I suppose so," said Montresor, without
+cordiality.
+
+"I have just got a letter from her ladyship."
+
+"Well, I hope it is more agreeable than those she writes to me. A more
+unreasonable old woman--"
+
+The tired Minister took up _Punch_, looked at a page, and flung it down
+again. Then he said:
+
+"Are you going?"
+
+"I don't know. Lady Henry gives me leave, which makes me feel myself a
+kind of spy."
+
+"Oh, never mind. Come along. Mademoiselle Julie will want all our
+support. I don't hear her as kindly spoken of just now as I
+should wish."
+
+"No. Lady Henry has more personal hold than we thought."
+
+"And Mademoiselle Julie less tact. Why, in the name of goodness, does
+she go and get herself talked about with the particular man who is
+engaged to her little cousin? You know, by-the-way, that the story of
+her parentage is leaking out fast? Most people seem to know something
+about it."
+
+"Well, that was bound to come. Will it do her good or harm?"
+
+"Harm, for the present. A few people are straitlaced, and a good many
+feel they have been taken in. But, anyway, this flirtation is
+a mistake."
+
+"Nobody really knows whether the man is engaged to the Moffatt girl or
+no. The guardians have forbidden it."
+
+"At any rate, everybody is kind enough to say so. It's a blunder on
+Mademoiselle Julie's part. As to the man himself, of course, there is
+nothing to say. He is a very clever fellow." Montresor looked at his
+companion with a sudden stiffness, as though defying contradiction. "He
+will do this piece of work that we have given him to do extremely well."
+
+"The Mokembe mission?"
+
+Montresor nodded.
+
+"He had very considerable claims, and was appointed entirely on his
+military record. All the tales as to Mademoiselle's influence--with me,
+for instance--that Lady Henry has been putting into circulation are
+either absurd fiction or have only the very smallest foundation
+in fact."
+
+Sir Wilfrid smiled amicably and diverted the conversation.
+
+"Warkworth starts at once?"
+
+"He goes to Paris to-morrow. I recommended him to see Pattison, the
+Military Secretary there, who was in the expedition of five years back."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"This hasn't gone as well as it ought," said Dr. Meredith, in the ear of
+the Duchess.
+
+They were standing inside the door of Julie's little drawing-room. The
+Duchess, in a dazzling frock of white and silver, which placed Clarisse
+among the divinities of her craft, looked round her with a look
+of worry.
+
+"What's the matter with the tiresome creatures? Why is everybody going
+so early? And there are not half the people here who ought to be here."
+
+Meredith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I saw you at Chatton House the other night," he said, in the same tone.
+
+"Well?" said the Duchess, sharply.
+
+"It seemed to me there was something of a demonstration."
+
+"Against Julie? Let them try it!" said the little lady, with evasive
+defiance. "We shall be too strong for them."
+
+"Lady Henry is putting her back into it. I confess I never thought she
+would be either so venomous or so successful."
+
+"Julie will come out all right."
+
+"She would--triumphantly--if--"
+
+The Duchess glanced at him uneasily.
+
+"I believe you are overworking her. She looks skin and bone."
+
+Dr. Meredith shook his head.
+
+"On the contrary, I have been holding her back. But it seems she wants
+to earn a good deal of money."
+
+"That's so absurd," cried the Duchess, "when there are people only
+pining to give her some of theirs."
+
+"No, no," said the journalist, brusquely. "She is quite right there. Oh,
+it would be all right if she were herself. She would make short work of
+Lady Henry. But, Mademoiselle Julie"--for she glided past them, and he
+raised his voice--"sit down and rest yourself. Don't take so
+much trouble."
+
+She flung them a smile.
+
+"Lord Lackington is going," and she hurried on.
+
+Lord Lackington was standing in a group which contained Sir Wilfrid Bury
+and Mr. Montresor.
+
+"Well, good-bye, good-bye," he said, as she came up to him. "I must go.
+I'm nearly asleep."
+
+"Tired with abusing me?" said Montresor, nonchalantly, turning round
+upon him.
+
+"No, only with trying to make head or tail of you," said Lackington,
+gayly. Then he stooped over Julie.
+
+"Take care of yourself. Come back rosier--and _fatter_."
+
+"I'm perfectly well. Let me come with you."
+
+"No, don't trouble yourself." For she had followed him into the hall
+and found his coat for him. All the arrangements for her little
+"evening" had been of the simplest. That had been a point of pride with
+her. Madame Bornier and Thérèse dispensing tea and coffee in the
+dining-room, one hired parlor-maid, and she herself active and busy
+everywhere. Certain French models were in her head, and memories of her
+mother's bare little salon in Bruges, with its good talk, and its
+thinnest of thin refreshments--a few cups of weak tea, or glasses of
+_eau sucrée_, with a plate of _patisserie_.
+
+The hired parlor-maid was whistling for a cab in the service of some
+other departing guest; so Julie herself put Lord Lackington into his
+coat, much to his discomfort.
+
+"I don't think you ought to have come," she said to him, with soft
+reproach. "Why did you have that fainting fit before dinner?"
+
+"I say! Who's been telling tales?"
+
+"Sir Wilfrid Bury met your son, Mr. Chantrey, at dinner."
+
+"Bill can never hold his tongue. Oh, it was nothing; not with the proper
+treatment, mind you. Of course, if the allopaths were to get their
+knives into me--but, thank God! I'm out of that _galère_. Well, in a
+fortnight, isn't it? We shall both be in town again. I don't like saying
+good-bye."
+
+And he took both her hands in his.
+
+"It all seems so strange to me still--so strange!" he murmured.
+
+"Next week I shall see mamma's grave," said Julie, under her breath.
+"Shall I put some flowers there for you?"
+
+The fine blue eyes above her wavered. He bent to her.
+
+"Yes. And write to me. Come back soon. Oh, you'll see. Things will all
+come right, perfectly right, in spite of Lady Henry."
+
+Confidence, encouragement, a charming raillery, an enthusiastic
+tenderness--all these beamed upon her from the old man's tone and
+gesture. She was puzzled. But with another pressure of the hand he was
+gone. She stood looking after him. And as the carriage drove away, the
+sound of the wheels hurt her. It was the withdrawal of something
+protecting--something more her own, when all was said, than anything
+else which remained to her.
+
+As she returned to the drawing-room, Dr. Meredith intercepted her.
+
+"You want me to send you some work to take abroad?" he said, in a low
+voice. "I shall do nothing of the kind."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you ought to have a complete holiday."
+
+"Very well. Then I sha'n't be able to pay my way," she said, with a
+tired smile.
+
+"Remember the doctor's bills if you fall ill."
+
+"Ill! I am never ill," she said, with scorn. Then she looked round the
+room deliberately, and her gaze returned to her companion. "I am not
+likely to be fatigued with society, am I?" she added, in a voice that
+did not attempt to disguise the bitterness within.
+
+"My dear lady, you are hardly installed."
+
+"I have been here a month--the critical month. Now was the moment to
+stand by me, or throw me over--n'est-ce pas? This is my first party, my
+house-warming. I gave a fortnight's notice; I asked about sixty people,
+whom I knew _well_. Some did not answer at all. Of the rest, half
+declined--rather curtly, in many instances. And of those who accepted,
+not all are here. And, oh, how it dragged!"
+
+Meredith looked at her rather guiltily, not knowing what to say. It was
+true the evening had dragged. In both their minds there rose the memory
+of Lady Henry's "Wednesdays," the beautiful rooms, the varied and
+brilliant company, the power and consideration which had attended Lady
+Henry's companion.
+
+"I suppose," said Julie, shrugging her shoulders, "I had been thinking
+of the French _maîtresses de salon_, like a fool; of Mademoiselle de
+l'Espinasse--or Madame Mohl--imagining that people would come to _me_
+for a cup of tea and an agreeable hour. But in England, it seems, people
+must be paid to talk. Talk is a business affair--you give it for a
+consideration."
+
+"No, no! You'll build it up," said Meredith. In his heart of hearts he
+said to himself that she had not been herself that night. Her wonderful
+social instincts, her memory, her adroitness, had somehow failed her.
+And from a hostess strained, conscious, and only artificially gay, the
+little gathering had taken its note.
+
+"You have the old guard, anyway," added the journalist, with a smile, as
+he looked round the room. The Duchess, Delafield, Montresor and his
+wife, General McGill, and three or four other old _habitués_ of the
+Bruton Street evenings were scattered about the little drawing-room.
+General Fergus, too, was there--had arrived early, and was staying late.
+His frank soldier's face, the accent, cheerful, homely, careless, with
+which he threw off talk full of marrow, talk only possible--for all its
+simplicity--to a man whose life had been already closely mingled with
+the fortunes of his country, had done something to bind Julie's poor
+little party together. Her eye rested on him with gratitude. Then she
+replied to Meredith.
+
+"Mr. Montresor will scarcely come again."
+
+"What do you mean? Ungrateful lady! Montresor! who has already
+sacrificed Lady Henry and the habits of thirty years to your
+_beaux yeux_!"
+
+"That is what he will never forgive me," said Julie, sadly. "He has
+satisfied his pride, and I--have lost a friend."
+
+"Pessimist! Mrs. Montresor seemed to me most friendly."
+
+Julie laughed.
+
+"_She_, of course, is enchanted. Her husband has never been her own till
+now. She married him, subject to Lady Henry's rights. But all that she
+will soon forget--and my existence with it."
+
+"I won't argue. It only makes you more stubborn," said Meredith. "Ah,
+still they come!"
+
+For the door opened to admit the tall figure of Major Warkworth.
+
+"Am I very late?" he said, with a surprised look as he glanced at the
+thinly scattered room. Julie greeted him, and he excused himself on the
+ground of a dinner which had begun just an hour late, owing to the
+tardiness of a cabinet minister.
+
+Meredith observed the young man with some attention, from the dark
+corner in which Julie had left him. The gossip of the moment had
+reached him also, but he had not paid much heed to it. It seemed to him
+that no one knew anything first-hand of the Moffatt affair. And for
+himself, he found it difficult to believe that Julie Le Breton was any
+man's dupe.
+
+She must marry, poor thing! Of course she must marry. Since it had been
+plain to him that she would never listen to his own suit, this
+great-hearted and clear-brained man had done his best to stifle in
+himself all small or grasping impulses. But this fellow--with his
+inferior temper and morale--alack! why are the clever women such fools?
+
+If only she had confided in him--her old and tried friend--he thought he
+could have put things before her, so as to influence without offending
+her. But he suffered--had always suffered--from the jealous reserve
+which underlay her charm, her inborn tendency to secretiveness
+and intrigue.
+
+Now, as he watched her few words with Warkworth, it seemed to him that
+he saw the signs of some hidden relation. How flushed she was suddenly,
+and her eyes so bright!
+
+He was not allowed much time or scope, however, for observation.
+Warkworth took a turn round the room, chatted a little with this person
+and that, then, on the plea that he was off to Paris early on the
+following morning, approached his hostess again to take his leave.
+
+"Ah, yes, you start to-morrow," said Montresor, rising. "Well, good luck
+to you--good luck to you."
+
+General Fergus, too, advanced. The whole room, indeed, awoke to the
+situation, and all the remaining guests grouped themselves round the
+young soldier. Even the Duchess was thawed a little by this actual
+moment of departure. After all, the man was going on his
+country's service.
+
+"No child's play, this mission, I can assure you," General McGill had
+said to her. "Warkworth will want all the powers he has--of mind
+or body."
+
+The slim, young fellow, so boyishly elegant in his well-cut
+evening-dress, received the ovation offered to him with an evident
+pleasure which tried to hide itself in the usual English ways. He had
+been very pale when he came in. But his cheek reddened as Montresor
+grasped him by the hand, as the two generals bade him a cordial
+godspeed, as Sir Wilfrid gave him a jesting message for the British
+representative in Egypt, and as the ladies present accorded him those
+flattering and admiring looks that woman keeps for valor.
+
+Julie counted for little in these farewells. She stood _apart_ and
+rather silent. "_They_ have had their good-bye," thought the Duchess,
+with a thrill she could not help.
+
+"Three days in Paris?" said Sir Wilfrid. "A fortnight to Denga--and then
+how long before you start for the interior?"
+
+"Oh, three weeks for collecting porters and supplies. They're drilling
+the escort already. We should be off by the middle of May."
+
+"A bad month," said General Fergus, shrugging his shoulders.
+
+"Unfortunately, affairs won't wait. But I am already stiff with
+quinine," laughed Warkworth--"or I shall be by the time I get to Denga.
+Good-bye--good-bye."
+
+And in another moment he was gone. Miss Le Breton had given him her
+hand and wished him "Bon voyage," like everybody else.
+
+The party broke up. The Duchess kissed her Julie with peculiar
+tenderness; Delafield pressed her hand, and his deep, kind eyes gave her
+a lingering look, of which, however, she was quite unconscious; Meredith
+renewed his half-irritable, half-affectionate counsels of rest and
+recreation; Mrs. Montresor was conventionally effusive; Montresor alone
+bade the mistress of the house a somewhat cold and perfunctory farewell.
+Even Sir Wilfrid was a little touched, he knew not why; he vowed to
+himself that his report to Lady Henry on the morrow should contain no
+food for malice, and inwardly he forgave Mademoiselle Julie the old
+romancings.
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+It was twenty minutes since the last carriage had driven away. Julie was
+still waiting in the little hall, pacing its squares of black-and-white
+marble, slowly, backward and forward.
+
+There was a low knock on the door.
+
+She opened it. Warkworth appeared on the threshold, and the high moon
+behind him threw a bright ray into the dim hall, where all but one faint
+light had been extinguished. She pointed to the drawing-room.
+
+"I will come directly. Let me just go and ask Léonie to sit up."
+
+Warkworth went into the drawing-room. Julie opened the dining-room door.
+Madame Bornier was engaged in washing and putting away the china and
+glass which had been used for Julie's modest refreshments.
+
+"Léonie, you won't go to bed? Major Warkworth is here."
+
+Madame Bornier did not raise her head.
+
+"How long will he be?"
+
+"Perhaps half an hour."
+
+"It is already past midnight."
+
+"Léonie, he goes to-morrow."
+
+"Très bien. Mais--sais-tu, ma chère, ce n'est pas convenable, ce que tu
+fais là!"
+
+And the older woman, straightening herself, looked her foster-sister
+full in the face. A kind of watch-dog anxiety, a sulky, protesting
+affection breathed from her rugged features.
+
+Julie went up to her, not angrily, but rather with a pleading humility.
+
+The two women held a rapid colloquy in low tones--Madame Bornier
+remonstrating, Julie softly getting her way.
+
+Then Madame Bornier returned to her work, and Julie went to the
+drawing-room.
+
+Warkworth sprang up as she entered. Both paused and wavered. Then he
+went up to her, and roughly, irresistibly, drew her into his arms. She
+held back a moment, but finally yielded, and clasping her hands round
+his neck she buried her face on his breast.
+
+They stood so for some minutes, absolutely silent, save for her hurried
+breathing, his head bowed upon hers.
+
+"Julie, how can we say good-bye?" he whispered, at last.
+
+She disengaged herself, and, seeing his face, she tried for composure.
+
+"Come and sit down."
+
+She led him to the window, which he had thrown open as he entered the
+room, and they sat beside it, hand in hand. A mild April night shone
+outside. Gusts of moist air floated in upon them. There were dim lights
+and shadows in the garden and on the shuttered facade of the
+great house.
+
+"Is it forever?" said Julie, in a low, stifled voice.
+"Good-bye--forever?"
+
+She felt his hand tremble, but she did not look at him. She seemed to
+be reciting words long since spoken in the mind.
+
+"You will be away--perhaps a year? Then you go back to India, and
+then--"
+
+She paused.
+
+Warkworth was physically conscious, as it were, of a letter he carried
+in his coat-pocket--a letter from Lady Blanche Moffatt which had reached
+him that morning, the letter of a _grande dame_, reduced to undignified
+remonstrance by sheer maternal terror--terror for the health and life of
+a child as fragile and ethereal as a wild rose in May. Reports had
+reached her; but no--they could not be true! She bade him be thankful
+that not a breath of suspicion had yet touched Aileen. As for herself,
+let him write and reassure her at once. Otherwise--
+
+And the latter part of the letter conveyed a veiled menace that
+Warkworth perfectly understood.
+
+No--in that direction, no escape; his own past actions closed him in.
+And henceforth, it was clear, he must walk more warily.
+
+But how blame himself for these feelings of which he was now conscious
+towards Julie Le Breton--the strongest, probably, that a man not built
+for passion would ever know. His relation towards her had grown upon him
+unawares, and now their own hands were about to cut it at the root. What
+blame to either of them? Fate had been at work; and he felt himself
+glorified by a situation so tragically sincere, and by emotions of which
+a month before he would have secretly held himself incapable.
+
+Resolutely, in this last meeting with Julie, he gave these emotions
+play. He possessed himself of her cold hands as she put her desolate
+question--"And then?"--and kissed them fervently.
+
+"Julie, if you and I had met a year ago, what happened in India would
+never have happened. You know that!"
+
+"Do I? But it only hurts me to _think it away_ like that. There it
+is--it has happened."
+
+She turned upon him suddenly.
+
+"Have you any picture of her?"
+
+He hesitated.
+
+"Yes," he said, at last.
+
+"Have you got it here?"
+
+"Why do you ask, dear one? This one evening is _ours_."
+
+And again he tried to draw her to him. But she persisted.
+
+"I feel sure you have it. Show it me."
+
+"Julie, you and you only are in my thoughts!"
+
+"Then do what I ask." She bent to him with a wild, entreating air; her
+lips almost touched his cheek. Unwillingly he drew out a letter-case
+from his breast-pocket, and took from it a little photograph which he
+handed to her.
+
+She looked at it with eager eyes. A face framed, as it were, out of snow
+and fire lay in her hand, a thing most delicate, most frail, yet steeped
+in feeling and significance--a child's face with its soft curls of brown
+hair, and the upper lip raised above the white, small teeth, as though
+in a young wonder; yet behind its sweetness, what suggestions of a
+poetic or tragic sensibility! The slender neck carried the little head
+with girlish dignity; the clear, timid eyes seemed at once to shrink
+from and trust the spectator.
+
+Julie returned the little picture, and hid her face with her hands.
+Warkworth watched her uncomfortably, and at last drew her hands away.
+
+"What are you thinking of?" he said, almost with violence. "Don't shut
+me out!"
+
+"I am not jealous now," she said, looking at him piteously. "I don't
+hate her. And if she knew all--she couldn't--hate me."
+
+"No one could hate her. She is an angel. But she is not my Julie!" he
+said, vehemently, and he thrust the little picture into his
+pocket again.
+
+"Tell me," she said, after a pause, laying her hand on his knee, "when
+did you begin to think of me--differently? All the winter, when we used
+to meet, you never--you never loved me then?"
+
+"How, placed as I was, could I let myself think of love? I only knew
+that I wanted to see you, to talk to you, to write to you--that the day
+when we did not meet was a lost day. Don't be so proud!" He tried to
+laugh at her. "You didn't think of me in any special way, either. You
+were much too busy making bishops, or judges, or academicians. Oh,
+Julie, I was so afraid of you in those early days!"
+
+"The first night we met," she said, passionately, "I found a carnation
+you had worn in your button-hole. I put it under my pillow, and felt for
+it in the dark like a talisman. You had stood between me and Lady Henry
+twice. You had smiled at me and pressed my hand--not as others did, but
+as though you understood _me_, myself--as though, at least, you wished
+to understand. Then came the joy of joys, that I could help you--that I
+could do something for you. Ah, how it altered life for me! I never
+turned the corner of a street that I did not count on the chance of
+seeing you beyond--suddenly--on my path. I never heard your voice that
+it did not thrill me from head to foot. I never made a new friend or
+acquaintance that I did not ask myself first how I could thereby serve
+you. I never saw you come into the room that my heart did not leap. I
+never slept but you were in my dreams. I loathed London when you were
+out of it. It was paradise when you were there."
+
+Straining back from him as he still held her hands, her whole face and
+form shook with the energy of her confession. Her wonderful hair,
+loosened from the thin gold bands in which it had been confined during
+the evening, fell in a glossy confusion about her brow and slender neck;
+its black masses, the melting brilliance of the eyes, the tragic freedom
+of the attitude gave both to form and face a wild and poignant beauty.
+
+Warkworth, beside her, was conscious first of amazement, then of a kind
+of repulsion--a kind of fear--till all else was lost in a hurry of joy
+and gratitude.
+
+The tears stood on his cheek. "Julie, you shame me--you trample me into
+the earth!"
+
+He tried to gather her in his arms, but she resisted, Caresses were not
+what those eyes demanded--eyes feverishly bright with the memory of her
+own past dreams, Presently, indeed, she withdrew herself from him. She
+rose and closed the window; she put the lamp in another place; she
+brought her rebellious hair into order.
+
+"We must not be so mad," she said, with a quivering smile, as she again
+seated herself, but at some distance from him. "You see, for me the
+great question is "--her voice became low and rapid--"What am I going to
+do with the future? For you it is all plain. We part to-night. You have
+your career, your marriage. I withdraw from your life--absolutely.
+But for me--"
+
+She paused. It was the manner of one trying to see her way in the dark.
+
+"Your social gifts," said Warkworth, in agitation, "your friends,
+Julie--these will occupy your mind. Then, of course, you will, you must
+marry! Oh, you'll soon forget me, Julie! I pray you may!"
+
+"My social gifts?" she repeated, disregarding the rest of his speech. "I
+have told you already they have broken down. Society sides with Lady
+Henry. I am to be made to know my place--I do know it!"
+
+"The Duchess will fight for you."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"The Duke won't let her--nor shall I."
+
+"You'll marry," he repeated, with emotion. "You'll find some one worthy
+of you--some one who will give you the great position for which you
+were born."
+
+"I could have it at any moment," she said, looking him quietly in the
+eyes.
+
+Warkworth drew back, conscious of a disagreeable shock. He had been
+talking in generalities, giving away the future with that fluent
+prodigality, that easy prophecy which costs so little. What did
+she mean?
+
+"_Delafield?"_ he cried.
+
+And he waited for her reply--which lingered--in a tense and growing
+eagerness. The notion had crossed his mind once or twice during the
+winter, only to be dismissed as ridiculous. Then, on the occasion of
+their first quarrel, when Julie had snubbed him in Delafield's presence
+and to Delafield's advantage, he had been conscious of a momentary
+alarm. But Julie, who on that one and only occasion had paraded her
+intimacy with Delafield, thenceforward said not a word of him, and
+Warkworth's jealousy had died for lack of fuel. In relation to Julie,
+Delafield had been surely the mere shadow and agent of his little cousin
+the Duchess--a friendly, knight-errant sort of person, with a liking for
+the distressed. What! the heir-presumptive of Chudleigh Abbey, and one
+of the most famous of English dukedoms, when even he, the struggling,
+penurious officer, would never have dreamed of such a match?
+
+Julie, meanwhile, heard only jealousy in his exclamation, and it
+caressed her ear, her heart. She was tempted once more, woman-like, to
+dwell upon the other lover, and again something compelling and delicate
+in her feeling towards Delafield forbade.
+
+"No, you mustn't make me tell you any more," she said, putting the name
+aside with a proud gesture. "It would be poor and mean. But it's true. I
+have only to put out my hand for what you call 'a great position,' I
+have refused to put it out. Sometimes, of course, it has dazzled me.
+To-night it seems to me--dust and ashes. No; when we two have said
+good-bye, I shall begin life again. And this time I shall live it in my
+own way, for my own ends. I'm very tired. Henceforth 'I'll walk where my
+own nature would be leading--it vexes me to choose another guide.'"
+
+And as she spoke the words of one of the chainless souls of history, in
+a voice passionately full and rich, she sprang to her feet, and, drawing
+her slender form to its full height, she locked her hands behind her,
+and began to pace the room with a wild, free step.
+
+Every nerve in Warkworth's frame was tingling. He was carried out of
+himself, first by the rebellion of her look and manner, then by this
+fact, so new, so astounding, which her very evasion had confirmed.
+During her whole contest with Lady Henry, and now, in her present
+ambiguous position, she had Delafield, and through Delafield the English
+great world, in the hollow of her hand? This nameless woman--no longer
+in her first youth. And she had refused? He watched her in a speechless
+wonder and incredulity.
+
+The thought leaped. "And this sublime folly--this madness--was for
+_me_?"
+
+It stirred and intoxicated him. Yet she was not thereby raised in his
+eyes. Nay, the contrary. With the passion which was rapidly mounting in
+his veins there mingled--poor Julie!--a curious diminution of respect.
+
+"Julie!" He held out his hand to her peremptorily. "Come to me again.
+You are so wonderful to-night, in that white dress--like a wild muse. I
+shall always see you so. Come!"
+
+She obeyed, and gave him her hands, standing beside his chair. But her
+face was still absorbed.
+
+"To be free," she said, under her breath--"free, like my parents, from
+all these petty struggles and conventions!"
+
+Then she felt his kisses on her hands, and her expression changed.
+
+"How we cheat ourselves with words!" she whispered, trembling, and,
+withdrawing one hand, she smoothed back the light-brown curls from his
+brow with that protecting tenderness which had always entered into her
+love for him. "To-night we are here--together--this one last night! And
+to-morrow, at this time, you'll be in Paris; perhaps you'll be looking
+out at the lights--and the crowds on the Boulevard--and the
+chestnut-trees. They'll just be in their first leaf--I know so
+well!--and the little thin leaves will be shining so green under the
+lamps--and I shall be here--and it will be all over and done
+with--forever. What will it matter whether I am free or not free? I
+shall be _alone_! That's all a woman knows."
+
+Her voice died away. Warkworth rose. He put his arms round her, and she
+did not resist.
+
+"Julie," he said in her ear, "why should you be alone?"
+
+A silence fell between them.
+
+"I--I don't understand," she said, at last.
+
+"Julie, listen! I shall be three days in Paris, but my business can be
+perfectly done in one. What if you met me there after to-morrow? What
+harm would it be? We are not babes, we two. We understand life. And who
+would have any right to blame or to meddle? Julie, I know a little inn
+in the valley of the Bièvre, quite near Paris, but all wood and field.
+No English tourists ever go there. Sometimes an artist or two--but this
+is not the time of year. Julie, why shouldn't we spend our last two days
+there--together--away from all the world, before we say good-bye? You've
+been afraid here of prying people--of the Duchess even--of Madame
+Bornier--how she scowls at me sometimes! Why shouldn't we sweep all that
+away--and be happy! Nobody should ever--nobody _could_ ever know." His
+voice dropped, became still more hurried and soft. "We might go as
+brother and sister--that would be quite simple. You are practically
+French. I speak French well. Who is to have an idea, a suspicion of our
+identity? The spring there is mild and warm. The Bois de Verrières close
+by is full of flowers. When my father was alive, and I was a child, we
+went once, to economize, for a year, to a village a mile or two away.
+But I knew this place quite well. A lovely, green, quiet spot! With your
+poetical ideas, Julie, you would delight in it. Two days--wandering in
+the woods--together! Then I put you into the train for Brussels, and I
+go my way. But to all eternity, Julie, those days will have been ours!"
+
+At the first words, almost, Julie had disengaged herself. Pushing him
+from her with both hands, she listened to him in a dumb amazement. The
+color first deserted her face, then returned in a flood.
+
+"So you despise me?" she said, catching her breath.
+
+"No. I adore you."
+
+She fell upon a chair and hid her eyes. He first knelt beside her,
+arguing and soothing; then he paced up and down before her, talking very
+fast and low, defending and developing the scheme, till it stood before
+them complete and tempting in all its details.
+
+Julie did not look up, nor did she speak. At last, Warkworth, full of
+tears, and stifled with his own emotions, threw open the window again in
+a craving for air and coolness. A scent of fresh leaves and moistened
+earth floated up from the shrubbery beneath the window. The scent, the
+branching trees, the wide, mild spaces of air brought relief. He leaned
+out, bathing his brow in the night. A tumult of voices seemed to be
+echoing through his mind, dominated by one which held the rest
+defiantly in check.
+
+"Is she a mere girl, to be 'led astray'? A moment of happiness--what
+harm?--for either of us?"
+
+Then he returned to Julie.
+
+"Julie!" He touched her shoulder, trembling. Had she banished him
+forever? It seemed to him that in these minutes he had passed through an
+infinity of experience. Was he not the nobler, the more truly man? Let
+the moralists talk.
+
+"Julie!" he repeated, in an anguish.
+
+She raised her head, and he saw that she had been crying. But there was
+in her face a light, a wildness, a yearning that reassured him. She put
+her arm round him and pressed her cheek to his. He divined that she,
+too, had lived and felt a thousand hours in one. With a glow of ecstatic
+joy he began to talk to her again, her head resting on his shoulder, her
+slender hands crushed in his.
+
+And Julie, meanwhile, was saying to herself, "Either I go to him, as he
+asks, or in a few minutes I must send him away--forever."
+
+And then as she clung to him, so warm and near, her strength failed her.
+Nothing in the world mattered to her at that moment but this handsome,
+curly head bowed upon her own, this voice that called her all the names
+of love, this transformation of the man's earlier prudence, or ambition,
+or duplicity, into this eager tenderness, this anguish in separation....
+
+"Listen, dear!" He whispered to her. "All my business can be got through
+the day before you come. I have two men to see. A day will be ample. I
+dine at the Embassy to-morrow night--that is arranged; the day after I
+lunch with the Military Secretary; then--a thousand regrets, but I must
+hurry on to meet some friends in Italy. So I turn my back on Paris, and
+for two days I belong to Julie--and she to me. Say yes,
+Julie--my Julie!"
+
+He bent over her, his hands framing her face.
+
+"Say yes," he urged, "and put off for both of us that word--_alone_!"
+
+His low voice sank into her heart. He waited, till his strained sense
+caught the murmured words which conveyed to him the madness and the
+astonishment of victory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Léonie had shut up the house, in a grim silence, and had taken her way
+up-stairs to bed.
+
+Julie, too, was in her room. She sat on the edge of her bed, her head
+drooped, her hands clasped before her absently, like Hope still
+listening for the last sounds of the harp of life. The candle beside her
+showed her, in the big mirror opposite, her grace, the white confusion
+of her dress.
+
+She had expected reaction, but it did not come. She was still borne on a
+warm tide of will and energy. All that she was about to do seemed to her
+still perfectly natural and right. Petty scruples, conventional
+hesitations, the refusal of life's great moments--these are what are
+wrong, these are what disgrace!
+
+Romance beckoned to her, and many a secret tendency towards the lawless
+paths of conduct, infused into her by the associations and affections of
+her childhood. The _horror naturalis_ which protects the great majority
+of women from the wilder ways of passion was in her weakened or dormant.
+She was the illegitimate child of a mother who had defied law for love,
+and of that fact she had been conscious all her life.
+
+A sharp contempt, indeed, arose within her for the interpretation that
+the common mind would be sure to place upon her action.
+
+"What matter! I am my own mistress--responsible to no one. I choose for
+myself--I dare for myself!"
+
+And when at last she rose, first loosening and then twisting the black
+masses of her hair, it seemed to her that the form in the glass was that
+of another woman, treading another earth. She trampled cowardice under
+foot; she freed herself from--"was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine!"
+
+Then as she stood before the oval mirror in a classical frame, which
+adorned the mantel-piece of what had once been Lady Mary Leicester's
+room, her eye was vaguely caught by the little family pictures and texts
+which hung on either side of it. Lady Mary and her sister as children,
+their plain faces emerging timidly from their white, high-waisted
+frocks; Lady 'Mary's mother, an old lady in a white coif and kerchief,
+wearing a look austerely kind; on the other side a clergyman, perhaps
+the brother of the old lady, with a similar type of face, though
+gentler--a face nourished on the _Christian Year_; and above and below
+them two or three card-board texts, carefully illuminated by Lady Mary
+Leicester herself:
+
+"Thou, Lord, knowest my down-sitting and my uprising."
+
+"Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."
+
+"Fear not, little flock. It is your Father's good pleasure to give you
+the kingdom."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Julie observed these fragments, absently at first, then with repulsion.
+This Anglican pietism, so well fed, so narrowly sheltered, which
+measured the universe with its foot-rule, seemed to her quasi-Catholic
+eye merely fatuous and hypocritical. It is not by such forces, she
+thought, that the true world of men and women is governed.
+
+As she turned away she noticed two little Catholic pictures, such as she
+had been accustomed in her convent days to carry in her books of
+devotion, carefully propped up beneath the texts.
+
+"Ah, Thérèse!" she said to herself, with a sudden feeling of pain. "Is
+the child asleep?"
+
+She listened. A little cough sounded from the neighboring room. Julie
+crossed the landing.
+
+"Thérèse! tu ne dors pas encore?"
+
+A voice said, softly, in the darkness, "Je t'attendais, mademoiselle."
+
+Julie went to the child's bed, put down her candle, and stooped to kiss
+her.
+
+The child's thin hand caressed her cheek.
+
+"Ah, it will be good--to be in Bruges--with mademoiselle."
+
+Julie drew herself away.
+
+"I sha'n't be there to-morrow, dear."
+
+"Not there! Oh, mademoiselle!"
+
+The child's voice was pitiful.
+
+"I shall join you there. But I find I must go to Paris first. I--I have
+some business there."
+
+"But maman said--"
+
+"Yes, I have only just made up my mind. I shall tell maman to-morrow
+morning,"
+
+"You go alone, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Why not, dear goose?"
+
+"Vous êtes fatiguée. I would like to come with you, and carry your cloak
+and the umbrellas."
+
+"You, indeed!" said Julie. "It would end, wouldn't it, in my carrying
+you--besides the cloak and the umbrellas?"
+
+Then she knelt down beside the child and took her in her arms.
+
+"Do you love me, Thérèse?"
+
+The child drew a long breath. With her little, twisted hands she stroked
+the beautiful hair so close to her.
+
+"Do you, Thérèse?"
+
+A kiss fell on Julie's cheek.
+
+"Ce soir, j'ai beaucoup prié la Sainte Vierge pour vous!" she said, in a
+timid and hurried whisper.
+
+Julie made no immediate reply. She rose from her knees, her hand still
+clasped in that of the crippled girl.
+
+"Did you put those pictures on my mantel-piece, Thérèse?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why?"
+
+The child hesitated.
+
+"It does one good to look at them--n'est-ce pas?--when one is sad?"
+
+"Why do you suppose I am sad?"
+
+Thérèse was silent a moment; then she flung her little skeleton arms
+round Julie, and Julie felt her crying.
+
+"Well, I won't be sad any more," said Julie, comforting her. "When we're
+all in Bruges together, you'll see."
+
+And smiling at the child, she tucked her into her white bed and left
+her.
+
+Then from this exquisite and innocent affection she passed back into the
+tumult of her own thoughts and plans. Through the restless night her
+parents were often in her mind. She was the child of revolt, and as she
+thought of the meeting before her she seemed to be but entering upon a
+heritage inevitable from the beginning. A sense of enfranchisement, of
+passionate enlargement, upheld her, as of a life coming to its fruit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Creil!"
+
+A flashing vision of a station and its lights, and the Paris train
+rushed on through cold showers of sleet and driving wind, a return of
+winter in the heart of spring.
+
+On they sped through the half-hour which still divided them from the
+Gare du Nord. Julie, in her thick veil, sat motionless in her corner.
+She was not conscious of any particular agitation. Her mind was strained
+not to forget any of Warkworth's directions. She was to drive across
+immediately to the Gare de Sceaux, in the Place Denfert-Rochereau, where
+he would meet her. They were to dine at an obscure inn near the station,
+and go down by the last train to the little town in the wooded valley of
+the Bièvre, where they were to stay.
+
+She had her luggage with her in the carriage. There would be no
+custom-house delays.
+
+Ah, the lights of Paris beginning! She peered into the rain, conscious
+of a sort of home-coming joy. She loved the French world and the French
+sights and sounds--these tall, dingy houses of the _banlieue_, the dregs
+of a great architecture; the advertisements; the look of the streets.
+
+The train slackened into the Nord Station. The blue-frocked porters
+crowded into the carriages.
+
+"C'est tout, madame? Vous n'avez pas de grands bagages?"
+
+"No, nothing. Find me a cab at once."
+
+There was a great crowd outside. She hurried on as quickly as she could,
+revolving what was to be said if any acquaintance were to accost her. By
+great good luck, and by travelling second class both in the train and on
+the boat, she had avoided meeting anybody she knew. But the Nord Station
+was crowded with English people, and she pushed her way through in a
+nervous terror.
+
+"Miss Le Breton!"
+
+She turned abruptly. In the white glare of the electric lights she did
+not at first recognize the man who had spoken to her. Then she drew
+back. Her heart beat wildly. For she had distinguished the face of Jacob
+Delafield.
+
+He came forward to meet her as she passed the barrier at the end of the
+platform, his aspect full of what seemed to her an extraordinary
+animation, significance, as though she were expected.
+
+"Miss Le Breton! What an astonishing, what a fortunate meeting! I have a
+message for you from Evelyn."
+
+"From Evelyn?" She echoed the words mechanically as she shook hands.
+
+"Wait a moment," he said, leading her aside towards the waiting-room,
+while the crowd that was going to the _douane_ passed them by. Then he
+turned to Julie's porter.
+
+"Attendez un instant."
+
+The man sulkily shook his head, dropped Julie's bag at their feet, and
+hurried off in search of a more lucrative job.
+
+"I am going back to-night," added Delafield, hurriedly. "How strange
+that I should have met you, for I have very sad news for you! Lord
+Lackington had an attack this morning, from which he cannot recover. The
+doctors give him perhaps forty-eight hours. He has asked for
+you--urgently. The Duchess tells me so in a long telegram I had from her
+to-day. But she supposed you to be in Bruges. She has wired there. You
+will go back, will you not?"
+
+"Go back?" said Julie, staring at him helplessly. "Go back to-night?"
+
+"The evening train starts in little more than an hour. You would be just
+in time, I think, to see the old man alive."
+
+She still looked at him in bewilderment, at the blue eyes under the
+heavily moulded brows, and the mouth with its imperative, and yet
+eager--or tremulous?--expression. She perceived that he hung upon
+her answer.
+
+She drew her hand piteously across her eyes as though to shut out the
+crowds, the station, and the urgency of this personality beside her.
+Despair was in her heart. How to consent? How to refuse?
+
+"But my friends," she stammered--"the friends with whom I was going to
+stay--they will be alarmed."
+
+"Could you not telegraph to them? They would understand, surely. The
+office is close by."
+
+She let herself be hurried along, not knowing what to do. Delafield
+walked beside her. If she had been able to observe him, she must have
+been struck afresh by the pale intensity, the controlled agitation
+of his face.
+
+"Is it really so serious?" she asked, pausing a moment, as though in
+resistance.
+
+"It is the end. Of that there can be no question. You have touched his
+heart very deeply. He longs to see her, Evelyn says. And his daughter
+and granddaughter are still abroad--Miss Moffatt, indeed, is ill at
+Florence with a touch of diphtheria. He is alone with his two sons.
+You will go?"
+
+Even in her confusion, the strangeness of it all was borne in upon
+her--his insistence, the extraordinary chance of their meeting, his
+grave, commanding manner.
+
+"How could you know I was here?" she said, in bewilderment.
+
+"I didn't know," he said, slowly. "But, thank God, I have met you. I
+dread to think of your fatigue, but you will be glad just to see him
+again--just to give him his last wish--won't you?" he said, pleadingly.
+"Here is the telegraph-office. Shall I do it for you?"
+
+"No, thank you. I--I must think how to word it. Please wait."
+
+She went in alone. As she took the pencil into her hands a low groan
+burst from her lips. The man writing in the next compartment turned
+round in astonishment. She controlled herself and began to write. There
+was no escape. She must submit; and all was over.
+
+She telegraphed to Warkworth, care of the Chef de Gare, at the Sceaux
+Station, and also to the country inn.
+
+"Have met Mr. Delafield by chance at Nord Station. Lord Lackington
+dying. Must return to-night. Where shall I write? Good-bye."
+
+When it was done she could hardly totter out of the office. Delafield
+made her take his arm.
+
+"You must have some food. Then I will go and get a sleeping-car for you
+to Calais. There will be no crowd to-night. At Calais I will look after
+you if you will allow me."
+
+"You are crossing to-night?" she said, vaguely. Her lips framed the
+words with difficulty.
+
+"Yes. I came over with my cousins yesterday."
+
+She asked nothing more. It did not occur to her to notice that he had no
+luggage, no bag, no rug, none of the paraphernalia of travel. In her
+despairing fatigue and misery she let him guide her as he would.
+
+He made her take some soup, then some coffee, all that she could make
+herself swallow. There was a dismal period of waiting, during which she
+was hardly conscious of where she was or of what was going on round her.
+
+Then she found herself in the sleeping-car, in a reserved compartment,
+alone. Once more the train moved through the night. The miles flew
+by--the miles that forever parted her from Warkworth.
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+The train was speeding through the forest country of Chantilly. A pale
+moon had risen, and beneath its light the straight forest roads,
+interminably long, stretched into the distance; the vaporous masses of
+young and budding trees hurried past the eye of the traveller; so, also,
+the white hamlets, already dark and silent; the stations with their
+lights and figures; the great wood-piles beside the line.
+
+Delafield, in his second-class carriage, sat sleepless and erect. The
+night was bitterly cold. He wore the light overcoat in which he had left
+the Hôtel du Rhin that afternoon for a stroll before dinner, and had no
+other wrap or covering. But he felt nothing, was conscious of nothing
+but the rushing current of his own thoughts.
+
+The events of the two preceding days, the meaning of them, the
+significance of his own action and its consequences--it was with these
+materials that his mind dealt perpetually, combining, interpreting,
+deducing, now in one way, now in another. His mood contained both
+excitement and dread. But with a main temper of calmness, courage,
+invincible determination, these elements did not at all interfere.
+
+The day before, he had left London with his cousins, the Duke of
+Chudleigh, and young Lord Elmira, the invalid boy. They were bound to
+Paris to consult a new doctor, and Jacob had offered to convey them
+there. In spite of all the apparatus of servants and couriers with which
+they were surrounded, they always seemed to him, on their journeys, a
+singularly lonely and hapless pair, and he knew that they leaned upon
+him and prized his company.
+
+On the way to Paris, at the Calais buffet, he had noticed Henry
+Warkworth, and had given him a passing nod. It had been understood the
+night before in Heribert Street that they would both be crossing on
+the morrow.
+
+On the following day--the day of Julie's journey--Delafield, who was
+anxiously awaiting the return of his two companions from their interview
+with the great physician they were consulting, was strolling up the Rue
+de la Paix, just before luncheon, when, outside the Hôtel Mirabeau, he
+ran into a man whom he immediately perceived to be Warkworth.
+
+Politeness involved the exchange of a few sentences, although a secret
+antagonism between the two men had revealed itself from the first day of
+their meeting in Lady Henry's drawing-room. Each word of their short
+conversation rang clearly through Delafield's memory.
+
+"You are at the 'Rhin'?" said Warkworth.
+
+"Yes, for a couple more days. Shall we meet at the Embassy to-morrow?"
+
+"No. I dined there last night. My business here is done. I start for
+Rome to-night."
+
+"Lucky man. They have put on a new fast train, haven't they?"
+
+"Yes. You leave the Gare de Lyon at 7.15, and you are at Rome the second
+morning, in good time."
+
+"Magnificent! Why don't we all rush south? Well, good-bye again, and
+good luck."
+
+They touched hands perfunctorily and parted.
+
+This happened about mid-day. While Delafield and his cousins were
+lunching, a telegram from the Duchess of Crowborough was handed to
+Jacob. He had wired to her early in the morning to ask for the address
+in Paris of an old friend of his, who was also a cousin of hers. The
+telegram contained:
+
+     "Thirty-six Avenue Friedland. Lord Lackington heart-attack
+     this morning. Dying. Has asked urgently for Julie. Blanche
+     Moffatt detained Florence by daughter's illness. All
+     circumstances most sad. Woman Heribert Street gave me Bruges
+     address. Have wired Julie there."
+
+The message set vibrating in Delafield's mind the tender memory which
+already existed there of his last talk with Julie, of her strange
+dependence and gentleness, her haunting and pleading personality. He
+hoped with all his heart she might reach the old man in time, that his
+two sons, Uredale and William, would treat her kindly, and that it would
+be found when the end came that he had made due provision for her as his
+granddaughter.
+
+But he had small leisure to give to thoughts of this kind. The
+physician's report in the morning had not been encouraging, and his two
+travelling companions demanded all the sympathy and support he could
+give them. He went out with them in the afternoon to the Hôtel de la
+Terrasse at St. Germain. The Duke, a nervous hypochondriac, could not
+sleep in the noise of Paris, and was accustomed to a certain apartment
+in this well-known hotel, which was often reserved for him. Jacob left
+them about six o'clock to return to Paris. He was to meet one of the
+Embassy attachés--an old Oxford friend--at the Café Gaillard for dinner.
+He dressed at the "Rhin," put on an overcoat, and set out to walk to the
+Rue Gaillard about half-past seven. As he approached the "Mirabeau," he
+saw a cab with luggage standing at the door. A man came out with the
+hotel _concierge_. To his astonishment, Delafield recognized Warkworth.
+
+The young officer seemed in a hurry and out of temper. At any rate, he
+jumped into the cab without taking any notice of the two _sommeliers_
+and the _concierge_ who stood round expectant of francs, and when the
+_concierge_ in his stiffest manner asked where the man was to drive,
+Warkworth put his head out of the window and said, hastily, to
+the _cocher_:
+
+"D'abord, à la Gare de Sceaux! Puis, je vous dirai. Mais dépêchez-vous!"
+
+The cab rolled away, and Delafield walked on.
+
+Half-past seven, striking from all the Paris towers! And Warkworth's
+intention in the morning was to leave the Gare de Lyon at 7.15. But it
+seemed he was now bound, at 7.30, for the Gare de Sceaux, from which
+point of departure it was clear that no reasonable man would think of
+starting for the Eternal City.
+
+"_D'abord,_ à la Gare de Sceaux!"
+
+Then he was not catching a train?--at any rate, immediately. He had some
+other business first, and was perhaps going to the station to deposit
+his luggage?
+
+Suddenly a thought, a suspicion, flashed through Delafield's mind, which
+set his heart thumping in his breast. In after days he was often puzzled
+to account for its origin, still more for the extraordinary force with
+which it at once took possession of all his energies. In his more
+mystical moments of later life he rose to the secret belief that God had
+spoken to him.
+
+At any rate, he at once hailed a cab, and, thinking no more of his
+dinner engagement, he drove post-haste to the Nord Station. In those
+days the Calais train arrived at eight. He reached the station a few
+minutes before it appeared. When at last it drew up, amid the crowd on
+the platform it took him only a few seconds to distinguish the dark and
+elegant head of Julie Le Breton.
+
+A pang shot through him that pierced to the very centre of life. He was
+conscious of a prayer for help and a clear mind. But on his way to the
+station he had rapidly thought out a plan on which to act should this
+mad notion in his brain turn out to have any support in reality.
+
+It had so much support that Julie Le Breton was there--in Paris--and not
+at Bruges, as she had led the Duchess to suppose. And when she turned
+her startled face upon him, his wild fancy became, for himself, a
+certainty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Amiens! Cinq minutes d'arrêt."
+
+Delafield got out and walked up and down the platform. He passed the
+closed and darkened windows of the sleeping-car; and it seemed to his
+abnormally quickened sense that he was beside her, bending over her, and
+that he said to her:
+
+"Courage! You are saved! Let us thank God!"
+
+A boy from the refreshment-room came along, wheeling a barrow on which
+were tea and coffee.
+
+Delafield eagerly drank a cup of tea and put his hand into his pocket to
+pay for it. He found there three francs and his ticket. After paying for
+the tea he examined his purse. That contained an English half-crown.
+
+So he had had with him just enough to get his own second-class ticket,
+her first-class, and a sleeping-car. That was good fortune, seeing that
+the bulk of his money, with his return ticket, was reposing in his
+dressing-case at the Hôtel du Rhin.
+
+"En voiture! En voiture, s'il vous plaît!"
+
+He settled himself once more in his corner, and the train rushed on.
+This time it was the strange hour at the Gare du Nord which he lived
+through again, her white face opposite to him in the refreshment-room,
+the bewilderment and misery she had been so little able to conceal, her
+spasmodic attempts at conversation, a few vague words about Lord
+Lackington or the Duchess, and then pauses, when her great eyes, haggard
+and weary, stared into vacancy, and he knew well enough that her
+thoughts were with Warkworth, and that she was in fierce rebellion
+against his presence there, and this action into which he had
+forced her.
+
+As for him, he perfectly understood the dilemma in which she stood.
+Either she must accept the duty of returning to the death-bed of the old
+man, her mother's father, or she must confess her appointment with
+Warkworth.
+
+Yet--suppose he had been mistaken? Well, the telegram from the Duchess
+covered his whole action. Lord Lackington _was_ dying; and apart from
+all question of feeling, Julie Le Breton's friends must naturally desire
+that he should see her, acknowledge her before his two sons, and, with
+their consent, provide for her before his death.
+
+But, ah, he had not been mistaken! He remembered her hurried refusal
+when he had asked her if he should telegraph for her to her Paris
+"friends"--how, in a sudden shame, he had turned away that he might not
+see the beloved false face as she spoke, might not seem to watch or
+suspect her.
+
+He had just had time to send off a messenger, first to his friend at the
+Café Gaillard, and then to the Hôtel du Rhin, before escorting her to
+the sleeping-car.
+
+Ah, how piteous had been that dull bewilderment with which she had
+turned to him!
+
+"But--my ticket?"
+
+"Here they are. Oh, never mind--we will settle in town. Try to sleep.
+You must be very tired."
+
+And then it seemed to him that her lips trembled, like those of a
+miserable child; and surely, surely, she must hear that mad beating of
+his pulse!
+
+Boulogne was gone in a flash. Here was the Somme, stretched in a pale
+silver flood beneath the moon--a land of dunes and stunted pines, of
+wide sea-marshes, over which came the roar of the Channel. Then again
+the sea was left behind, and the rich Picard country rolled away to
+right and left. Lights here and there, in cottage or villa--the lights,
+perhaps, of birth or death--companions of hope or despair.
+
+Calais!
+
+The train moved slowly up to the boat-side. Delafield jumped out. The
+sleeping-car was yielding up its passengers. He soon made out the small
+black hat and veil, the slender form in the dark travelling-dress.
+
+Was she fainting? For she seemed to him to waver as he approached her,
+and the porter who had taken her rugs and bag was looking at her in
+astonishment. In an instant he had drawn her arm within his, and was
+supporting her as he best could,
+
+"The car was very hot, and I am so tired. I only want some air."
+
+They reached the deck.
+
+"You will go down-stairs?"
+
+"No, no--some air!" she murmured, and he saw that she could hardly keep
+her feet.
+
+But in a few moments they had reached the shelter on the upper deck
+usually so well filled with chairs and passengers on a day crossing. Now
+it was entirely deserted. The boat was not full, the night was cold and
+stormy, and the stream of passengers had poured down into the shelter of
+the lower deck.
+
+Julie sank into a chair. Delafield hurriedly loosened the shawl she
+carried with her from its attendant bag and umbrella, and wrapped it
+round her.
+
+"It will be a rough crossing," he said, in her ear. "Can you stand it on
+deck?"
+
+"I am a good sailor. Let me stay here."
+
+Her eyes closed. He stooped over her in an anguish. One of the boat
+officials approached him.
+
+"Madame ferait mieux de descendre, monsieur. La traversée ne sera pas
+bonne."
+
+Delafield explained that the lady must have air, and was a good sailor.
+Then he pressed into the man's hand his three francs, and sent him for
+brandy and an extra covering of some kind. The man went unwillingly.
+
+During the whole bustle of departure, Delafield saw nothing but Julie's
+helpless and motionless form; he heard nothing but the faint words by
+which, once or twice, she tried to convey to him that she was not
+unconscious.
+
+The brandy came. The man who brought it again objected to Julie's
+presence on deck. Delafield took no heed. He was absorbed in making
+Julie swallow some of the brandy.
+
+At last they were off. The vessel glided slowly out of the old harbor,
+and they were immediately in rough water.
+
+Delafield was roused by a peremptory voice at his elbow.
+
+"This lady ought not to stay here, sir. There is plenty of room in the
+ladies' cabin."
+
+Delafield looked up and recognized the captain of the boat, the same man
+who, thirty-six hours before, had shown special civilities to the Duke
+of Chudleigh and his party.
+
+"Ah, you are Captain Whittaker," he said.
+
+The shrewd, stout man who had accosted him raised his eyebrows in
+astonishment.
+
+Delafield drew him aside a moment. After a short conversation the
+captain lifted his cap and departed, with a few words to the subordinate
+officer who had drawn his attention to the matter. Henceforward they
+were unmolested, and presently the officer brought a pillow and striped
+blanket, saying they might be useful to the lady. Julie was soon
+comfortably placed, lying down on the seat under the wooden shelter.
+Delicacy seemed to suggest that her companion should leave her
+to herself.
+
+Jacob walked up and down briskly, trying to shake off the cold which
+benumbed him. Every now and then he paused to look at the lights on the
+receding French coast, at its gray phantom line sweeping southward under
+the stormy moon, or disappearing to the north in clouds of rain. There
+was a roar of waves and a dashing of spray. The boat, not a large one,
+was pitching heavily, and the few male passengers who had at first
+haunted the deck soon disappeared.
+
+Delafield hung over the surging water in a strange exaltation, half
+physical, half moral. The wild salt strength and savor of the sea
+breathed something akin to that passionate force of will which had
+impelled him to the enterprise in which he stood. No mere man of the
+world could have dared it; most men of the world, as he was well aware,
+would have condemned or ridiculed it. But for one who saw life and
+conduct _sub specie æternitatis_ it had seemed natural enough.
+
+The wind blew fierce and cold. He made his way back to Julie's side. To
+his surprise, she had raised herself and was sitting propped up against
+the corner of the seat, her veil thrown back.
+
+"You are better?" he said, stooping to her, so as to be heard against
+the boom of the waves. "This rough weather does not affect you?"
+
+She made a negative sign. He drew his camp-stool beside her. Suddenly
+she asked him what time it was. The haggard nobleness of her pale face
+amid the folds of black veil, the absent passion of the eye, thrilled to
+his heart. Where were her thoughts?
+
+"Nearly four o'clock." He drew out his watch. "You see it is beginning
+to lighten,"
+
+And he pointed to the sky, in which that indefinable lifting of the
+darkness which precedes the dawn was taking place, and to the far
+distances of sea, where a sort of livid clarity was beginning to absorb
+and vanquish that stormy play of alternate dark and moonlight which had
+prevailed when they left the French shore.
+
+He had hardly spoken, when he felt that her eyes were fixed upon him.
+
+To look at his watch, he had thrown open his long Newmarket coat,
+forgetting that in so doing he disclosed the evening-dress in which he
+had robed himself at the Hôtel du Rhin for his friend's dinner at the
+Café Gaillard.
+
+He hastily rebuttoned his coat, and turned his face seaward once more.
+But he heard her voice, and was obliged to come close to her that he
+might catch the words.
+
+"You have given me your wraps," she said, with difficulty. "You will
+suffer."
+
+"Not at all. You have your own rug, and one that the captain provided. I
+keep myself quite warm with moving about."
+
+There was a pause. His mind began to fill with alarm. He was not of the
+men who act a part with ease; but, having got through so far, he had
+calculated on preserving his secret.
+
+Flight was best, and he was just turning away when a gesture of hers
+arrested him. Again he stooped till their faces were near enough to let
+her voice reach him.
+
+"Why are you in evening-dress?"
+
+"I had intended to dine with a friend. There was not time to change."
+
+"Then you did not mean to cross to-night?"
+
+He delayed a moment, trying to collect his thoughts.
+
+"Not when I dressed for dinner, but some sudden news decided me."
+
+Her head fell back wearily against the support behind it. The eyes
+closed, and he, thinking she would perhaps sleep, was about to rise from
+his seat, when the pressure of her hand upon his arm detained him. He
+sat still and the hand was withdrawn.
+
+There was a lessening of the roar in their ears. Under the lee of the
+English shore the wind was milder, the "terror-music" of the sea less
+triumphant. And over everything was stealing the first discriminating
+touch of the coming light. Her face was clear now; and Delafield, at
+last venturing to look at her, saw that her eyes were open again, and
+trembled at their expression. There was in them a wild suspicion.
+Secretly, steadily, he nerved himself to meet the blow that he foresaw.
+
+"Mr. Delafield, have you told me all the truth?"
+
+She sat up as she spoke, deadly pale but rigid. With an impatient hand
+she threw off the wraps which had covered her. Her face commanded
+an answer.
+
+"Certainly I have told you the truth."
+
+"Was it the whole truth? It seems--it seems to me that you were not
+prepared yourself for this journey--that there is some mystery--which I
+do not understand--which I resent!"
+
+"But what mystery? When I saw you, I of course thought of Evelyn's
+telegram."
+
+"I should like to see that telegram."
+
+He hesitated. If he had been more skilled in the little falsehoods of
+every day he would simply have said that he had left it at the hotel.
+But he lost his chance. Nor at the moment did he clearly perceive what
+harm it would do to show it to her. The telegram was in his pocket, and
+he handed it to her.
+
+There was a dim oil-lamp in the shelter. With difficulty she held the
+fluttering paper up and just divined the words. Then the wind carried it
+away and blew it overboard. He rose and leaned against the edge of the
+shelter, looking down upon her. There was in his mind a sense of
+something solemn approaching, round which this sudden lull of blast and
+wave seemed to draw a "wind-warm space," closing them in.
+
+"Why did you come with me?" she persisted, in an agitation she could now
+scarcely control. "It is evident you had not meant to travel. You have
+no luggage, and you are in evening-dress. And I remember now--you sent
+two letters from the station!"
+
+"I wished to be your escort."
+
+Her gesture was almost one of scorn at the evasion.
+
+"Why were you at the station at all? Evelyn had told you I was at
+Bruges. And--you were dining out. I--I can't understand!"
+
+She spoke with a frowning intensity, a strange queenliness, in which was
+neither guilt nor confusion.
+
+A voice spoke in Delafield's heart. "Tell her!" it said.
+
+He bent nearer to her.
+
+"Miss Le Breton, with what friends were you going to stay in Paris?"
+
+She breathed quick.
+
+"I am not a school-girl, I think, that I should be asked questions of
+that kind."
+
+"But on your answer depends mine."
+
+She looked at him in amazement. His gentle kindness had disappeared. She
+saw, instead, that Jacob Delafield whom her instinct had divined from
+the beginning behind the modest and courteous outer man, the Jacob
+Delafield of whom she had told the Duchess she was afraid.
+
+But her passion swept every other thought out of its way. With dim agony
+and rage she began to perceive that she had been duped.
+
+"Mr. Delafield"--she tried for calm--"I don't understand your attitude,
+but, so far as I do understand it, I find it intolerable. If you have
+deceived me--"
+
+"I have not deceived you. Lord Lackington is dying."
+
+"But that is not why you were at the station," she repeated,
+passionately. "Why did you meet the English train?"
+
+Her eyes, clear now in the cold light, shone upon him imperiously.
+
+Again the inner voice said: "Speak--get away from conventionalities.
+Speak--soul to soul!"
+
+He sat down once more beside her. His gaze sought the ground. Then, with
+sharp suddenness, he looked her in the face.
+
+"Miss Le Breton, you were going to Paris to meet Major Warkworth?"
+
+She drew back.
+
+"And if I was?" she said, with a wild defiance.
+
+"I had to prevent it, that was all."
+
+His tone was calm and resolution itself.
+
+"Who--who gave you authority over me?"
+
+"One may save--even by violence. You were too precious to be allowed to
+destroy yourself."
+
+His look, so sad and strong, the look of a deep compassion, fastened
+itself upon her. He felt himself, indeed, possessed by a force not his
+own, that same force which in its supreme degree made of St. Francis
+"the great tamer of souls."
+
+"Who asked you to be our judge? Neither I nor Major Warkworth owe you
+anything."
+
+"No. But I owed you help--as a man--as your friend. The truth was
+somehow borne in upon me. You were risking your honor--I threw myself
+in the way."
+
+Every word seemed to madden her.
+
+"What--what could you know of the circumstances?" cried her choked,
+laboring voice. "It is unpardonable--an outrage! You know nothing either
+of him or of me."
+
+She clasped her hands to her breast in a piteous, magnificent gesture,
+as though she were defending her lover and her love.
+
+"I know that you have suffered much," he said, dropping his eyes before
+her, "but you would suffer infinitely more if--"
+
+"If you had not interfered." Her veil had fallen over her face again.
+She flung it back in impatient despair. "Mr. Delafield, I can do without
+your anxieties."
+
+"But not"--he spoke slowly--"without your own self-respect."
+
+Julie's face trembled. She hid it in her hands.
+
+"Go!" she said. "Go!"
+
+He went to the farther end of the ship and stood there motionless,
+looking towards the land but seeing nothing. On all sides the darkness
+was lifting, and in the distance there gleamed already the whiteness
+that was Dover. His whole being was shaken with that experience which
+comes so rarely to cumbered and superficial men--the intimate wrestle of
+one personality with another. It seemed to him he was not worthy of it.
+
+After some little time, when only a quarter of an hour lay between the
+ship and Dover pier, he went back to Julie.
+
+She was sitting perfectly still, her hands clasped in front of her, her
+veil drawn down.
+
+"May I say one word to you?" he said, gently.
+
+She did not speak.
+
+"It is this. What I have confessed to you to-night is, of course, buried
+between us. It is as though it had never been said. I have given you
+pain. I ask your pardon from the bottom of my heart, and, at the same
+time"--his voice trembled--"I thank God that I had the courage to
+do it!"
+
+She threw him a glance that showed her a quivering lip and the pallor of
+intense emotion.
+
+"I know you think you were right," she said, in a voice dull and
+strained, "but henceforth we can only be enemies. You have tyrannized
+over me in the name of standards that you revere and I reject. I can
+only beg you to let my life alone for the future."
+
+He said nothing. She rose, dizzily, to her feet. They were rapidly
+approaching the pier.
+
+[Illustration: "HER HANDS CLASPED IN FRONT OF HER"]
+
+With the cold aloofness of one who feels it more dignified to submit
+than to struggle, she allowed him to assist her in landing. He put her
+into the Victoria train, travelling himself in another carriage.
+
+As he walked beside her down the platform of Victoria Station, she said
+to him:
+
+"I shall be obliged if you will tell Evelyn that I have returned."
+
+"I go to her at once."
+
+She suddenly paused, and he saw that she was looking helplessly at one
+of the newspaper placards of the night before. First among its items
+appeared: "Critical state of Lord Lackington."
+
+He hardly knew how far she would allow him to have any further
+communication with her, but her pale exhaustion made it impossible not
+to offer to serve her.
+
+"It would be early to go for news now," he said, gently. "It would
+disturb the house. But in a couple of hours from now"--the station clock
+pointed to 6.15--"if you will allow me, I will leave the morning
+bulletin at your door."
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"You must rest, or you will have no strength for nursing," he continued,
+in the same studiously guarded tone. "But if you would prefer another
+messenger--"
+
+"I have none," and she raised her hand to her brow in mute, unconscious
+confession of an utter weakness and bewilderment.
+
+"Then let me go," he said, softly.
+
+It seemed to him that she was so physically weary as to be incapable
+either of assent or resistance. He put her into her cab, and gave the
+driver his directions. She looked at him uncertainly. But he did not
+offer his hand. From those blue eyes of his there shot out upon her one
+piercing glance--manly, entreating, sad. He lifted his hat and was gone.
+
+
+
+XX
+
+"Jacob, what brings you back so soon?" The Duchess ran into the room, a
+trim little figure in her morning dress of blue-and-white cloth, with
+her small spitz leaping beside her.
+
+Delafield advanced.
+
+"I came to tell you that I got your telegram yesterday, and that in the
+evening, by an extraordinary and fortunate chance, I met Miss Le Breton
+in Paris--"
+
+"You met Julie in Paris?" echoed the Duchess, in astonishment.
+
+"She had come to spend a couple of days with some friends there before
+going on to Bruges. I gave her the news of Lord Lackington's illness,
+and she at once turned back. She was much fatigued and distressed, and
+the night was stormy. I put her into the sleeping-car, and came back
+myself to see if I could be any assistance to her. And at Calais I was
+of some use. The crossing was very rough."
+
+"Julie was in Paris?" repeated the Duchess, as though she had heard
+nothing else of what he had been saying.
+
+Her eyes, so blue and large in her small, irregular face, sought those
+of her cousin and endeavored to read them.
+
+"It seems to have been a rapid change of plan. And it was a great stroke
+of luck my meeting her."
+
+"But how--and where?"
+
+"Oh, there is no time for going into that," said Delafield, impatiently.
+"But I knew you would like to know that she was here--after your message
+yesterday. We arrived a little after six this morning. About nine I went
+for news to St. James's Square. There is a slight rally."
+
+"Did you see Lord Uredale? Did you say anything about Julie?" asked the
+Duchess, eagerly.
+
+"I merely asked at the door, and took the bulletin to Miss Le Breton.
+Will you see Uredale and arrange it? I gather you saw him yesterday."
+
+"By all means," said the Duchess, musing. "Oh, it was so curious
+yesterday. Lord Lackington had just told them. You should have seen
+those two men."
+
+"The sons?"
+
+The Duchess nodded.
+
+"They don't like it. They were as stiff as pokers. But they will do
+absolutely the right thing. They see at once that she must be provided
+for. And when he asked for her they told me to telegraph, if I could
+find out where she was. Well, of all the extraordinary chances."
+
+She looked at him again, oddly, a spot of red on either small cheek.
+Delafield took no notice. He was pacing up and down, apparently
+in thought.
+
+"Suppose you take her there?" he said, pausing abruptly before her.
+
+"To St. James's Square? What did you tell her?"
+
+"That he was a trifle better, and that you would come to her."
+
+"Yes, it would be hard for her to go alone," said the Duchess,
+reflectively. She looked at her watch. "Only a little after eleven.
+Ring, please, Jacob."
+
+The carriage was ordered. Meanwhile the little lady inquired eagerly
+after her Julie. Had she been exhausted by the double journey? Was she
+alone in Paris, or was Madame Bornier with her?
+
+Jacob had understood that Madame Bornier and the little girl had gone
+straight to Bruges.
+
+The Duchess looked down and then looked up.
+
+"Did--did you come across Major Warkworth?"
+
+"Yes, I saw him for a moment in the Rue de la Paix, He was starting for
+Rome."
+
+The Duchess turned away as though ashamed of her question, and gave her
+orders for the carriage. Then her attention was suddenly drawn to her
+cousin. "How pale you look, Jacob," she said, approaching him. "Won't
+you have something--some wine?"
+
+Delafield refused, declaring that all he wanted was an hour or two's
+sleep.
+
+"I go back to Paris to-morrow," he said, as he prepared to take his
+leave. "Will you be here to-night if I look in?"
+
+"Alack! we go to Scotland to-night! It was just a piece of luck that you
+found me this morning. Freddie is fuming to get away."
+
+Delafield paused a moment. Then he abruptly shook hands and went.
+
+"He wants news of what happens at St. James's Square," thought the
+Duchess, suddenly, and she ran after him to the top of the stairs.
+"Jacob! If you don't mind a horrid mess to-night, Freddie and I shall be
+dining alone--of course we must have something to eat. Somewhere about
+eight. Do look in. There'll be a cutlet--on a trunk--anyway."
+
+Delafield laughed, hesitated, and finally accepted.
+
+The Duchess went back to the drawing-room, not a little puzzled and
+excited.
+
+"It's very, _very_ odd," she said to herself. "And what _is_ the matter
+with Jacob?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half an hour later she drove to the splendid house in St. James's Square
+where Lord Lackington lay dying.
+
+She asked for Lord Uredale, the eldest son, and waited in the library
+till he came.
+
+He was a tall, squarely built man, with fair hair already gray, and
+somewhat absent and impassive manners.
+
+At sight of him the Duchess's eyes filled with tears. She hurried to
+him, her soft nature dissolved in sympathy.
+
+"How is your father?"
+
+"A trifle easier, though the doctors say there is no real improvement.
+But he is quite conscious--knows us all. I have just been reading him
+the debate."
+
+"You told me yesterday he had asked for Miss Le Breton," said the
+Duchess, raising herself on tiptoe as though to bring her low tones
+closer to his ear. "She's here--in town, I mean. She came back from
+Paris last night."
+
+Lord Uredale showed no emotion of any kind. Emotion was not in his line.
+
+"Then my father would like to see her," he said, in a dry, ordinary
+voice, which jarred upon the sentimental Duchess.
+
+"When shall I bring her?"
+
+"He is now comfortable and resting. If you are free--"
+
+The Duchess replied that she would go to Heribert Street at once. As
+Lord Uredale took her to her carriage a young man ran down the steps
+hastily, raised his hat, and disappeared.
+
+Lord Uredale explained that he was the husband of the famous young
+beauty, Mrs. Delaray, whose portrait Lord Lackington had been engaged
+upon at the time of his seizure. Having been all his life a skilful
+artist, a man of fashion, and a harmless haunter of lovely women, Lord
+Lackington, as the Duchess knew, had all but completed a gallery of a
+hundred portraits, representing the beauty of the reign. Mrs. Delaray's
+would have been the hundredth in a series of which Mrs. Norton was
+the first.
+
+"He has been making arrangements with the husband to get it finished,"
+said Lord Uredale; "it has been on his mind."
+
+The Duchess shivered a little.
+
+"He knows he won't finish it?"
+
+"Quite well."
+
+"And he still thinks of those things?"
+
+"Yes--or politics," said Lord Uredale, smiling faintly. "I have written
+to Mr. Montresor. There are two or three points my father wants to
+discuss with him."
+
+"And he is not depressed, or troubled about himself?"
+
+"Not in the least. He will be grateful if you will bring him Miss Le
+Breton."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Julie, my darling, are you fit to come with me?"
+
+The Duchess held her friend in her arms, soothing and caressing her.
+How forlorn was the little house, under its dust-sheets, on this rainy,
+spring morning! And Julie, amid the dismantled drawing-room, stood
+spectrally white and still, listening, with scarcely a word in reply, to
+the affection, or the pity, or the news which the Duchess poured
+out upon her.
+
+"Shall we go now? I am quite ready."
+
+And she withdrew herself from the loving grasp which held her, and put
+on her hat and gloves.
+
+"You ought to be in bed," said the Duchess. "Those night journeys are
+too abominable. Even Jacob looks a wreck. But what an extraordinary
+chance, Julie, that Jacob should have found you! How did you come across
+each other?"
+
+"At the Nord Station," said Julie, as she pinned her veil before the
+glass over the mantel-piece.
+
+Some instinct silenced the Duchess. She asked no more questions, and
+they started for St. James's Square.
+
+"You won't mind if I don't talk?" said Julie, leaning back and closing
+her eyes. "I seem still to have the sea in my ears."
+
+The Duchess looked at her tenderly, clasping her hand close, and the
+carriage rolled along. But just before they reached St. James's Square,
+Julie hastily raised the fingers which held her own and kissed them.
+
+"Oh, Julie," said the Duchess, reproachfully, "I don't like you to do
+that!"
+
+She flushed and frowned. It was she who ought to pay such acts of
+homage, not Julie.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Father, Miss Le Breton is here."
+
+"Let her come in, Jack--and the Duchess, too."
+
+Lord Uredale went back to the door. Two figures came noiselessly into
+the room, the Duchess in front, with Julie's hand in hers.
+
+Lord Lackington was propped up in bed, and breathing fast. But he smiled
+as they approached him.
+
+"This is good-bye, dear Duchess," he said, in a whisper, as she bent
+over him. Then, with a spark of his old gayety in the eyes, "I should be
+a cur to grumble. Life has been very agreeable. Ah, Julie!"
+
+Julie dropped gently on her knees beside him and laid her cheek against
+his arm. At the mention of her name the old man's face had clouded as
+though the thoughts she called up had suddenly rebuked his words to the
+Duchess. He feebly moved his hands towards hers, and there was silence
+in the room for a few moments.
+
+"Uredale!"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"This is Rose's daughter."
+
+His eyes lifted themselves to those of his son.
+
+"I know, father. If Miss Le Breton will allow us, we will do what we can
+to be of service to her."
+
+Bill Chantrey, the younger brother, gravely nodded assent. They were
+both men of middle age, the younger over forty. They did not resemble
+their father, nor was there any trace in either of them of his wayward
+fascination. They were a pair of well-set-up, well-bred Englishmen,
+surprised at nothing, and quite incapable of showing any emotion in
+public; yet just and kindly men. As Julie entered the house they had
+both solemnly shaken hands with her, in a manner which showed at once
+their determination, as far as they were concerned, to avoid anything
+sentimental or in the nature of a scene, and their readiness to do what
+could be rightly demanded of them.
+
+Julie hardly listened to Lord Uredale's little speech. She had eyes and
+ears only for her grandfather. As she knelt beside him, her face bowed
+upon his hand, the ice within her was breaking up, that dumb and
+straitening anguish in which she had lived since that moment at the Nord
+Station in which she had grasped the meaning and the implications of
+Delafield's hurried words. Was everything to be swept away from her at
+once--her lover, and now this dear old man, to whom her heart, crushed
+and bleeding as it was, yearned with all its strength?
+
+Lord Lackington supposed that she was weeping.
+
+"Don't grieve, my dear," he murmured. "It must come to an end some
+time--'_cette charmante promenade à travers la réalité_!'"
+
+And he smiled at her, agreeably vain to the last of that French accent
+and that French memory which--so his look implied--they two could
+appreciate, each in the other. Then he turned to the Duchess.
+
+"Duchess, you knew this secret before me. But I forgive _you_, and thank
+you. You have been very good to Rose's child. Julie has told me--and--I
+have observed--"
+
+"Oh, dear Lord Lackington!" Evelyn bent over him. "Trust her to me," she
+said, with a lovely yearning to comfort and cheer him breathing from her
+little face.
+
+He smiled.
+
+"To you--and--"
+
+He did not finish the sentence.
+
+After a pause he made a little gesture of farewell which the Duchess
+understood. She kissed his hand and turned away weeping.
+
+"Nurse--where is nurse?" said Lord Lackington.
+
+Both the nurse and the doctor, who had withdrawn a little distance from
+the family group, came forward.
+
+"Doctor, give me some strength," said the laboring voice, not without
+its old wilfulness of accent.
+
+He moved his arm towards the young homoeopath, who injected strychnine.
+Then he looked at the nurse.
+
+"Brandy--and--lift me."
+
+All was done as he desired.
+
+"Now go, please," he said to his sons. "I wish to be left with Julie."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For some moments, that seemed interminable to Julie, Lord Lackington lay
+silent. A feverish flush, a revival of life in the black eyes had
+followed on the administration of the two stimulants. He seemed to be
+gathering all his forces.
+
+At last he laid his hand on her arm. "You shouldn't be alone," he said,
+abruptly.
+
+His expression had grown anxious, even imperious. She felt a vague pang
+of dread as she tried to assure him that she had kind friends, and that
+her work would be her resource.
+
+Lord Lackington frowned.
+
+"That won't do," he said, almost vehemently. "You have great talents,
+but you are weak--you are a woman--you must marry."
+
+Julie stared at him, whiter even than when she had entered his
+room--helpless to avert what she began to foresee.
+
+"Jacob Delafield is devoted to you. You should marry him, dear--you
+should marry him."
+
+The room seemed to swim around her. But his face was still plain--the
+purpled lips and cheeks, the urgency in the eyes, as of one pursued by
+an overtaking force, the magnificent brow, the crown of white hair.
+
+She summoned all her powers and told him hurriedly that he was
+mistaken--entirely mistaken. Mr. Delafield had, indeed, proposed to her,
+but, apart from her own unwillingness, she had reason to know that his
+feelings towards her were now entirely changed. He neither loved her nor
+thought well of her.
+
+Lord Lackington lay there, obstinate, patient, incredulous. At last he
+interrupted her.
+
+"You make yourself believe these things. But they are not true.
+Delafield is attached to you. I know it."
+
+He nodded to her with his masterful, affectionate look. And before she
+could find words again he had resumed.
+
+"He could give you a great position. Don't despise it. We English
+big-wigs have a good time."
+
+A ghostly, humorous ray shot out upon her; then he felt for her hand.
+
+"Dear Julie, why won't you?"
+
+"If you were to ask him," she cried, in despair, "he would tell you as I
+do."
+
+And across her miserable thoughts there flashed two mingled
+images--Warkworth waiting, waiting for her at the Sceaux Station, and
+that look of agonized reproach in Delafield's haggard face as he had
+parted from her in the dawn of this strange, this incredible day.
+
+And here beside her, with the tyranny of the dying, this dear babbler
+wandered on in broken words, with painful breath, pleading, scolding,
+counselling. She felt that he was exhausting himself. She begged him to
+let her recall nurse and doctor. He shook his head, and when he could no
+longer speak, he clung to her hand, his gaze solemnly, insistently,
+fixed upon her.
+
+Her spirit writhed and rebelled. But she was helpless in the presence of
+this mortal weakness, this affection, half earthly, half beautiful, on
+its knees before her.
+
+A thought struck her. Why not content him? Whatever pledges she gave
+would die with him. What did it matter? It was cruelty to deny him the
+words--the mere empty words--he asked of her.
+
+"I--I would do anything to please you!" she said, with a sudden burst of
+uncontrollable tears, as she laid her head down beside him on the
+pillow. "If he _were_ to ask me again, of course, for your sake, I would
+consider it once more. Dear, dear friend, won't that satisfy you?"
+
+Lord Lackington was silent a few moments, then he smiled.
+
+"That's a promise?"
+
+She raised herself and looked at him, conscious of a sick movement of
+terror. What was there in his mind, still so quick, fertile, ingenious,
+under the very shadow of death?
+
+He waited for her answer, feebly pressing her hand.
+
+"Yes," she said, faintly, and once more hid her face beside him.
+
+Then, for some little time, the dying man neither stirred nor spoke. At
+last Julie heard:
+
+"I used to be afraid of death--that was in middle life. Every night it
+was a torment. But now, for many years, I have not been afraid at
+all.... Byron--Lord Byron--said to me, once, he would not change
+anything in his life; but he would have preferred not to have lived at
+all. I could not say that. I have enjoyed it all--being an Englishman,
+and an English peer--pictures, politics, society--everything. Perhaps it
+wasn't fair. There are so many poor devils."
+
+Julie pressed his hand to her lips. But in her thoughts there rose the
+sudden, sharp memory of her mother's death--of that bitter stoicism and
+abandonment in which the younger life had closed, in comparison with
+this peace, this complacency.
+
+Yet it was a complacency rich in sweetness. His next words were to
+assure her tenderly that he had made provision for her. "Uredale and
+Bill--will see to it. They're good fellows. Often--they've thought me--a
+pretty fool. But they've been kind to me--always."
+
+Then, after another interval, he lifted himself in bed, with more
+strength than she had supposed he could exert, looked at her earnestly,
+and asked her, in the same painful whisper, whether she believed in
+another life.
+
+"Yes," said Julie. But her shrinking, perfunctory manner evidently
+distressed him. He resumed, with a furrowed brow:
+
+"You ought. It is good for us to believe it."
+
+"I must hope, at any rate, that I shall see you again--and mamma," she
+said, smiling on him through her tears.
+
+"I wonder what it will be like," he replied, after a pause. His tone and
+look implied a freakish, a whimsical curiosity, yet full of charm.
+Then, motioning to her to come nearer, and speaking into her ear:
+
+"Your poor mother, Julie, was never happy--never! There must be laws,
+you see--and churches--and religious customs. It's because--we're made
+of such wretched stuff. My wife, when she died--made me promise to
+continue going to church--and praying. And--without it--I should have
+been a bad man. Though I've had plenty of sceptical thoughts--plenty.
+Your poor parents rebelled--against all that. They suffered--they
+suffered. But you'll make up--you're a noble woman--you'll make up."
+
+He laid his hand on her head. She offered no reply; but through the
+inner mind there rushed the incidents, passions, revolts of the
+preceding days.
+
+But for that strange chance of Delafield's appearance in her path--a
+chance no more intelligible to her now, after the pondering of several
+feverish hours, than it had been at the moment of her first
+suspicion--where and what would she be now? A dishonored woman, perhaps,
+with a life-secret to keep; cut off, as her mother had been, from the
+straight-living, law-abiding world.
+
+The touch of the old man's hand upon her hair roused in her a first
+recoil, a first shattering doubt of the impulse which had carried her to
+Paris. Since Delafield left her in the early dawn she had been pouring
+out a broken, passionate heart in a letter to Warkworth. No misgivings
+while she was writing it as to the all-sufficing legitimacy of love!
+
+But here, in this cold neighborhood of the grave--brought back to gaze
+in spirit; on her mother's tragedy--she shrank, she trembled. Her proud
+intelligence denied the stain, and bade her hate and despise her
+rescuer. And, meanwhile, things also inherited and inborn, the fruit of
+a remoter ancestry, rising from the dimmest and deepest caverns of
+personality, silenced the clamor of the naturalist mind. One moment she
+felt herself seized with terror lest anything should break down the veil
+between her real self and this unsuspecting tenderness of the dying man;
+the next she rose in revolt against her own fear. Was she to find
+herself, after all, a mere weak penitent--meanly grateful to Jacob
+Delafield? Her heart cried out to Warkworth in a protesting anguish.
+
+So absorbed in thought was she that she did not notice how long the
+silence had lasted.
+
+"He seems to be sleeping," said a low voice beside her.
+
+She looked up to see the doctor, with Lord Uredale. Gently releasing
+herself, she kissed Lord Lackington's forehead, and rose to her feet.
+
+Suddenly the patient opened his eyes, and as he seemed to become aware
+of the figures beside him, he again lifted himself in bed, and a gleam
+most animated, most vivacious, passed over his features.
+
+"Brougham's not asked," he said, with a little chuckle of amusement.
+"Isn't it a joke?"
+
+The two men beside him looked at each other. Lord Uredale approached the
+bed.
+
+"Not asked to what, father?" he said, gently.
+
+"Why, to the Queen's fancy ball, of course," said Lord Lackington, still
+smiling. "Such a to-do! All the elderly sticks practising minuets for
+their lives!"
+
+A voluble flow of talk followed--hardly intelligible. The words
+"Melbourne" and "Lady Holland" emerged--the fragment, apparently, of a
+dispute with the latter, in which "Allen" intervened--the names of
+"Palmerston" and "that dear chap, Villiers."
+
+Lord Uredale sighed. The young doctor looked at him interrogatively.
+
+"He is thinking of his old friends," said the son. "That was the Queen's
+ball, I imagine, of '42. I have often heard him describe my
+mother's dress."
+
+But while he was speaking the fitful energy died away. The old man
+ceased to talk; his eyelids fell. But the smile still lingered about his
+mouth, and as he settled himself on his pillows, like one who rests, the
+spectators were struck by the urbane and distinguished beauty of his
+aspect. The purple flush had died again into mortal pallor. Illness had
+masked or refined the weakness of mouth and chin; the beautiful head and
+countenance, with their characteristic notes of youth, impetuosity, a
+kind of gay detachment, had never been more beautiful.
+
+The young doctor looked stealthily from the recumbent figure to the tall
+and slender woman standing absorbed and grief-stricken beside the bed.
+The likeness was as evident to him as it had been, in the winter, to Sir
+Wilfrid Bury.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As he was escorting her down-stairs, Lord Uredale said to his companion,
+"Foster thinks he may still live twenty-four hours."
+
+"If he asks for me again," said Julie, now shrouded once more behind a
+thick, black veil, "you will send?"
+
+He gravely assented.
+
+"It is a great pity," he said, with a certain stiffness--did it
+unconsciously mark the difference between her and his legitimate
+kindred?--"that my sister Lady Blanche and her daughter cannot be
+with us."
+
+"They are in Italy?"
+
+"At Florence. My niece has had an attack of diphtheria. She could
+neither travel nor could her mother leave her."
+
+Then pausing in the hall, he added in a low voice, and with some
+embarrassment:
+
+"My father has told you, I believe, of the addition he has made to his
+will?"
+
+Julie drew back.
+
+"I neither asked for it nor desired it," she said, in her coldest and
+clearest voice.
+
+"That I quite understand," said Lord Uredale. "But--you cannot hurt him
+by refusing."
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"No. But afterwards--I must be free to follow my own judgment."
+
+"We cannot take what does not belong to us," he said, with some
+sharpness. "My brother and I are named as your trustees. Believe me, we
+will do our best."
+
+Meanwhile the younger brother had come out of the library to bid her
+farewell. She felt that she was under critical observation, though both
+pairs of gray eyes refrained from any appearance of scrutiny. Her pride
+came to her aid, and she did not shrink from the short conversation
+which the two brothers evidently desired. When it was over, and the
+brothers returned to the hall after putting her into the Duchess's
+carriage, the younger said to the elder:
+
+"She can behave herself, Johnnie."
+
+They looked at each other, with their hands in their pockets. A little
+nod passed between them--an augur-like acceptance of this new and
+irregular member of the family.
+
+"Yes, she has excellent manners," said Uredale. "And really, after the
+tales Lady Henry has been spreading--that's something!"
+
+"Oh, I always thought Lady Henry an old cat," said Bill, tranquilly.
+"That don't matter."
+
+The Chantrey brothers had not been among Lady Henry's _habitués_. In her
+eyes, they were the dull sons of an agreeable father. They were
+humorously aware of it, and bore her little malice.
+
+"No," said Uredale, raising his eyebrows; "but the 'affaire Warkworth'?
+If there's any truth in what one hears, that's deuced unpleasant."
+
+Bill Chantrey whistled.
+
+"It's hard luck on that poor child Aileen that it should be her own
+cousin interfering with her preserves. By-the-way"--he stooped to look
+at the letters on the hall table--"do you see there's a letter for
+father from Blanche? And in a letter I got from her by the same post,
+she says that she has told him the whole story. According to her,
+Aileen's too ill to be thwarted, and she wants the governor to see the
+guardians. I say, Johnnie"--he looked at his brother--"we'll not trouble
+the father with it now?"
+
+"Certainly not," said Uredale, with a sigh. "I saw one of the
+trustees--Jack Underwood--yesterday. He told me Blanche and the child
+were more infatuated than ever. Very likely what one hears is a pack of
+lies. If not, I hope this woman will have the good taste to drop it.
+Father has charged me to write to Blanche and tell her the whole story
+of poor Rose, and of this girl's revealing herself. Blanche, it appears,
+is just as much in the dark as we were."
+
+"If this gossip has got round to her, her feelings will be mixed. Oh,
+well, I've great faith in the money," said Bill Chantrey, carelessly, as
+they began to mount the stairs again. "It sounds disgusting; but if the
+child wants him I suppose she must have him. And, anyway, the man's off
+to Africa for a twelvemonth at least. Miss Le Breton will have time to
+forget him. One can't say that either he or she has behaved with
+delicacy--unless, indeed, she knew nothing of Aileen, which is quite
+probable."
+
+"Well, don't ask me to tackle her," said Uredale. "She has the ways of
+an empress."
+
+Bill Chantrey shrugged his shoulders. "And, by George! she looks as if
+she could fall in love," he said, slowly. "Magnificent eyes, Johnnie. I
+propose to make a study of our new niece."
+
+"Lord Uredale!" said a voice on the stairs.
+
+The young doctor descended rapidly to meet them.
+
+"His lordship is asking for some one," he said. "He seems excited. But I
+cannot catch the name."
+
+Lord Uredale ran up-stairs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later in the day a man emerged from Lackington House and walked rapidly
+towards the Mall. It was Jacob Delafield.
+
+He passed across the Mall and into St. James's Park. There he threw
+himself on the first seat he saw, in an absorption so deep that it
+excited the wondering notice of more than one passer-by.
+
+After about half an hour he roused himself, and walked, still in the
+same brown study, to his lodgings in Jermyn Street. There he found a
+letter which he eagerly opened.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"DEAR JACOB,--Julie came back this morning about one o'clock. I waited
+for her--and at first she seemed quite calm and composed. But suddenly,
+as I was sitting beside her, talking, she fainted away in her chair, and
+I was terribly alarmed. We sent for a doctor at once. He shakes his head
+over her, and says there are all the signs of a severe strain of body
+and mind. No wonder, indeed--our poor Julie! Oh, how I _loathe_ some
+people! Well, there she is in bed, Madame Bornier away, and everybody. I
+simply _can't_ go to Scotland. But Freddie is just mad. Do, Jacob,
+there's a dear, go and dine with him to-night and cheer him up. He vows
+he won't go north without me. _Perhaps_ I'll come to-morrow. I could no
+more leave Julie to-night than fly.
+
+"She'll be ill for weeks. What I ought to do is to take her abroad.
+She's _very_ dear and good; but, oh, Jacob, as she lies there I _feel_
+her heart's broken. And it's not Lord Lackington. Oh no! though I'm sure
+she loved him. _Do_ go to Freddie, there's a dear."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"No, that I won't!" said Delafield, with a laugh that choked him, as he
+threw the letter down.
+
+He tried to write an answer, but could not achieve even the simplest
+note. Then he began a pacing of his room, which lasted till he dropped
+into his chair, worn out with the sheer physical exhaustion of the night
+and day. When his servant came in he found his master in a heavy sleep.
+And, at Crowborough House, the Duke dined and fumed alone.
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+"Why does any one stay in England who _can_ make the trip to Paradise?"
+said the Duchess, as she leaned lazily back in the corner of the boat
+and trailed her fingers in the waters of Como.
+
+It was a balmy April afternoon, and she and Julie were floating through
+a scene enchanted, incomparable. When spring descends upon the shores of
+the Lago di Como, she brings with her all the graces, all the beauties,
+all the fine, delicate, and temperate delights of which earth and sky
+are capable, and she pours them forth upon a land of perfect loveliness.
+Around the shores of other lakes--Maggiore, Lugano, Garda--blue
+mountains rise, and the vineyards spread their green and dazzling
+terraces to the sun. Only Como can show in unmatched union a main
+composition, incomparably grand and harmonious, combined with every
+jewelled, or glowing, or exquisite detail. Nowhere do the mountains lean
+towards each other in such an ordered splendor as that which bends round
+the northern shores of Como. Nowhere do buttressed masses rise behind
+each other, to right and left of a blue water-way, in lines statelier or
+more noble than those kept by the mountains of the Lecco Lake, as they
+marshal themselves on either hand, along the approaches to Lombardy and
+Venetia; bearing aloft, as though on the purple pillars of some majestic
+gateway, the great curtain of dazzling cloud which, on a sunny day,
+hangs over the Brescian plain--a glorious drop-scene, interposed between
+the dwellers on the Como Mountains, and those marble towns, Brescia,
+Verona, Padua, which thread the way to Venice.
+
+And within this divine frame-work, between the glistening snows which
+still, in April, crown and glorify the heights, and those reflections of
+them which lie encalmed in the deep bosom of the lake, there's not a
+foot of pasture, not a shelf of vineyard, not a slope of forest where
+the spring is not at work, dyeing the turf with gentians, starring it
+with narcissuses, or drawing across it the first golden net-work of the
+chestnut leaves; where the mere emerald of the grass is not in itself a
+thing to refresh the very springs of being; where the peach-blossom and
+the wild-cherry and the olive are not perpetually weaving patterns on
+the blue, which ravish the very heart out of your breast. And already
+the roses are beginning to pour over the walls; the wistaria is climbing
+up the cypresses; a pomp of camellias and azaleas is in all the gardens;
+while in the grassy bays that run up into the hills the primrose banks
+still keep their sweet austerity, and the triumph of spring over the
+just banished winter is still sharp and new.
+
+And in the heart and sense of Julie Le Breton, as she sat beside the
+Duchess, listening absently to the talk of the old boatman, who, with
+his oars resting idly in his hands, was chattering to the ladies, a
+renewing force akin to that of the spring was also at its healing and
+life-giving work. She had still the delicate, tremulous look of one
+recovering from a sore wrestle with physical ill; but in her aspect
+there were suggestions more intimate, more moving than this. Those who
+have lain down and risen up with pain; those who have been face to face
+with passion and folly and self-judgment; those who have been forced to
+seek with eagerness for some answer to those questions which the
+majority of us never ask, "Whither is my life leading me--and what is it
+worth to me or to any other living soul?"--these are the men and women
+who now and then touch or startle us with the eyes and the voice of
+Julie, if, at least, we have the capacity that responds. Sir Wilfrid
+Bury, for instance, prince of self-governed and reasonable men, was not
+to be touched by Julie. For him, in spite of her keen intelligence, she
+was the _type passionné_, from which he instinctively recoiled--the Duke
+of Crowborough the same. Such men feel towards such women as Julie Le
+Breton hostility or satire; for what they ask, above all, of the women
+of their world is a kind of simplicity, a kind of lightness which makes
+life easier for men.
+
+But for natures like Evelyn Crowborough--or Meredith--or Jacob
+Delafield--the Julie-type has perennial attractions. For these are all
+_children of feeling_, allied in this, however different in intelligence
+or philosophy. They are attracted by the storm-tossed temperament in
+itself; by mere sensibility; by that which, in the technical language of
+Catholicism, suggests or possesses "the gift of tears." At any rate,
+pity and love for her poor Julie--however foolish, however faulty--lay
+warm in Evelyn Crowborough's breast; they had brought her to Como; they
+kept her now battling on the one hand with her husband's angry letters
+and on the other with the melancholy of her most perplexing, most
+appealing friend.
+
+"I had often heard" [wrote the sore-tried Duke] "of the ravages wrought
+in family life by these absurd and unreasonable female friendships, but
+I never thought that it would be you, Evelyn, who would bring them home
+to me. I won't repeat the arguments I have used a hundred times in vain.
+But once again I implore and demand that you should find some kind,
+responsible person to look after Miss Le Breton--I don't care what you
+pay--and that you yourself should come home to me and the children and
+the thousand and one duties you are neglecting.
+
+"As for the spring month in Scotland, which I generally enjoy so much,
+that has been already entirely ruined. And now the season is apparently
+to be ruined also. On the Shropshire property there is an important
+election coming on, as I am sure you know; and the Premier said to me
+only yesterday that he hoped you were already up and doing. The Grand
+Duke of C---- will be in London within the next fortnight. I
+particularly want to show him some civility. But what can I do without
+you--and how on earth am I to explain your absence?
+
+"Once more, Evelyn, I beg and I demand that you should come home."
+
+To which the Duchess had rushed off a reply without a post's delay.
+
+"Oh, Freddie, you are such a wooden-headed darling! As if I hadn't
+explained till I'm black in the face. I'm glad, anyway, you didn't say
+command; that would really have made difficulties.
+
+"As for the election, I'm sure if I was at home I should think it very
+good fun. Out here I am extremely doubtful whether we ought to do such
+things as you and Lord M---- suggest. A duke shouldn't interfere in
+elections. Anyway, I'm sure it's good for my character to consider it a
+little--though I quite admit you may lose the election.
+
+"The Grand Duke is a horrid wretch, and if he wasn't a grand duke you'd
+be the first to cut him. I had to spend a whole dinner-time last year in
+teaching him his proper place. It was very humiliating, and not at all
+amusing. You can have a men's dinner for him. That's all he's fit for.
+
+"And as for the babies, Mrs. Robson sends me a telegram every morning. I
+can't make out that they have had a finger-ache since I went away, and I
+am sure mothers are entirely superfluous. All the same, I think about
+them a great deal, especially at night. Last night I tried to think
+about their education--if only I wasn't such a sleepy creature! But, at
+any rate, I never in my life tried to think about it at home. So that's
+so much to the good.
+
+"Indeed, I'll come back to you soon, you poor, forsaken, old thing! But
+Julie has no one in the world, and I feel like a Newfoundland dog who
+has pulled some one out of the water. The water was deep; and the life's
+only just coming back; and the dog's not much good. But he sits there,
+for company, till the doctor comes, and that's just what I'm doing.
+
+"I know you don't approve of the notions I have in my head now. But
+that's because you don't understand. Why don't you come out and join us?
+Then you'd like Julie as much as I do; everything would be quite simple;
+and I shouldn't be in the least jealous.
+
+"Dr. Meredith is coming here, probably to-night, and Jacob should arrive
+to-morrow on his way to Venice, where poor Chudleigh and his boy are."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _breva_, or fair-weather wind, from the north was blowing freshly
+yet softly down the lake. The afternoon sun was burning on Bellaggio, on
+the long terrace of the Melzi villa, on the white mist of fruit-blossom
+that lay lightly on the green slopes above San Giovanni.
+
+Suddenly the Duchess and the boatman left the common topics of every day
+by which the Duchess was trying to improve her Italian--such as the
+proposed enlargement of the Bellevue Hotel, the new villas that were
+springing up, the gardens of the Villa Carlotta, and so forth. Evelyn
+had carelessly asked the old man whether he had been in any of the
+fighting of '59, and in an instant, under her eyes, he became another
+being. Out rolled a torrent of speech; the oars lay idly on the water;
+and through the man's gnarled and wrinkled face there blazed a high and
+illumining passion. Novara and its beaten king, in '49; the ten years of
+waiting, when a whole people bode its time, in a gay, grim silence; the
+grudging victory of Magenta; the fivefold struggle that wrenched the
+hills of San Martino from the Austrians; the humiliations and the rage
+of Villafranca--of all these had this wasted graybeard made a part. And
+he talked of them with the Latin eloquence and facility, as no veteran
+of the north could have talked; he was in a moment the equal of these
+great affairs in which he had mingled; so that one felt in him the son
+of a race which had been rolled and polished--a pebble, as it were, from
+rocks which had made the primeval frame-work of the world--in the main
+course and stream of history.
+
+Then from the campaign of '59 he fell back on the Five Days of Milan in
+'48--the immortal days, when a populace drove out an army, and what
+began almost in jest ended in a delirium, a stupefaction of victory. His
+language was hot, broken, confused, like the street fighting it
+chronicled. Afterwards--a further sharpening and blanching of the old
+face--and he had carried them deep into the black years of Italy's
+patience and Austria's revenge. Throwing out a thin arm, he pointed
+towards town after town on the lake shores, now in the brilliance of
+sunset, now in the shadow of the northern slope--Gravedona, Varenna,
+Argegno--towns which had each of them given their sons to the Austrian
+bullet and the Austrian lash for the ransom of Italy.
+
+He ran through the sacred names--Stazzonelli, Riccini, Crescieri,
+Ronchetti, Ceresa, Previtali--young men, almost all of them, shot for
+the possession of a gun or a knife, for helping their comrades in the
+Austrian army to desert, for "insulting conduct" towards an Austrian
+soldier or officer.
+
+Of one of these executions, which he had himself witnessed at
+Varese--the shooting of a young fellow of six-and-twenty, his own friend
+and kinsman--he gave an account which blanched the Duchess's cheeks and
+brought the big tears into her eyes. Then, when he saw the effect he had
+produced, the old man trembled.
+
+"Ah, eccellenza," he cried, "but it had to be! The Italians had to show
+they knew how to die; then God let them live. Ecco, eccellenza!"
+
+And he drew from his breast-pocket, with shaking hands, an old envelope
+tied round with string. When he had untied it, a piece of paper emerged,
+brown with age and worn with much reading. It was a rudely printed
+broadsheet containing an account of the last words and sufferings of the
+martyrs of Mantua--those conspirators of 1852--from whose graves and
+dungeons sprang, tenfold renewed, the regenerating and liberating forces
+which, but a few years later, drove out the Austrian with the Bourbon,
+together.
+
+"See here, eccellenza," he said, as he tenderly spread out its tattered
+folds and gave it into the Duchess's hand. "Have the goodness to look
+where is that black mark. There you will find the last words of Don
+Enrico Tazzoli, the half-brother of my father. He was a priest,
+eccellenza. Ah, it was not then as it is now! The priests were then for
+Italy. They hanged three of them at Mantua alone. As for Don Enrico,
+first they stripped him of his priesthood, and then they hanged him. And
+those were his last words, and the last words of Scarsellini also, who
+suffered with him. _Veda eccellenza_! As for me, I know them from
+a boy."
+
+And while the Duchess read, the old man repeated tags and fragments
+under his breath, as he once more resumed the oars and drove the boat
+gently towards Menaggio.
+
+"_The multitude of victims has not robbed us of courage in the past, nor
+will it so rob us in the future--till victory dawns. The cause of the
+people is like the cause of religion--it triumphs only through its
+martyrs.... You--who survive--will conquer, and in your victory we, the
+dead, shall live_....
+
+"_Take no thought for us; the blood of the forerunners is like the seed
+which the wise husbandman scatters on the fertile ground_.... _Teach our
+young men how to adore and how to suffer for a great idea. Work
+incessantly at that; so shall our country come to birth; and grieve not
+for us!... Yes, Italy shall be one! To that all things point._ WORK!
+_There is no obstacle that cannot be overcome, no opposition that cannot
+be destroyed. The_ HOW _and the_ WHEN _only remain to be solved. You,
+more fortunate than we, will find the clew to the riddle, when all
+things are accomplished, and the times are ripe.... Hope!--my parents,
+and my brothers--hope always!--waste no time in weeping_."
+
+The Duchess read aloud the Italian, and Julie stooped over her shoulder
+to follow the words.
+
+"Marvellous!" said Julie, in a low voice, as she sank back into her
+place. "A youth of twenty-seven, with the rope round his neck, and he
+comforts himself with 'Italy.' What's 'Italy' to him, or he to 'Italy'?"
+Not even an immediate paradise. "Is there anybody capable of it now?"
+
+Her face and attitude had lost their languor. As the Duchess returned
+his treasure to the old man she looked at Julie with joy. Not since her
+illness had there been any such sign of warmth and energy.
+
+And, indeed, as they floated on, past the glow of Bellaggio, towards the
+broad gold and azure of the farther lake, the world-defying passion that
+breathed from these words of dead and murdered Italians played as a
+bracing and renewing power on Julie's still feeble being. It was akin to
+the high snows on those far Alps that closed in the lake--to the pure
+wind that blew from them--to the "gleam, the shadow, and the peace
+supreme," amid which their little boat pressed on towards the shore.
+
+"What matter," cried the intelligence, but as though through sobs--"what
+matter the individual struggle and misery? These can be lived down. The
+heart can be silenced--nerves steadied--strength restored. Will and idea
+remain--the eternal spectacle of the world, and the eternal thirst of
+man to see, to know, to feel, to realize himself, if not in one passion,
+then in another. If not in love, then in patriotism--art--thought."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Duchess and Julie landed presently beneath the villa of which they
+were the passing tenants. The Duchess mounted the double staircase where
+the banksia already hung in a golden curtain over the marble balustrade.
+Her face was thoughtful. She had to write her daily letter to the absent
+and reproachful Duke.
+
+Julie parted from her with a caress, and paused awhile to watch the
+small figure till it mounted out of sight. Her friend had become very
+dear to her. A new humility, a new gratitude filled her heart. Evelyn
+should not sacrifice herself much longer. When she had insisted on
+carrying her patient abroad, Julie had neither mind nor will wherewith
+to resist. But now--the Duke should soon come to his own again.
+
+She herself turned inland for that short walk by which each day she
+tested her returning strength. She climbed the winding road to Criante,
+the lovely village above Cadenabbia; then, turning to the left, she
+mounted a path that led to the woods which overhang the famous gardens
+of the Villa Carlotta.
+
+Such a path! To the left hand, and, as it seemed, steeply beneath her
+feet, all earth and heaven--the wide lake, the purple mountains, the
+glories of a flaming sky. On the calm spaces of water lay a shimmer of
+crimson and gold, repeating the noble splendor of the clouds; the
+midgelike boats crept from shore to shore; and, midway between Bellaggio
+and Cadenabbia, the steam-boat, a white speck, drew a silver furrow. To
+her right a green hill-side--each blade of grass, each flower, each
+tuft of heath, enskied, transfigured, by the broad light that poured
+across it from the hidden west. And on the very hill-top a few scattered
+olives, peaches, and wild cherries scrawled upon the blue, their bare,
+leaning stems, their pearly whites, their golden pinks and feathery
+grays all in a glory of sunset that made of them things enchanted,
+aerial, fantastical, like a dance of Botticelli angels on the height.
+
+And presently a sheltered bank in a green hollow, where Julie sat down
+to rest. But nature, in this tranquil spot, had still new pageants, new
+sorceries wherewith to play upon the nerves of wonder. Across the hollow
+a great crag clothed in still leafless chestnut-trees reared itself
+against the lake. The innumerable lines of stem and branch, warm brown
+or steely gray, were drawn sharp on silver air, while at the very summit
+of the rock one superb tree with branching limbs, touched with intense
+black, sprang high above the rest, the proud plume or ensign of the
+wood. Through the trunks the blaze of distant snow and the purples of
+craggy mountains; in front the glistening spray of peach or cherry
+blossom, breaking the still wintry beauty of that majestic grove. And in
+all the air, dropping from the heaven, spread on the hills, or
+shimmering on the lake, a diffusion of purest rose and deepest blue,
+lake and cloud and mountain each melting into the other, as though
+heaven and earth conspired merely to give value and relief to the year's
+new birth, to this near sparkle of young leaf and blossom which shone
+like points of fire on the deep breast of the distance.
+
+On the green ledge which ran round the hollow were children tugging at a
+goat. Opposite was a _contadino's_ house of gray stone. A water-wheel
+turned beside it, and a stream, brought down from the hills, ran
+chattering past, a white and dancing thread of water. Everything was
+very still and soft. The children and the river made their voices heard;
+and there were nightingales singing in the woods below. Otherwise all
+was quiet. With a tranquil and stealthy joy the spring was taking
+possession. Nay--the Angelus! It swung over the lake and rolled from
+village to village....
+
+The tears were in Julie's eyes. Such beauty as this was apt now to crush
+and break her. All her being was still sore, and this appeal of nature
+was sometimes more than she could bear.
+
+Only a few short weeks since Warkworth had gone out of her life--since
+Delafield at a stroke had saved her from ruin--since Lord Lackington had
+passed away.
+
+One letter had reached her from Warkworth, a wild and incoherent letter,
+written at night in a little room of a squalid hotel near the Gare de
+Sceaux. Her telegram had reached him, and for him, as for her, all
+was over.
+
+But the letter was by no means a mere cry of baffled passion. There was
+in it a new note of moral anguish, as fresh and startling in her ear,
+coming from him, as the cry of passion itself. In the language of
+religion, it was the utterance of a man "convicted of sin."
+
+     "How long is it since that man gave me your telegram? I was
+     pacing up and down the departure platform, working myself
+     into an agony of nervousness and anxiety as the time went by,
+     wondering what on earth had happened to you, when the _chef
+     de gare_ came up: 'Monsieur attend une dépêche?' There were
+     some stupid formalities--at last I got it. It seemed to me I
+     had already guessed what it contained.
+
+     "So it was _Delafield_ who met you--Delafield who turned you
+     back?
+
+     "I saw him outside the hotel yesterday, and we exchanged a
+     few words. I have always disliked his long, pale face and his
+     high and mighty ways--at any rate, towards plain fellows, who
+     don't belong to the classes, like me. Yesterday I was more
+     than usually anxious to get rid of him.
+
+     "So he guessed?
+
+     "It can't have been chance. In some way he guessed. And you
+     have been torn from me. My God! If I could only reach him--if
+     I could fling his contempt in his face! And yet--
+
+     "I have been walking up and down this room all night. The
+     longing for you has been the sharpest suffering I suppose
+     that I have ever known. For I am not one of the many people
+     who enjoy pain. I have kept as free of it as I could. This
+     time it caught and gripped me. Yet that isn't all. There has
+     been something else.
+
+     "What strange, patched creatures we are! Do you know, Julie,
+     that by the time the dawn came I was on my knees--thanking
+     God that we were parted--that you were on your way
+     home--safe--out of my reach? Was I mad, or what? I can't
+     explain it. I only know that one moment I hated Delafield as
+     a mortal enemy--whether he was conscious of what he had done
+     or no--and the next I found myself blessing him!
+
+     "I understand now what people mean when they talk of
+     conversion. It seems to me that in the hours I have just
+     passed through things have come to light in me that I myself
+     never suspected. I came of an Evangelical stock--I was
+     brought up in a religious household. I suppose that one
+     can't, after all, get away from the blood and the life that
+     one inherits. My poor, old father--I was a bad son, and I
+     know I hastened his death--was a sort of Puritan saint, with
+     very stern ideas. I seem to have been talking with him this
+     night, and shrinking under his condemnation. I could see his
+     old face, as he put before me the thoughts I had dared to
+     entertain, the risks I had been ready to take towards the
+     woman I loved--the woman to whom I owed a deep debt of
+     eternal gratitude.
+
+     "Julie, it is strange how this appointment affects me. Last
+     night I saw several people at the Embassy--good fellows--who
+     seemed anxious to do all they could for me. Such men never
+     took so much notice of me before. It is plain to me that this
+     task will make or mar me. I may fail. I may die. But if I
+     succeed England will owe me something, and these men at the
+     top of the tree--
+
+     "Good God! how can I go on writing this to you? It's because
+     I came back to the hotel and tossed about half the night
+     brooding over the difference between what these men--these
+     honorable, distinguished fellows--were prepared to think of
+     me, and the blackguard I knew myself to be. What, take
+     everything from a woman's hand, and then turn and try and
+     drag her in the mire--propose to her what one would shoot a
+     man for proposing to one's sister! Thief and cur.
+
+     "Julie--kind, beloved Julie--forget it all! For God's sake,
+     let's cast it all behind us! As long as I live, your name,
+     your memory will live in my heart. We shall not meet,
+     probably, for many years. You'll marry and be happy yet. Just
+     now I know you're suffering. I seem to see you in the
+     train--on the steamer--your pale face that has lighted up
+     life for me--your dear, slender hands that folded so easily
+     into one of mine. You are in pain, my darling. Your nature is
+     wrenched from its natural supports. And you gave me all your
+     fine, clear mind, and all your heart. I ought to be damned to
+     the deepest hell!
+
+     "Then, again, I say to myself, if only she were here! If only
+     I had her _here_, with her arms round my neck, surely I might
+     have found the courage and the mere manliness to extricate
+     both herself and me from these entanglements. Aileen might
+     have released and forgiven one.
+
+     "No, no! It's all over! I'll go and do my task. You set it
+     me. You sha'n't be ashamed of me there.
+
+     "Good-bye, Julie, my love--good-bye--forever!"
+
+These were portions of that strange document composed through the
+intervals of a long night, which showed in Warkworth's mind the survival
+of a moral code, inherited from generations of scrupulous and
+God-fearing ancestors, overlaid by selfish living, and now revived under
+the stress, the purification partly of deepening passion, partly of a
+high responsibility. The letter was incoherent, illogical; it showed now
+the meaner, now the nobler elements of character; but it was human; it
+came from the warm depths of life, and it had exerted in the end a
+composing and appeasing force upon the woman to whom it was addressed.
+He had loved her--if only at the moment of parting--he had loved her! At
+the last there had been feeling, sincerity, anguish, and to these all
+things may be forgiven.
+
+And, indeed, what in her eyes there was to forgive, Julie had long
+forgiven. Was it his fault if, when they met first, he was already
+pledged--for social and practical reasons which her mind perfectly
+recognized and understood--to Aileen Moffatt? Was it his fault if the
+relations between herself and him had ripened into a friendship which in
+its turn could only maintain itself by passing into love? No! It was
+she, whose hidden, insistent passion--nourished, indeed, upon a tragic
+ignorance--had transformed what originally he had a perfect right to
+offer and to feel.
+
+So she defended him; for in so doing she justified herself. And as to
+the Paris proposal, he had a right to treat her as a woman capable of
+deciding for herself how far love should carry her; he had a right to
+assume that her antecedents, her training, and her circumstances were
+not those of the ordinary sheltered girl, and that for her love might
+naturally wear a bolder and wilder aspect than for others. He blamed
+himself too severely, too passionately; but for this very blame her
+heart remembered him the more tenderly. For it meant that his mind was
+torn and in travail for her, that his thoughts clung to her in a
+passionate remorse; and again she felt herself loved, and forgave with
+all her heart.
+
+All the same, he was gone out of her life, and through the strain and
+the unconscious progress to other planes and phases of being, wrought by
+sickness and convalescence, her own passion for him even was now a
+changed and blunted thing.
+
+Was she ashamed of the wild impulse which had carried her to Paris? It
+is difficult to say. She was often seized with the shuddering
+consciousness of an abyss escaped, with wonder that she was still in the
+normal, accepted world, that Evelyn might still be her companion, that
+Thérèse still adored her more fervently than any saint in the calendar.
+Perhaps, if the truth were known, she was more abased in her own eyes by
+the self-abandonment which had preceded the assignation with Warkworth.
+She had much intellectual arrogance, and before her acquaintance with
+Warkworth she had been accustomed to say and to feel that love was but
+one passion among many, and to despise those who gave it too great a
+place. And here she had flung herself into it, like any dull or foolish
+girl for whom a love affair represents the only stirring in the pool of
+life that she is ever likely to know.
+
+Well, she must recapture herself and remake her life. As she sat there
+in the still Italian evening she thought of the old boatman, and those
+social and intellectual passions to which his burst of patriotism had
+recalled her thoughts. Society, literature, friends, and the ambitions
+to which these lead--let her go back to them and build her days afresh.
+Dr. Meredith was coming. In his talk and companionship she would once
+more dip and temper the tools of mind and taste. No more vain
+self-arraignment, no more useless regrets. She looked back with
+bitterness upon a moment of weakness when, in the first stage of
+convalescence, in mortal weariness and loneliness, she had slipped one
+evening into the Farm Street church and unburdened her heart in
+confession. As she had told the Duchess, the Catholicism instilled into
+her youth by the Bruges nuns still laid upon her at times its ghostly
+and compelling hand. Now in her renewed strength she was inclined to
+look upon it as an element of weakness and disintegration in her nature.
+She resolved, in future, to free herself more entirely from a useless
+_Aberglaube_.
+
+But Meredith was not the only visitor expected at the villa in the next
+few days. She was already schooling herself to face the arrival of Jacob
+Delafield.
+
+It was curious how the mere thought of Delafield produced an agitation,
+a shock of feeling, which seemed to spread through all the activities of
+being. The faint, renascent glamour which had begun to attach to
+literature and social life disappeared. She fell into a kind of
+brooding, the sombre restlessness of one who feels in the dark the
+recurrent presence of an attacking and pursuing power, and is in a
+tremulous uncertainty where or how to meet it.
+
+The obscure tumult within her represented, in fact, a collision between
+the pagan and Christian conceptions of life. In self-dependence, in
+personal pride, in her desire to refer all things to the arbitrament of
+reason, Julie, whatever her practice, was theoretically a stoic and a
+pagan. But Delafield's personality embodied another "must," another
+"ought," of a totally different kind. And it was a "must" which, in a
+great crisis of her life, she also had been forced to obey. There was
+the thought which stung and humiliated. And the fact was irreparable;
+nor did she see how she was ever to escape from the strange, silent,
+penetrating relation it had established between her and the man who
+loved her and had saved her, against her will.
+
+During her convalescence at Crowborough House, Delafield had been often
+admitted. It would have been impossible to exclude him, unless she had
+confided the whole story of the Paris journey to the Duchess. And
+whatever Evelyn might tremblingly guess, from Julie's own mouth she knew
+nothing. So Delafield had come and gone, bringing Lord Lackington's last
+words, and the account of his funeral, or acting as intermediary in
+business matters between Julie and the Chantrey brothers. Julie could
+not remember that she had ever asked him for these services. They fell
+to him, as it were, by common consent, and she had been too weak
+to resist.
+
+At first, whenever he entered the room, whenever he approached her, her
+sense of anger and resentment had been almost unbearable. But little by
+little his courtesy, tact, and coolness had restored a relation between
+them which, if not the old one, had still many of the outward characters
+of intimacy. Not a word, not the remotest allusion reminded her of what
+had happened. The man who had stood before her transfigured on the deck
+of the steamer, stammering out, "I thank God I had the courage to do
+it!"--it was often hard for her to believe, as she stole a look at
+Delafield, chatting or writing in the Duchess's drawing-room, that such
+a scene had ever taken place.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The evening stole on. How was it that whenever she allowed the thought
+of Delafield to obtain a real lodgment in the mind, even the memory of
+Warkworth was for the time effaced? Silently, irresistibly, a wild heat
+of opposition would develop within her. These men round whom, as it
+were, there breathes an air of the heights; in whom one feels the secret
+guard that religion keeps over thoughts and words and acts--her
+passionate yet critical nature flung out against them. How are they
+better than others, after all? What right have they over the wills
+of others?
+
+Nevertheless, as the rose of evening burned on the craggy mountain face
+beyond Bellaggio, retreating upward, step by step, till the last
+glorious summit had died into the cool and already starlit blues of
+night, Julie, held, as it were, by a reluctant and half-jealous
+fascination, sat dreaming on the hill-side, not now of Warkworth, not of
+the ambitions of the mind, or society, but simply of the goings and
+comings, the aspects and sayings of a man in whose eyes she had once
+read the deepest and sternest things of the soul--a condemnation and an
+anguish above and beyond himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. Meredith arrived in due time, a jaded Londoner athirst for idleness
+and fresh air. The Duchess and Julie carried him hither and thither
+about the lake in the four-oar boat which had been hired for the
+Duchess's pleasure. Here, enthroned between the two ladies, he passed
+luxurious hours, and his talk of politics, persons, and books brought
+just that stimulus to Julie's intelligence and spirits for which the
+Duchess had been secretly longing.
+
+A first faint color returned to Julie's cheeks. She began to talk again;
+to resume certain correspondences; to show herself once more--at any
+rate intermittently--the affectionate, sympathetic, and
+beguiling friend.
+
+As for Meredith, he knew little, but he suspected a good deal. There
+were certain features in her illness and convalescence which suggested
+to him a mental cause; and if there were such a cause, it must, of
+course, spring from her relations to Warkworth.
+
+The name of that young officer was never mentioned. Once or twice
+Meredith was tempted to introduce it. It rankled in his mind that Julie
+had never been frank with him, freely as he had poured his affection at
+her feet. But a moment of languor or of pallor disarmed him.
+
+"She is better," he said to the Duchess one day, abruptly. "Her mind is
+full of activity. But why, at times, does she still look so
+miserable--like a person without hope or future?"
+
+The Duchess looked pensive. They were sitting in the corner of one of
+the villa's terraced walks, amid a scented wilderness of flowers. Above
+them was a canopy of purple and yellow--rose and wistaria; while through
+the arches of the pergola which ran along the walk gleamed all those
+various blues which make the spell of Como--the blue and white of the
+clouds, the purple of the mountains, the azure of the lake.
+
+"Well, she was in love with him. I suppose it takes a little time," said
+the Duchess, sighing.
+
+"Why was she in love with him?" said Meredith, impatiently. "As to the
+Moffatt engagement, naturally, she was kept in the dark?"
+
+"At first," said the Duchess, hesitating. "And when she knew, poor dear,
+it was too late!"
+
+"Too late for what?"
+
+"Well, when one falls in love one doesn't all at once shake it off
+because the man deceives you."
+
+"One _should_," said Meredith, with energy. "Men are not worth all that
+women spend upon them."
+
+"Oh, that's true!" cried the Duchess--"so dreadfully true! But what's
+the good of preaching? We shall go on spending it to the end of time."
+
+"Well, at any rate, don't choose the dummies and the frauds."
+
+"Ah, there you talk sense," said the Duchess. "And if only we had the
+French system in England! If only one could say to Julie: 'Now look
+here, _there's_ your husband! It's all settled--down to plate and
+linen--and you've _got_ to marry him!' how happy we should all be."
+
+Dr. Meredith stared.
+
+"You have the man in your eye," he said.
+
+The Duchess hesitated.
+
+"Suppose you come a little walk with me in the wood," she said, at last,
+gathering up her white skirts.
+
+Meredith obeyed her. They were away for half an hour, and when they
+returned the journalist's face, flushed and furrowed with thought, was
+not very easy to read.
+
+Nor was his temper in good condition. It required a climb to the very
+top of Monte Crocione to send him back, more or less appeased, a
+consenting player in the Duchess's game. For if there are men who are
+flirts and egotists--who ought to be, yet never are, divined by the
+sensible woman at a glance--so also there are men too well equipped for
+this wicked world, too good, too well born, too desirable.
+
+It was in this somewhat flinty and carping mood that Meredith prepared
+himself for the advent of Jacob Delafield.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But when Delafield appeared, Meredith's secret antagonisms were soon
+dissipated. There was certainly no challenging air of prosperity about
+the young man.
+
+At first sight, indeed, he was his old cheerful self, always ready for a
+walk or a row, on easy terms at once with the Italian servants or
+boatmen. But soon other facts emerged--stealthily, as it were, from the
+concealment in which a strong man was trying to keep them.
+
+"That young man's youth is over," said Meredith, abruptly, to the
+Duchess one evening. He pointed to the figure of Delafield, who was
+pacing, alone with his pipe, up and down one of the lower terraces of
+the garden.
+
+The Duchess showed a teased expression.
+
+"It's like something wearing through," she said, slowly. "I suppose it
+was always there, but it didn't show."
+
+"Name your 'it.'"
+
+"I can't." But she gave a little shudder, which made Meredith look at
+her with curiosity.
+
+"You feel something ghostly--unearthly?"
+
+She nodded assent; crying out, however, immediately afterwards, as
+though in compunction, that he was one of the dearest and best
+of fellows.
+
+"Of course he is," said Meredith. "It is only the mystic in him coming
+out. He is one of the men who have the sixth sense."
+
+"Well, all I know is, he has the oddest power over people," said Evelyn,
+with another shiver. "If Freddie had it, my life wouldn't be worth
+living. Thank goodness, he hasn't a vestige!"
+
+"At bottom it's the power of the priest," said Meredith. "And you women
+are far too susceptible towards it. Nine times out of ten it plays the
+mischief."
+
+The Duchess was silent a moment. Then she bent towards her companion,
+finger on lip, her charming eyes glancing significantly towards the
+lower terrace. The figures on it were now two. Julie and Delafield
+paced together.
+
+"But this is the tenth!" she said, in an eager whisper.
+
+Meredith smiled at her, then flung her a dubious "Chi sa?" and changed
+the subject.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Delafield, who was a fine oar, had soon taken command of the lake
+expeditions; and by the help of two stalwart youths from Tremezzo, the
+four-oar was in use from morning till night. Through the broad lake
+which lies between Menaggio and Varenna it sped northward to Gravedona;
+or beneath the shadowy cliffs of the Villa Serbelloni it slipped over
+deep waters, haunted and dark, into the sunny spaces of Lecco; or it
+coasted along the steep sides of Monte Primo, so that the travellers in
+it might catch the blue stain of the gentians on the turf, where it
+sloped into the lucent wave below, or watch the fishermen on the rocks,
+spearing their prey in the green or golden shallows.
+
+The weather was glorious--a summer before its time. The wild cherries
+shook down their snow upon the grass; but the pears were now in bridal
+white, and a warmer glory of apple-blossom was just beginning to break
+upon the blue. The nights were calm and moonlit; the dawns were visions
+of mysterious and incredible beauty, wherein mountain and forest and
+lake were but the garments, diaphanous, impalpable, of some delicate,
+indwelling light and fire spirit, which breathed and pulsed through the
+solidity of rock, no less visibly than through the crystal leagues of
+air or the sunlit spaces of water.
+
+Yet presently, as it were, a hush of waiting, of tension, fell upon
+their little party. Nature offered her best; but there was only an
+apparent acceptance of her bounties. Through the outward flow of talk
+and amusement, of wanderings on lake or hill, ugly hidden forces of pain
+and strife, regret, misery, resistance, made themselves rarely yet
+piercingly felt.
+
+Julie drooped again. Her cheeks were paler even than when Meredith
+arrived. Delafield, too, began to be more silent, more absent. He was
+helpful and courteous as ever, but it began to be seen that his gayety
+was an effort, and now and then there were sharp or bitter notes in
+voice or manner, which jarred, and were not soon forgotten.
+
+Presently, Meredith and the Duchess found themselves looking on,
+breathless and astonished, at the struggle of two personalities, the
+wrestle between two wills. They little knew that it was a renewed
+struggle--second wrestle. But silently, by a kind of tacit agreement,
+they drew away from Delafield and Julie. They dimly understood that he
+pursued and she resisted; and that for him life was becoming gradually
+absorbed into the two facts of her presence and her resistance.
+
+"_On ne s'appuie que sur ce qui résiste_." For both of them these words
+were true. Fundamentally, and beyond all passing causes of grief and
+anger, each was fascinated by the full strength of nature in the other.
+Neither could ever forget the other. The hours grew electric, and every
+tiny incident became charged with spiritual meaning.
+
+Often for hours together Julie would try to absorb herself in talk with
+Meredith. But the poor fellow got little joy from it. Presently, at a
+word or look of Delafield's she would let herself be recaptured, as
+though with a proud reluctance; they wandered away together; and once
+more Meredith and the Duchess became the merest by-standers.
+
+The Duchess shrugged her shoulders over it, and, though she laughed,
+sometimes the tears were in her eyes. She felt the hovering of passion,
+but it was no passion known to her own blithe nature.
+
+And if only this strange state of things might end, one way or other,
+and set her free to throw her arms round her Duke's neck, and beg his
+pardon for all these weeks of desertion! She said to herself, ruefully,
+that her babies would indeed have forgotten her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet she stood stoutly to her post, and the weeks passed quickly by. It
+was the dramatic energy of the situation--so much more dramatic in truth
+than either she or Meredith suspected--that made it such a strain upon
+the onlookers.
+
+One evening they had left the boat at Tremezzo, that they might walk
+back along that most winning of paths that skirts the lake between the
+last houses of Tremezzo and the inn at Cadenabbia. The sunset was nearly
+over, but the air was still suffused with its rose and pearl, and
+fragrant with the scent of flowering laurels. Each mountain face, each
+white village, either couched on the water's edge or grouped about its
+slender campanile on some shoulder of the hills, each house and tree and
+figure seemed still penetrated with light, the glorified creatures of
+some just revealed and already fading world. The echoes of the evening
+bell were floating on the lake, and from a boat in front, full of
+peasant-folk, there rose a sound of singing, some litany of saint or
+virgin, which stole in harmonies, rudely true, across the water.
+
+"They have been to the pilgrimage church above Lenno," said Julie,
+pointing to the boat, and in order to listen to the singing, she found a
+seat on a low wall above the lake.
+
+There was no reply, and, looking round her, she saw with a start that
+only Delafield was beside her, that the Duchess and Meredith had
+already rounded the corner of the Villa Carlotta and were out of sight.
+
+Delafield's gaze was fixed upon her. He was very pale, and suddenly
+Julie's breath seemed to fail her.
+
+"I don't think I can bear it any longer," he said, as he came close to
+her.
+
+"Bear what?"
+
+"That you should look as you do now."
+
+Julie made no reply. Her eyes, very sad and bitter, searched the blue
+dimness of the lake in silence.
+
+Delafield sat down on the wall beside her. Not a soul was in sight. At
+the Cadenabbia Hotel, the _table d'hôte_ had gathered in the visitors; a
+few boats passed and repassed in the distance, but on land all
+was still.
+
+Suddenly he took her hand with a firm grasp.
+
+"Are you never going to forgive me?" he said, in a low voice.
+
+"I suppose I ought to bless you."
+
+Her face seemed to him to express the tremulous misery of a heart
+deeply, perhaps irrevocably, wounded. Emotion rose in a tide, but he
+crushed it down.
+
+He bent over her, speaking with deliberate tenderness.
+
+"Julie, do you remember what you promised Lord Lackington when he was
+dying?"
+
+"Oh!" cried Julie.
+
+She sprang to her feet, speechless and suffocated. Her eyes expressed a
+mingled pride and terror.
+
+He paused, confronting her with a pale resolution.
+
+"You didn't know that I had seen him?"
+
+"Know!"
+
+She turned away fiercely, choking with sobs she could hardly control,
+as the memory of that by-gone moment returned upon her.
+
+"I thought as much," said Delafield, in a low voice. "You hoped never to
+hear of your promise again."
+
+She made no answer; but she sank again upon the seat beside the lake,
+and supporting herself on one delicate hand, which clung to the coping
+of the wall, she turned her pale and tear-stained face to the lake and
+the evening sky. There was in her gesture an unconscious yearning, a
+mute and anguished appeal, as though from the oppressions of human
+character to the broad strength of nature, that was not lost on
+Delafield. His mind became the centre of a swift and fierce debate. One
+voice said: "Why are you persecuting her? Respect her weakness and her
+grief." And another replied: "It is because she is weak that she must
+yield--must allow herself to be guided and adored."
+
+He came close to her again. Any passer-by might have supposed that they
+were both looking at the distant boat and listening to the
+pilgrimage chant.
+
+"Do you think I don't understand why you made that promise?" he said,
+very gently, and the mere self-control of his voice and manner carried a
+spell with it for the woman beside him. "It was wrung out of you by
+kindness for a dying man. You thought I should never know, or I should
+never claim it. Well, I am selfish. I take advantage. I do claim it. I
+saw Lord Lackington only a few hours before his death. 'She mustn't be
+alone,' he said to me, several times. And then, almost at the last, 'Ask
+her again. She'll consider it--she promised.'"
+
+Julie turned impetuously.
+
+"Neither of us is bound by that--neither of us."
+
+Delafield smiled.
+
+"Does that mean that I am asking you now because he bade me?"
+
+A pause. Julie must needs raise her eyes to his. She flushed red and
+withdrew them.
+
+"No," he said, with a long breath, "you don't mean that, and you don't
+think it. As for you--yes, you are bound! Julie, once more I bring you
+my plea, and you must consider it."
+
+"How can I be your wife?" she said, her breast heaving. "You know all
+that has happened. It would be monstrous."
+
+"Not at all," was his quiet reply. "It would be natural and right.
+Julie, it is strange that I should be talking to you like this. You're
+so much cleverer than I--in some ways, so much stronger. And yet, in
+others--you'll let me say it, won't you?--I could help you. I could
+protect you. It's all I care for in the world."
+
+"How can I be your wife?" she repeated, passionately, wringing her
+hands.
+
+"Be what you will--at home. My friend, comrade, housemate. I ask nothing
+more--_nothing_." His voice dropped, and there was a pause. Then he
+resumed. "But, in the eyes of the world, make me your servant and
+your husband!"
+
+"I can't condemn you to such a fate," she cried. "You know where my
+heart is."
+
+Delafield did not waver.
+
+"I know where your heart was," he said, with firmness. "You will banish
+that man from your thoughts in time. He has no right to be there. I take
+all the risks--all."
+
+"Well, at least for you, I am no hypocrite," she said, with a quivering
+lip. "You know what I am."
+
+"Yes, I know, and I am at your feet."
+
+The tears dropped from Julie's eyes. She turned away and hid her face
+against one of the piers of the wall.
+
+Delafield attempted no caress. He quietly set himself to draw the life
+that he had to offer her, the comradeship that he proposed to her. Not a
+word of what the world called his "prospects" entered in. She knew very
+well that he could not bring himself to speak of them. Rather, a sort of
+ascetic and mystical note made itself heard in all he said of the
+future, a note that before now had fascinated and controlled a woman
+whose ambition was always strangely tempered with high, poetical
+imagination.
+
+Yet, ambitious she was, and her mind inevitably supplied what his voice
+left unsaid.
+
+"He will have to fill his place whether he wishes it or no," she said to
+herself. "And if, in truth, he desires my help--"
+
+Then she shrank from her own wavering. Look where she would into her
+life, it seemed to her that all was monstrous and out of joint.
+
+"You don't realize what you ask," she said, at last, in despair. "I am
+not what you call a good woman--you know it too well. I don't measure
+things by your standards. I am capable of such a journey as you found me
+on. I can't find in my own mind that I repent it at all. I can tell a
+lie--you can't. I can have the meanest and most sordid thoughts--you
+can't. Lady Henry thought me an intriguer--I am one. It is in my blood.
+And I don't know whether, in the end, I could understand your language
+and your life. And if I don't, I shall make you miserable."
+
+She looked up, her slender frame straightening under what was, in truth,
+a noble defiance.
+
+Delafield bent over her and took both her hands forcibly in his own.
+
+"If all that were true, I would rather risk it a thousand times over
+than go out of your life again--a stranger. Julie, you have done mad
+things for love--you should know what love is. Look in my
+face--there--your eyes in mine! Give way! The dead ask it of you--and it
+is God's will."
+
+And as, drawn by the last, low-spoken words, Julie looked up into his
+face, she felt herself enveloped by a mystical and passionate tenderness
+that paralyzed her resistance. A force, superhuman, laid its grasp upon
+her will. With a burst of tears, half in despair, half in revolt, she
+submitted.
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+In the first week of May, Julie Le Breton married Jacob Delafield in the
+English Church at Florence. The Duchess was there. So was the Duke--a
+sulky and ill-resigned spectator of something which he believed to be
+the peculiar and mischievous achievement of his wife.
+
+At the church door Julie and Delafield left for Camaldoli.
+
+"Well, if you imagine that I intend to congratulate you or anybody else
+upon that performance you are very much mistaken," said the Duke, as he
+and his wife drove back to the "Grand Bretagne" together.
+
+"I don't deny it's--risky," said the Duchess, her hands on her lap, her
+eyes dreamily following the streets.
+
+"Risky!" repeated the Duke, shrugging his shoulders. "Well, I don't want
+to speak harshly of your friends, Evelyn, but Miss Le Breton--"
+
+"Mrs. Delafield," said the Duchess.
+
+"Mrs. Delafield, then"--the name was evidently a difficult
+mouthful--"seems to me a most undisciplined and unmanageable woman. Why
+does she look like a tragedy queen at her marriage? Jacob is twice too
+good for her, and she'll lead him a life. And how you can reconcile it
+to your conscience to have misled me so completely as you have in this
+matter, I really can't imagine."
+
+"Misled you?" said Evelyn.
+
+Her innocence was really a little hard to bear, and not even the beauty
+of her blue eyes, now happily restored to him, could appease the mentor
+at her side.
+
+"You led me plainly to believe," he repeated, with emphasis, "that if I
+helped her through the crisis of leaving Lady Henry she would relinquish
+her designs on Delafield."
+
+"Did I?" said the Duchess. And putting her hands over her face she
+laughed rather hysterically. "But that wasn't why you lent her the
+house, Freddie."
+
+"You coaxed me into it, of course," said the Duke.
+
+"No, it was Julie herself got the better of you," said Evelyn,
+triumphantly. "You felt her spell, just as we all do, and wanted to do
+something for her."
+
+"Nothing of the sort," said the Duke, determined to admit no
+recollection to his disadvantage. "It was your doing entirely."
+
+The Duchess thought it discreet to let him at least have the triumph of
+her silence, smiling, and a little sarcastic though it were.
+
+"And of all the undeserved good fortune!" he resumed, feeling in his
+irritable disapproval that the moral order of the universe had been
+somehow trifled with. "In the first place, she is the daughter of people
+who flagrantly misconducted themselves--_that_ apparently does her no
+harm. Then she enters the service of Lady Henry in a confidential
+position, and uses it to work havoc in Lady Henry's social relations.
+That, I am glad to say, _has_ done her a little harm, although not
+nearly as much as she deserves. And finally she has a most discreditable
+flirtation with a man already engaged--to her own cousin, please
+observe!--and pulls wires for him all over the place in the most
+objectionable and unwomanly manner."
+
+"As if everybody didn't do that!" cried the Duchess. "You know, Freddie,
+that your own mother always used to boast that she had made six bishops
+and saved the Establishment."
+
+The Duke took no notice.
+
+"And yet there she is! Lord Lackington has left her a fortune--a
+competence, anyway. She marries Jacob Delafield--rather a fool, I
+consider, but all the same one of the best fellows in the world. And at
+any time, to judge from what one hears of the health both of Chudleigh
+and his boy, she may find herself Duchess of Chudleigh."
+
+The Duke threw himself back in the carriage with the air of one who
+waits for Providence to reply.
+
+"Oh, well, you see, you can't make the world into a moral tale to please
+you," said the Duchess, absently.
+
+Then, after a pause, she asked, "Are you still going to let them have
+the house, Freddie?"
+
+"I imagine that if Jacob Delafield applies to me to let it to _him_,
+that I shall not refuse him," said the Duke, stiffly.
+
+The Duchess smiled behind her fan. Yet her tender heart was not in
+reality very happy about her Julie. She knew well enough that it was a
+strange marriage of which they had just been witnesses--a marriage
+containing the seeds of many untoward things only too likely to develop
+unless fate were kinder than rash mortals have any right to expect.
+
+"I wish to goodness Delafield weren't so religious," murmured the
+Duchess, fervently, pursuing her own thoughts.
+
+"Evelyn!"
+
+"Well, you see, Julie isn't, at all," she added, hastily.
+
+"You need not have troubled yourself to tell me that," was the Duke's
+indignant reply.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a fortnight at Camaldoli and Vallombrosa the Delafields turned
+towards Switzerland. Julie, who was a lover of Rousseau and Obermann,
+had been also busy with the letters of Byron. She wished to see with her
+own eyes St. Gingolphe and Chillon, Bevay and Glion.
+
+So one day at the end of May they found themselves at Montreux. But
+Montreux was already hot and crowded, and Julie's eyes turned in longing
+to the heights. They found an old inn at Charnex, whereof the garden
+commanded the whole head of the lake, and there they settled themselves
+for a fortnight, till business, in fact, should recall Delafield to
+England. The Duke of Chudleigh had shown all possible kindness and
+cordiality with regard to the marriage, and the letter in which he
+welcomed his cousin's new wife had both touched Julie's feelings and
+satisfied her pride. "You are marrying one of the best of men," wrote
+this melancholy father of a dying son. "My boy and I owe him more than
+can be written. I can only tell you that for those he loves he grudges
+nothing--no labor, no sacrifice of himself. There are no half-measures
+in his affections. He has spent himself too long on sick and sorry
+creatures like ourselves. It is time he had a little happiness on his
+own account. You will give it him, and Mervyn and I will be most
+grateful to you. If joy and health can never be ours, I am not yet so
+vile as to grudge them to others. God bless you! Jacob will tell you
+that my house is not a gay one; but if you and he will sometimes visit
+it, you will do something to lighten its gloom."
+
+Julie wondered, as she wrote her very graceful reply, how much the Duke
+might know about herself. Jacob had told his cousin, as she knew, the
+story of her parentage and of Lord Lackington's recognition of his
+granddaughter. But as soon as the marriage was announced it was not
+likely that Lady Henry had been able to hold her tongue.
+
+A good many interesting tales of his cousin's bride had, indeed, reached
+the melancholy Duke. Lady Henry had done all that she conceived it her
+duty to do, filling many pages of note-paper with what the Duke regarded
+as most unnecessary information.
+
+At any rate, he had brushed it all aside with the impatience of one for
+whom nothing on earth had now any savor or value beyond one or two
+indispensable affections. "What's good enough for Jacob is good for me,"
+he wrote to Lady Henry, "and if I may offer you some advice, it is that
+you should not quarrel with Jacob about a matter so vital as his
+marriage. Into the rights and wrongs of the story you tell me, I really
+cannot enter; but rather than break with Jacob I would welcome _anybody_
+he chose to present to me. And in this case I understand the lady is
+very clever, distinguished, and of good blood on both sides. Have you
+had no trouble in your life, my dear Flora, that you can make quarrels
+with a light heart? If so, I envy you; but I have neither the energy nor
+the good spirits wherewith to imitate you."
+
+Julie, of course, knew nothing of this correspondence, though from the
+Duke's letters to Jacob she divined that something of the kind had taken
+place. But it was made quite plain to her that she was to be spared all
+the friction and all the difficulty which may often attend the entrance
+of a person like herself within the circle of a rich and important
+family like the Delafields. With Lady Henry, indeed, the fight had still
+to be fought. But Jacob's mother, influenced on one side by her son and
+on the other by the head of the family, accepted her daughter-in-law
+with the facile kindliness and good temper that were natural to her;
+while his sister, the fair-haired and admirable Susan, owed her brother
+too much and loved him too well to be other than friendly to his wife.
+
+No; on the worldly side all was smooth. The marriage had been carried
+through with ease and quietness The Duke, in spite of Jacob's
+remonstrances, had largely increased his cousin's salary, and Julie was
+already enjoying the income left her by Lord Lackington. She had only to
+reappear in London as Jacob's wife to resume far more than her old
+social ascendency. The winning cards had all passed into her hands, and
+if now there was to be a struggle with Lady Henry, Lady Henry would
+be worsted.
+
+All this was or should have been agreeable to the sensitive nerves of a
+woman who knew the worth of social advantages. It had no effect,
+however, on the mortal depression which was constantly Julie's portion
+during the early weeks of her marriage.
+
+As for Delafield, he had entered upon this determining experiment of his
+life--a marriage, which was merely a legalized comradeship, with the
+woman he adored--in the mind of one resolved to pay the price of what he
+had done. This graceful and stately woman, with her high intelligence
+and her social gifts, was now his own property. She was to be the
+companion of his days and the mistress of his house. But although he
+knew well that he had a certain strong hold upon her, she did not love
+him, and none of the fusion of true marriage had taken place or could
+take place. So be it. He set himself to build up a relation between them
+which should justify the violence offered to natural and spiritual law.
+His own delicacy of feeling and perception combined with the strength of
+his passion to make every action of their common day a symbol and
+sacrament. That her heart regretted Warkworth, that bitterness and
+longing, an unspent and baffled love, must be constantly overshadowing
+her--these things he not only knew, he was forever reminding himself of
+them, driving them, as it were, into consciousness, as the ascetic
+drives the spikes into his flesh. His task was to comfort her, to make
+her forget, to bring her back to common peace and cheerfulness of mind.
+
+To this end he began with appealing as much as possible to her
+intelligence. He warmly encouraged her work for Meredith. From the first
+days of their marriage he became her listener, scholar, and critic.
+Himself interested mainly in social, economical, or religious
+discussion, he humbly put himself to school in matters of
+_belles-lettres_. His object was to enrich Julie's daily life with new
+ambitions and new pleasures, which might replace the broodings of her
+illness and convalescence, and then, to make her feel that she had at
+hand, in the companion of that life, one who felt a natural interest in
+all her efforts, a natural pride in all her successes.
+
+Alack! the calculation was too simple--and too visible. It took too
+little account of the complexities of Julie's nature, of the ravages and
+the shock of passion. Julie herself might be ready enough to return to
+the things of the mind, but they were no sooner offered to her, as it
+were, in exchange for the perilous delights of love, than she grew
+dumbly restive. She felt herself, also, too much observed, too much
+thought over, made too often, if the truth were known, the subject of
+religious or mystical emotion.
+
+More and more, also, was she conscious of strangeness and eccentricity
+in the man she had married. It often seemed to that keen and practical
+sense which in her mingled so oddly with the capacity for passion that,
+as they grew older, and her mind recovered tone and balance, she would
+probably love the world disastrously more and he disastrously less. And
+if so, the gulf between them, instead of closing, could but widen.
+
+One day--a showery day in early June--she was left alone for an hour,
+while Delafield went down to Montreux to change some circular notes.
+Julie took a book from the table and strolled out along the lovely road
+that slopes gently downward from Charnex to the old field-embowered
+village of Brent.
+
+The rain was just over. It had been a cold rain, and the snow had crept
+downward on the heights, and had even powdered the pines of the Cubly.
+The clouds were sweeping low in the west. Towards Geneva the lake was
+mere wide and featureless space--a cold and misty water, melting into
+the fringes of the rain-clouds. But to the east, above the Rhône
+valley, the sky was lifting; and as Julie sat down upon a midway seat
+and turned herself eastward, she was met by the full and unveiled glory
+of the higher Alps--the Rochers de Naye, the Velan, the Dent du Midi. On
+the jagged peaks of the latter a bright shaft of sun was playing, and
+the great white or rock-ribbed mass raised itself above the mists of the
+lower world, once more unstained and triumphant.
+
+But the cold _bise_ was still blowing, and Julie, shivering, drew her
+wrap closer round her. Her heart pined for Como and the south; perhaps
+for the little Duchess, who spoiled and petted her in the common,
+womanish ways.
+
+The spring--a second spring--was all about her; but in this chilly
+northern form it spoke to her with none of the ravishment of Italy. In
+the steep fields above her the narcissuses were bent and bowed with
+rain; the red-browns of the walnuts glistened in the wet gleams of sun;
+the fading apple-blossom beside her wore a melancholy beauty; only in
+the rich, pushing grass, with its wealth of flowers and its branching
+cow-parsley, was there the stubborn life and prophecy of summer.
+
+Suddenly Julie caught up the book that lay beside her and opened it with
+a hasty hand. It was one of that set of Saint-Simon which had belonged
+to her mother, and had already played a part in her own destiny.
+
+She turned to the famous "character" of the Dauphin, of that model
+prince, in whose death Saint-Simon, and Fénelon, and France herself, saw
+the eclipse of all great hopes.
+
+"A prince, affable, gentle, humane, patient, modest, full of
+compunctions, and, as much as his position allowed--sometimes beyond
+it--humble, and severe towards himself."
+
+Was it not to the life? "_Affable, doux, humain--patient,
+modeste--humble et austère pour soi_"--beyond what was expected, beyond,
+almost, what was becoming?
+
+She read on to the mention of the Dauphine, terrified, in her human
+weakness, of so perfect a husband, and trying to beguile or tempt him
+from the heights; to the picture of Louis Quatorze, the grandfather,
+shamed in his worldly old age by the presence beside him of this saintly
+and high-minded youth; of the Court, looking forward with dismay to the
+time when it should find itself under the rule of a man who despised and
+condemned both its follies and its passions, until she reached that
+final rapture, where, in a mingled anguish and adoration, Saint-Simon
+bids eternal farewell to a character and a heart of which France was
+not worthy.
+
+The lines passed before her, and she was conscious, guiltily conscious,
+of reading them with a double mind.
+
+Then she closed the book, held by the thought of her husband--in a
+somewhat melancholy reverie.
+
+There is a Catholic word with which in her convent youth she had been
+very familiar--the word _recueilli_--"recollected." At no time
+had it sounded kindly in her ears; for it implied fetters and
+self--suppressions--of the voluntary and spiritual sort--wholly
+unwelcome to and unvalued by her own temperament. But who that knew him
+well could avoid applying it to Delafield? A man of "recollection"
+living in the eye of the Eternal; keeping a guard over himself in the
+smallest matters of thought and action; mystically possessed by the
+passion of a spiritual ideal; in love with charity, purity,
+simplicity of life.
+
+She bowed her head upon her hands in dreariness of spirit. Ultimately,
+what could such a man want with her? What had she to give him? In what
+way could she ever be _necessary_ to him? And a woman, even in
+friendship, must feel herself that to be happy.
+
+Already this daily state in which she found herself--of owing everything
+and giving nothing--produced in her a secret irritation and repulsion;
+how would it be in the years to come?
+
+"He never saw me as I am," she thought to herself, looking fretfully
+back to their past acquaintance. "I am neither as weak as he thinks
+me--nor as clever. And how strange it is--this _tension_ in which
+he lives!"
+
+And as she sat there idly plucking at the wet grass, her mind was
+overrun with a motley host of memories--some absurd, some sweet, some of
+an austerity that chilled her to the core. She thought of the difficulty
+she had in persuading Delafield to allow himself even necessary comforts
+and conveniences; a laugh, involuntary, and not without tenderness,
+crossed her face as she recalled a tale he had told her at Camaldoli, of
+the contempt excited in a young footman of a smart house by the
+mediocrity and exiguity of his garments and personal appointments
+generally. "I felt I possessed nothing that he would have taken as a
+gift," said Delafield, with a grin. "It was chastening."
+
+Yet though he laughed, he held to it; and Julie was already so much of
+the wife as to be planning how to coax him presently out of a
+portmanteau and a top-hat that were in truth a disgrace to
+their species.
+
+And all the time _she_ must have the best of everything--a maid,
+luxurious travelling, dainty food. They had had one or two wrestles on
+the subject already. "Why are you to have all the high thinking and
+plain living to yourself?" she had asked him, angrily, only to be met by
+the plea, "Dear, get strong first--then you shall do what you like."
+
+But it was at La Verna, the mountain height overshadowed by the memories
+of St. Francis, that she seemed to have come nearest to the ascetic and
+mystical tendency in Delafield. He went about the mountain-paths a
+transformed being, like one long spiritually athirst who has found the
+springs and sources of life. Julie felt a secret terror. Her impression
+was much the same as Meredith's--as of "something wearing through" to
+the light of day. Looking back she saw that this temperament, now so
+plain to view, had been always there; but in the young and capable agent
+of the Chudleigh property, in the Duchess's cousin, or Lady Henry's
+nephew, it had passed for the most part unsuspected. How remarkably it
+had developed!--whither would it carry them both in the future? When
+thinking about it, she was apt to find herself seized with a sudden
+craving for Mayfair, "little dinners," and good talk.
+
+"What a pity you weren't born a Catholic!--you might have been a
+religious," she said to him one night at La Verna, when he had been
+reading her some of the _Fioretti_ with occasional comments of his own.
+
+But he had shaken his head with a smile.
+
+"You see, I have no creed--or next to none."
+
+The answer startled her. And in the depths of his blue eyes there seemed
+to her to be hovering a swarm of thoughts that would not let themselves
+loose in her presence, but were none the less the true companions of his
+mind. She saw herself a moment as Elsa, and her husband as a modern
+Lohengrin, coming spiritually she knew not whence, bound on some quest
+mysterious and unthinkable.
+
+"What will you do," she said, suddenly, "when the dukedom comes to you?"
+
+Delafield's aspect darkened in an instant. If he could have shown anger
+to her, anger there would have been.
+
+"That is a subject I never think of or discuss, if I can help it," he
+said, abruptly; and, rising to his feet, he pointed out that the sun was
+declining fast towards the plain of the Casentino, and they were far
+from their hotel.
+
+"Inhuman!--unreasonable!" was the cry of the critical sense in her as
+she followed him in silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Innumerable memories of this kind beat on Julie's mind as she sat
+dreamily on her bench among the Swiss meadows. How natural that in the
+end they should sweep her by reaction into imaginations wholly
+indifferent--of a drum-and-trumpet history, in the actual
+fighting world.
+
+... Far, far in the African desert she followed the march of Warkworth's
+little troop.
+
+Ah, the blinding light--the African scrub and sand--the long, single
+line--the native porters with their loads--the handful of English
+officers with that slender figure at their head--the endless, waterless
+path with its palms and mangoes and mimosas--the scene rushed upon the
+inward eye and held it. She felt the heat, the thirst, the weariness of
+bone and brain--all the spell and mystery of the unmapped,
+unconquered land.
+
+Did he think of her sometimes, at night, under the stars, or in the
+blaze and mirage of noon? Yes, yes; he thought of her. Each to the other
+their thoughts must travel while they lived.
+
+In Delafield's eyes, she knew, his love for her had been mere outrage
+and offence.
+
+Ah, well, _he_, at least, had needed her. He had desired only very
+simple, earthy things--money, position, success--things it was possible
+for a woman to give him, or get for him; and at the last, though it were
+only as a traitor to his word and his _fiancée_, he had asked for
+love--asked commonly, hungrily, recklessly, because he could not help
+it--and then for pardon! And those are things the memory of which lies
+deep, deep in the pulsing, throbbing heart.
+
+At this point she hurriedly checked and scourged herself, as she did a
+hundred times a day.
+
+No, no, _no_! It was all over, and she and Jacob would still make a fine
+thing of their life together. Why not?
+
+And all the time there were burning hot tears in her eyes; and as the
+leaves of Saint-Simon passed idly through her fingers, the tears blotted
+out the meadows and the flowers, and blurred the figure of a young girl
+who was slowly mounting the long slope of road that led from the village
+of Brent towards the seat on which Julie was sitting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gradually the figure approached. The mist cleared from Julie's eyes.
+Suddenly she found herself giving a close and passionate attention to
+the girl upon the road.
+
+Her form was slight and small; under her shady hat there was a gleam of
+fair hair arranged in smooth, shining masses about her neck and temples.
+As she approached Julie she raised her eyes absently, and Julie saw a
+face of singular and delicate beauty, marred, however, by the suggestion
+of physical fragility, even sickliness, which is carried with it. One
+might have thought it a face blanched by a tropical climate, and for the
+moment touched into faint color by the keen Alpine air. The eyes,
+indeed, were full of life; they were no sooner seen but they defined and
+enforced a personality. Eager, intent, a little fretful, they expressed
+a nervous energy out of all proportion to their owner's slender
+physique. In this, other bodily signs concurred. As she perceived Julie
+on the bench, for instance, the girl's slight, habitual frown sharply
+deepened; she looked at the stranger with keen observation, both glance
+and gesture betraying a quick and restless sensibility.
+
+As for Julie, she half rose as the girl neared her. Her cheeks were
+flushed, her lips parted; she had the air of one about to speak. The
+girl looked at her in a little surprise and passed on.
+
+She carried a book under her arm, into which were thrust a few
+just-opened letters. She had scarcely passed the bench when an envelope
+fell out of the book and lay unnoticed on the road.
+
+Julie drew a long breath. She picked up the envelope. It lay in her
+hand, and the name she had expected to see was written upon it.
+
+For a moment she hesitated. Then she ran after the owner of the letter.
+
+"You dropped this on the road."
+
+The girl turned hastily.
+
+"Thank you very much. I am sorry to have given you the trouble--"
+
+Then she paused, arrested evidently by the manner in which Julie stood
+regarding her.
+
+"Did--did you wish to speak to me?" she said, uncertainly.
+
+"You are Miss Moffatt?"
+
+"Yes. That is my name. But, excuse me. I am afraid I don't remember
+you." The words were spoken with a charming sweetness and timidity.
+
+"I am Mrs. Delafield."
+
+The girl started violently.
+
+"Are you? I--I beg your pardon!"
+
+She stood in a flushed bewilderment, staring at the lady who had
+addressed her, a troubled consciousness possessing itself of her face
+and manner more and more plainly with every moment.
+
+Julie asked herself, hurriedly: "How much does she know? What has she
+heard?" But aloud she gently said: "I thought you must have heard of me.
+Lord Uredale told me he had written--his father wished it--to Lady
+Blanche. Your mother and mine were sisters."
+
+The girl shyly withdrew her eyes.
+
+"Yes, mother told me."
+
+There was a moment's silence. The mingled fear and recklessness which
+had accompanied Julie's action disappeared from her mind. In the girl's
+manner there was neither jealousy nor hatred, only a young shrinking
+and reserve.
+
+"May I walk with you a little?"
+
+"Please do. Are you staying at Montreux?"
+
+"No; we are at Charnex--and you?"
+
+"We came up two days ago to a little _pension_ at Brent. I wanted to be
+among the fields, now the narcissuses are out. If it were warm weather
+we should stay, but mother is afraid of the cold for me. I have
+been ill."
+
+"I heard that," said Julie, in a voice gravely kind and winning. "That
+was why your mother could not come home."
+
+The girl's eyes suddenly filled with tears.
+
+"No; poor mother! I wanted her to go--we had a good nurse--but she would
+not leave me, though she was devoted to my grandfather. She--"
+
+"She is always anxious about you?"
+
+"Yes. My health has been a trouble lately, and since father died--"
+
+"She has only you."
+
+They walked on a few paces in silence. Then the girl looked up eagerly.
+
+"You saw grandfather at the last? Do tell me about it, please. My uncles
+write so little."
+
+Julie obeyed with difficulty. She had not realized how hard it would be
+for her to talk of Lord Lackington. But she described the old man's
+gallant dying as best she could; while Aileen Moffatt listened with that
+manner at once timid and rich in feeling which seemed to be her
+characteristic.
+
+As they neared the top of the hill where the road begins to incline
+towards Charnex, Julie noticed signs of fatigue in her companion.
+
+"You have been an invalid," she said. "You ought not to go farther. May
+I take you home? Would your mother dislike to see me?"
+
+The girl paused perceptibly. "Ah, there she is!"
+
+They had turned towards Brent, and Julie saw coming towards them, with
+somewhat rapid steps, a small, elderly lady, gray-haired, her features
+partly hidden by her country hat.
+
+A thrill passed through Julie. This was the sister whose name her mother
+had mentioned in her last hour. It was as though something of her
+mother, something that must throw light upon that mother's life and
+being, were approaching her along this Swiss road.
+
+But the lady in question, as she neared them, looked with surprise, not
+unmingled with hauteur, upon her daughter and the stranger beside her.
+
+"Aileen, why did you go so far? You promised me only to be a quarter of
+an hour."
+
+"I am not tired, mother. Mother, this is Mrs. Delafield. You remember,
+Uncle Uredale wrote--"
+
+Lady Blanche Moffatt stood still. Once more a fear swept through Julie's
+mind, and this time it stayed. After an evident hesitation, a hand was
+coldly extended.
+
+"How do you do? I heard from my brothers of your marriage, but they said
+you were in Italy."
+
+"We have just come from there."
+
+"And your husband?"
+
+"He has gone down to Montreux, but he should be home very soon now. We
+are only a few steps from our little inn. Would you not rest there? Miss
+Moffatt looks very tired."
+
+There was a pause. Lady Blanche was considering her daughter. Julie saw
+the trembling of her wide, irregular mouth, of which the lips were
+slightly turned outward. Finally she drew her daughter's hand into her
+arm, and bent anxiously towards her, scrutinizing her face.
+
+"Thank you. We will rest a quarter of an hour. Can we get a carriage at
+Charnex?"
+
+"Yes, I think so, if you will wait a little on our balcony."
+
+They walked on towards Charnex. Lady Blanche began to talk resolutely of
+the weather, which was, indeed, atrocious. She spoke as she would have
+done to the merest acquaintance. There was not a word of her father; not
+a word, either, of her brother's letter, or of Julie's relationship to
+herself. Julie accepted the situation with perfect composure, and the
+three kept up some sort of a conversation till they reached the paved
+street of Charnex and the old inn at its lower end.
+
+Julie guided her companions through its dark passages, till they reached
+an outer terrace where there were a few scattered seats, and among them
+a deck-chair with cushions.
+
+"Please," said Julie, as she kindly drew the girl towards it. Aileen
+smiled and yielded. Julie placed her among the cushions, then brought
+out a shawl, and covered her warmly from the sharp, damp air. Aileen
+thanked her, and lightly touched her hand. A secret sympathy seemed to
+have suddenly sprung up between them.
+
+Lady Blanche sat stiffly beside her daughter, watching her face. The
+warm touch of friendliness in Aileen's manner towards Mrs. Delafield
+seemed only to increase the distance and embarrassment of her own. Julie
+appeared to be quite unconscious. She ordered tea, and made no further
+allusion of any kind to the kindred they had in common. She and Lady
+Blanche talked as strangers.
+
+Julie said to herself that she understood. She remembered the evening at
+Crowborough House, the spinster lady who had been the Moffatts' friend,
+her own talk with Evelyn. In that way, or in some other, the current
+gossip about herself and Warkworth, gossip they had been too mad and
+miserable to take much account of, had reached Lady Blanche. Lady
+Blanche probably abhorred her; though, because of her marriage, there
+was to be an outer civility. Meanwhile no sign whatever of any angry or
+resentful knowledge betrayed itself in the girl's manner. Clearly the
+mother had shielded her.
+
+Julie felt the flutter of an exquisite relief. She stole many a look at
+Aileen, comparing the reality with that old, ugly notion her jealousy
+had found so welcome--of the silly or insolent little creature,
+possessing all that her betters desired, by the mere brute force of
+money or birth. And all the time the reality was _this_--so soft,
+suppliant, ethereal! Here, indeed, was the child of Warkworth's
+picture--the innocent, unknowing child, whom their passion had
+sacrificed and betrayed. She could see the face now, as it lay piteous,
+in Warkworth's hand. Then she raised her eyes to the original. And as it
+looked at her with timidity and nascent love her own heart beat wildly,
+now in remorse, now in a reviving jealousy.
+
+Secretly, behind this mask of convention, were they both thinking of
+him? A girl's thoughts are never far from her lover; and Julie was
+conscious, this afternoon, of a strange and mysterious preoccupation,
+whereof Warkworth was the centre.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gradually the great mountains at the head of the lake freed themselves
+from the last wandering cloud-wreaths. On the rock faces of the Rochers
+de Naye the hanging pine-woods, brushed with snow, came into sight. The
+white walls of Glion shone faintly out, and a pearly gold, which was but
+a pallid reflection of the Italian glory, diffused itself over mountain
+and lake. The sun was grudging; there was no caress in the air. Aileen
+shivered a little in her shawls, and when Julie spoke of Italy the
+girl's enthusiasm and longing sprang, as it were, to meet her, and both
+were conscious of another slight link between them.
+
+Suddenly a sound of steps came to them from below.
+
+"My husband," said Julie, rising, and, going to the balustrade, she
+waved to Delafield, who had come up from Montreux by one of the steep
+vineyard paths. "I will tell him you are here," she added, with what
+might have been taken for the shyness of the young wife.
+
+She ran down the steps leading from the terrace to the lower garden.
+Aileen looked at her mother.
+
+"Isn't she wonderful?" she said, in an ardent whisper. "I could watch
+her forever. She is the most graceful person I ever saw. Mother, is she
+like Aunt Rose?"
+
+Lady Blanche shook her head.
+
+"Not in the least," she said, shortly. "She has too much manner for me."
+
+"Oh, mother!" And the girl caught her mother's hand in caressing
+remonstrance, as though to say: "Dear little mother, you must like her,
+because I do; and you mustn't think of Aunt Rose, and all those
+terrible things, except for pity."
+
+"Hush!" said Lady Blanche, smiling at her a little excitedly. "Hush;
+they're coming!"
+
+Delafield and Julie emerged from the iron staircase. Lady Blanche turned
+and looked at the tall, distinguished pair, her ugly lower lip hardening
+ungraciously. But she and Delafield had a slight previous acquaintance,
+and she noticed instantly the charming and solicitous kindness with
+which he greeted her daughter.
+
+"Julie tells me Miss Moffatt is still far from strong," he said,
+returning to the mother.
+
+Lady Blanche only sighed for answer. He drew a chair beside her, and
+they fell into the natural talk of people who belong to the same social
+world, and are travelling in the same scenes.
+
+Meanwhile Julie was sitting beside the heiress. Not much was said, but
+each was conscious of a lively interest in the other, and every now and
+then Julie would put out a careful hand and draw the shawls closer about
+the girl's frail form. The strain of guilty compunction that entered
+into Julie's feeling did but make it the more sensitive. She said to
+herself in a vague haste that now she would make amends. If only Lady
+Blanche were willing--
+
+But she should be willing! Julie felt the stirrings of the old
+self-confidence, the old trust in a social ingenuity which had, in
+truth, rarely failed her. Her intriguing, managing instinct made itself
+felt--the mood of Lady Henry's companion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently, as they were talking, Aileen caught sight of an English
+newspaper which Delafield had brought up from Montreux. It lay still
+unopened on one of the tables of the terrace.
+
+"Please give it me," said the girl, stretching out an eager hand. "It
+will have Tiny's marriage, mamma! A cousin of mine," she explained to
+Julie, who rose to hand it to her. "A very favorite cousin. Oh,
+thank you."
+
+She opened the paper. Julie turned away, that she might relieve Lady
+Blanche of her teacup.
+
+Suddenly a cry rang out--a cry of mortal anguish. Two ladies who had
+just stepped out upon the terrace from the hotel drawing-room turned in
+terror; the gardener who was watering the flower-boxes at the farther
+end stood arrested.
+
+"Aileen!" shrieked Lady Blanche, running to her. "What--what is it?"
+
+The paper had dropped to the floor, but the child still pointed to it,
+gasping.
+
+"Mother--mother!"
+
+Some intuition woke in Julie. She stood dead-white and dumb, while Lady
+Blanche threw herself on her daughter.
+
+"Aileen, darling, what is it?"
+
+The girl, in her agony, threw her arms frantically round her mother, and
+dragged herself to her feet. She stood tottering, her hand over
+her eyes.
+
+"He's dead, mother! He's--dead!"
+
+The last word sank into a sound more horrible even than the first cry.
+Then she swayed out of her mother's arms. It was Julie who caught her,
+who laid her once more on the deck-chair--a broken, shrunken form, in
+whom all the threads and connections of life had suddenly, as it were,
+fallen to ruin. Lady Blanche hung over her, pushing Julie away,
+gathering the unconscious girl madly in her arms. Delafield rushed for
+water-and-brandy. Julie snatched the paper and looked at the telegrams.
+
+High up in the first column was the one she sought.
+
+     "CAIRO, _June_ 12.--Great regret is felt here at the sudden
+     and tragic news of Major Warkworth's death from fever, which
+     seems to have occurred at a spot some three weeks' distance
+     from the coast, on or about May 25. Letters from the officer
+     who has succeeded him in the command of the Mokembe
+     expedition have now reached Denga. A fortnight after leaving
+     the coast Major Warkworth was attacked with fever; he made a
+     brave struggle against it, but it was of a deadly type, and
+     in less than a week he succumbed. The messenger brought also
+     his private papers and diaries, which have been forwarded to
+     his representatives in England. Major Warkworth was a most
+     promising and able officer, and his loss will be keenly
+     felt."
+
+Julie fell on her knees beside her swooning cousin. Lady Blanche,
+meanwhile, was loosening her daughter's dress, chafing her icy hands, or
+moaning over her in a delirium of terror.
+
+"My darling--my darling! Oh, my God! Why did I allow it? Why did I ever
+let him come near her? It was my fault--my fault! And it's killed her!"
+
+And clinging to her child's irresponsive hands, she looked down upon her
+in a convulsion of grief, which included not a shadow of regret, not a
+gleam of pity for anything or any one else in the world but this bone of
+her bone and flesh of her flesh, which lay stricken there.
+
+But Julie's mind had ceased to be conscious of the tragedy beside her.
+It had passed for the second time into the grasp of an illusion which
+possessed itself of the whole being and all its perceptive powers.
+Before her wide, terror-stricken gaze there rose once more the same
+piteous vision which had tortured her in the crisis of her love for
+Warkworth. Against the eternal snows which close in the lake the phantom
+hovered in a ghastly relief--emaciated, with matted hair, and purpled
+cheeks, and eyes--not to be borne!--expressing the dumb anger of a man,
+still young, who parts unwillingly from life in a last lonely spasm of
+uncomforted pain.
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+It was midnight in the little inn at Charnex. The rain which for so many
+nights in this miserable June had been beating down upon the village had
+at last passed away. The night was clear and still--a night when the
+voice of mountain torrents, far distant, might reach the ear
+suddenly--sharply pure--from the very depths of silence.
+
+Julie was in bed. She had been scarcely aware of her maid's help in
+undressing. The ordinary life was, as it were, suspended. Two scenes
+floated alternately before her--one the creation of memory, the other of
+imagination; and the second was, if possible, the more vivid, the more
+real of the two. Now she saw herself in Lady Henry's drawing-room; Sir
+Wilfrid Bury and a white-haired general were beside her. The door opened
+and Warkworth entered--young, handsome, soldierly, with that boyish,
+conquering air which some admired and others disliked. His eyes met
+hers, and a glow of happiness passed through her.
+
+Then, at a stroke, the London drawing-room melted away. She was in a low
+bell-tent. The sun burned through its sides; the air was stifling. She
+stood with two other men and the doctor beside the low camp-bed; her
+heart was wrung by every movement, every sound; she heard the clicking
+of the fan in the doctor's hands, she saw the flies on the poor,
+damp brow.
+
+And still she had no tears. Only, existence seemed to have ended in a
+gulf of horror, where youth and courage, repentance and high resolve,
+love and pleasure were all buried and annihilated together.
+
+That poor girl up-stairs! It had not been possible to take her home. She
+was there with nurse and doctor, her mother hanging upon every difficult
+breath. The attack of diphtheria had left a weakened heart and nervous
+system; the shock had been cruel, and the doctor could promise nothing
+for the future.
+
+"Mother--mother!... _Dead!_"
+
+The cry echoed in Julie's ears. It seemed to fill the old, low-ceiled
+room in which she lay. Her fancy, preternaturally alive, heard it thrown
+back from the mountains outside--returned to her in wailing from the
+infinite depths of the lake. She was conscious of the vast forms and
+abysses of nature, there in the darkness, beyond the walls of her room,
+as something hostile, implacable....
+
+And while he lay there dead, under the tropical sand, she was still
+living and breathing here, in this old Swiss inn--Jacob Delafield's
+wife, at least in name.
+
+There was a knock at her door. At first she did not answer it. It seemed
+to be only one of the many dream sounds which tormented her nerves. Then
+it was repeated. Mechanically she said "Come in."
+
+The door opened, and Delafield, carrying a light, which he shaded with
+his hand, stood on the threshold.
+
+"May I come and talk to you?" he said, in a low voice. "I know you are
+not sleeping."
+
+It was the first time he had entered his wife's room. Through all her
+misery, Julie felt a strange thrill as her husband's face was thus
+revealed to her, brightly illumined, in the loneliness of the night.
+Then the thrill passed into pain--the pain of a new and sharp
+perception.
+
+Delafield, in truth, was some two or three years younger than Warkworth.
+But the sudden impression on Julie's mind, as she saw him thus, was of a
+man worn and prematurely aged--markedly older and graver, even, since
+their marriage, since that memorable evening by the side of Como when,
+by that moral power of which he seemed often to be the mere channel and
+organ, he had overcome her own will and linked her life with his.
+
+She looked at him in a kind of terror. Why was he so pale--an embodied
+grief? Warkworth's death was not a mortal stroke for _him_.
+
+He came closer, and still Julie's eyes held him. Was it her fault,
+this--this shadowed countenance, these suggestions of a dumb strain and
+conflict, which not even his strong youth could bear without betrayal?
+Her heart cried out, first in a tragic impatience; then it melted within
+her strangely, she knew not how.
+
+She sat up in bed and held out her hands. He thought of that evening in
+Heribert Street, after Warkworth had left her, when she had been so sad
+and yet so docile. The same yearning, the same piteous agitation was in
+her attitude now.
+
+He knelt down beside the bed and put his arms round her. She clasped her
+hands about his neck and hid her face on his shoulder. There ran through
+her the first long shudder of weeping.
+
+"He was so young!" he heard her say through sobs. "So young!"
+
+He raised his hand and touched her hair tenderly.
+
+"He died serving his country," he said, commanding his voice with
+difficulty. "And you grieve for him like this! I can't pity him
+so much."
+
+"You thought ill of him--I know you did." She spoke between deep,
+sobbing breaths. "But he wasn't--he wasn't a bad man."
+
+She fell back on her pillow and the tears rained down her cheeks.
+
+Delafield kissed her hand in silence.
+
+"Some day--I'll tell you," she said, brokenly.
+
+"Yes, you shall tell me. It would help us both."
+
+"I'll prove to you he wasn't vile. When--when he proposed that to me he
+was distracted. So was I. How could he break off his engagement? Now you
+see how she loved him. But we couldn't part--we couldn't say good-bye.
+It had all come on us unawares. We wanted to belong to each other--just
+for two days--and then part forever. Oh, I'll tell you--"
+
+"You shall tell me all--here!" he said, firmly, crushing her delicate
+hands in his own against his breast, so that she felt the beating of
+his heart.
+
+"Give me my hand. I'll show you his letter--his last letter to me." And,
+trembling, she drew from under her pillow that last scrawled letter,
+written from the squalid hotel near the Gare de Sceaux.
+
+No sooner, however, had she placed it in Delafield's hands than she was
+conscious of new forces of feeling in herself which robbed the act of
+its simplicity. She had meant to plead her lover's cause and her own
+with the friend who was nominally her husband. Her action had been a
+cry for sympathy, as from one soul to another.
+
+But as Delafield took the letter and began to read, her pulses began to
+flutter strangely. She recalled the phrases of passion which the letter
+contained. She became conscious of new fears, new compunctions.
+
+For Delafield, too, the moment was one of almost intolerable complexity.
+This tender intimacy of night--the natural intimacy of husband and wife;
+this sense, which would not be denied, however sternly he might hold it
+in check, of her dear form beside him; the little refinements and
+self-revelations of a woman's room; his half-rights towards her,
+appealing at once to love, and to the memory of that solemn pledge by
+which he had won her--what man who deserved the name but must be
+conscious, tempestuously conscious, of such thoughts and facts?
+
+And then, wrestling with these smarts, these impulses, belonging to the
+natural, physical life, the powers of the moral being--compassion,
+self-mastery, generosity; while strengthening and directing all, the man
+of faith was poignantly aware of the austere and tender voices
+of religion.
+
+Amid this play of influences he read the letter, still kneeling beside
+her and holding her fingers clasped in his. She had closed her eyes and
+lay still, save for the occasional tremulous movement of her free hand,
+which dried the tears on her cheek.
+
+"Thank you," he said, at last, with a voice that wavered, as he put the
+letter down. "Thank you. It was good of you to let me see it. It changes
+all my thoughts of him henceforward. If he had lived--"
+
+"But he's dead! He's dead!" cried Julie, in a sudden agony, wrenching
+her hand from his and burying her face in the pillow. "Just when he
+wanted to live. Oh, my God--my God! No, there's no God--nothing that
+cares--that takes any notice!"
+
+She was shaken by deep, convulsive weeping. Delafield soothed her as
+best he could. And presently she stretched out her hand with a quick,
+piteous gesture, and touched his face.
+
+"You, too! What have I done to you? How you looked, just now! I bring a
+curse. Why did you want to marry me? I can't tear this out of my
+heart--I can't!"
+
+And again she hid herself from him. Delafield bent over her.
+
+"Do you imagine that I should be poor-souled enough to ask you?"
+
+Suddenly a wild feeling of revolt ran through Julie's mind. The
+loftiness of his mood chilled her. An attitude more weakly, passionately
+human, a more selfish pity for himself would, in truth, have served him
+better. Had the pain of the living man escaped his control, avenging
+itself on the supremacy that death had now given to the lover, Delafield
+might have found another Julie in his arms. As it was, her husband
+seemed to her perhaps less than man, in being more; she admired
+unwillingly, and her stormy heart withdrew itself.
+
+And when at last she controlled her weeping, and it became evident to
+him that she wished once more to be alone, his sensitiveness perfectly
+divined the secret reaction in her. He rose from his place beside her
+with a deep, involuntary sigh. She heard it, but only to shrink away.
+
+"You will sleep a little?" he said, looking down upon her.
+
+"I will try, _mon ami_."
+
+"If you don't sleep, and would like me to read to you, call me. I am in
+the next room."
+
+She thanked him faintly, and he went away. At the door he paused and
+came back again.
+
+"To-night"--he hesitated--"while the doctors were here, I ran down to
+Montreux by the short path and telegraphed. The consul at Zanzibar is an
+old friend of mine. I asked him for more particulars at once, by wire.
+But the letters can't be here for a fortnight."
+
+"I know. You're very, very good."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hour after hour Delafield sat motionless in his room, till "high in the
+Valais depths profound" he "saw the morning break."
+
+There was a little balcony at his command, and as he noiselessly stepped
+out upon it, between three and four o'clock, he felt himself the
+solitary comrade of the mist-veiled lake, of those high, rosy mountains
+on the eastern verge, the first throne and harbor of the light--of the
+lower forest-covered hills that "took the morning," one by one, in a
+glorious and golden succession. All was fresh, austere, and vast--the
+spaces of the lake, the distant hollows of high glaciers filled with
+purple shadow, the precipices of the Rochers de Naye, where the new snow
+was sparkling in the sun, the cool wind that blew towards him from the
+gates of Italy, down the winding recesses of that superb valley which
+has been a thoroughfare of nations from the beginning of time.
+
+Not a boat on the wide reaches of the lake; not a voice or other sound
+of human toil, either from the vineyards below or the meadows above.
+Meanwhile some instinct, perhaps also some faint movements in her room,
+told him that Julie was no less wakeful than himself. And was not that a
+low voice in the room above him--the trained voice and footsteps of a
+nurse? Ah, poor little heiress, she, too, watched with sorrow!
+
+A curious feeling of shame, of self-depreciation crept into his heart.
+Surely he himself of late had been lying down with fear and rising up
+with bitterness? Never a day had passed since they had reached
+Switzerland but he, a man of strong natural passions, had bade himself
+face the probable truth that, by a kind of violence, he had married a
+woman who would never love him--had taken irrevocably a false step, only
+too likely to be fatal to himself, intolerable to her.
+
+Nevertheless, steeped as he had been in sadness, in foreboding, and,
+during this by-gone night, in passionate envy of the dead yet beloved
+Warkworth, he had never been altogether unhappy. That mysterious
+_It_--that other divine self of the mystic--God--the enwrapping,
+sheltering force--had been with him always. It was with him now--it
+spoke from the mysterious color and light of the dawn.
+
+How, then, could he ever equal Julie in _experience_, in the true and
+poignant feeling of any grief whatever? His mind was in a strange,
+double state. It was like one who feels himself unfairly protected by a
+magic armor; he would almost throw it aside in a remorseful eagerness
+to be with his brethren, and as his brethren, in the sore weakness and
+darkness of the human combat; and then he thinks of the hand that gave
+the shield, and his heart melts in awe.
+
+"_Friend of my soul and of the world, make me thy tool--thy instrument!
+Thou art Love! Speak through me! Draw her heart to mine_."
+
+At last, knowing that there was no sleep in him, and realizing that he
+had brooded enough, he made his way out of the hotel and up through the
+fresh and dew-drenched meadows, where the haymakers were just appearing,
+to the Les Avants stream. A plunge into one of its cool basins
+retempered the whole man. He walked back through the scented
+field-paths, resolutely restraining his mind from the thoughts of the
+night, hammering out, indeed, in his head a scheme for the establishment
+of small holdings on certain derelict land in Wiltshire belonging to
+his cousin.
+
+As he was descending on Charnex, he met the postman and took his
+letters. One among them, from the Duke of Chudleigh, contained a most
+lamentable account of Lord Elmira. The father and son had returned to
+England, and an angry, inclement May had brought a touch of pneumonia to
+add to all the lad's other woes. In itself it was not much--was, indeed,
+passing away. "But it has used up most of his strength," said the Duke,
+"and you know whether he had any to waste. Don't forget him. He
+constantly thinks and talks of you."
+
+Delafield restlessly wondered when he could get home. But he realized
+that Julie would now feel herself tragically linked to the Moffatts, and
+how could he leave her? He piteously told himself that here, and now,
+was his chance with her. As he bore himself now towards her, in this
+hour of her grief for Warkworth, so, perhaps, would their future be.
+
+Yet the claims of kindred were strong. He suffered much inward distress
+as he thought of the father and son, and their old touching dependence
+upon him. Chudleigh, as Jacob knew well, was himself incurably ill.
+Could he long survive his poor boy?
+
+And so that other thought, which Jacob spent so much ingenuity in
+avoiding, rushed upon him unawares. The near, inevitable expectation of
+the famous dukedom, which, in the case of almost any other man in
+England, must at least have quickened the blood with a natural
+excitement, produced in Delafield's mind a mere dull sense of
+approaching torment. Perhaps there was something non-sane in his
+repulsion, something that linked itself with his father's "queerness,"
+or the bigotry and fanaticism of his grandmother, the Evangelical
+Duchess, with her "swarm of parsons," as Sir Wilfrid remembered her. The
+oddity, which had been violent or brutal in earlier generations, showed
+itself in him, one might have said, in a radical transposition of
+values, a singularity of criterion, which the ordinary robust Englishman
+might very well dismiss with impatience as folly or cant.
+
+Yet it was neither; and the feeling had, in truth, its own logic and
+history. He had lived from his youth up among the pageants of rank and
+possession. They had no glamour for him; he realized their burdens,
+their ineffectiveness for all the more precious kinds of happiness--how
+could he not, with these two forlorn figures of Chudleigh and his boy
+always before him? As for imagination and poetry, Delafield, with a
+mind that was either positive or mystical--the mind, one might say, of
+the land-agent or the saint--failed to see where they came in. Family
+tradition, no doubt, carries a thrill. But what thrill is there in the
+mere possession of a vast number of acres of land, of more houses, new
+and old, than any human being can possibly live in, of more money than
+any reasonable man can ever spend, and more responsibilities than he can
+ever meet? Such things often seemed to Delafield pure calamity--mere
+burdens upon life and breath. That he could and must be forced, some
+time, by law and custom, to take them up, was nothing but a social
+barbarity.
+
+Mingled with all which, of course, was his passionate sense of spiritual
+democracy. To be throned apart, like a divine being, surrounded by the
+bought homage of one's fellows, and possessed of more power than a man
+can decently use, was a condition which excited in Delafield the same
+kind of contemptuous revolt that it would have excited in St. Francis.
+"Be not ye called master"--a Christian even of his transcendental and
+heterodox sort, if he _were_ a Christian, must surely hold these words
+in awe, at least so far as concerned any mastery of the external or
+secular kind. To masteries of another order the saint has never been
+disinclined.
+
+As he once more struck the village street, this familiar whirl of
+thoughts was buzzing in Delafield's mind, pierced, however, by one
+sharper and newer. Julie! Did he know--had he ever dared to find
+out--how she regarded this future which was overtaking them? She had
+tried to sound _him_; she had never revealed herself.
+
+In Lady Henry's house he had often noticed in Julie that she had an
+imaginative tenderness for rank or great fortune. At first it had seemed
+to him a woman's natural romanticism; then he explained it to himself as
+closely connected with her efforts to serve Warkworth.
+
+But suppose he were made to feel that there, after all, lay her
+compensation? She had submitted to a loveless marriage and lost her
+lover; but the dukedom was to make amends. He knew well that it would be
+so with nine women out of ten. But the bare thought that it might be so
+with Julie maddened him. He then was to be for her, in the future, the
+mere symbol of the vulgarer pleasures and opportunities, while Warkworth
+held her heart?
+
+Nay!
+
+He stood still, strengthening in himself the glad and sufficient answer.
+She had refused him twice--knowing all his circumstances. At this moment
+he adored her doubly for those old rebuffs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Within twenty-four hours Delafield had received a telegram from his
+friend at Zanzibar. For the most part it recapitulated the news already
+sent to Cairo, and thence transmitted to the English papers. But it
+added the information that Warkworth had been buried in the neighborhood
+of a certain village on the caravan route to Mokembe, and that special
+pains had been taken to mark the spot. And the message concluded: "Fine
+fellow. Hard luck. Everybody awfully sorry here."
+
+These words brought Delafield a sudden look of passionate gratitude from
+Julie's dark and sunken eyes. She rested her face against his sleeve and
+pressed his hand.
+
+Lady Blanche also wept over the telegram, exclaiming that she had
+always believed in Henry Warkworth, and now, perhaps, those busybodies
+who at Simla had been pleased to concern themselves with her affairs and
+Aileen's would see cause to be ashamed of themselves.
+
+To Delafield's discomfort, indeed, she poured out upon him a stream of
+confidences he would have gladly avoided. He had brought the telegram to
+her sitting-room. In the room adjoining it was Aileen, still, according
+to her mother's account, very ill, and almost speechless. Under the
+shadow of such a tragedy it seemed to him amazing that a mother could
+find words in which to tell her daughter's story to a comparative
+stranger. Lady Blanche appeared to him an ill-balanced and foolish
+woman; a prey, on the one hand, to various obscure jealousies and
+antagonisms, and on the other to a romantic and sentimental temper
+which, once roused, gloried in despising "the world," by which she
+generally meant a very ordinary degree of prudence.
+
+She was in chronic disagreement, it seemed, with her daughter's
+guardians, and had been so from the first moment of her widowhood, the
+truth being that she was jealous of their legal powers over Aileen's
+fortune and destiny, and determined, notwithstanding, to have her own
+way with her own child. The wilfulness and caprice of the father, which
+had taken such strange and desperate forms in Rose Delaney, appeared
+shorn of all its attraction and romance in the smaller, more
+conventional, and meaner egotisms of Lady Blanche.
+
+And yet, in her own way, she was full of heart. She lost her head over a
+love affair. She could deny Aileen nothing. That was what her casual
+Indian acquaintances meant by calling her "sweet." When Warkworth's
+attentions, pushed with an ardor which would have driven any prudent
+mother to an instant departure from India, had made a timid and charming
+child of eighteen the talk of Simla, Lady Blanche, excited and
+dishevelled--was it her personal untidiness which accounted for the
+other epithet of "quaint," which had floated to the Duchess's ear, and
+been by her reported to Julie?--refused to break her daughter's heart.
+Warkworth, indeed, had begun long before by flattering the mother's
+vanity and sense of possession, and she now threw herself hotly into his
+cause as against Aileen's odious trustees.
+
+They, of course, always believed the worst of everybody. As for her, all
+she wanted for the child was a good husband. Was it not better, in a
+world of fortune-hunters, that Aileen, with her half-million, should
+marry early? Of money, she had, one would think, enough. It was only the
+greed of certain persons which could possibly desire more. Birth? The
+young man was honorably born, good-looking, well mannered. What did you
+want more? _She_ accepted a democratic age; and the obstacles thrown by
+Aileen's guardians in the way of an immediate engagement between the
+young people appeared to her, so she declared, either vulgar or
+ridiculous.
+
+Well, poor lady, she had suffered for her whims. First of all, her
+levity had perceived, with surprise and terror, the hold that passion
+was taking on the delicate and sensitive nature of Aileen. This young
+girl, so innocent and spotless in thought, so virginally sweet in
+manner, so guileless in action, developed a power of loving, an
+absorption of the whole being in the beloved, such as our modern world
+but rarely sees.
+
+She lived, she breathed for Warkworth. Her health, always frail,
+suffered from their separation. She became a thin and frail vision--a
+"gossamer girl" indeed. The ordinary life of travel and society lost all
+hold upon her; she passed through it in a mood of weariness and distaste
+that was in itself a danger to vital force. The mother became
+desperately alarmed, and made a number of flurried concessions. Letters,
+at any rate, should be allowed, in spite of the guardians, and without
+their knowledge. Yet each letter caused emotions which ran like a
+storm-wind through the child's fragile being, and seemed to exhaust the
+young life at its source. Then came the diphtheria, acting with
+poisonous effect on a nervous system already overstrained.
+
+And in the midst of the mother's anxieties there burst upon her the
+sudden, incredible tale that Warkworth--to whom she herself was writing
+regularly, and to whom Aileen, from her bed, was sending little
+pencilled notes, sweetly meant to comfort a sighing lover--had been
+entangling himself in London with another, a Miss Le Breton, positively
+a nobody, as far as birth and position were concerned, the paid
+companion of Lady Henry Delafield, and yet, as it appeared, a handsome,
+intriguing, unscrupulous hussy, just the kind of hawk to snatch a morsel
+from a dove's mouth--a woman, in fact, with whom a little
+bread-and-butter girl like Aileen might very well have no chance.
+
+Emily Lawrence's letter, in the tone of the candid friend, written after
+her evening at Crowborough House, had roused a mingled anguish and fury
+in the mother's breast. She lifted her eyes from it to look at Aileen,
+propped up in bed, her head thrown back against the pillow, and her
+little hands closed happily over Warkworth's letters; and she went
+straight from that vision to write to the traitor.
+
+The traitor defended and excused himself by return of post. He implored
+her to pay no attention to the calumnious distortion of a friendship
+which had already served Aileen's interests no less than his own. It was
+largely to Miss Le Breton's influence that he owed the appointment which
+was to advance him so materially in his career. At the same time he
+thought it would be wise if Lady Blanche kept not only the silly gossip
+that was going about, but even this true and innocent fact, from
+Aileen's knowledge. One never knew how a girl would take such things,
+and he would rather explain it himself at his own time.
+
+Lady Blanche had to be content. And meanwhile the glory of the Mokembe
+appointment was a strong factor in Aileen's recovery. She exulted over
+it by day and night, and she wrote the letters of an angel.
+
+The mother watched her writing them with mixed feelings. As to
+Warkworth's replies, which she was sometimes allowed to see, Lady
+Blanche, who had been a susceptible girl, and the heroine of several
+"affairs," was secretly and strongly of opinion that men's love-letters,
+at any rate, were poor things nowadays, compared with what they
+had been.
+
+But Aileen was more than satisfied with them. How busy he must be, and
+with such important business! Poor, harassed darling, how good of him to
+write her a word--to give her a thought!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now Lady Blanche beheld her child crushed and broken, a nervous
+wreck, before her life had truly begun. The agonies which the mother
+endured were very real, and should have been touching. But she was not a
+touching person. All her personal traits--her red-rimmed eyes, her
+straggling hair, the slight, disagreeable twist in her nose and
+mouth--combined, with her signal lack of dignity and reticence, to stir
+the impatience rather than the sympathy of the by-stander.
+
+"And mamma was so fond of her," Julie would say to herself sometimes, in
+wonder, proudly contrasting the wild grace and originality of her
+disgraced mother with the awkward, slipshod ways of the sister who had
+remained a great lady.
+
+Meanwhile, Lady Blanche was, indeed, perpetually conscious of her
+strange niece, perpetually thinking of the story her brothers had told
+her, perpetually trying to recall the sister she had lost so young, and
+then turning from all such things to brood angrily over the Lawrence
+letter, and the various other rumors which had reached her of
+Warkworth's relations to Miss Le Breton.
+
+What was in the woman's mind now? She looked pale and tragic enough. But
+what right had she to grieve--or, if she did grieve, to be pitied?
+
+Jacob Delafield had been fool enough to marry her, and fate would make
+her a duchess. So true it is that they who have no business to flourish
+do flourish, like green bay-trees.
+
+As to poor Rose--sometimes there would rise on Lady Blanche's mind the
+sudden picture of herself and the lost, dark-eyed sister, scampering on
+their ponies through the country lanes of their childhood; of her
+lessons with Rose, her worship of Rose; and then of that black curtain
+of mystery and reprobation which for the younger child of sixteen had
+suddenly descended upon Rose and all that concerned her.
+
+But Rose's daughter! All one could say was that she had turned out as
+the child of such proceedings might be expected to turn out--a minx. The
+aunt's conviction as to that stood firm. And while Rose's face and fate
+had sunk into the shadows of the past, even for her sister, Aileen was
+_here_, struggling for her delicate, threatened life, her hand always in
+the hand of this woman who had tried to steal her lover from her, her
+soft, hopeless eyes, so tragically unconscious, bent upon the bold
+intriguer.
+
+What possessed the child? Warkworth's letters, Julie's company--those
+seemed to be all she desired.
+
+And at last, in the June beauty and brilliance, when a triumphant summer
+had banished the pitiful spring, when the meadows were all perfume and
+color, and the clear mountains, in a clear sky, upheld the ever-new and
+never-ending pomp of dawn and noon and night, the little, wasted
+creature looked up into Julie's face, and, without tears, gasped out
+her story.
+
+"These are his letters. Some day I'll--I'll read you some of them; and
+this--is his picture. I know you saw him at Lady Henry's. He mentioned
+your name. Will you please tell me everything--all the times you saw
+him, and what he talked of? You see I am much stronger. I can bear
+it all now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, for Delafield, this fortnight of waiting--waiting for the
+African letters, waiting for the revival of life in Aileen--was a period
+of extraordinary tension, when all the powers of nerve and brain seemed
+to be tested and tried to the utmost. He himself was absorbed in
+watching Julie and in dealing with her.
+
+In the first place, as he saw, she could give no free course to grief.
+The tragic yearning, the agonized tenderness and pity which consumed
+her, must be crushed out of sight as far as possible. They would have
+been an offence to Lady Blanche, a bewilderment to Aileen. And it was on
+her relation to her new-found cousin that, as Delafield perceived, her
+moral life for the moment turned. This frail girl was on the brink of
+perishing because death had taken Warkworth from her. And Julie knew
+well that Warkworth had neither loved her nor deserved her--that he had
+gone to Africa and to death with another image in his heart.
+
+There was a perpetual and irreparable cruelty in the situation. And from
+the remorse of it Julie could not escape. Day by day she was more
+profoundly touched by the clinging, tender creature, more sharply
+scourged by the knowledge that the affection developing between them
+could never be without its barrier and its mystery, that something must
+always remain undisclosed, lest Aileen cast her off in horror.
+
+It was a new moral suffering, in one whose life had been based hitherto
+on intellect, or passion. In a sense it held at bay even her grief for
+Warkworth, her intolerable compassion for his fate. In sheer dread lest
+the girl should find her out and hate her, she lost insensibly the first
+poignancy of sorrow.
+
+These secrets of feeling left her constantly pale and silent. Yet her
+grace had never been more evident. All the inmates of the little
+_pension_, the landlord's family, the servants, the visitors, as the
+days passed, felt the romance and thrill of her presence. Lady Blanche
+evoked impatience of ennui. She was inconsiderate; she was meddlesome;
+she soon ceased even to be pathetic. But for Julie every foot ran, every
+eye smiled.
+
+Then, when the day was over, Delafield's opportunity began. Julie could
+not sleep. He gradually established the right to read with her and talk
+with her. It was a relation very singular, and very intimate. She would
+admit him at his knock, and he would find her on her sofa, very sad,
+often in tears, her black hair loose upon her shoulders. Outwardly there
+was often much ceremony, even distance between them; inwardly, each was
+exploring the other, and Julie's attitude towards Delafield was becoming
+more uncertain, more touched with emotion.
+
+What was, perhaps, most noticeable in it was a new timidity, a touch of
+anxious respect towards him. In the old days, what with her literary
+cultivation and her social success, she had always been the flattered
+and admired one of their little group. Delafield felt himself clumsy and
+tongue-tied beside her. It was a superiority on her part very natural
+and never ungraceful, and it was his chief delight to bring it forward,
+to insist upon it, to take it for granted.
+
+But the relation between them had silently shifted.
+
+"You _judge_--you are always judging," she had said once, impatiently,
+to Delafield. And now it was round these judgments, these inward
+verdicts of his, on life or character, that she was perpetually
+hovering. She was infinitely curious about them. She would wrench them
+from him, and then would often shiver away from him in resentment.
+
+He, meanwhile, as he advanced further in the knowledge of her strange
+nature, was more and more bewildered by her--her perversities and
+caprices, her brilliancies and powers, her utter lack of any standard or
+scheme of life. She had been for a long time, as it seemed to him, the
+creature of her exquisite social instincts--then the creature of
+passion. But what a woman through it all, and how adorable, with those
+poetic gestures and looks, those melancholy, gracious airs that ravished
+him perpetually! And now this new attitude, as of a child leaning,
+wistfully looking in your face, asking to be led, to be wrestled and
+reasoned with.
+
+The days, as they passed, produced in him a secret and mounting
+intoxication. Then, perhaps for a day or two, there would be a reaction,
+both foreseeing that a kind of spiritual tyranny might arise from their
+relation, and both recoiling from it....
+
+One night she was very restless and silent. There seemed to be no means
+of approach to her true mind. Suddenly he took her hand--it was some
+days since they had spoken of Warkworth--and almost roughly reminded her
+of her promise to tell him all.
+
+She rebelled. But his look and manner held her, and the inner misery
+sought an outlet. Submissively she began to speak, in her low, murmuring
+voice; she went back over the past--the winter in Bruton Street; the
+first news of the Moffatt engagement; her efforts for Warkworth's
+promotion; the history of the evening party which had led to her
+banishment; the struggle in her own mind and Warkworth's; the sudden mad
+schemes of their last interview; the rush of the Paris journey.
+
+The mingled exaltation and anguish, the comparative absence of regret
+with which she told the story, produced an astonishing effect on
+Delafield. And in both minds, as the story proceeded, there emerged ever
+more clearly the consciousness of that imperious act by which he had
+saved her.
+
+Suddenly she stopped.
+
+"I know you can find no excuse for it all," she said, in excitement.
+
+"Yes; for all--but for one thing," was his low reply.
+
+She shrank, her eyes on his face.
+
+"That poor child," he said, under his breath.
+
+She looked at him piteously.
+
+"Did you ever realize what you were doing?" he asked her, raising her
+hand to his lips.
+
+"No, no! How could I? I thought of some one so different--I had never
+seen her--"
+
+She paused, her wide--seeking gaze fixed upon him through tears, as
+though she pleaded with him to find explanations--palliatives.
+
+But he gently shook his head.
+
+Suddenly, shaken with weeping, she bowed her face upon the hands that
+held her own. It was like one who relinquishes all pleading, all
+defence, and throws herself on the mercy of the judge.
+
+He tenderly asked her pardon if he had wounded her. But he shrank from
+offering any caress. The outward signs of life's most poignant and most
+beautiful moments are generally very simple and austere.
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+"You have had a disquieting letter?"
+
+The voice was Julie's. Delafield was standing, apparently in thought, at
+the farther corner of the little, raised terrace of the hotel. She
+approached him with an affectionate anxiety, of which he was instantly
+conscious.
+
+"I am afraid I may have to leave you to-night," he said, turning towards
+her, and holding out the letter in his hand.
+
+It contained a few agitated lines from the Duke of Chudleigh.
+
+"They tell me my lad can't get over this. He's made a gallant fight, but
+this beats us. A week or two--no more. Ask Mrs. Delafield to let you
+come. She will, I know. She wrote to me very kindly. Mervyn keeps
+talking of you. You'd come, if you heard him. It's ghastly--the cruelty
+of it all. Whether I can live without him, that's the point."
+
+"You'll go, of course?" said Julie, returning it.
+
+"To-night, if you allow it."
+
+"Of course. You ought."
+
+"I hate leaving you alone, with this trouble on your hands," said Jacob,
+in some agitation. "What are your plans?"
+
+"I could follow you next week. Aileen comes down to-day. And I should
+like to wait here for the mail."
+
+"In five days, about, it should be here," said Delafield.
+
+There was a silence. She dropped into a chair beside the balustrade of
+the terrace, which was wreathed in wistaria, and looked out upon the
+vast landscape of the lake. His thought was, "How can the mail matter to
+her? She cannot suppose that he had written--"
+
+Aloud he said, in some embarrassment, "You expect letters yourself?"
+
+"I expect nothing," she said, after a pause. "But Aileen is living on
+the chance of letters."
+
+"There may be nothing for her--except, indeed, her letters to him--poor
+child!"
+
+"She knows that. But the hope keeps her alive."
+
+"And you?" thought Delafield, with an inward groan, as he looked down
+upon her pale profile. He had a moment's hateful vision of himself as
+the elder brother in the parable. Was Julie's mind to be the home of an
+eternal antithesis between the living husband and the dead lover--in
+which the latter had forever the _beau rôle_?
+
+Then, impatiently, Jacob wrenched himself from mean thoughts. It was as
+though he bared his head remorse-fully before the dead man.
+
+"I will go to the Foreign Office," he said, in her ear, "as I pass
+through town. They will have letters. All the information I can get you
+shall have at once."
+
+"Thank you, _mon ami_", she said, almost inaudibly.
+
+Then she looked up, and he was startled by her eyes. Where he had
+expected grief, he saw a shrinking animation.
+
+"Write to me often," she said, imperiously.
+
+"Of course. But don't trouble to answer much. Your hands are so full
+here."
+
+She frowned.
+
+"Trouble! Why do you spoil me so? Demand--insist--that I should write!"
+
+"Very well," he said, smiling, "I demand--I insist!"
+
+She drew a long breath, and went slowly away from him into the house.
+Certainly the antagonism of her secret thoughts, though it persisted,
+was no longer merely cold or critical. For it concerned one who was not
+only the master of his own life, but threatened unexpectedly to become
+the master of hers.
+
+She had begun, indeed, to please her imagination with the idea of a
+relation between them, which, while it ignored the ordinary relations of
+marriage, should yet include many of the intimacies and refinements of
+love. More and more did the surprises of his character arrest and occupy
+her mind. She found, indeed, no "plaster saint." Her cool intelligence
+soon detected the traces of a peevish or stubborn temper, and of a
+natural inertia, perpetually combated, however, by the spiritual energy
+of a new and other self exfoliating from the old; a self whose acts and
+ways she watched, sometimes with the held breath of fascination,
+sometimes with a return of shrinking or fear. That a man should not only
+appear but be so good was still in her eyes a little absurd. Perhaps her
+feeling was at bottom the common feeling of the sceptical nature. "We
+should listen to the higher voices; but in such a way that if another
+hypothesis were true, we should not have been too completely duped."
+
+She was ready, also, to convict him of certain prejudices and
+superstitions which roused in her an intellectual impatience. But when
+all was said, Delafield, unconsciously, was drawing her towards him, as
+the fowler draws a fluttering bird. It was the exquisite refinement of
+those spiritual insights and powers he possessed which constantly
+appealed, not only to her heart, but--a very important matter in Julie's
+case--to her taste, to her own carefully tempered instinct for the rare
+and beautiful.
+
+He was the master, then, she admitted, of a certain vein of spiritual
+genius. Well, here should he lead--and even, if he pleased, command her.
+She would sit at his feet, and he should open to her ranges of feeling,
+delights, and subtleties of moral sensation hitherto unknown to her.
+
+Thus the feeling of ennui and reaction which had marked the first weeks
+of her married life had now wholly disappeared. Delafield was no longer
+dull or pedantic in her eyes. She passed alternately from moments of
+intolerable smart and pity for the dead to moments of agitation and
+expectancy connected with her husband. She thought over their meeting of
+the night before; she looked forward to similar hours to come.
+
+Meanwhile his relation towards her in many matters was still naïvely
+ignorant and humble--determined by the simplicity of a man of some real
+greatness, who never dreamed of claiming tastes or knowledge he did not
+possess, whether in small things or large. This phase, however, only
+gave the more value to one which frequently succeeded it. For suddenly
+the conversation would enter regions where he felt himself peculiarly at
+home, and, with the same unconsciousness on his part, she would be made
+to feel the dignity and authority which surrounded his ethical and
+spiritual life. And these contrasts--this weakness and this
+strength--combined with the man-and-woman element which is always
+present in any situation of the kind, gave rise to a very varied and
+gradually intensifying play of feeling between them. Feeling only
+possible, no doubt, for the _raffinés_ of this world; but for them full
+of strange charm, and even of excitement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Delafield left the little inn for Montreux, Lausanne, and London that
+afternoon. He bent to kiss his wife at the moment of his departure, in
+the bare sitting-room that had been improvised for them on the ground
+floor of the hotel, and as she let her face linger ever so little
+against his she felt strong arms flung round her, and was crushed
+against his breast in a hungry embrace. When he released her with a
+flush and a murmured word of apology she shook her head, smiling sadly
+but saying nothing. The door closed on him, and at the sound she made a
+hasty step forward.
+
+"Jacob! Take me with you!"
+
+But her voice died in the rattle and bustle of the diligence outside,
+and she was left trembling from head to foot, under a conflict of
+emotions that seemed now to exalt, now to degrade her.
+
+Half an hour after Delafield's departure there appeared on the terrace
+of the hotel a tottering, emaciated form--Aileen Moffatt, in a black
+dress and hat, clinging to her mother's arm. But she refused the
+deck--chair, which they had spread with cushions and shawls.
+
+"No; let me sit up." And she took an ordinary chair, looking round upon
+the lake and the little flowery terrace with a slow, absorbed look, like
+one trying to remember. Suddenly she bowed her head on her hands.
+
+"Aileen!" cried Lady Blanche, in an agony.
+
+But the girl motioned her away. "Don't, mummy. I'm all right."
+
+And restraining any further emotion, she laid her arms on the balustrade
+and gazed long and calmly into the purple depths and gleaming snows of
+the Rhône valley. Her hat oppressed her and she took it off, revealing
+the abundance of her delicately golden hair, which, in its lack of
+lustre and spring, seemed to share in the physical distress and loss of
+the whole personality.
+
+The face was that of a doomed creature, incapable now of making any
+successful struggle for the right to live. What had been sensibility had
+become melancholy; the slight, chronic frown was deeper, the pale lips
+more pinched. Yet intermittently there was still great sweetness, the
+last effort of a "beautiful soul" meant for happiness, and withered
+before its time.
+
+As Julie stood beside her, while Lady Blanche had gone to fetch a book
+from the salon, the poor child put out her hand and grasped that
+of Julie.
+
+"It is quite possible I may get the letter to-night," she said, in a
+hurried whisper. "My maid went down to Montreux--there is a clever man
+at the post-office who tried to make it out for us. He thinks it'll be
+to-night."
+
+"Don't be too disappointed if nothing comes," said Julie, caressing the
+hand. Its thinness, its icy and lifeless touch, dismayed her. Ah, how
+easily might this physical wreck have been her doing!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bells of Montreux struck half-past six. A restless and agonized
+expectation began to show itself in all the movements of the invalid.
+She left her chair and began to pace the little terrace on Julie's arm.
+Her dragging step, the mournful black of her dress, the struggle between
+youth and death in her sharpened face, made her a tragic presence. Julie
+could hardly bear it, while all the time she, too, was secretly and
+breathlessly waiting for Warkworth's last words.
+
+Lady Blanche returned, and Julie hurried away.
+
+She passed through the hotel and walked down the Montreux road. The post
+had already reached the first houses of the village, and the postman,
+who knew her, willingly gave her the letters.
+
+Yes, a packet for Aileen, addressed in an unknown hand to a London
+address, and forwarded thence. It bore the Denga postmark.
+
+And another for herself, readdressed from London by Madame Bornier. She
+tore off the outer envelope; beneath was a letter of which the address
+was feebly written in Warkworth's hand: "Mademoiselle Le Breton, 3
+Heribert Street, London."
+
+She had the strength to carry her own letter to her room, to call
+Aileen's maid and send her with the other packet to Lady Blanche. Then
+she locked herself in....
+
+Oh, the poor, crumpled page, and the labored hand-writing!
+
+"Julie, I am dying. They are such good fellows, but they can't save me.
+It's horrible.
+
+"I saw the news of your engagement in a paper the day before I left
+Denga. You're right. He'll make you happy. Tell him I said so. Oh, my
+God, I shall never trouble you again! I bless you for the letter you
+wrote me. Here it is.... No, I can't--can't read it. Drowsy. No pain--"
+
+And here the pen had dropped from his hand. Searching for something
+more, she drew from the envelope the wild and passionate letter she had
+written him at Heribert Street, in the early morning after her return
+from Paris, while she was waiting for Delafield to bring her the news of
+Lord Lackington's state.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The small _table d'hôte_ of the Hotel Michel was still further
+diminished that night. Lady Blanche was with her daughter, and Mrs.
+Delafield did not appear.
+
+But the moon was hanging in glory over the lake when Julie, unable to
+bear her room and her thoughts any longer, threw a lace scarf about her
+head and neck, and went blindly climbing through the upward paths
+leading to Les Avants. The roads were silver in the moonlight; so was
+the lake, save where the great mountain shadows lay across the eastern
+end. And suddenly, white, through pine-trees, "Jaman, delicately tall!"
+
+The air cooled her brow, and from the deep, enveloping night her torn
+heart drew balm, and a first soothing of the pulse of pain. Every now
+and then, as she sat down to rest, a waking dream overshadowed her. She
+seemed to be supporting Warkworth in her arms; his dying head lay upon
+her breast, and she murmured courage and love into his ear. But not as
+Julie Le Breton. Through all the anguish of what was almost an illusion
+of the senses, she still felt herself Delafield's wife. And in that
+flood of silent speech she poured out on Warkworth, it was as though she
+offered him also Jacob's compassion, Jacob's homage, mingled with
+her own.
+
+Once she found herself sitting at the edge of a meadow, environed by the
+heavy scents of flowers. Some apple-trees with whitened trunks rose
+between her and the lake a thousand feet below. The walls of Chillon,
+the houses of Montreux, caught the light; opposite, the deep forests of
+Bouveret and St. Gingolphe lay black upon the lake; above them rode the
+moon. And to the east the high Alps, their pure lines a little effaced
+and withdrawn, as when a light veil hangs over a sanctuary.
+
+Julie looked out upon a vast freedom of space, and by a natural
+connection she seemed to be also surveying her own world of life and
+feeling, her past and her future. She thought of her childhood and her
+parents, of her harsh, combative youth, of the years with Lady Henry, of
+Warkworth, of her husband, and the life into which his strong hand had
+so suddenly and rashly drawn her. Her thoughts took none of the
+religious paths so familiar to his. And yet her reverie was so far
+religious that her mind seemed to herself to be quivering under the
+onset of affections, emotions, awes, till now unknown, and that, looking
+back, she was conscious of a groping sense of significance, of purpose,
+in all that had befallen her. Yet to this sense she could put no words.
+Only, in the end, through the constant action of her visualizing
+imagination, it connected itself with Delafield's face, and with the
+memory of many of his recent acts and sayings.
+
+It was one of those hours which determine the history of a man or woman.
+And the august Alpine beauty entered in, so that Julie, in this sad and
+thrilling act of self-probing, felt herself in the presence of powers
+and dominations divine.
+
+Her face, stained with tears, took gradually some of the calm, the
+loftiness of the night. Yet the close-shut, brooding mouth would slip
+sometimes into a smile exquisitely soft and gentle, as though the heart
+remembered something which seemed to the intelligence at once folly and
+sweetness.
+
+What was going on within her was, to her own consciousness, a strange
+thing. It appeared to her as a kind of simplification, a return to
+childhood; or, rather, was it the emergence in the grown mind, tired
+with the clamor of its own egotistical or passionate life, of some
+instincts, natural to the child, which she, nevertheless, as a child had
+never known; instincts of trust, of self-abandonment, steeped, perhaps,
+in those tears which are themselves only another happiness?...
+
+But hush! What are our poor words in the presence of these nobler
+secrets of the wrestling and mounting spirit!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the way down she saw another figure emerge from the dark.
+
+"Lady Blanche!"
+
+Lady Blanche stood still.
+
+"The hotel was stifling," she said, in a voice that vainly tried for
+steadiness.
+
+Julie perceived that she had been weeping.
+
+"Aileen is asleep?"
+
+"Perhaps. They have given her something to make her sleep."
+
+They walked on towards the hotel.
+
+Julie hesitated.
+
+"She was not disappointed?" she said, at last, in a low voice.
+
+"No!" said the mother, sharply. "But one knew, of course, there must be
+letters for her. Thank God, she can feel that his very last thought was
+for her! The letters which have reached her are dated the day before the
+fatal attack began--giving a complete account of his march--most
+interesting--showing how he trusted her already--though she is such a
+child. It will tranquillize her to feel how completely she possessed his
+heart--poor fellow!"
+
+Julie said nothing, and Lady Blanche, with bitter satisfaction, felt
+rather than saw what seemed to her the just humiliation expressed in the
+drooping and black-veiled figure beside her.
+
+Next day there was once more a tinge of color on Aileen's cheeks. Her
+beautiful hair fell round her once more in a soft life and confusion,
+and the roses which her mother had placed beside her on the bed were not
+in too pitiful contrast with her frail loveliness.
+
+"Read it, please," she said, as soon as she found herself alone with
+Julie, pushing her letter tenderly towards her. "He tells me
+everything--everything! All he was doing and hoping--consults me in
+everything. Isn't it an honor--when I'm so ignorant and childish? I'll
+try to be brave--try to be worthy--"
+
+And while her whole frame was shaken with deep, silent sobs, she
+greedily watched Julie read the letter.
+
+"Oughtn't I to try and live," she said, dashing away her tears, as Julie
+returned it, "when he loved me so?"
+
+Julie kissed her with a passionate and guilty pity. The letter might
+have been written to any friend, to any charming child for whom a much
+older man had a kindness. It gave a business-like account of their
+march, dilated on one or two points of policy, drew some humorous
+sketches of his companions, and concluded with a few affectionate and
+playful sentences.
+
+But when the wrestle with death began, Warkworth wrote but one last
+letter, uttered but one cry of the heart, and it lay now in
+Julie's bosom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few days passed. Delafield's letters were short and full of sadness.
+Elmira still lived; but any day or hour might see the end. As for the
+father--But the subject was too tragic to be written of, even to her.
+Not to feel, not to realize; there lay the only chance of keeping one's
+own courage, and so of being any help whatever to two of the most
+miserable of human beings.
+
+At last, rather more than a week after Delafield's departure, came
+two telegrams. One was from Delafield--"Mervyn died this morning.
+Duke's condition causes great anxiety." The other from Evelyn
+Crowborough--"Elmira died this morning. Going down to Shropshire to
+help Jacob."
+
+Julie threw down the telegrams. A rush of proud tears came to her eyes.
+She swept to the door of her room, opened it, and called her maid.
+
+The maid came, and when she saw the sparkling looks and strained bearing
+of her mistress, wondered what crime she was to be rebuked for. Julie
+merely bade her pack at once, as it was her intention to catch the
+eight o'clock through train at Lausanne that night for England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Twenty hours later the train carrying Julie to London entered Victoria
+Station. On the platform stood the little Duchess, impatiently
+expectant. Julie was clasped in her arms, and had no time to wonder at
+the pallor and distraction of her friend before she was hurried into the
+brougham waiting beyond the train.
+
+"Oh, Julie!" cried the Duchess, catching the traveller's hands, as they
+drove away. "Julie, darling!"
+
+Julie turned to her in amazement. The blue eyes fixed upon her had no
+tears, but in them, and in the Duchess's whole aspect, was expressed a
+vivid horror and agitation which struck at Julie's heart.
+
+"What is it?" she said, catching her breath. "What is it?"
+
+"Julie, I was going to Faircourt this morning. First your telegram
+stopped me. I thought I'd wait and go with you. Then came another, from
+Delafield. The Duke! The poor Duke!"
+
+Julie's attitude changed unconsciously--instantly.
+
+"Yes; tell me!"
+
+"It's in all the papers to-night--on the placards--don't look out!" And
+the Duchess lifted her hand and drew down the blinds of the brougham.
+"He was in a most anxious state yesterday, but they thought him calmer
+at night, and he insisted on being left alone. The doctors still kept a
+watch, but he managed in some mysterious way to evade them all, and this
+morning he was missed. After two hours they found him--in the river
+that runs below the house!"
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"And Jacob?" said Julie, hoarsely.
+
+"That's what I'm so anxious about," exclaimed the Duchess. "Oh, I am
+thankful you've come! You know how Jacob's always felt about the Duke
+and Mervyn--how he's hated the notion of succeeding. And Susan, who went
+down yesterday, telegraphed to me last night--before this horror--that
+he was 'terribly strained and overwrought.'"
+
+"Succeeding?" said Julie, vaguely. Mechanically she had drawn up the
+blind again, and her eyes followed the dingy lines of the Vauxhall
+Bridge Road, till suddenly they turned away from the placards outside a
+small stationer's shop which announced: "Tragic death of the Duke of
+Chudleigh and his son."
+
+The Duchess looked at her curiously without replying. Julie seemed to be
+grappling with some idea which escaped her, or, rather, was presently
+expelled by one more urgent.
+
+"Is Jacob ill?" she said, abruptly, looking her companion full in the
+face.
+
+"I only know what I've told you. Susan says 'strained and overwrought.'
+Oh, it'll be all right when he gets you!"
+
+Julie made no reply. She sat motionless, and the Duchess, stealing
+another glance at her, must needs, even in this tragic turmoil, allow
+herself the reflection that she was a more delicate study in
+black-and-white, a more refined and accented personality than ever.
+
+"You won't mind," said Evelyn, timidly, after a pause; "but Lady Henry
+is staying with me, and also Sir Wilfrid Bury, who had such a bad cold
+in his lodgings that I went down there a week ago, got the doctor's
+leave, and carried him off there and then. And Mr. Montresor's coming
+in. He particularly wanted, he said, just to press your hand. But they
+sha'n't bother you if you're tired. Our train goes at 10.10, and Freddie
+has got the express stopped for us at Westonport--about three in
+the morning."
+
+The carriage rolled into Grosvenor Square, and presently stopped before
+Crowborough House. Julie alighted, looked round her at the July green of
+the square, at the brightness of the window-boxes, and then at the groom
+of the chambers who was taking her wraps from her--the same man who, in
+the old days, used to feed Lady Henry's dogs with sweet biscuit. It
+struck her that he was showing her a very particular and eager
+attention.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile in the Duchess's drawing--room a little knot of people was
+gathered--Lady Henry, Sir Wilfrid Bury, and Dr. Meredith. Their demeanor
+illustrated both the subduing and the exciting influence of great
+events. Lady Henry was more talkative than usual. Sir Wilfrid
+more silent.
+
+Lady Henry seemed to have profited by her stay at Torquay. As she sat
+upright in a stiff chair, her hands resting on her stick, she presented
+her characteristic aspect of English solidity, crossed by a certain free
+and foreign animation. She had been already wrangling with Sir Wilfrid,
+and giving her opinion freely on the "socialistic" views on rank and
+property attributed to Jacob Delafield. "If _he_ can't digest the cake,
+that doesn't mean it isn't good," had been her last impatient remark,
+when Sir Wilfrid interrupted her.
+
+"Only a few minutes more," he said, looking at his watch. "Now, then,
+what line do we take? How much is our friend likely to know?"
+
+"Unless she has lost her eyesight--which Evelyn has not reported--she
+will know most of what matters before she has gone a hundred yards from
+the station," said Lady Henry, dryly.
+
+"Oh, the streets! Yes; but persons are often curiously dazed by such a
+gallop of events."
+
+"Not Julie Le Breton!"
+
+"I should like to be informed as to the part you are about to play,"
+said Sir Wilfrid, in a lower voice, "that I may play up to it. Where
+are you?"
+
+Both looked at Meredith, who had walked to a distant window and was
+standing there looking out upon the square. Lady Henry was well aware
+that _he_ had not forgiven her, and, to tell the truth, was rather
+anxious that he should. So she, too, dropped her voice.
+
+"I bow to the institutions of my country," she said, a little sparkle in
+the strong, gray eye.
+
+"In other words, you forgive a duchess?"
+
+"I acknowledge the head of the family, and the greater carries the
+less."
+
+"Suppose Jacob should be unforgiving?"
+
+"He hasn't the spirit."
+
+"And she?"
+
+"Her conscience will be on my side."
+
+"I thought it was your theory that she had none?"
+
+"Jacob, let us hope, will have developed some. He has a good deal to
+spare."
+
+Sir Wilfrid laughed. "So it is you who will do the pardoning?"
+
+"I shall offer an armed and honorable peace. The Duchess of Chudleigh
+may intrigue and tell lies, if she pleases. I am not giving her a
+hundred a year."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Why, if I may ask," said Sir Wilfrid, at the end of it, "did you
+quarrel with Jacob? I understand there was a separate cause:"
+
+Lady Henry hesitated.
+
+"He paid me a debt," she said, at last, and a sudden flush rose in her
+old, blanched cheek.
+
+"And that annoyed you? You have the oddest code!"
+
+Lady Henry bit her lip.
+
+"One does not like one's money thrown in one's face."
+
+"Most unreasonable of women!"
+
+"Never mind, Wilfrid. We all have our feelings."
+
+"Precisely. Well, no doubt Jacob will make peace. As for--Ah, here comes
+Montresor!"
+
+A visible tremor passed through Lady Henry. The door was thrown open,
+and the footman announced the Minister for War.
+
+"Her grace, sir, is not yet returned."
+
+Montresor stumbled into the room, and even with his eye-glasses
+carefully adjusted, did not at once perceive who was in it.
+
+Sir Wilfrid went towards him.
+
+"Ah, Bury! Convalescent, I hope?"
+
+"Quite. The Duchess has gone to meet Mrs. Delafield."
+
+"Mrs.--?" Montresor's mouth opened. "But, of course, you know?"
+
+"Oh yes, I know. But one's tongue has to get oiled. You see Lady Henry?"
+
+Montresor started.
+
+"I am glad to see Lady Henry," he replied, stiffly.
+
+Lady Henry slowly rose and advanced two steps. She quietly held out her
+hand to him, and, smiling, looked him in the face.
+
+"Take it. There is no longer any cause of quarrel between us. I raise
+the embargo."
+
+The Minister took the hand, and shook his head.
+
+"Ah, but you had no right to impose it," he said, with energy.
+
+"Oh, for goodness sake, meet me half-way," cried Lady Henry, "or I shall
+never hold out!"
+
+Sir Wilfrid, whose half-embarrassed gaze was bent on the ground, looked
+up and was certain that he saw a gleam of moisture in those
+wrinkled eyes.
+
+"Why have you held out so long? What does it matter to me whether Miss
+Julie be a duchess or no? That doesn't make up to me for all the months
+you've shut your door on me. And I was always given to understand,
+by-the-way, that it wouldn't matter to you."
+
+"I've had three months at Torquay," said Lady Henry, raising her
+shoulders.
+
+"I hope it was dull to distraction."
+
+"It was. And my doctor tells me the more I fret the more gout I may
+expect."
+
+"So all this is not generosity, but health?"
+
+"Kiss my hand, sir, and have done with it! You are all avenged. At
+Torquay I had four companions in seven weeks."
+
+"More power to them!" said Montresor. "Meredith, come here. Shall we
+accept the pleas?"
+
+Meredith came slowly from the window, his hands behind his back.
+
+"Lady Henry commands and we obey," he said, slowly. "But to-day begins a
+new world--founded in ruin, like the rest of them."
+
+He raised his fine eyes, in which there was no laughter, rather a dreamy
+intensity. Lady Henry shrank.
+
+"If you're thinking of Chudleigh," she said, uncertainly, "be glad for
+him. It was release. As for Henry Warkworth--"
+
+"Ah, poor fellow!" said Montresor, perfunctorily. "Poor fellow!"
+
+He had dropped Lady Henry's hand, but he now recaptured it, enclosing
+the thin, jewelled fingers in his own.
+
+"Well, well, then it's peace, with all my heart." He stooped and lightly
+kissed the fingers. "And now, when do you expect our friend?"
+
+"At any moment," said Lady Henry.
+
+She seated herself, and Montresor beside her.
+
+"I am told," said Montresor, "that this horror will not only affect
+Delafield personally, but that he will regard the dukedom as a
+calamity."
+
+"Hm!--and you believe it?" said Lady Henry.
+
+"I try to," was the Minister's laughing reply. "Ah, surely, here they
+are!"
+
+Meredith turned from the window, to which he had gone back.
+
+"The carriage has just arrived," he announced, and he stood fidgeting,
+standing first on one foot, then on the other, and running his hand
+through his mane of gray hair. His large features were pale, and any
+close observer would have detected the quiver of emotion.
+
+A sound of voices from the anteroom, the Duchess's light tones floating
+to the top. At the same time a door on the other side of the
+drawing-room opened and the Duke of Crowborough appeared.
+
+"I think I hear my wife," he said, as he greeted Montresor and hurriedly
+crossed the room.
+
+There was a rustle of quick steps, and the little Duchess entered.
+
+"Freddie, here is Julie!"
+
+Behind appeared a tall figure in black. Everybody in the room advanced,
+including Lady Henry, who, however, after a few steps stood still behind
+the others, leaning on her stick.
+
+Julie looked round the little circle, then at the Duke of Crowborough,
+who had gravely given her his hand. The suppressed excitement already in
+the room clearly communicated itself to her. She did not lose her
+self-command for an instant, but her face pleaded.
+
+"Is it really true? Perhaps there is some mistake?"
+
+"I fear there can be none," said the Duke, sadly. "Poor Chudleigh had
+been long dead when they found him."
+
+"Freddie," said the Duchess, interrupting, "I have told Greswell we
+shall want the carriage at half-past nine for Euston. Will that do?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+Greswell, the handsome groom of the chambers, approached Julie.
+
+"Your grace's maid wishes to know whether it is your grace's wish that
+she should go round to Heribert Street before taking the luggage
+to Euston?"
+
+Julie looked at the man, bewildered. Then a stormy color rushed into her
+cheeks.
+
+"Does he mean my maid?" she said to the Duke, piteously.
+
+"Certainly. Will you give your orders?"
+
+She gave them, and then, turning again to the Duke, she covered her eyes
+with her hands a moment.
+
+"What does it all mean?" she said, faltering. "It seems as though we
+were all mad."
+
+"You understand, of course, that Jacob succeeds?" said the Duke, not
+without coldness; and he stood still an instant, gazing at this woman,
+who must now, he supposed, feel herself at the very summit of her
+ambitions.
+
+Julie drew a long breath. Then she perceived Lady Henry. Instantly,
+impetuously, she crossed the room. But as she reached that composed and
+formidable figure, the old timidity, the old fear, seized her. She
+paused abruptly, but she held out her hand.
+
+Lady Henry took it. The two women stood regarding each other, while the
+other persons in the room instinctively turned away from their meeting.
+Lady Henry's first look was one of curiosity. Then, before the
+indefinable, ennobling change in Julie's face, now full of the pale
+agitation of memory, the eyes of the older woman wavered and dropped.
+But she soon recovered herself.
+
+"We meet again under very strange circumstances," she said, quietly;
+"though I have long foreseen them. As for our former experience, we were
+in a false relation, and it made fools of us both. You and Jacob are now
+the heads of the family. And if you like to make friends with me on this
+new footing, I am ready. As to my behavior, I think it was natural; but
+if it rankles in your mind, I apologize."
+
+The personal pride of the owner, curbed in its turn by the pride of
+tradition and family, spoke strangely from these words. Julie stood
+trembling, her chest heaving.
+
+"I, too, regret--and apologize," she said, in a low voice.
+
+"Then we begin again. But now you must let Evelyn take you to rest for
+an hour or two. I am sorry you have this hurried journey to-night."
+
+Julie pressed her hands to her breast with one of those dramatic
+movements that were natural to her.
+
+"Oh, I must see Jacob!" she said, under her breath--"I must see Jacob!"
+
+And she turned away, looking vaguely round her. Meredith approached.
+
+"Comfort yourself," he said, very gently, pressing her hand in both of
+his. "It has been a great shock, but when you get there he'll be
+all right."
+
+"Jacob?"
+
+Her expression, the piteous note in her voice, awoke in him an answering
+sense of pain. He wondered how it might be between the husband and wife.
+Yet it was borne in upon him, as upon Lady Henry, that her marriage,
+however interpreted, had brought with it profound and intimate
+transformation. A different woman stood before him. And when, after a
+few more words, the Duchess swept down upon them, insisting that Julie
+must rest awhile, Meredith stood looking after the retreating figures,
+filled with the old, bitter sense of human separateness, and the
+fragmentariness of all human affections. Then he made his farewells to
+the Duke and Lady Henry, and slipped away. He had turned a page in the
+book of life; and as he walked through Grosvenor Square he applied his
+mind resolutely to one of the political "causes" with which, as a
+powerful and fighting journalist, he was at that moment occupied.
+
+Lady Henry, too, watched Julie's exit from the room.
+
+"So now she supposes herself in love with Jacob?" she thought, with
+amusement, as she resumed her seat.
+
+"What if Delafield refuses to be made a duke?" said Sir Wilfrid, in her
+ear.
+
+"It would be a situation new to the Constitution," said Lady Henry,
+composedly. "I advise you, however, to wait till it occurs."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The northern express rushed onward through the night. Rugby, Stafford,
+Crewe had been left behind. The Yorkshire valleys and moors began to
+show themselves in pale ridges and folds under the moon. Julie, wakeful
+in her corner opposite the little, sleeping Duchess, was conscious of an
+interminable rush of images through a brain that longed for a few
+unconscious and forgetful moments. She thought of the deferential
+station-master at Euston; of the fuss attending their arrival on the
+platform; of the arrangements made for stopping the express at the
+Yorkshire Station, where they were to alight.
+
+Faircourt? Was it the great Early-Georgian house of which she had heard
+Jacob speak--the vast pile, half barrack, half palace, in which,
+according to him, no human being could be either happy or at home?
+
+And this was now his--and hers? Again the whirl of thoughts swept and
+danced round her.
+
+A wild, hill country. In the valleys, the blackness of thick trees, the
+gleam of rivers, the huge, lifeless factories; and beyond, the high,
+silver edges, the sharp shadows of the moors.... The train slackened,
+and the little Duchess woke at once.
+
+"Ten minutes to three. Oh, Julie, here we are!"
+
+The dawn was just coldly showing as they alighted. Carriages and
+servants were waiting, and various persons whose identity and function
+it was not easy to grasp. One of them, however, at once approached Julie
+with a privileged air, and she perceived that he was a doctor.
+
+"I am very glad that your grace has come," he said, as he raised his
+hat. "The trouble with the Duke is shock, and want of sleep."
+
+Julie looked at him, still bewildered.
+
+"How long has my husband been ill?"
+
+He walked on beside her, describing in as few words as possible the
+harrowing days preceding the death of the boy, Delafield's attempts to
+soothe and control the father, the stratagem by which the poor Duke had
+outwitted them all, and the weary hours of search through the night,
+under a drizzling rain, which had resulted, about dawn, in the discovery
+of the Duke's body in one of the deeper holes of the river.
+
+"When the procession returned to the house, your husband"--the speaker
+framed the words uncertainly--"had a long fainting-fit. It was probably
+caused by the exhaustion of the search--many hours without food--and
+many sleepless nights. We kept him in his room all day. But towards
+evening he insisted on getting up. The restlessness he shows is itself a
+sign of shock. I trust, now you are here, you may be able to persuade
+him to spare himself. Otherwise the consequences might be grave."
+
+The drive to the house lay mainly through a vast park, dotted with stiff
+and melancholy woods. The morning was cloudy; even the wild roses in the
+hedges and the daisies in the grass had neither gayety nor color. Soon
+the house appeared--an immense pile of stone, with a pillared centre,
+and wings to east and west, built in a hollow, gray and sunless. The
+mournful blinds drawn closely down made of it rather a mausoleum for the
+dead than a home for the living.
+
+At the approach of the carriage, however, doors were thrown open,
+servants appeared, and on the steps, trembling and heavy-eyed, stood
+Susan Delafield.
+
+She looked timidly at Julie, and then, as they passed into the great
+central hall, the two kissed each other with tears.
+
+"He is in his room, waiting for you. The doctors persuaded him not to
+come down. But he is dressed, and reading and writing. We don't believe
+he has slept at all for a week."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Through there," said Susan Delafield, stepping back. "That is the
+door."
+
+[Illustration: "SHE FOUND HERSELF KNEELING BESIDE HIM"]
+
+Julie softly opened it, and closed it behind her. Delafield had heard
+her approach, and was standing by the table, supporting himself upon it.
+His aspect filled Julie with horror. She ran to him and threw her
+arms round him. He sank back into his chair, and she found herself
+kneeling beside him, murmuring to him, while his head rested upon
+her shoulder.
+
+"Jacob, I am here! Oh, I ought to have been here all through! It's
+terrible--terrible! But, Jacob, you won't suffer so--now I'm here--now
+we're together--now I love you, Jacob?"
+
+Her voice broke in tears. She put back the hair from his brow, kissing
+him with a tenderness in which there was a yearning and lovely humility.
+Then she drew a little away, waiting for him to speak, in an agony.
+
+But for a time he seemed unable to speak. He feebly released himself, as
+though he could not bear the emotion she offered him, and his
+eyes closed.
+
+"Jacob, come and lie down!" she said, in terror. "Let me call the
+doctors."
+
+He shook his head, and a faint pressure from his hand bade her sit
+beside him.
+
+"I shall be better soon. Give me time. I'll tell you--"
+
+Then silence again. She sat holding his hand, her eyes fixed upon him.
+Time passed, she knew not how. Susan came into the room--a small
+sitting-room in the east wing--to tell her that the neighboring bedroom
+had been prepared for herself. Julie only looked up for an instant with
+a dumb sign of refusal. A doctor came in, and Delafield made a painful
+effort to take the few spoonfuls of food and stimulant pressed upon him.
+Then he buried his face in the side of the arm-chair.
+
+"Please let us be alone," he said, with a touch of his old
+peremptoriness, and both Susan and the doctor obeyed.
+
+But it was long before he could collect energy enough to talk. When he
+did, he made an effort to tell her the story of the boy's death, and the
+father's self-destruction. He told it leaning forward in his chair, his
+eyes on the ground, his hands loosely joined, his voice broken and
+labored. Julie listened, gathering from his report an impression of
+horror, tragic and irremediable, similar to that which had shaken the
+balance of his own mind. And when he suddenly looked up with the words,
+"And now _I_ am expected to take their place--to profit by their deaths!
+What rightful law of God or man binds me to accept a life and a
+responsibility that I loathe?" Julie drew back as though he had struck
+her. His face, his tone were not his own--there was a violence, a threat
+in them, addressed, as it were, specially to _her_. "If it were not for
+you," his eyes seemed to say, "I could refuse this thing, which will
+destroy me, soul and body."
+
+She was silent, her pulses fluttering, and he resumed, speaking like one
+groping his way:
+
+"I could have done the work, of course--I have done it for five years. I
+could have looked after the estate and the people. But the money, the
+paraphernalia, the hordes of servants, the mummery of the life! Why,
+Julie, should we be forced into it? What happiness--I ask you--what
+happiness can it bring to either of us?"
+
+And again he looked up, and again it seemed to Julie that his expression
+was one of animated hostility and antagonism--antagonism to her, as
+embodying for the moment all the arguments--of advantage, custom,
+law--he was, in his own mind, fighting and denying. With a failing heart
+she felt herself very far from him. Was there not also something in his
+attitude, unconsciously, of that old primal antagonism of the man to
+the woman, of the stronger to the weaker, the more spiritual to the
+more earthy?
+
+"You think, no doubt," he said, after a pause, "that it is my duty to
+take this thing, even if I _could_ lay it down?"
+
+"I don't know what I think," she said, hurriedly. "It is very strange,
+of course, what you say. We ought to discuss it thoroughly. Let me have
+a little time."
+
+He gave an impatient sigh, then suddenly rose.
+
+"Will you come and look at them?"
+
+She, too, rose and put her hand in his.
+
+"Take me where you will."
+
+"It is not horrible," he said, shading his eyes a moment. "They are at
+peace."
+
+With a feeble step, leaning on her arm, he guided her through the great,
+darkened house. Julie was dimly aware of wide staircases, of galleries
+and high halls, of the pictures of past Delafields looking down upon
+them. The morning was now far advanced. Many persons were at work in the
+house, but Julie was conscious of them only as distant figures that
+vanished at their approach. They walked alone, guarded from all
+intrusion by the awe and sympathy of the unseen human beings
+around them.
+
+Delafield opened the closed door.
+
+The father and son lay together, side by side, the boy's face in a very
+winning repose, which at first sight concealed the traces of his long
+suffering; the father's also--closed eyes and sternly shut
+mouth--suggesting, not the despair which had driven him to his death,
+but, rather, as in sombre triumph, the all-forgetting, all-effacing
+sleep which he had won from death.
+
+They stood a moment, till Delafield fell on his knees. Julie knelt
+beside him. She prayed for a while; then she wearied, being, indeed,
+worn out with her journey. But Delafield was motionless, and it seemed
+to Julie that he hardly breathed.
+
+She rose to her feet, and found her eyes for the first time flooded with
+tears. Never for many weeks had she felt so lonely, or so utterly
+unhappy. She would have given anything to forget herself in comforting
+Jacob. But he seemed to have no need of her, no thought of her.
+
+As she vaguely looked round her, she saw that beside the dead man was a
+table holding some violets--the only flowers in the room--some
+photographs, and a few well--worn books. Softly she took up one. It was
+a copy of the _Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_, much noted and
+underlined. It would have seemed to her sacrilege to look too close; but
+she presently perceived a letter between its pages, and in the morning
+light, which now came strongly into the room through a window looking on
+the garden, she saw plainly that it was written on thin, foreign paper,
+that it was closed, and addressed to her husband.
+
+"Jacob!"
+
+She touched him softly on the shoulder, alarmed by his long immobility.
+
+He looked up, and it appeared to Julie as though he were shaking off
+with difficulty some abnormal and trancelike state. But he rose, looking
+at her strangely.
+
+"Jacob, this is yours."
+
+He took the book abruptly, almost as if she had no right to be holding
+it. Then, as he saw the letter, the color rushed into his face. He took
+it, and after a moment's hesitation walked to the window and opened it.
+
+She saw him waver, and ran to his support. But he put out a hand which
+checked her.
+
+"It was the last thing he wrote," he said; and then, uncertainly, and
+without reading any but the first words of the letter, he put it into
+his pocket.
+
+Julie drew back, humiliated. His gesture said that to a secret so
+intimate and sacred he did not propose to admit his wife.
+
+They went back silently to the room from which they had come. Sentence
+after sentence came to Julie's lips, but it seemed useless to say them,
+and once more, but in a totally new way, she was "afraid" of the man
+beside her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She left him shortly after, by his own wish.
+
+"I will lie down, and you must rest," he said, with decision.
+
+So she bathed and dressed, and presently she allowed the kind,
+fair-haired Susan to give her food, and pour out her own history of the
+death-week which she and Jacob had passed through. But in all that was
+said, Julie noticed that Susan spoke of her brother very little, and of
+his inheritance and present position not at all. And once or twice she
+noticed a wondering or meditative expression in the girl's charming eyes
+as they rested on herself, and realized that the sense of mystery, of
+hushed expectancy, was not confined to her own mind.
+
+When Susan left her at nine o'clock, it was to give a number of
+necessary orders in the house. The inquest was to be held in the
+morning, and the whole day would be filled with arrangements for the
+double funeral. The house would be thronged with officials of all sorts.
+"Poor Jacob!" said the sister, sighing, as she went away.
+
+But the tragic tumult had not yet begun. The house was still quiet, and
+Julie was for the first time alone.
+
+She drew up the blinds, and stood gazing out upon the park, now flooded
+with light; at the famous Italian garden beneath the windows, with its
+fountains and statues; at the wide lake which filled the middle
+distance; and the hills beyond it, with the plantations and avenues
+which showed the extension of the park as far as the eye could see.
+
+Julie knew very well what it all implied. Her years with Lady Henry, in
+connection with her own hidden sense of birth and family, had shown her
+with sufficient plainness the conditions under which the English noble
+lives. She _was_ actually, at that moment, Duchess of Chudleigh; her
+strong intelligence faced and appreciated the fact; the social scope and
+power implied in those three words were all the more vivid to her
+imagination because of her history and up-bringing. She had not grown to
+maturity _inside_, like Delafield, but as an exile from a life which was
+yet naturally hers--an exile, full, sometimes, of envy, and the
+passions of envy.
+
+It had no terrors for her--quite the contrary--this high social state.
+Rather, there were moments when her whole nature reached out to it, in a
+proud and confident ambition. Nor had she any mystical demurrer to make.
+The originality which in some ways she richly possessed was not
+concerned in the least with the upsetting of class distinctions, and as
+a Catholic she had been taught loyally to accept them.
+
+The minutes passed away. Julie sank deeper and deeper into reverie, her
+head leaning against the side of the window, her hands clasped before
+her on her black dress. Once or twice she found the tears dropping from
+her eyes, and once or twice she smiled.
+
+She was not thinking of the tragic circumstances amid which she stood.
+From that short trance of feeling even the piteous figures of the dead
+father and son faded away. Warkworth entered into it, but already
+invested with the passionless and sexless beauty of a world
+where--whether it be to us poetry or reality--"they neither marry nor
+are given in marriage." Her warm and living thoughts spent themselves on
+one theme only--the redressing of a spiritual balance. She was no longer
+a beggar to her husband; she had the wherewithal to give. She had been
+the mere recipient, burdened with debts beyond her paying; now--
+
+And then it was that her smiles came--tremluous, fugitive, exultant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A bell rang in the long corridor, and the slight sound recalled her to
+life and action. She walked towards the door which separated her from
+the sitting-room where she had left her husband, and opened it
+without knocking.
+
+Delafield was sitting at a writing-table in the window. He had
+apparently been writing; but she found him in a moment of pause, playing
+absently with the pen he still held.
+
+As she entered he looked up, and it seemed to her that his aspect and
+his mood had changed. Her sudden and indefinable sense of this made it
+easier for her to hasten to him, and to hold out her hands to him.
+
+"Jacob, you asked me a question just now, and I begged you to give me
+time. But I am here to answer it. If it would be to your happiness to
+refuse the dukedom, refuse it. I will not stand in your way, and I will
+never reproach you. I suppose"--she made herself smile upon him--"there
+are ways of doing such a strange thing. You will be much criticised,
+perhaps much blamed. But if it seems to you right, do it. I'll just
+stand by you and help you. Whatever makes you happy shall make me happy,
+if only--"
+
+Delafield had risen impetuously and held her by both hands. His breast
+heaved, and the hurrying of her own breath would now hardly let
+her speak.
+
+"If only what?" he said, hoarsely.
+
+She raised her eyes.
+
+"If only, _mon ami_"--she disengaged one hand and laid it gently on his
+shoulder--"you will give me your trust, and"--her voice
+dropped--"your love!"
+
+They gazed at each other. Between them, around them hovered thoughts of
+the past--of Warkworth, of the gray Channel waves, of the spiritual
+relation which had grown up between them in Switzerland, mingled with
+the consciousness of this new, incalculable present, and of the growth
+and change in themselves.
+
+"You'd give it all up?" said Delafield, gently, still holding her at
+arm's-length.
+
+"Yes," she nodded to him, with a smile.
+
+"For me? For my sake?"
+
+She smiled again. He drew a long breath, and turning to the table
+behind him, took up a letter which was lying there.
+
+"I want you to read that," he said, holding it out to her.
+
+She drew back, with a little, involuntary frown.
+
+He understood.
+
+"Dearest," he cried, pressing her hand passionately, "I have been in the
+grip of all the powers of death! Read it--be good to me!"
+
+Standing beside him, with his arm round her, she read the melancholy
+Duke's last words:
+
+     "My Dear Jacob,--I leave you a heavy task, which I know well
+     is, in your eyes, a mere burden. But, for my sake, accept it.
+     The man who runs away has small right to counsel courage. But
+     you know what my struggle has been. You'll judge me
+     mercifully, if no one else does. There is in you, too, the
+     little, bitter drop that spoils us all; but you won't be
+     alone. You have your wife, and you love her. Take my place
+     here, care for our people, speak of us sometimes to your
+     children, and pray for us. I bless you, dear fellow. The only
+     moments of comfort I have ever known this last year have come
+     from you. I would live on if I could, but I must--_must_ have
+     sleep."
+
+Julie dropped the paper. She turned to look at her husband.
+
+"Since I read that," he said, in a low voice, "I have been sitting here
+alone--or, rather, it is my belief that I have not been alone. But"--he
+hesitated--"it is very difficult for me to speak of that--even to you.
+At any rate, I have felt the touch of discipline, of command. My poor
+cousin deserted. I, it seems"--he drew a long and painful breath--"must
+keep to the ranks."
+
+"Let us discuss it," said Julie; and sitting down, hand in hand, they
+talked quietly and gravely.
+
+Suddenly, Delafield turned to her with renewed emotion.
+
+"I feel already the energy, the honorable ambition you will bring to it.
+But still, you'd have given it up, Julie? You'd have given it up?"
+
+Julie chose her words.
+
+"Yes. But now that we are to keep it, will you hate me if, some
+day--when we are less sad--I get pleasure from it? I sha'n't be able to
+help it. When we were at La Verna, I felt that you ought to have been
+born in the thirteenth century, that you were really meant to wed
+poverty and follow St. Francis. But now you have got to be horribly,
+hopelessly rich. And I, all the time, am a worldling, and a modern. What
+you'll suffer from, I shall perhaps--enjoy."
+
+The word fell harshly on the darkened room. Delafield shivered, as
+though he felt the overshadowing dead. Julie impetuously took his hand.
+
+"It will be my part to be a worldling--for your sake," she said, her
+breath wavering. Their eyes met. From her face shone a revelation, a
+beauty that enwrapped them both. Delafield fell on his knees beside her,
+and laid his head upon her breast. The exquisite gesture with which she
+folded her arms about him told her inmost thought. At last he needed
+her, and the dear knowledge filled and tamed her heart.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Lady Rose's Daughter, by Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lady Rose's Daughter, by Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lady Rose's Daughter
+
+Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
+Release Date: October 18, 2004 [EBook #13782]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY ROSE'S DAUGHTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<a name="illus-000.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/illus-000.jpg"><img src=
+"images/illus-000.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"AS THOUGH SHE LISTENED STILL TO WORDS IN HER EARS"</b><br>
+[See page <a href="#VIII">122</a>]</p>
+<h1>Lady Rose's Daughter</h1>
+<h3>A Novel</h3>
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h2>MRS. HUMPHRY WARD</h2>
+<h5>Author of "Eleanor" "Robert Elsmere" etc. etc.</h5>
+<br>
+<h4>ILLUSTRATED BY<br>
+HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY</h4>
+<h5>1903</h5>
+<center>[<a href="#I">1</a>] [<a href="#II">2</a>] [<a href=
+"#III">3</a>] [<a href="#IV">4</a>] [<a href="#V">5</a>] [<a href=
+"#VI">6</a>] [<a href="#VII">7</a>] [<a href="#VIII">8</a>]
+[<a href="#IX">9</a>] [<a href="#X">10</a>]<br>
+[<a href="#XI">11</a>] [<a href="#XII">12</a>] [<a href=
+"#XIII">13</a>] [<a href="#XIV">14</a>] [<a href="#XV">15</a>]
+[<a href="#XVI">16</a>] [<a href="#XVII">17</a>] [<a href=
+"#XVIII">18</a>] [<a href="#XIX">19</a>] [<a href="#XX">20</a>]<br>
+[<a href="#XXI">21</a>] [<a href="#XXII">22</a>] [<a href=
+"#XXIII">23</a>] [<a href="#XXIV">24</a>]</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>ILLUSTRATION</h2>
+<center>
+<table summary="">
+<tr>
+<td>"AS THOUGH SHE LISTENED STILL TO WORDS IN HER EARS"</td>
+<td align="right"><i><a href=
+"#illus-000.jpg">Frontispiece</a></i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>"LADY HENRY LISTENED EAGERLY"</td>
+<td align="right"><i>Facing p</i>. <a href=
+"#illus-030.jpg">30</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>"'INDEED I WILL!' CRIED SIR WILFRID, AND THEY WALKED ON"</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illus-052.jpg">52</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>"LADY HENRY GASPED. SHE FELL BACK INTO HER CHAIR"</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illus-100.jpg">100</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>"HE ENTERED UPON A MERRY SCENE"</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illus-242.jpg">242</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>"'FOR MY ROSE'S CHILD,' HE SAID, GENTLY"</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illus-254.jpg">254</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>"HER HANDS CLASPED IN FRONT OF HER"</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illus-356.jpg">356</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>"SHE FOUND HERSELF KNEELING BESIDE HIM"</td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illus-480.jpg">480</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>LADY ROSE'S DAUGHTER</h1>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="I"></a>I</h2>
+<br>
+<p>"Hullo! No!--Yes!--upon my soul, it <i>is</i> Jacob! Why,
+Delafield, my dear fellow, how are you?"</p>
+<p>So saying--on a February evening a good many years ago--an
+elderly gentleman in evening dress flung himself out of his cab,
+which had just stopped before a house in Bruton Street, and hastily
+went to meet a young man who was at the same moment stepping out of
+another hansom a little farther down the pavement.</p>
+<p>The pleasure in the older man's voice rang clear, and the
+younger met him with an equal cordiality, expressed perhaps through
+a manner more leisurely and restrained.</p>
+<p>"So you <i>are</i> home, Sir Wilfrid? You were announced, I saw.
+But I thought Paris would have detained you a bit."</p>
+<p>"Paris? Not I! Half the people I ever knew there are dead, and
+the rest are uncivil. Well, and how are you getting on? Making your
+fortune, eh?"</p>
+<p>And, slipping his arm inside the young man's, the speaker walked
+back with him, along a line of carriages, towards a house which
+showed a group of footmen at its open door. Jacob Delafield
+smiled.</p>
+<p>"The business of a land agent seems to be to spend some one
+else's--as far as I've yet gone."</p>
+<p>"Land agent! I thought you were at the bar?"</p>
+<p>"I was, but the briefs didn't come in. My cousin offered me the
+care of his Essex estates. I like the country--always have. So I
+thought I'd better accept."</p>
+<p>"What--the Duke? Lucky fellow! A regular income, and no
+anxieties. I expect you're pretty well paid?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I'm not badly paid," replied the young man, tranquilly. "Of
+course you're going to Lady Henry's?"</p>
+<p>"Of course. Here we are."</p>
+<p>The older man paused outside the line of servants waiting at the
+door, and spoke in a lower tone. "How is she? Failing at all?"</p>
+<p>Jacob Delafield hesitated. "She's grown very blind--and perhaps
+rather more infirm, generally. But she is at home, as usual--every
+evening for a few people, and for a good many on Wednesdays."</p>
+<p>"Is she still alone--or is there any relation who looks after
+her?"</p>
+<p>"Relation? No. She detests them all."</p>
+<p>"Except you?"</p>
+<p>Delafield raised his shoulders, without an answering smile.
+"Yes, she is good enough to except me. You're one of her trustees,
+aren't you?"</p>
+<p>"At present, the only one. But while I have been in Persia the
+lawyers have done all that was necessary. Lady Henry herself never
+writes a letter she can help. I really have heard next to nothing
+about her for more than a year. This morning I arrived from
+Paris--sent round to ask if she would be at home--and here I
+am."</p>
+<p>"Ah!" said Delafield, looking down. "Well, there is a lady who
+has been with her, now, for more than two years--"</p>
+<p>"Ah, yes, yes, I remember. Old Lady Seathwaite told me--last
+year. Mademoiselle Le Breton--isn't that her name? What--she reads
+to her, and writes letters for her--that kind of thing?"</p>
+<p>"Yes--that kind of thing," said the other, after a moment's
+hesitation. "Wasn't that a spot of rain? Shall I charge these
+gentry?"</p>
+<p>And he led the way through the line of footmen, which, however,
+was not of the usual Mayfair density. For the party within was not
+a "crush." The hostess who had collected it was of opinion that the
+chief object of your house is not to entice the mob, but to keep it
+out. The two men mounted the stairs together.</p>
+<p>"What a charming house!" said the elder, looking round him. "I
+remember when your uncle rebuilt it. And before that, I remember
+his mother, the old Duchess here, with her swarm of parsons. Upon
+my word, London tastes good--after Teheran!"</p>
+<p>And the speaker threw back his fair, grizzled head, regarding
+the lights, the house, the guests, with the air of a sensitive dog
+on a familiar scent.</p>
+<p>"Ah, you're fresh home," said Delafield, laughing. "But let's
+just try to keep you here--"</p>
+<p>"My dear fellow, who is that at the top of the stairs?"</p>
+<p>The old diplomat paused. In front of the pair some half a dozen
+guests were ascending, and as many coming down. At the top stood a
+tall lady in black, receiving and dismissing.</p>
+<p>Delafield looked up.</p>
+<p>"That is Mademoiselle Le Breton," he said, quietly.</p>
+<p>"She receives?"</p>
+<p>"She distributes the guests. Lady Henry generally establishes
+herself in the back drawing-room. It doesn't do for her to see too
+many people at once. Mademoiselle arranges it."</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry must indeed be a good deal more helpless that I
+remember her," murmured Sir Wilfrid, in some astonishment.</p>
+<p>"She is, physically. Oh, no doubt of it! Otherwise you won't
+find much change. Shall I introduce you?"</p>
+<p>They were approaching a woman whose tall slenderness, combined
+with a remarkable physiognomy, arrested the old man's attention.
+She was not handsome--that, surely, was his first impression? The
+cheek-bones were too evident, the chin and mouth too strong. And
+yet the fine pallor of the skin, the subtle black-and-white, in
+which, so to speak, the head and face were drawn, the life, the
+animation of the whole--were these not beauty, or more than beauty?
+As for the eyes, the carriage of the head, the rich magnificence of
+hair, arranged with an artful eighteenth-century freedom, as Madame
+Vig&eacute;e Le Brun might have worn it--with the second glance the
+effect of them was such that Sir Wilfrid could not cease from
+looking at the lady they adorned. It was an effect as of something
+over-living, over-brilliant--an animation, an intensity, so strong
+that, at first beholding, a by-stander could scarcely tell whether
+it pleased him or no.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle Le Breton--Sir Wilfrid Bury," said Jacob
+Delafield, introducing them.</p>
+<p>"<i>Is</i> she French?" thought the old diplomat, puzzled.
+"And--have I ever seen her before?"</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry will be so glad!" said a low, agreeable voice. "You
+are one of the old friends, aren't you? I have often heard her talk
+of you."</p>
+<p>"You are very good. Certainly, I am an old friend--a connection
+also." There was the slightest touch of stiffness in Sir Wilfrid's
+tone, of which the next moment he was ashamed. "I am very sorry to
+hear that Lady Henry has grown so much more helpless since I left
+England."</p>
+<p>"She has to be careful of fatigue. Two or three people go in to
+see her at a time. She enjoys them more so."</p>
+<p>"In my opinion," said Delafield, "one more device of milady's
+for getting precisely what she wants."</p>
+<p>The young man's gay undertone, together with the look which
+passed between him and Mademoiselle Le Breton, added to Sir
+Wilfrid's stifled feeling of surprise.</p>
+<p>"You'll tell her, Jacob, that I'm here?" He turned abruptly to
+the young man.</p>
+<p>"Certainly--when mademoiselle allows me. Ah, here comes the
+Duchess!" said Delafield, in another voice.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle Le Breton, who had moved a few steps away from the
+stair-head with Sir Wilfrid Bury, turned hastily. A slight, small
+woman, delicately fair and sparkling with diamonds, was coming up
+the stairs alone.</p>
+<p>"My dear," said the new-comer, holding out her hands eagerly to
+Mademoiselle Le Breton, "I felt I must just run in and have a look
+at you. But Freddie says that I've got to meet him at that tiresome
+Foreign Office! So I can only stay ten minutes. How are
+you?"--then, in a lower voice, almost a whisper, which, however,
+reached Sir Wilfrid Bury's ears--"worried to death?"</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle Le Breton raised eyes and shoulders for a moment,
+then, smiling, put her finger to her lip.</p>
+<p>"You're coming to me to-morrow afternoon?" said the Duchess, in
+the same half-whisper.</p>
+<p>"I don't think I can get away."</p>
+<p>"Nonsense! My dear, you must have some air and exercise! Jacob,
+will you see she comes?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I'm no good," said that young man, turning away. "Duchess,
+you remember Sir Wilfrid Bury?"</p>
+<p>"She would be an unnatural goddaughter if she didn't," said that
+gentleman, smiling. "She may be your cousin, but I knew her before
+you did."</p>
+<p>The young Duchess turned with a start.</p>
+<p>"Sir Wilfrid! A sight for sair een. When did you get back?"</p>
+<p>She put her slim hands into both of his, and showered upon him
+all proper surprise and the greetings due to her father's oldest
+friend. Voice, gesture, words--all were equally amiable, well
+trained, and perfunctory--Sir Wilfrid was well aware of it. He was
+possessed of a fine, straw-colored mustache, and long eyelashes of
+the same color. Both eyelashes and mustache made a screen behind
+which, as was well known, their owner observed the world to
+remarkably good purpose. He perceived the difference at once when
+the Duchess, having done her social and family duty, left him to
+return to Mademoiselle Le Breton.</p>
+<p>"It <i>was</i> such a bore you couldn't come this afternoon! I
+wanted you to see the babe dance--she's <i>too</i> great a duck!
+And that Canadian girl came to sing. The voice is magnificent--but
+she has some tiresome tricks!--and <i>I</i> didn't know what to say
+to her. As to the other music on the 16th--I say, can't we find a
+corner somewhere?" And the Duchess looked round the beautiful
+drawing-room, which she and her companions had just entered, with a
+dissatisfied air.</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry, you'll remember, doesn't like corners," said
+Mademoiselle Le Breton, smiling. Her tone, delicately free and
+allusive, once more drew Sir Wilfrid's curious eyes to her, and he
+caught also the impatient gesture with which the Duchess received
+the remark.</p>
+<p>"Ah, that's all right!" said Mademoiselle Le Breton, suddenly,
+turning round to himself. "Here is Mr. Montresor--going on, too, I
+suppose, to the Foreign Office. Now there'll be some chance of
+getting at Lady Henry."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid looked down the drawing-room, to see the famous War
+Minister coming slowly through the well-filled but not crowded
+room, stopping now and then to exchange a greeting or a farewell,
+and much hampered, as it seemed, in so doing, by a pronounced and
+disfiguring short-sight. He was a strongly built man of more than
+middle height. His iron-gray hair, deeply carved features, and
+cavernous black eyes gave him the air of power that his reputation
+demanded. On the other hand, his difficulty of eyesight, combined
+with the marked stoop of overwork, produced a qualifying
+impression--as of power teased and fettered, a Samson among the
+Philistines.</p>
+<p>"My dear lady, good-night. I must go and fight with wild beasts
+in Whitehall--worse luck! Ah, Duchess! All very well--but you can't
+shirk either!"</p>
+<p>So saying, Mr. Montresor shook hands with Mademoiselle Le Breton
+and smiled upon the Duchess--both actions betraying precisely the
+same degree of playful intimacy.</p>
+<p>"How did you find Lady Henry?" said Mademoiselle Le Breton, in a
+lowered voice.</p>
+<p>"Very well, but very cross. She scolds me perpetually--I haven't
+got a skin left. Ah, Sir Wilfrid!--<i>very</i> glad to see you!
+When did you arrive? I thought I might perhaps find you at the
+Foreign Office."</p>
+<p>"I'm going on there presently," said Sir Wilfrid.</p>
+<p>"Ah, but that's no good. Dine with me to-morrow night?--if you
+are free? Excellent!--that's arranged. Meanwhile--send him in,
+mademoiselle--send him in! He's fresh--let him take his turn." And
+the Minister, grinning, pointed backward over his shoulder towards
+an inner drawing-room, where the form of an old lady, seated in a
+wheeled invalid-chair between two other persons, could be just
+dimly seen.</p>
+<p>"When the Bishop goes," said Mademoiselle Le Breton, with a
+laughing shake of the head. "But I told him not to stay long."</p>
+<p>"He won't want to. Lady Henry pays no more attention to his
+cloth than to my gray hairs. The rating she has just given me for
+my speech of last night! Well, good-night, dear lady--good-night.
+You <i>are</i> better, I think?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Montresor threw a look of scrutiny no less friendly than
+earnest at the lady to whom he was speaking; and immediately
+afterwards Sir Wilfrid, who was wedged in by an entering group of
+people, caught the murmured words:</p>
+<p>"Consult me when you want me--at any time."</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle Le Breton raised her beautiful eyes to the speaker
+in a mute gratitude.</p>
+<p>"And five minutes ago I thought her plain!" said Sir Wilfrid to
+himself as he moved away. "Upon my word, for a <i>dame de
+compagnie</i> that young woman is at her ease! But where the deuce
+have I seen her, or her double, before?"</p>
+<p>He paused to look round the room a moment, before yielding
+himself to one of the many possible conversations which, as he saw,
+it contained for him. It was a stately panelled room of the last
+century, furnished with that sure instinct both for comfort and
+beauty which a small minority of English rich people have always
+possessed. Two glorious Gainsboroughs, clad in the subtlest
+brilliance of pearly white and shimmering blue, hung on either side
+of the square opening leading to the inner room. The fair, clouded
+head of a girl, by Romney, looked down from the panelling above the
+hearth. A gowned abb&eacute;, by Vandyck, made the centre of
+another wall, facing the Gainsboroughs. The pictures were all
+famous, and had been associated for generations with the Delafield
+name. Beneath them the carpets were covered by fine
+eighteenth-century furniture, much of it of a florid Italian type
+subdued to a delicate and faded beauty by time and use. The room
+was cleverly broken into various circles and centres for
+conversation; the chairs were many and comfortable; flowers
+sheltered t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;tes or made a setting for
+beautiful faces; the lamps were soft, the air warm and light. A
+cheerful hum of voices rose, as of talk enjoyed for talking's sake;
+and a general effect of intimacy, or gayety, of an unfeigned social
+pleasure, seemed to issue from the charming scene and communicate
+itself to the onlooker.</p>
+<p>And for a few moments, before he was discovered and tumultuously
+annexed by a neighboring group, Sir Wilfrid watched the progress of
+Mademoiselle Le Breton through the room, with the young Duchess in
+her wake. Wherever she moved she was met with smiles, deference,
+and eager attention. Here and there she made an introduction, she
+redistributed a group, she moved a chair. It was evident that her
+eye was everywhere, that she knew every one; her rule appeared to
+be at once absolute and welcome. Presently, when she herself
+accepted a seat, she became, as Sir Wilfrid perceived in the
+intervals of his own conversation, the leader of the most animated
+circle in the room. The Duchess, with one delicate arm stretched
+along the back of Mademoiselle Le Breton's chair, laughed and
+chattered; two young girls in virginal white placed themselves on
+big gilt footstools at her feet; man after man joined the group
+that stood or sat around her; and in the centre of it, the
+brilliance of her black head, sharply seen against a background of
+rose brocade, the grace of her tall form, which was thin almost to
+emaciation, the expressiveness of her strange features, the
+animation of her gestures, the sweetness of her voice, drew the
+eyes and ears of half the room to Lady Henry's "companion."</p>
+<p>Presently there was a movement in the distance. A man in
+knee-breeches and silver-buckled shoes emerged from the back
+drawing-room. Mademoiselle Le Breton rose at once and went to meet
+him.</p>
+<p>"The Bishop has had a long innings," said an old general to Sir
+Wilfrid Bury. "And here is Mademoiselle Julie coming for you."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid rose, in obedience to a smiling sign from the lady
+thus described, and followed her floating black draperies towards
+the farther room.</p>
+<p>"Who are those two persons with Lady Henry?" he asked of his
+guide, as they approached the <i>penetralia</i> where reigned the
+mistress of the house. "Ah, I see!--one is Dr. Meredith--but the
+other?"</p>
+<p>"The other is Captain Warkworth," said Mademoiselle Le Breton.
+"Do you know him?"</p>
+<p>"Warkworth--Warkworth? Ah--of course--the man who distinguished
+himself in the Mahsud expedition. But why is he home again so
+soon?"</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle Le Breton smiled uncertainly.</p>
+<p>"I think he was invalided home," she said, with that manner, at
+once restrained and gracious, that Sir Wilfrid had already observed
+in her. It was the manner of some one who <i>counted</i>;
+and--through all outward modesty--knew it.</p>
+<p>"He wants something out of the ministry. I remember the man,"
+was Sir Wilfrid's unspoken comment.</p>
+<p>But they had entered the inner room. Lady Henry looked round.
+Over her wrinkled face, now parchment-white, there shone a ray of
+pleasure--sudden, vehement, and unfeigned.</p>
+<p>"Sir Wilfrid!"</p>
+<p>She made a movement as though to rise from her chair, which was
+checked by his gesture and her helplessness.</p>
+<p>"Well, this is good fortune," she said, as she put both her
+hands into both of his. "This morning, as I was dressing, I had a
+feeling that something agreeable was going to happen at last--and
+then your note came. Sit down there. You know Dr. Meredith. He's as
+quarrelsome as ever. Captain Warkworth--Sir Wilfrid Bury."</p>
+<p>The square-headed, spectacled journalist addressed as Dr.
+Meredith greeted the new-comer with the quiet cordiality of one for
+whom the day holds normally so many events that it is impossible to
+make much of any one of them. And the man on the farther side of
+Lady Henry rose and bowed. He was handsome, and slenderly built.
+The touch of impetuosity in his movement, and the careless ease
+with which he carried his curly head, somehow surprised Sir
+Wilfrid. He had expected another sort of person.</p>
+<p>"I will give you my chair," said the Captain, pleasantly. "I
+have had more than my turn."</p>
+<p>"Shall I bring in the Duchess?" said Mademoiselle Le Breton, in
+a low tone, as she stooped over the back of Lady Henry's chair.</p>
+<p>That lady turned abruptly to the speaker.</p>
+<p>"Let her do precisely as she pleases," said a voice, sharp,
+lowered also, but imperious, like the drawing of a sword. "If she
+wants me, she knows where I am."</p>
+<p>"She would be so sorry--"</p>
+<p>"Ne jouez pas la com&eacute;die, ma ch&egrave;re! Where is
+Jacob?"</p>
+<p>"In the other room. Shall I tell him you want him?"</p>
+<p>"I will send for him when it suits me. Meanwhile, as I
+particularly desired you to let me know when he arrived--"</p>
+<p>"He has only been here twenty minutes," murmured Mademoiselle Le
+Breton. "I thought while the Bishop was here you would not like to
+be disturbed--"</p>
+<p>"You thought!" The speaker raised her shoulders fiercely. "Comme
+toujours, vous vous &ecirc;tes trop bien amus&eacute;e pour vous
+souvenir de mes instructions--voil&agrave; la v&eacute;rit&eacute;!
+Dr. Meredith," the whole imperious form swung round again towards
+the journalist, "unless you forbid me, I shall tell Sir Wilfrid who
+it was reviewed his book for you."</p>
+<p>"Oh, good Heavens! I forbid you with all the energy of which I
+am capable," said the startled journalist, raising appealing hands,
+while Lady Henry, delighted with the effect produced by her sudden
+shaft, sank back in her chair and grimly smiled.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile Sir Wilfrid Bury's attention was still held by
+Mademoiselle Le Breton. In the conversation between her and Lady
+Henry he had noticed an extraordinary change of manner on the part
+of the younger lady. Her ease, her grace had disappeared. Her tone
+was humble, her manner quivering with nervous anxiety. And now, as
+she stood a moment behind Lady Henry's chair, one trembling hand
+steadying the other, Sir Wilfrid was suddenly aware of yet another
+impression. Lady Henry had treated her companion with a
+contemptuous and haughty ill-humor. Face to face with her mistress,
+Mademoiselle Le Breton had borne it with submission, almost with
+servility. But now, as she stood silent behind the blind old lady
+who had flouted her, her wonderfully expressive face, her delicate
+frame, spoke for her with an energy not to be mistaken. Her dark
+eyes blazed. She stood for anger; she breathed humiliation.</p>
+<p>"A dangerous woman, and an extraordinary situation," so ran his
+thought, while aloud he was talking Central Asian politics and the
+latest Simla gossip to his two companions.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Captain Warkworth and Mademoiselle Le Breton returned
+together to the larger drawing-room, and before long Dr. Meredith
+took his leave. Lady Henry and her old friend were left alone.</p>
+<p>"I am sorry to hear that your sight troubles you more than of
+old," said Sir Wilfrid, drawing his chair a little nearer to
+her.</p>
+<p>Lady Henry gave an impatient sigh. "Everything troubles me more
+than of old. There is one disease from which no one recovers, my
+dear Wilfrid, and it has long since fastened upon me."</p>
+<p>"You mean old age? Oh, you are not so much to be pitied for
+that," said Sir Wilfrid, smiling. "Many people would exchange their
+youth for your old age."</p>
+<p>"Then the world contains more fools than even I give it credit
+for!" said Lady Henry, with energy. "Why should any one exchange
+with me--a poor, blind, gouty old creature, with no chick or child
+to care whether she lives or dies?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, well, that's a misfortune--I won't deny that," said Sir
+Wilfrid, kindly. "But I come home after three years. I find your
+house as thronged as ever, in the old way. I see half the most
+distinguished people in London in your drawing-room. It is sad that
+you can no longer receive them as you used to do: but here you sit
+like a queen, and people fight for their turn with you."</p>
+<p>Lady Henry did not smile. She laid one of her wrinkled hands
+upon his arm.</p>
+<p>"Is there any one else within hearing?" she said, in a quick
+undertone. Sir Wilfrid was touched by the vague helplessness of her
+gesture, as she looked round her.</p>
+<p>"No one--we are quite alone."</p>
+<p>"They are not here for <i>me</i>--those people," she said,
+quivering, with a motion of her hand towards the large
+drawing-room.</p>
+<p>"My dear friend, what do you mean?"</p>
+<p>"They are here--come closer, I don't want to be overheard--for a
+<i>woman</i>--whom I took in, in a moment of lunacy--who is now
+robbing me of my best friends and supplanting me in my own
+house."</p>
+<p>The pallor of the old face had lost all its waxen dignity. The
+lowered voice hissed in his ear. Sir Wilfrid, startled and
+repelled, hesitated for his reply. Meanwhile, Lady Henry, who could
+not see it, seemed at once to divine the change in his
+expression.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I suppose you think I'm mad," she said, impatiently, "or
+ridiculous. Well, see for yourself, judge for yourself. In fact, I
+have been looking, hungering, for your return. You have helped me
+through emergencies before now. And I am in that state at present
+that I trust no one, talk to no one, except of
+<i>banalit&eacute;s</i>. But I should be greatly obliged if
+<i>you</i> would come and listen to me, and, what is more, advise
+me some day."</p>
+<p>"Most gladly," said Sir Wilfrid, embarrassed; then, after a
+pause, "Who is this lady I find installed here?"</p>
+<p>Lady Henry hesitated, then shut her strong mouth on the
+temptation to speak.</p>
+<p>"It is not a story for to-night," she said; "and it would upset
+me. But, when you first saw her, how did she strike you?"</p>
+<p>"I saw at once," said her companion after a pause, "that you had
+caught a personality."</p>
+<p>"A personality!" Lady Henry gave an angry laugh. "That's one way
+of putting it. But physically--did she remind you of no one?"</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid pondered a moment.</p>
+<p>"Yes. Her face haunted me, when I first saw it. But--no; no, I
+can't put any names."</p>
+<p>Lady Henry gave a little snort of disappointment.</p>
+<p>"Well, think. You knew her mother quite well. You have known her
+grandfather all your life. If you're going on to the Foreign
+Office, as I suppose you are, you'll probably see him to-night. She
+is uncannily like him. As to her father, I don't know--but he was a
+rolling-stone of a creature; you very likely came across him."</p>
+<p>"I knew her mother and her father?" said Sir Wilfrid, astonished
+and pondering.</p>
+<p>"They had no right to be her mother and her father," said Lady
+Henry, with grimness.</p>
+<p>"Ah! So if one does guess--"</p>
+<p>"You'll please hold your tongue."</p>
+<p>"But at present I'm completely mystified," said Sir Wilfrid.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps it'll come to you later. You've a good memory generally
+for such things. Anyway, I can't tell you anything now. But when'll
+you come again? To-morrow--luncheon? I really want you."</p>
+<p>"Would you be alone?"</p>
+<p>"Certainly. <i>That</i>, at least, I can still do--lunch as I
+please, and with whom I please. Who is this coming in? Ah, you
+needn't tell me."</p>
+<p>The old lady turned herself towards the entrance, with a
+stiffening of the whole frame, an instinctive and passionate
+dignity in her whole aspect, which struck a thrill through her
+companion.</p>
+<p>The little Duchess approached, amid a flutter of satin and lace,
+heralded by the scent of the Parma violets she wore in profusion at
+her breast and waist. Her eye glanced uncertainly, and she
+approached with daintiness, like one stepping on mined ground.</p>
+<p>"Aunt Flora, I must have just a minute."</p>
+<p>"I know no reason against your having ten, if you want them,"
+said Lady Henry, as she held-out three fingers to the new-comer.
+"You promised yesterday to come and give me a full account of the
+Devonshire House ball. But it doesn't matter--and you have
+forgotten."</p>
+<p>"No, indeed, I haven't," said the Duchess, embarrassed. "But you
+seemed so well employed to-night, with other people. And now--"</p>
+<p>"Now you are going on," said Lady Henry, with a most unfriendly
+suavity.</p>
+<p>"Freddie says I must," said the other, in the attitude of a
+protesting child.</p>
+<p>"<i>Alors</i>!" said Lady Henry, lifting her hand. "We all know
+how obedient you are. Good-night!"</p>
+<p>The Duchess flushed. She just touched her aunt's hand, and then,
+turning an indignant face on Sir Wilfrid, she bade him farewell
+with an air which seemed to him intended to avenge upon his neutral
+person the treatment which, from Lady Henry, even so spoiled a
+child of fortune as herself could not resent.</p>
+<p>Twenty minutes later, Sir Wilfrid entered the first big room of
+the Foreign Office party. He looked round him with a revival of the
+exhilaration he had felt on Lady Henry's staircase, enjoying, after
+his five years in Teheran, after his long homeward journey by
+desert and sea, even the common trivialities of the scene--the
+lights, the gilding, the sparkle of jewels, the scarlet of the
+uniforms, the noise and movement of the well-dressed crowd. Then,
+after this first physical thrill, began the second stage of
+pleasure--the recognitions and the greetings, after long absence,
+which show a man where he stands in the great world, which sum up
+his past and forecast his future. Sir Wilfrid had no reason to
+complain. Cabinet ministers and great ladies, members of Parliament
+and the permanent officials who govern but do not rule, soldiers,
+journalists, barristers--were all glad, it seemed, to grasp him by
+the hand. He had returned with a record of difficult service
+brilliantly done, and the English world rewarded him in its
+accustomed ways.</p>
+<p>It was towards one o'clock that he found himself in a crowd
+pressing towards the staircase in the wake of some departing
+royalties. A tall man in front turned round to look for some ladies
+behind him from whom he had been separated in the crush. Sir
+Wilfrid recognized old Lord Lackington, the veteran of marvellous
+youth, painter, poet, and sailor, who as a gay naval lieutenant had
+entertained Byron in the &AElig;gean; whose fame as one of the
+raciest of naval reformers was in all the newspapers; whose
+personality was still, at seventy-five, charming to most women and
+challenging to most men.</p>
+<p>As the old man turned, he was still smiling, as though in unison
+with something which had just been said to him; and his black eyes
+under his singularly white hair searched the crowd with the
+animation of a lad of twenty. Through the energy of his aspect the
+flame of life still burned, as the evening sun through a fine sky.
+The face had a faulty yet most arresting brilliance. The mouth was
+disagreeable, the chin common. But the general effect was still
+magnificent.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid started. He recalled the drawing-room in Bruton
+Street; the form and face of Mademoiselle Le Breton; the sentences
+by which Lady Henry had tried to put him on the track. His mind ran
+over past years, and pieced together the recollections of a
+long-past scandal. "Of course! <i>Of course!</i>" he said to
+himself, not without excitement. "She is not like her mother, but
+she has all the typical points of her mother's race."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="II"></a>II</h2>
+<br>
+<p>It was a cold, clear morning in February, with a little pale
+sunshine playing on the bare trees of the Park. Sir Wilfrid,
+walking southward from the Marble Arch to his luncheon with Lady
+Henry, was gladly conscious of the warmth of his fur-collared coat,
+though none the less ready to envy careless youth as it crossed his
+path now and then, great-coatless and ruddy, courting the keen
+air.</p>
+<p>Just as he was about to make his exit towards Mount Street he
+became aware of two persons walking southward like himself, but on
+the other side of the roadway. He soon identified Captain Warkworth
+in the slim, soldierly figure of the man. And the lady? There also,
+with the help of his glasses, he was soon informed. Her trim, black
+hat and her black cloth costume seemed to him to have a becoming
+and fashionable simplicity; and she moved in morning dress, with
+the same ease and freedom that had distinguished her in Lady
+Henry's drawing-room the night before.</p>
+<p>He asked himself whether he should interrupt Mademoiselle Le
+Breton with a view to escorting her to Bruton Street. He
+understood, indeed, that he and Lady Henry were to be alone at
+luncheon; Mademoiselle Julie had, no doubt, her own quarters and
+attendants. But she seemed to be on her way home. An opportunity
+for some perhaps exploratory conversation with her before he found
+himself face to face with Lady Henry seemed to him not
+undesirable.</p>
+<p>But he quickly decided to walk on. Mademoiselle Le Breton and
+Captain Warkworth paused in their walk, about no doubt to say
+good-bye, but, very clearly, loath to say it. They were, indeed, in
+earnest conversation. The Captain spoke with eagerness;
+Mademoiselle Julie, with downcast eyes, smiled and listened.</p>
+<p>"Is the fellow making love to her?" thought the old man, in some
+astonishment, as he turned away. "Hardly the place for it either,
+one would suppose."</p>
+<p>He vaguely thought that he would both sound and warn Lady Henry.
+Warn her of what? He happened on the way home to have been thrown
+with a couple of Indian officers whose personal opinion of Harry
+Warkworth was not a very high one, in spite of the brilliant
+distinction which the young man had earned for himself in the
+Afridi campaign just closed. But how was he to hand that sort of
+thing on to Lady Henry?--and because he happened to have seen her
+lady companion and Harry Warkworth together? No doubt Mademoiselle
+Julie was on her employer's business.</p>
+<p>Yet the little encounter added somehow to his already lively
+curiosity on the subject of Lady Henry's companion. Thanks to a
+remarkable physical resemblance, he was practically certain that he
+had guessed the secret of Mademoiselle Le Breton's parentage. At
+any rate, on the supposition that he had, his thoughts began to
+occupy themselves with the story to which his guess pointed.</p>
+<p>Some thirty years before, he had known, both in London and in
+Italy, a certain Colonel Delaney and his wife, once Lady Rose
+Chantrey, the favorite daughter of Lord Lackington. They were not a
+happy couple. She was a woman of great intelligence, but endowed
+with one of those natures--sensitive, plastic, eager to search out
+and to challenge life--which bring their possessors some great
+joys, hardly to be balanced against a final sum of pain. Her
+husband, absorbed in his military life, silent, narrowly able, and
+governed by a strict Anglicanism that seemed to carry with it
+innumerable "shalts" and "shalt nots," disagreeable to the natural
+man or woman, soon found her a tiring and trying companion. She
+asked him for what he could not give; she coquetted with questions
+he thought it impious to raise; the persons she made friends with
+were distasteful to him; and, without complaining, he soon grew to
+think it intolerable that a woman married to a soldier should care
+so little for his professional interests and ambitions. Though when
+she pretended to care for them she annoyed him, if possible, still
+more.</p>
+<p>As for Lady Rose, she went through all the familiar emotions of
+the <i>femme incomprise</i>. And with the familiar result. There
+presently appeared in the house a man of good family, thirty-five
+or so, traveller, painter, and dreamer, with fine, long-drawn
+features bronzed by the sun of the East, and bringing with him the
+reputation of having plotted and fought for most of the "lost
+causes" of our generation, including several which had led him into
+conflict with British authorities and British officials. To Colonel
+Delaney he was an "agitator," if not a rebel; and the careless
+pungency of his talk soon classed him as an atheist besides. In the
+case of Lady Rose, this man's free and generous nature, his
+independence of money and convention, his passion for the things of
+the mind, his contempt for the mode, whether in dress or politics,
+his light evasions of the red tape of life as of something that no
+one could reasonably expect of a vagabond like himself--these
+things presently transformed a woman in despair to a woman in
+revolt. She fell in love with an intensity befitting her true
+temperament, and with a stubbornness that bore witness to the
+dreary failure of her marriage. Marriott Dalrymple returned her
+love, and nothing in his view of life predisposed him to put what
+probably appeared to him a mere legality before the happiness of
+two people meant for each other. There were no children of the
+Delaney marriage; and in his belief the husband had enjoyed too
+long a companionship he had never truly deserved.</p>
+<p>So Lady Rose faced her husband, told him the truth, and left
+him. She and Dalrymple went to live in Belgium, in a small
+country-house some twenty or thirty miles from Brussels. They
+severed themselves from England; they asked nothing more of English
+life. Lady Rose suffered from the breach with her father, for Lord
+Lackington never saw her again. And there was a young sister whom
+she had brought up, whose image could often rouse in her a sense of
+loss that showed itself in occasional spells of silence and tears.
+But substantially she never repented what she had done, although
+Colonel Delaney made the penalties of it as heavy as he could. Like
+Karennine in Tolstoy's great novel, he refused to sue for a
+divorce, and for something of the same reasons. Divorce was in
+itself impious, and sin should not be made easy. He was at any time
+ready to take back his wife, so far as the protection of his name
+and roof were concerned, should she penitently return to him.</p>
+<p>So the child that was presently born to Lady Rose could not be
+legitimized.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid stopped short at the Park end of Bruton Street, with
+a start of memory.</p>
+<p>"I saw it once! I remember now--perfectly."</p>
+<p>And he went on to recall a bygone moment in the Brussels
+Gallery, when, as he was standing before the great Quintin Matsys,
+he was accosted with sudden careless familiarity by a thin,
+shabbily dressed man, in whose dark distinction, made still more
+fantastic and conspicuous by the fever and the emaciation of
+consumption, he recognized at once Marriott Dalrymple.</p>
+<p>He remembered certain fragments of their talk about the
+pictures--the easy mastery, now brusque, now poetic, with which
+Dalrymple had shown him the treasures of the gallery, in the manner
+of one whose learning was merely the food of fancy, the stuff on
+which imagination and reverie grew rich.</p>
+<p>Then, suddenly, his own question--"And Lady Rose?"</p>
+<p>And Dalrymple's quiet, "Very well. She'd see you, I think, if
+you want to come. She has scarcely seen an English person in the
+last three years."</p>
+<p>And as when a gleam searches out some blurred corner of a
+landscape, there returned upon him his visit to the pair in their
+country home. He recalled the small eighteenth-century house, the
+"ch&acirc;teau" of the village, built on the French model, with its
+high <i>mansarde</i> roof; the shabby stateliness of its
+architecture matching plaintively with the field of beet-root that
+grew up to its very walls; around it the flat, rich fields, with
+their thin lines of poplars; the slow, canalized streams; the
+unlovely farms and cottages; the mire of the lanes; and, shrouding
+all, a hot autumn mist sweeping slowly through the damp meadows and
+blotting all cheerfulness from the sun. And in the midst of this
+pale landscape, so full of ragged edges to an English eye, the
+English couple, with their books, their child, and a pair of
+Flemish servants.</p>
+<p>It had been evident to him at once that their circumstances were
+those of poverty. Lady Rose's small fortune, indeed, had been
+already mostly spent on "causes" of many kinds, in many countries.
+She and Dalrymple were almost vegetarians, and wine never entered
+the house save for the servants, who seemed to regard their
+employers with a real but half-contemptuous affection. He
+remembered the scanty, ill-cooked luncheon; the difficulty in
+providing a few extra knives and forks; the wrangling with the old
+<i>bonne</i>-housekeeper, which was necessary before
+<i>serviettes</i> could be produced.</p>
+<p>And afterwards the library, with its deal shelves from floor to
+ceiling put up by Dalrymple himself, its bare, polished floor,
+Dalrymple's table and chair on one side of the open hearth, Lady
+Rose's on the other; on his table the sheets of verse translation
+from &AElig;schylus and Euripides, which represented his favorite
+hobby; on hers the socialist and economical books they both studied
+and the English or French poets they both loved. The walls, hung
+with the faded damask of a past generation, were decorated with a
+strange crop of pictures pinned carelessly into the
+silk--photographs or newspaper portraits of modern men and women
+representing all possible revolt against authority, political,
+religious, even scientific, the Everlasting No of an untiring and
+ubiquitous dissent.</p>
+<p>Finally, in the centre of the polished floor, the strange child,
+whom Lady Rose had gone to fetch after lunch, with its high crest
+of black hair, its large, jealous eyes, its elfin hands, and the
+sudden smile with which, after half an hour of silence and apparent
+scorn, it had rewarded Sir Wilfrid's advances. He saw himself
+sitting bewitched beside it.</p>
+<p>Poor Lady Rose! He remembered her as he and she parted at the
+gate of the neglected garden, the anguish in her eyes as they
+turned to look after the bent and shrunken figure of Dalrymple
+carrying the child back to the house.</p>
+<p>"If you meet any of his old friends, don't--don't say anything!
+We've just saved enough money to go to Sicily for the
+winter--that'll set him right."</p>
+<p>And then, barely a year later, the line in a London newspaper
+which had reached him at Madrid, chronicling the death of Marriott
+Dalrymple, as of a man once on the threshold of fame, but long
+since exiled from the thoughts of practical men. Lady Rose, too,
+was dead--many years since; so much he knew. But how, and where?
+And the child?</p>
+<p>She was now "Mademoiselle Le Breton "?--the centre and
+apparently the chief attraction of Lady Henry's once famous
+salon?</p>
+<p>"And, by Jove! several of her kinsfolk there, relations of the
+mother or the father, if what I suppose is true!" thought Sir
+Wilfrid, remembering one or two of the guests. "Were they--was
+she--aware of it?"</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The old man strode on, full of a growing eagerness, and was soon
+on Lady Henry's doorstep.</p>
+<p>"Her ladyship is in the dining-room," said the butler, and Sir
+Wilfrid was ushered there straight.</p>
+<p>"Good-morning, Wilfrid," said the old lady, raising herself on
+her silver--headed sticks as he entered. "I prefer to come
+down-stairs by myself. The more infirm I am, the less I like
+it--and to be helped enrages me. Sit down. Lunch is ready, and I
+give you leave to eat some."</p>
+<p>"And you?" said Sir Wilfrid, as they seated themselves almost
+side by side at the large, round table in the large, dingy
+room.</p>
+<p>The old lady shook her head.</p>
+<p>"All the world eats too much. I was brought up with people who
+lunched on a biscuit and a glass of sherry."</p>
+<p>"Lord Russell?--Lord Palmerston?" suggested Sir Wilfrid,
+attacking his own lunch meanwhile with unabashed vigor.</p>
+<p>"That sort. I wish we had their like now."</p>
+<p>"Their successors don't please you?"</p>
+<p>Lady Henry shook her head.</p>
+<p>"The Tories have gone to the deuce, and there are no longer
+enough Whigs even to do that. I wouldn't read the newspapers at all
+if I could help it. But I do."</p>
+<p>"So I understand," said Sir Wilfrid; "you let Montresor know it
+last night."</p>
+<p>"Montresor!" said Lady Henry, with a contemptuous movement.
+"What a <i>poseur</i>! He lets the army go to ruin, I understand,
+while he joins Dante societies."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid raised his eyebrows.</p>
+<p>"I think, if I were you, I should have some lunch," he said,
+gently pushing the admirable <i>salmi</i> which the butler had left
+in front of him towards his old friend.</p>
+<p>Lady Henry laughed.</p>
+<p>"Oh, my temper will be better presently, when those men are
+gone"--she nodded towards the butler and footman in the
+distance--"and I can have my say."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid hurried his meal as much as Lady Henry--who, as it
+turned out, was not at all minded to starve him--would allow. She
+meanwhile talked politics and gossip to him, with her old, caustic
+force, nibbling a dry biscuit at intervals and sipping a cup of
+coffee. She was a wilful, characteristic figure as she sat there,
+beneath her own portrait as a bride, which hung on the wall behind
+her. The portrait represented a very young woman, with plentiful
+brown hair gathered into a knot on the top of her head, a high
+waist, a blue waist-ribbon, and inflated sleeves. Handsome,
+imperious, the corners of the mouth well down, the look straight
+and daring--the Lady Henry of the picture, a bride of nineteen, was
+already formidable. And the old woman sitting beneath it, with the
+strong, white hair, which the ample cap found some difficulty even
+now in taming and confining, the droop of the mouth accentuated,
+the nose more masterful, the double chin grown evident, the light
+of the eyes gone out, breathed pride and will from every feature of
+her still handsome face, pride of race and pride of intellect,
+combined with a hundred other subtler and smaller prides that only
+an intimate knowledge of her could detect. The brow and eyes, so
+beautiful in the picture, were, however, still agreeable in the
+living woman; if generosity lingered anywhere, it was in them.</p>
+<p>The door was hardly closed upon the servants when she bent
+forward.</p>
+<p>"Well, have you guessed?"</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid looked at her thoughtfully as he stirred the sugar
+in his coffee.</p>
+<p>"I think so," he said. "She is Lady Rose Delaney's
+daughter."</p>
+<p>Lady Henry gave a sudden laugh.</p>
+<p>"I hardly expected you to guess! What helped you?"</p>
+<p>"First your own hints. Then the strange feeling I had that I had
+seen the face, or some face just like it, before. And, lastly, at
+the Foreign Office I caught sight, for a moment, of Lord
+Lackington. That finished it."</p>
+<p>"Ah!" said Lady Henry, with a nod. "Yes, that likeness is
+extraordinary. Isn't it amazing that that foolish old man has never
+perceived it?"</p>
+<p>"He knows nothing?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, nothing! Nobody does. However, that'll do presently. But
+Lord Lackington comes here, mumbles about his music and his
+water-colors, and his flirtations--seventy-four, if you please,
+last birthday!--talks about himself endlessly to Julie or to
+me--whoever comes handy--and never has an inkling, an idea."</p>
+<p>"And she?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>she</i> knows. I should rather think she does." And Lady
+Henry pushed away her coffee-cup with the ill-suppressed vehemence
+which any mention of her companion seemed to produce in her. "Well,
+now, I suppose you'd like to hear the story."</p>
+<p>"Wait a minute. It'll surprise you to hear that I not only knew
+this lady's mother and father, but that I've seen her, herself,
+before."</p>
+<p>"You?" Lady Henry looked incredulous.</p>
+<p>"I never told you of my visit to that <i>m&eacute;nage</i>,
+four-and-twenty years ago?"</p>
+<p>"Never, that I remember. But if you had I should have forgotten.
+What did they matter to me then? I myself only saw Lady Rose once,
+so far as I remember, before she misconducted herself. And
+afterwards--well, one doesn't trouble one's self about the women
+that have gone under."</p>
+<p>Something lightened behind Sir Wilfrid's straw-colored lashes.
+He bent over his coffee-cup and daintily knocked off the end of his
+cigarette with a beringed little finger.</p>
+<p>"The women who have--not been able to pull up?"</p>
+<p>Lady Henry paused.</p>
+<p>"If you like to put it so," she said, at last. Sir Wilfrid did
+not raise his eyes. Lady Henry took up her strongest glasses from
+the table and put them on. But it was pitifully evident that even
+so equipped she saw but little, and that her strong nature fretted
+perpetually against the physical infirmity that teased it.
+Nevertheless, some unspoken communication passed between them, and
+Sir Wilfrid knew that he had effectually held up a protecting hand
+for Lady Rose.</p>
+<p>"Well, let me tell you my tale first," he said; and gave the
+little reminiscence in full. When he described the child, Lady
+Henry listened eagerly.</p>
+<p>"Hm," she said, when he came to an end; "she was jealous, you
+say, of her mother's attentions to you? She watched you, and in the
+end she took possession of you? Much the same creature, apparently,
+then as now."</p>
+<p>"No moral, please, till the tale is done," said Sir Wilfrid,
+smiling. "It's your turn."</p>
+<p>Lady Henry's face grew sombre.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="illus-030.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/illus-030.jpg"><img src=
+"images/illus-030.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"LADY HENRY LISTENED EAGERLY"</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>"All very well," she said. "What did your tale matter to you? As
+for mine--"</p>
+<p>The substance of hers was as follows, put into chronological
+order:</p>
+<p>Lady Rose had lived some ten years after Dalrymple's death. That
+time she passed in great poverty in some <i>chambres garnies</i> at
+Bruges, with her little girl and an old Madame Le Breton, the maid,
+housekeeper, and general factotum who had served them in the
+country. This woman, though of a peevish, grumbling temper, was
+faithful, affectionate, and not without education. She was
+certainly attached to little Julie, whose nurse she had been during
+a short period of her infancy. It was natural that Lady Rose should
+leave the child to her care. Indeed, she had no choice. An old
+Ursuline nun, and a kind priest who at the nun's instigation
+occasionally came to see her, in the hopes of converting her, were
+her only other friends in the world. She wrote, however, to her
+father, shortly before her death, bidding him good-bye, and asking
+him to do something for the child. "She is wonderfully like you,"
+so ran part of the letter. "You won't ever acknowledge her, I know.
+That is your strange code. But at least give her what will keep her
+from want, till she can earn her living. Her old nurse will take
+care of her, I have taught her, so far. She is already very clever.
+When I am gone she will attend one of the convent schools here. And
+I have found an honest lawyer who will receive and pay out
+money."</p>
+<p>To this letter Lord Lackington replied, promising to come over
+and see his daughter. But an attack of gout delayed him, and,
+before he was out of his room, Lady Rose was dead. Then he no
+longer talked of coming over, and his solicitors arranged matters.
+An allowance of a hundred pounds a year was made to Madame Le
+Breton, through the "honest lawyer" whom Lady Rose had found, for
+the benefit of "Julie Dalrymple," the capital value to be handed
+over to that young lady herself on the attainment of her eighteenth
+birthday--always provided that neither she nor anybody on her
+behalf made any further claim on the Lackington family, that her
+relationship to them was dropped, and her mother's history buried
+in oblivion.</p>
+<p>Accordingly the girl grew to maturity in Bruges. By the lawyer's
+advice, after her mother's death, she took the name of her old
+<i>gouvernante</i>, and was known thenceforward as Julie Le Breton.
+The Ursuline nuns, to whose school she was sent, took the
+precaution, after her mother's death, of having her baptized
+straightway into the Catholic faith, and she made her
+<i>premi&egrave;re communion</i> in their church. In the course of
+a few years she became a remarkable girl, the source of many
+anxieties to the nuns. For she was not only too clever for their
+teaching, and an inborn sceptic, but wherever she appeared she
+produced parties and the passions of parties. And though, as she
+grew older, she showed much adroitness in managing those who were
+hostile to her, she was never without enemies, and intrigues
+followed her.</p>
+<p>"I might have been warned in time," said Lady Henry, in whose
+wrinkled cheeks a sharp and feverish color had sprung up as her
+story approached the moment of her own personal acquaintance with
+Mademoiselle Le Breton. "For one or two of the nuns when I saw them
+in Bruges, before the bargain was finally struck, were candid
+enough. However, now I come to the moment when I first set eyes on
+her. You know my little place in Surrey? About a mile from me is a
+manor-house belonging to an old Catholic family, terribly devout
+and as poor as church-mice. They sent their daughters to school in
+Bruges. One summer holiday these girls brought home with them Julie
+Dalrymple as their quasi-holiday governess. It was three years ago.
+I had just seen Liebreich. He told me that I should soon be blind,
+and, naturally, it was a blow to me."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid made a murmur of sympathy.</p>
+<p>"Oh, don't pity me! I don't pity other people. This odious body
+of ours has got to wear out sometime--it's in the bargain. Still,
+just then I was low. There are two things I care about--one is
+talk, with the people that amuse me, and the other is the reading
+of French books. I didn't see how I was going to keep my circle
+here together, and my own mind in decent repair, unless I could
+find somebody to be eyes for me, and to read to me. And as I'm a
+bundle of nerves, and I never was agreeable to illiterate people,
+nor they to me, I was rather put to it. Well, one day these girls
+and their mother came over to tea, and, as you guess, of course,
+they brought Mademoiselle Le Breton with them. I had asked them to
+come, but when they arrived I was bored and cross, and like a sick
+dog in a hole. And then, as you have seen her, I suppose you can
+guess what happened."</p>
+<p>"You discovered an exceptional person?"</p>
+<p>Lady Henry laughed.</p>
+<p>"I was limed, there and then, old bird as I am. I was first
+struck with the girl's appearance--<i>une belle laide</i>--with
+every movement just as it ought to be; infinitely more attractive
+to me than any pink-and-white beauty. It turned out that she had
+just been for a month in Paris with another school-fellow.
+Something she said about a new play--suddenly--made me look at her.
+'Venez vous asseoir ici, mademoiselle, s'il vous
+pla&icirc;t--pr&egrave;s de moi,' I said to her--I can hear my own
+voice now, poor fool, and see her flush up. Ah!" Lady Henry's
+interjection dropped to a note of rage that almost upset Sir
+Wilfrid's gravity; but he restrained himself, and she resumed: "We
+talked for two hours; it seemed to me ten minutes. I sent the
+others out to the gardens. She stayed with me. The new French
+books, the theatre, poems, plays, novels, memoirs, even politics,
+she could talk of them all; or, rather--for, mark you, that's her
+gift--she made <i>me</i> talk. It seemed to me I had not been so
+brilliant for months. I was as good, in fact, as I had ever been.
+The difficulty in England is to find any one to keep up the ball.
+She does it to perfection. She never throws to win--never!--but so
+as to leave you all the chances. You make a brilliant stroke; she
+applauds, and in a moment she has arranged you another. Oh, it is
+the most extraordinary gift of conversation--and she never says a
+thing that you want to remember."</p>
+<p>There was a silence. Lady Henry's old fingers drummed restlessly
+on the table. Her memory seemed to be wandering angrily among her
+first experiences of the lady they were discussing.</p>
+<p>"Well," said Sir Wilfrid, at last, "so you engaged her as
+<i>lectrice</i>, and thought yourself very lucky?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, don't suppose that I was quite an idiot. I made some
+inquiries--I bored myself to death with civilities to the stupid
+family she was staying with, and presently I made her stay with me.
+And of course I soon saw there was a history. She possessed jewels,
+laces, little personal belongings of various kinds, that wanted
+explaining. So I laid traps for her; I let her also perceive
+whither my own plans were drifting. She did not wait to let me
+force her hand. She made up her mind. One day I found, left
+carelessly on the drawing-room table, a volume of Saint-Simon,
+beautifully bound in old French morocco, with something thrust
+between the leaves. I opened it. On the fly-leaf was written the
+name Marriott Dalrymple, and the leaves opened, a little farther,
+on a miniature of Lady Rose Delaney. So--"</p>
+<p>"Apparently it was <i>her</i> traps that worked," said Sir
+Wilfrid, smiling. Lady Henry returned the smile unwillingly, as one
+loath to acknowledge her own folly.</p>
+<p>"I don't know that I was trapped. We both desired to come to
+close quarters. Anyway, she soon showed me books, letters--from
+Lady Rose, from Dalrymple, Lord Lackington--the evidence was
+complete....</p>
+<p>"'Very well,' I said; 'it isn't your fault. All the better if
+you are well born--I am not a person of prejudices. But understand,
+if you come to me, there must be no question of worrying your
+relations. There are scores of them in London. I know them all, or
+nearly all, and of course you'll come across them. But unless you
+can hold your tongue, don't come to me. Julie Dalrymple has
+disappeared, and I'll be no party to her resurrection. If Julie Le
+Breton becomes an inmate of my house, there shall be no raking up
+of scandals much better left in their graves. If you haven't got a
+proper parentage, consistently thought out, we must invent
+one--'"</p>
+<p>"I hope I may some day be favored with it," said Sir
+Wilfrid.</p>
+<p>Lady Henry laughed uncomfortably.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I've had to tell lies," she said, "plenty of them."</p>
+<p>"What! It was <i>you</i> that told the lies?"</p>
+<p>Lady Henry's look flashed.</p>
+<p>"The open and honest ones," she said, defiantly.</p>
+<p>"Well," said Sir Wilfrid, regretfully, "<i>some</i> sort were
+indispensable. So she came. How long ago?"</p>
+<p>"Three years. For the first half of that time I did nothing but
+plume myself on my good fortune. I said to myself that if I had
+searched Europe through I could not have fared better. My
+household, my friends, my daily ways, she fitted into them all to
+perfection. I told people that I had discovered her through a
+Belgian acquaintance. Every one was amazed at her manners, her
+intelligence. She was perfectly modest, perfectly well behaved. The
+old Duke--he died six months after she came to me--was charmed with
+her. Montresor, Meredith, Lord Robert, all my
+<i>habitu&eacute;s</i> congratulated me. 'Such cultivation, such
+charm, such <i>savoir-faire!</i> Where on earth did you pick up
+such a treasure? What are her antecedents?' etc., etc. So then, of
+course--"</p>
+<p>"I hope no more than were absolutely necessary!" said Sir
+Wilfrid, hastily.</p>
+<p>"I had to do it well," said Lady Henry, with decision; "I can't
+say I didn't. That state of things lasted, more or less, about a
+year and a half. And by now, where do you think it has all worked
+out?"</p>
+<p>"You gave me a few hints last night," said Sir Wilfrid,
+hesitating.</p>
+<p>Lady Henry pushed her chair back from the table. Her hands
+trembled on her stick.</p>
+<p>"Hints!" she said, scornfully. "I'm long past hints. I told you
+last night--and I repeat--that woman has stripped me of all my
+friends! She has intrigued with them all in turn against me. She
+has done the same even with my servants. I can trust none of them
+where she is concerned. I am alone in my own house. My blindness
+makes me her tool, her plaything. As for my salon, as you call it,
+it has become hers. I am a mere courtesy-figurehead--her chaperon,
+in fact. I provide the house, the footmen, the champagne; the
+guests are hers. And she has done this by constant intrigue and
+deception--by flattery--by lying!"</p>
+<p>The old face had become purple. Lady Henry breathed hard.</p>
+<p>"My dear friend," said Sir Wilfrid, quickly, laying a calming
+hand on her arm, "don't let this trouble you so. Dismiss her."</p>
+<p>"And accept solitary confinement for the rest of my days? I
+haven't the courage--yet," said Lady Henry, bitterly. "You don't
+know how I have been isolated and betrayed! And I haven't told you
+the worst of all. Listen! Do you know whom she has got into her
+toils?"</p>
+<p>She paused, drawing herself rigidly erect. Sir Wilfrid, looking
+up sharply, remembered the little scene in the Park, and
+waited.</p>
+<p>"Did you have any opportunity last night," said Lady Henry,
+slowly, "of observing her and Jacob Delafield?"</p>
+<p>She spoke with passionate intensity, her frowning brows meeting
+above a pair of eyes that struggled to see and could not. But the
+effect she listened for was not produced. Sir Wilfrid drew back
+uncertainly.</p>
+<p>"Jacob Delafield?" he said. "Jacob Delafield? Are you sure?"</p>
+<p>"Sure?" cried Lady Henry, angrily. Then, disdaining to support
+her statement, she went on: "He hesitates. But she'll soon make an
+end of that. And do you realize what that means--what Jacob's
+possibilities are? Kindly recollect that Chudleigh has one boy--one
+sickly, tuberculous boy--who might die any day. And Chudleigh
+himself is a poor life. Jacob has more than a good chance--ninety
+chances out of a hundred"--she ground the words out with
+emphasis--"of inheriting the dukedom."</p>
+<p>"Good gracious!" said Sir Wilfrid, throwing away his
+cigarette.</p>
+<p>"There!" said Lady Henry, in sombre triumph. "Now you can
+understand what I have brought on poor Henry's family."</p>
+<p>A low knock was heard at the door.</p>
+<p>"Come in," said Lady Henry, impatiently.</p>
+<p>The door opened, and Mademoiselle Le Breton appeared on the
+threshold, carrying a small gray terrier under each arm.</p>
+<p>"I thought I had better tell you," she said, humbly, "that I am
+taking the dogs out. Shall I get some fresh wool for your
+knitting?"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="III"></a>III</h2>
+<br>
+<p>It was nearly four o'clock. Sir Wilfrid had just closed Lady
+Henry's door behind him, and was again walking along Bruton
+Street.</p>
+<p>He was thinking of the little scene of Mademoiselle Le Breton's
+appearance on the threshold of Lady Henry's dining-room; of the
+insolent sharpness with which Lady Henry had given her order upon
+order--as to the dogs, the books for the circulating library, a
+message for her dressmaker, certain directions for the tradesmen,
+etc., etc.--as though for the mere purpose of putting the woman who
+had dared to be her rival in her right place before Sir Wilfrid
+Bury. And at the end, as she was departing, Mademoiselle Le Breton,
+trusting no doubt to Lady Henry's blindness, had turned towards
+himself, raising her downcast eyes upon him suddenly, with a proud,
+passionate look. Her lips had moved; Sir Wilfrid had half risen
+from his chair. Then, quickly, the door had closed upon her.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid could not think of it without a touch of
+excitement.</p>
+<p>"Was she reminding me of Gherardtsloo?" he said to himself.
+"Upon my word, I must find some means of conversation with her, in
+spite of Lady Henry."</p>
+<p>He walked towards Bond Street, pondering the situation of the
+two women--the impotent jealousy and rancor with which Lady Henry
+was devoured, the domestic slavery contrasted with the social power
+of Mademoiselle Le Breton. Through the obscurity and difficulty of
+circumstance, how marked was the conscience of race in her, and, as
+he also thought, of high intelligence! The old man was deeply
+interested. He felt a certain indulgent pity for his lifelong
+friend Lady Henry; but he could not get Mademoiselle Julie out of
+his head.</p>
+<p>"Why on earth does she stay where she is?"</p>
+<p>He had asked the same question of Lady Henry, who had
+contemptuously replied:</p>
+<p>"Because she likes the flesh-pots, and won't give them up. No
+doubt she doesn't find my manners agreeable; but she knows very
+well that she wouldn't get the chances she gets in my house
+anywhere else. I give her a foothold. She'll not risk it for a few
+sour speeches on my part. I may say what I like to her--and I
+intend to say what I like! Besides, you watch her, and see whether
+she's made for poverty. She takes to luxury as a fish to water.
+What would she be if she left me? A little visiting teacher,
+perhaps, in a Bloomsbury lodging. That's not her line at all."</p>
+<p>"But somebody else might employ her as you do?" Sir Wilfrid had
+suggested.</p>
+<p>"You forget I should be asked for a character," said Lady Henry.
+"Oh, I admit there are possibilities--on her side. That silly
+goose, Evelyn Crowborough, would have taken her in, but I had a few
+words with Crowborough, and he put his foot down. He told his wife
+he didn't want an intriguing foreigner to live with them. No; for
+the present we are chained to each other. I can't get rid of her,
+and she doesn't want to get rid of me. Of course, things might
+become intolerable for either of us. But at present self-interest
+on both sides keeps us going. Oh, don't tell me the thing is
+odious! I know it. Every day she stays in the house I become a more
+abominable old woman."</p>
+<p>A more exacting one, certainly. Sir Wilfrid thought with pity
+and amusement of the commissions with which Mademoiselle Julie had
+been loaded. "She earns her money, any way," he thought. "Those
+things will take her a hard afternoon's work. But, bless my
+soul!"--he paused in his walk--"what about that engagement to
+Duchess Evelyn that I heard her make? Not a word, by-the-way, to
+Lady Henry about it! Oh, this is amusing!"</p>
+<p>He went meditatively on his way, and presently turned into his
+club to write some letters. But at five o'clock he emerged, and
+told a hansom to drive him to Grosvenor Square. He alighted at the
+great red-brick mansion of the Crowboroughs, and asked for the
+Duchess. The magnificent person presiding over the hall, an old
+family retainer, remembered him, and made no difficulty about
+admitting him.</p>
+<p>"Anybody with her grace?" he inquired, as the man handed him
+over to the footman who was to usher him up-stairs.</p>
+<p>"Only Miss Le Breton and Mr. Delafield, Sir Wilfrid. Her grace
+told me to say 'not at home' this afternoon, but I am sure, sir,
+she will see you."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid smiled.</p>
+<p>As he entered the outer drawing-room, the Duchess and the group
+surrounding her did not immediately perceive the footman nor
+himself, and he had a few moments in which to take in a charming
+scene.</p>
+<p>A baby girl in a white satin gown down to her heels, and a white
+satin cap, lace-edged and tied under her chin, was holding out her
+tiny skirt with one hand and dancing before the Duchess and Miss Le
+Breton, who was at the piano. The child's other hand held up a
+morsel of biscuit wherewith she directed the movements of her
+partner, a small black spitz, of a slim and silky elegance, who,
+straining on his hind legs, his eager attention fixed upon the
+biscuit, followed every movement of his small mistress; while she,
+her large blue eyes now solemn, now triumphant, her fair hair
+escaping from her cap in fluttering curls, her dainty feet pointed,
+her dimpled arm upraised, repeated in living grace the picture of
+her great-great-grandmother which hung on the wall in front of her,
+a masterpiece from Reynolds's happiest hours.</p>
+<p>Behind Mademoiselle Le Breton stood Jacob Delafield; while the
+Duchess, in a low chair beside them, beat time gayly to the gavotte
+that Mademoiselle Julie was playing and laughed encouragement and
+applause to the child in front of her. She herself, with her cloud
+of fair hair, the delicate pink and white of her skin, the laughing
+lips and small white hands that rose and fell with the baby steps,
+seemed little more than a child. Her pale blue dress, for which she
+had just exchanged her winter walking-costume, fell round her in
+sweeping folds of lace and silk--a French fairy dressed by
+W&ouml;rth, she was possessed by a wild gayety, and her silvery
+laugh held the room.</p>
+<p>Beside her, Julie Le Breton, very thin, very tall, very dark,
+was laughing too. The eyes which Sir Wilfrid had lately seen so
+full of pride were now alive with pleasure. Jacob Delafield, also,
+from behind, grinned applause or shouted to the babe, "Brava,
+Tottie; well done!" Three people, a baby, and a dog more intimately
+pleased with one another's society it would have been difficult to
+discover.</p>
+<p>"Sir Wilfrid!"</p>
+<p>The Duchess sprang up astonished, and in a moment, to Sir
+Wilfrid's chagrin, the little scene fell to pieces. The child
+dropped on the floor, defending herself and the biscuit as best she
+could against the wild snatches of the dog. Delafield composed his
+face in a moment to its usual taciturnity. Mademoiselle Le Breton
+rose from the piano.</p>
+<p>"No, no!" said Sir Wilfrid, stopping short and holding up a
+deprecating hand. "Too bad! Go on."</p>
+<p>"Oh, we were only fooling with baby!" said the Duchess. "It is
+high time she went to her nurse. Sit here, Sir Wilfrid. Julie, will
+you take the babe, or shall I ring for Mrs. Robson?"</p>
+<p>"I'll take her," said Mademoiselle Le Breton.</p>
+<p>She knelt down by the child, who rose with alacrity. Catching
+her skirts round her, with one eye half laughing, half timorous,
+turned over her shoulder towards the dog, the baby made a wild
+spring into Mademoiselle Julie's arms, tucking up her feet
+instantly, with a shriek of delight, out of the dog's way. Then she
+nestled her fair head down upon her bearer's shoulder, and,
+throbbing with joy and mischief, was carried away.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid, hat in hand, stood for a moment watching the pair.
+A bygone marriage uniting the Lackington family with that of the
+Duchess had just occurred to him in some bewilderment. He sat down
+beside his hostess, while she made him some tea. But no sooner had
+the door of the farther drawing-room closed behind Mademoiselle Le
+Breton, than with a dart of all her lively person she pounced upon
+him.</p>
+<p>"Well, so Aunt Flora has been complaining to you?"</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid's cup remained suspended in his hand. He glanced
+first at the speaker and then at Jacob Delafield.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Jacob knows all about it!" said the Duchess, eagerly. "This
+is Julie's headquarters; <i>we</i> are on her staff. <i>You</i>
+come from the enemy!"</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid took out his white silk handkerchief and waved
+it.</p>
+<p>"Here is my flag of truce," he said. "Treat me well."</p>
+<p>"We are only too anxious to parley with you," said the Duchess,
+laughing. "Aren't we, Jacob?"</p>
+<p>Then she drew closer.</p>
+<p>"What has Aunt Flora been saying to you?"</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid paused. As he sat there, apparently studying his
+boots, his blond hair, now nearly gray, carefully parted in the
+middle above his benevolent brow, he might have been reckoned a
+tame and manageable person. Jacob Delafield, however, knew him of
+old.</p>
+<p>"I don't think that's fair," said Sir Wilfrid, at last, looking
+up. "I'm the new-comer; I ought to be allowed the questions."</p>
+<p>"Go on," said the Duchess, her chin on her hand. "Jacob and I
+will answer all we know."</p>
+<p>Delafield nodded. Sir Wilfrid, looking from one to the other,
+quickly reminded himself that they had been playmates from the
+cradle--or might have been.</p>
+<p>"Well, in the first place," he said, slowly, "I am lost in
+admiration at the rapidity with which Mademoiselle Le Breton does
+business. An hour and a half ago"--he looked at his watch--"I stood
+by while Lady Henry enumerated commissions it would have taken any
+ordinary man-mortal half a day to execute."</p>
+<p>The Duchess clapped her hands.</p>
+<p>"My maid is now executing them," she said, with glee. "In an
+hour she will be back. Julie will go home with everything done, and
+I shall have had nearly two hours of her delightful society. What
+harm is there in that?"</p>
+<p>"Where are the dogs?" said Sir Wilfrid, looking round.</p>
+<p>"Aunt Flora's dogs? In the housekeeper's room, eating sweet
+biscuit. They adore the groom of the chambers."</p>
+<p>"Is Lady Henry aware of this--this division of labor?" said Sir
+Wilfrid, smiling.</p>
+<p>"Of course not," said the Duchess, flushing. "She makes Julie's
+life such a burden to her that something has to be done. Now what
+<i>has</i> Aunt Flora been telling you? We were certain she would
+take you into council--she has dropped various hints of it. I
+suppose she has been telling you that Julie has been intriguing
+against her--taking liberties, separating her from her friends, and
+so on?"</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid smilingly presented his cup for some more tea.</p>
+<p>"I beg to point out," he said, "that I have only been allowed
+<i>two</i> questions so far. But if things are to be at all fair
+and equal, I am owed at least six."</p>
+<p>The Duchess drew back, checked, and rather annoyed. Jacob
+Delafield, on the other hand, bent forward.</p>
+<p>"We are <i>anxious</i>, Sir Wilfrid, to tell you all we know,"
+he replied, with quiet emphasis.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid looked at him. The flame in the young man's eyes
+burned clear and steady--but flame it was. Sir Wilfrid remembered
+him as a lazy, rather somnolent youth; the man's advance in
+expression, in significant power, of itself, told much.</p>
+<p>"In the first place, can you give me the history of this lady's
+antecedents?"</p>
+<p>He glanced from one to the other.</p>
+<p>The Duchess and Jacob Delafield exchanged glances. Then the
+Duchess spoke--uncertainly.</p>
+<p>"Yes, we know. She has confided in us. There is nothing whatever
+to her discredit."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid's expression changed.</p>
+<p>"Ah!" cried the Duchess, bending forward. "You know, too?"</p>
+<p>"I knew her father and mother," said Sir Wilfrid, simply.</p>
+<p>The Duchess gave a little cry of relief. Jacob Delafield rose,
+took a turn across the room, and came back to Sir Wilfrid.</p>
+<p>"Now we can really speak frankly," he said. "The situation has
+grown very difficult, and we did not know--Evelyn and I--whether we
+had a right to explain it. But now that Lady Henry--"</p>
+<p>"Oh yes," said Sir Wilfrid, "that's all right. The fact of
+Mademoiselle Le Breton's parentage--"</p>
+<p>"Is really what makes Lady Henry so jealous!" cried the Duchess,
+indignantly. "Oh, she's a tyrant, is Aunt Flora! It is because
+Julie is of her own world--of <i>our</i> world, by blood, whatever
+the law may say--that she can't help making a rival out of her, and
+tormenting her morning, noon, and night. I tell you, Sir Wilfrid,
+what that poor girl has gone through no one can imagine but we who
+have watched it. Lady Henry owes her <i>every</i>thing this last
+three years. Where would she have been without Julie? She talks of
+Julie's separating her from her friends, cutting her out, imposing
+upon her, and nonsense of that kind! How would she have kept up
+that salon alone, I should like to know--a blind old woman who
+can't write a note for herself or recognize a face? First of all
+she throws everything upon Julie, is proud of her cleverness, puts
+her forward in every way, tells most unnecessary falsehoods about
+her--Julie has felt <i>that</i> very much--and then when Julie has
+a great success, when people begin to come to Bruton Street, for
+her sake as well as Lady Henry's, then Lady Henry turns against
+her, complains of her to everybody, talks about treachery and
+disloyalty and Heaven knows what, and begins to treat her like the
+dirt under her feet! How can Julie help being clever and
+agreeable--she <i>is</i> clever and agreeable! As Mr. Montresor
+said to me yesterday, 'As soon as that woman comes into a room, my
+spirits go up!' And why? Because she never thinks of herself, she
+always makes other people show at their best. And then Lady Henry
+behaves like this!" The Duchess threw out her hands in scornful
+reprobation. "And the question is, of course, Can it go on?"</p>
+<p>"I don't gather," said Sir Wilfrid, hesitating, "that Lady Henry
+wants immediately to put an end to it."</p>
+<p>Delafield gave an angry laugh.</p>
+<p>"The point is whether Mademoiselle Julie and Mademoiselle
+Julie's friends can put up with it much longer."</p>
+<p>"You see," said the Duchess, eagerly, "Julie is such a loyal,
+affectionate creature. She knows Lady Henry was kind to her, to
+begin with, that she gave her great chances, and that she's getting
+old and infirm. Julie's awfully sorry for her. She doesn't want to
+leave her all alone--to the mercy of her servants--"</p>
+<p>"I understand the servants, too, are devoted to Mademoiselle
+Julie?" said Sir Wilfrid.</p>
+<p>"Yes, that's another grievance," said Delafield, contemptuously.
+"Why shouldn't they be? When the butler had a child very ill, it
+was Mademoiselle Julie who went to see it in the mews, who took it
+flowers and grapes--"</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry's grapes?" threw in Sir Wilfrid.</p>
+<p>"What does it matter!" said Delafield, impatiently. "Lady Henry
+has more of everything than she knows what to do with. But it
+wasn't grapes only! It was time and thought and consideration. Then
+when the younger footman wanted to emigrate to the States, it was
+Mademoiselle Julie who found a situation for him, who got Mr.
+Montresor to write to some American friends, and finally sent the
+lad off, devoted to her, of course, for life. I should like to know
+when Lady Henry would have done that kind of thing! Naturally the
+servants like her--she deserves it."</p>
+<p>"I see--I see," said Sir Wilfrid, nodding gently, his eyes on
+the carpet. "A very competent young lady."</p>
+<p>Delafield looked at the older man, half in annoyance, half in
+perplexity.</p>
+<p>"Is there anything to complain of in that?" he said, rather
+shortly.</p>
+<p>"Oh, nothing, nothing!" said Sir Wilfrid, hastily. "And this
+word intrigue that Lady Henry uses? Has mademoiselle always steered
+a straightforward course with her employer?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, well," said the Duchess, shrugging her shoulders, "how can
+you always be perfectly straightforward with such a tyrannical old
+person! She <i>has</i> to be managed. Lately, in order to be sure
+of every minute of Julie's time, she has taken to heaping work upon
+her to such a ridiculous extent that unless I come to the rescue
+the poor thing gets no rest and no amusement. And last summer there
+was an explosion, because Julie, who was supposed to be in Paris
+for her holiday with a school-friend, really spent a week of it
+with the Buncombes, Lady Henry's married niece, who has a place in
+Kent. The Buncombes knew her at Lady Henry's parties, of course.
+Then they met her in the Louvre, took her about a little, were
+delighted with her, and begged her to come and stay with them--they
+have a place near Canterbury--on the way home. They and Julie
+agreed that it would be best to say nothing to Lady Henry about
+it--she is too absurdly jealous--but then it leaked out, unluckily,
+and Lady Henry was furious."</p>
+<p>"I must say," said Delafield, hurriedly, "I always thought
+frankness would have been best there."</p>
+<p>"Well, perhaps," said the Duchess, unwillingly, with another
+shrug. "But now what is to be done? Lady Henry really must behave
+better, or Julie can't and sha'n't stay with her. Julie has a great
+following--hasn't she, Jacob? They won't see her harassed to
+death."</p>
+<p>"Certainly not," said Delafield. "At the same time we all
+see"--he turned to Sir Wilfrid--"what the advantages of the present
+combination are. Where would Lady Henry find another lady of
+Mademoiselle Le Breton's sort to help her with her house and her
+salon? For the last two years the Wednesday evenings have been the
+most brilliant and successful things of their kind in London. And,
+of course, for Mademoiselle Le Breton it is a great thing to have
+the protection of Lady Henry's name--"</p>
+<p>"A great thing?" cried Sir Wilfrid. "Everything, my dear
+Jacob!"</p>
+<p>"I don't know," said Delafield, slowly. "It may be bought too
+dear."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid looked at the speaker with curiosity. It had been at
+all times possible to rouse Jacob Delafield--as child, as
+school-boy, as undergraduate--from an habitual carelessness and
+idleness by an act or a tale of injustice or oppression. Had the
+Duchess pressed him into her service, and was he merely taking
+sides for the weaker out of a natural bent towards that way of
+looking at things? Or--</p>
+<p>"Well, certainly we must do our best to patch it up," said Sir
+Wilfrid, after a pause. "Perhaps Mademoiselle Le Breton will allow
+me a word with her by-and-by. I think I have still some influence
+with Lady Henry. But, dear goddaughter"--he bent forward and laid
+his hand on that of the Duchess--"don't let the maid do the
+commissions."</p>
+<p>"But I must!" cried the Duchess. "Just think, there is my big
+bazaar on the 16th. You don't know how clever Julie is at such
+things. I want to make her recite--her French is too beautiful! And
+then she has such inventiveness, such a head! Everything goes if
+she takes it in hand. But if I say anything to Aunt Flora, she'll
+put a spoke in all our wheels. She'll hate the thought of anything
+in which Julie is successful and conspicuous. Of course she
+will!"</p>
+<p>"All the same, Evelyn," said Delafield, uncomfortable apparently
+for the second time, "I really think it would be best to let Lady
+Henry know."</p>
+<p>"Well, then, we may as well give it up," said the Duchess,
+pettishly, turning aside.</p>
+<p>Delafield, who was still pacing the carpet, suddenly raised his
+hand in a gesture of warning. Mademoiselle Le Breton was crossing
+the outer drawing-room.</p>
+<p>"Julie, come here!" cried the Duchess, springing up and running
+towards her. "Jacob is making himself so disagreeable. He thinks we
+ought to tell Lady Henry about the 16th."</p>
+<p>The speaker put her arm through Julie Le Breton's, looking up at
+her with a frowning brow. The contrast between her restless
+prettiness, the profusion of her dress and hair, and Julie's dark,
+lissome strength, gowned and gloved in neat, close black, was
+marked enough.</p>
+<p>As the Duchess spoke, Julie looked smiling at Jacob
+Delafield.</p>
+<p>"I am in your hands," she said, gently. "Of course I don't want
+to keep anything from Lady Henry. Please decide for me."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid's mouth showed a satirical line. He turned aside and
+began to play with a copy of the <i>Spectator</i>.</p>
+<p>"Julie," said the Duchess, hesitating, "I hope you won't mind,
+but we have been discussing things a little with Sir Wilfrid. I
+felt sure Aunt Flora had been talking to him."</p>
+<p>"Of course," said Julie, "I knew she would." She looked towards
+Sir Wilfrid, slightly drawing herself up. Her manner was quiet, but
+all her movements were somehow charged with a peculiar and
+interesting significance. The force of the character made itself
+felt through all disguises.</p>
+<p>In spite of himself, Sir Wilfrid began to murmur apologetic
+things.</p>
+<p>"It was natural, mademoiselle, that Lady Henry should confide in
+me. She has perhaps told you that for many years I have been one of
+the trustees of her property. That has led to her consulting me on
+a good many matters. And evidently, from what she says and what the
+Duchess says, nothing could be of more importance to her happiness,
+now, in her helpless state, than her relations to you."</p>
+<p>He spoke with a serious kindness in which the tinge of mocking
+habitual to his sleek and well-groomed visage was wholly lost.
+Julie Le Breton met him with dignity.</p>
+<p>"Yes, they are important. But, I fear they cannot go on as they
+are."</p>
+<p>There was a pause. Then Sir Wilfrid approached her:</p>
+<p>"I hear you are returning to Bruton Street immediately. Might I
+be your escort?"</p>
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+<p>The Duchess, a little sobered by the turn events had taken and
+the darkened prospects of her bazaar, protested in vain against
+this sudden departure. Julie resumed her furs, which, as Sir
+Wilfrid, who was curious in such things; happened to notice, were
+of great beauty, and made her farewells. Did her hand linger in
+Jacob Delafield's? Did the look with which that young man received
+it express more than the steadfast support which justice offers to
+the oppressed? Sir Wilfrid could not be sure.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="illus-052.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/illus-052.jpg"><img src=
+"images/illus-052.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"'INDEED I WILL!' CRIED SIR WILFRID, AND THEY WALKED ON"</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>As they stepped out into the frosty, lamp-lit dark of Grosvenor
+Square, Julie Le Breton turned to her companion.</p>
+<p>"You knew my mother and father," she said, abruptly. "I remember
+your coming,"</p>
+<p>What was in her voice, her rich, beautiful voice? Sir Wilfrid
+only knew that while perfectly steady, it seemed to bring emotion
+near, to make all the aspects of things dramatic.</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes," he replied, in some confusion. "I knew her well,
+from the time when she was a girl in the school-room. Poor Lady
+Rose!"</p>
+<p>The figure beside him stood still.</p>
+<p>"Then if you were my mother's friend," she said, huskily, "you
+will hear patiently what I have to say, even though you are Lady
+Henry's trustee."</p>
+<p>"Indeed I will!" cried Sir Wilfrid, and they walked on.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+<br>
+<p>"But, first of all," said Mademoiselle Le Breton, looking in
+some annoyance at the brace of terriers circling and barking round
+them, "we must take the dogs home, otherwise no talk will be
+possible."</p>
+<p>"You have no more business to do?"</p>
+<p>His companion smiled.</p>
+<p>"Everything Lady Henry wants is here," she said, pointing to the
+bag upon her arm which had been handed to her, as Sir Wilfrid
+remembered, after some whispered conversation, in the hall of
+Crowborough House by an elegantly dressed woman, who was no doubt
+the Duchess's maid.</p>
+<p>"Allow me to carry it for you."</p>
+<p>"Many thanks," said Mademoiselle Le Breton, firmly retaining it,
+"but those are not the things I mind."</p>
+<p>They walked on quickly to Bruton Street. The dogs made
+conversation impossible. If they were on the chain it was one long
+battle between them and their leader. If they were let loose, it
+seemed to Sir Wilfrid that they ranged every area on the march, and
+attacked all elderly gentlemen and most errand-boys.</p>
+<p>"Do you always take them out?" he asked, when both he and his
+companion were crimson and out of breath.</p>
+<p>"Always."</p>
+<p>"Do you like dogs?"</p>
+<p>"I used to. Perhaps some day I shall again."</p>
+<p>"As for me, I wish they had but one neck!" said Sir Wilfrid, who
+had but just succeeded in dragging Max, the bigger of the two, out
+of the interior of a pastry-cook's hand-cart which had been rashly
+left with doors open for a few minutes in the street, while its
+responsible guardian was gossiping in an adjacent kitchen.
+Mademoiselle Julie meanwhile was wrestling with Nero, the younger,
+who had dived to the very heart of a peculiarly unsavory dust-box,
+standing near the entrance of a mews.</p>
+<p>"So you commonly go through the streets of London in this
+whirlwind?" asked Sir Wilfrid, again, incredulous, when at last
+they had landed their charges safe at the Bruton Street door.</p>
+<p>"Morning and evening," said Mademoiselle Julie, smiling. Then
+she addressed the butler: "Tell Lady Henry, please, that I shall be
+at home in half an hour."</p>
+<p>As they turned westward, the winter streets were gay with lights
+and full of people. Sir Wilfrid was presently conscious that among
+all the handsome and well-dressed women who brushed past them,
+Mademoiselle Le Breton more than held her own. She reminded him now
+not so much of her mother as of Marriott Dalrymple. Sir Wilfrid had
+first seen this woman's father at Damascus, when Dalrymple, at
+twenty-six, was beginning the series of Eastern journeys which had
+made him famous. He remembered the brillance of the youth; the
+power, physical and mental, which radiated from him, making all
+things easy; the scorn of mediocrity, the incapacity for
+subordination.</p>
+<p>"I should like you to understand," said the lady beside him,
+"that I came to Lady Henry prepared to do my very best."</p>
+<p>"I am sure of that," said Sir Wilfrid, hastily recalling his
+thoughts from Damascus. "And you must have had a very difficult
+task."</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle Le Breton shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+<p>"I knew, of course, it must be difficult. And as to the drudgery
+of it--the dogs, and that kind of thing--nothing of that sort
+matters to me in the least. But I cannot be humiliated before those
+who have become my friends, entirely because Lady Henry wished it
+to be so."</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry at first showed you every confidence?"</p>
+<p>"After the first month or two she put everything into my
+hands--her household, her receptions, her letters, you may almost
+say her whole social existence. She trusted me with all her
+secrets." ("No, no, my dear lady," thought Sir Wilfrid.) "She let
+me help her with all her affairs. And, honestly, I did all I could
+to make her life easy."</p>
+<p>"That I understand from herself."</p>
+<p>"Then why," cried Mademoiselle Le Breton, turning round to him
+with sudden passion--"why couldn't Lady Henry leave things alone?
+Are devotion, and--and the kind of qualities she wanted, so common?
+I said to myself that, blind and helpless as she was, she should
+lose nothing. Not only should her household be well kept, her
+affairs well managed, but her salon should be as attractive, her
+Wednesday evenings as brilliant, as ever. The world was deserting
+her; I helped her to bring it back. She cannot live without social
+success; yet now she hates me for what I have done. Is it sane--is
+it reasonable?"</p>
+<p>"She feels, I suppose," said Sir Wilfrid, gravely, "that the
+success is no longer hers."</p>
+<p>"So she says. But will you please examine that remark? When her
+guests assemble, can I go to bed and leave her to grapple with
+them? I have proposed it often, but of course it is impossible. And
+if I am to be there I must behave, I suppose, like a lady, not like
+the housemaid. Really, Lady Henry asks too much. In my mother's
+little flat in Bruges, with the two or three friends who frequented
+it, I was brought up in as good society and as good talk as Lady
+Henry has ever known."</p>
+<p>They were passing an electric lamp, and Sir Wilfrid, looking up,
+was half thrilled, half repelled by the flashing energy of the face
+beside him. Was ever such language on the lips of a paid companion
+before? His sympathy for Lady Henry revived.</p>
+<p>"Can you really give me no clew to the--to the sources of Lady
+Henry's dissatisfaction?" he said, at last, rather coldly.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle Le Breton hesitated.</p>
+<p>"I don't want to make myself out a saint," she said, at last, in
+another voice and with a humility which was, in truth, hardly less
+proud than her self-assertion. "I--I was brought up in poverty, and
+my mother died when I was fifteen. I had to defend myself as the
+poor defend themselves--by silence. I learned not to talk about my
+own affairs. I couldn't afford to be frank, like a rich English
+girl. I dare say, sometimes I have concealed things which had been
+better made plain. They were never of any real importance, and if
+Lady Henry had shown any consideration--"</p>
+<p>Her voice failed her a little, evidently to her annoyance. They
+walked on without speaking for a few paces. "Never of any real
+importance?" Sir Wilfrid wondered.</p>
+<p>Their minds apparently continued the conversation though their
+lips were silent, for presently Julie Le Breton said, abruptly:</p>
+<p>"Of course I am speaking of matters where Lady Henry might have
+some claim to information. With regard to many of my thoughts and
+feelings, Lady Henry has no right whatever to my confidence."</p>
+<p>"She gives us fair warning," thought Sir Wilfrid.</p>
+<p>Aloud he said:</p>
+<p>"It is not a question of thoughts and feelings, I understand,
+but of actions."</p>
+<p>"Like the visit to the Duncombes'?" said Mademoiselle Le Breton,
+impatiently. "Oh, I quite admit it--that's only one of several
+instances Lady Henry might have brought forward. You see, she led
+me to make these friendships; and now, because they annoy her, I am
+to break them. But she forgets. Friends are too--too new in my
+life, too precious--"</p>
+<p>Again the voice wavered. How it thrilled and penetrated! Sir
+Wilfrid found himself listening for every word.</p>
+<p>"No," she resumed. "If it is a question of renouncing the
+friends I have made in her house, or going--it will be going. That
+may as well be quite clear."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid looked up.</p>
+<p>"Let me ask you one question, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"Certainly. Whatever you like."</p>
+<p>"Have you ever had, have you now, any affection for Lady
+Henry?"</p>
+<p>"Affection? I could have had plenty. Lady Henry is most
+interesting to watch. It is magnificent, the struggles she makes
+with her infirmities."</p>
+<p>Nothing could have been more agreeable than the modulation of
+these words, the passage of the tone from a first note of surprise
+to its grave and womanly close. Again, the same suggestions of
+veiled and vibrating feeling. Sir Wilfrid's nascent dislike
+softened a little.</p>
+<p>"After all," he said, with gentleness, "one must make allowance
+for old age and weakness, mustn't one?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, as to that, you can't say anything to me that I am not
+perpetually saying to myself," was her somewhat impetuous reply.
+"Only there is a point when ill-temper becomes not only tormenting
+to me but degrading to herself.... Oh, if you only knew!"--the
+speaker drew an indignant breath. "I can hardly bring myself to
+speak of such <i>mis&egrave;res</i>. But everything excites her,
+everything makes her jealous. It is a grievance that I should have
+a new dress, that Mr. Montresor should send me an order for the
+House of Commons, that Evelyn Crowborough should give me a
+Christmas present. Last Christmas, Evelyn gave me these furs--she
+is the only creature in London from whom I would accept a farthing
+or the value of a farthing."</p>
+<p>She paused, then rapidly threw him a question:</p>
+<p>"Why, do you suppose, did I take it from her?"</p>
+<p>"She is your kinswoman," said Wilfrid, quietly.</p>
+<p>"Ah, you knew that! Well, then, mayn't Evelyn be kind to me,
+though I am what I am? I reminded Lady Henry, but she only thought
+me a mean parasite, sponging on a duchess for presents above my
+station. She said things hardly to be forgiven. I was silent. But I
+have never ceased to wear the furs."</p>
+<p>With what imperious will did the thin shoulders straighten
+themselves under the folds of chinchilla! The cloak became
+symbolic, a flag not to be struck.</p>
+<p>"I never answer back, please understand--never," she went on,
+hurriedly. "You saw to-day how Lady Henry gave me her orders. There
+is not a servant in the house with whom she would dare such a
+manner. Did I resent it?"</p>
+<p>"You behaved with great forbearance. I watched you with
+admiration."</p>
+<p>"Ah, <i>forbearance!</i> I fear you don't understand one of the
+strangest elements in the whole case. I am <i>afraid</i> of Lady
+Henry, mortally afraid! When she speaks to me I feel like a child
+who puts up its hands to ward off a blow. My instinct is not merely
+to submit, but to grovel. When you have had the youth that I had,
+when you have existed, learned, amused yourself on sufferance, when
+you have had somehow to maintain yourself among girls who had
+family, friends, money, name, while you--"</p>
+<p>Her voice stopped, resolutely silenced before it broke. Sir
+Wilfrid uncomfortably felt that he had no sympathy to produce
+worthy of the claim that her whole personality seemed to make upon
+it. But she recovered herself immediately.</p>
+<p>"Now I think I had better give you an outline of the last six
+months," she said, turning to him. "Of course it is my side of the
+matter. But you have heard Lady Henry's."</p>
+<p>And with great composure she laid before him an outline of the
+chief quarrels and grievances which had embittered the life of the
+Bruton Street house during the period she had named. It was a
+wretched story, and she clearly told it with repugnance and
+disgust. There was in her tone a note of offended personal
+delicacy, as of one bemired against her will.</p>
+<p>Evidently, Lady Henry was hardly to be defended. The thing had
+been "odious," indeed. Two women of great ability and different
+ages, shut up together and jarring at every point, the elder
+furiously jealous and exasperated by what seemed to her the affront
+offered to her high rank and her past ascendency by the social
+success of her dependant, the other defending herself, first by the
+arts of flattery and submission, and then, when these proved
+hopeless, by a social skill that at least wore many of the aspects
+of intrigue--these were the essential elements of the situation;
+and, as her narrative proceeded, Sir Wilfrid admitted to himself
+that it was hard to see any way out of it. As to his own
+sympathies, he did not know what to make of them.</p>
+<p>"No. I have been only too yielding," said Mademoiselle Le
+Breton, sorely, when her tale was done. "I am ashamed when I look
+back on what I have borne. But now it has gone too far, and
+something must be done. If I go, frankly, Lady Henry will
+suffer."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid looked at his companion.</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry is well aware of it."</p>
+<p>"Yes," was the calm reply, "she knows it, but she does not
+realize it. You see, if it comes to a rupture she will allow no
+half-measures. Those who stick to me will have to quarrel with her.
+And there will be a great many who will stick to me."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid's little smile was not friendly.</p>
+<p>"It is indeed evident," he said, "that you have thought it all
+out."</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle Le Breton did not reply. They walked on a few
+minutes in silence, till she said, with a suddenness and in a low
+tone that startled her companion:</p>
+<p>"If Lady Henry could ever have felt that she <i>humbled</i> me,
+that I acknowledged myself at her mercy! But she never could. She
+knows that I feel myself as well born as she, that I am <i>not</i>
+ashamed of my parents, that my principles give me a free mind about
+such things."</p>
+<p>"Your principles?" murmured Sir Wilfrid.</p>
+<p>"You were right," she turned upon him with a perfectly quiet but
+most concentrated passion. "I have <i>had</i> to think things out.
+I know, of course, that the world goes with Lady Henry. Therefore I
+must be nameless and kinless and hold my tongue. If the world knew,
+it would expect me to hang my head. I <i>don't!</i> I am as proud
+of my mother as of my father. I adore both their memories.
+Conventionalities of that kind mean nothing to me."</p>
+<p>"My dear lady--"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I don't expect you or any one else to feel with me," said
+the voice which for all its low pitch was beginning to make him
+feel as though he were in the centre of a hail-storm. "You are a
+man of the world, you knew my parents, and yet I understand
+perfectly that for you, too, I am disgraced. So be it! So be it! I
+don't quarrel with what any one may choose to think, but--"</p>
+<p>She recaptured herself with difficulty, and there was silence.
+They were walking through the purple February dusk towards the
+Marble Arch. It was too dark to see her face under its delicate
+veil, and Sir Wilfrid did not wish to see it. But before he had
+collected his thoughts sufficiently his companion was speaking
+again, in a wholly different manner.</p>
+<p>"I don't know what made me talk in this way. It was the contact
+with some one, I suppose, who had seen us at Gherardtsloo." She
+raised her veil, and he thought that she dashed away some tears.
+"That never happened to me before in London. Well, now, to return.
+If there is a breach--"</p>
+<p>"Why should there be a breach?" said Sir Wilfrid. "My dear Miss
+Le Breton, listen to me for a few minutes. I see perfectly that you
+have a great deal to complain of, but I also see that Lady Henry
+has something of a case."</p>
+<p>And with a courteous authority and tact worthy of his trade, the
+old diplomat began to discuss the situation.</p>
+<p>Presently he found himself talking with an animation, a
+friendliness, an intimacy that surprised himself. What was there in
+the personality beside him that seemed to win a way inside a man's
+defences in spite of him? Much of what she had said had seemed to
+him arrogant or morbid. And yet as she listened to him, with an
+evident dying down of passion, an evident forlornness, he felt in
+her that woman's weakness and timidity of which she had accused
+herself in relation to Lady Henry, and was somehow, manlike,
+softened and disarmed. She had been talking wildly, because no
+doubt she felt herself in great difficulties. But when it was his
+turn to talk she neither resented nor resisted what he had to say.
+The kinder he was, the more she yielded, almost eagerly at times,
+as though the thorniness of her own speech had hurt herself most,
+and there were behind it all a sad life, and a sad heart that only
+asked in truth for a little sympathy and understanding.</p>
+<p>"I shall soon be calling her 'my dear' and patting her hand,"
+thought the old man, at last, astonished at himself. For the
+dejection in her attitude and gait began to weigh upon him; he felt
+a warm desire to sustain and comfort her. More and more thought,
+more and more contrivance did he throw into the straightening out
+of this tangle between two excitable women, not, it seemed, for
+Lady Henry's sake, not, surely, for Miss Le Breton's sake. But--ah!
+those two poor, dead folk, who had touched his heart long ago, did
+he feel the hovering of their ghosts beside him in the wintry
+wind?</p>
+<p>At any rate, he abounded in shrewd and fatherly advice, and
+Mademoiselle Le Breton listened with a most flattering
+meekness.</p>
+<p>"Well, now I think we have come to an understanding," he urged,
+hopefully, as they turned down Bruton Street again.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle Le Breton sighed.</p>
+<p>"It is very kind of you. Oh, I will do my best. But--"</p>
+<p>She shook her head uncertainly.</p>
+<p>"No--no 'buts,'" cried Sir Wilfrid, cheerfully. "Suppose, as a
+first step," he smiled at his companion, "you tell Lady Henry about
+the bazaar?"</p>
+<p>"By all means. She won't let me go. But Evelyn will find some
+one else."</p>
+<p>"Oh, we'll see about that," said the old man, almost crossly.
+"If you'll allow me I'll try my hand."</p>
+<p>Julie Le Breton did not reply, but her face glimmered upon him
+with a wistful friendliness that did not escape him, even in the
+darkness. In this yielding mood her voice and movements had so much
+subdued sweetness, so much distinction, that he felt himself more
+than melting towards her.</p>
+<p>Then, of a sudden, a thought--a couple of thoughts--sped across
+him. He drew himself rather sharply together.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Delafield, I gather, has been a good deal concerned in the
+whole matter?"</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle Le Breton laughed and hesitated.</p>
+<p>"He has been very kind. He heard Lady Henry's language once when
+she was excited. It seemed to shock him. He has tried once or twice
+to smooth her down. Oh, he has been most kind!"</p>
+<p>"Has he any influence with her?"</p>
+<p>"Not much."</p>
+<p>"Do you think well of him?"</p>
+<p>He turned to her with a calculated abruptness. She showed a
+little surprise.</p>
+<p>"I? But everybody thinks well of him. They say the Duke trusts
+everything to him."</p>
+<p>"When I left England he was still a rather lazy and
+unsatisfactory undergraduate. I was curious to know how he had
+developed. Do you know what his chief interests are now?"</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle Le Breton hesitated.</p>
+<p>"I'm really afraid I don't know," she said, at last, smiling,
+and, as it were, regretful. "But Evelyn Crowborough, of course,
+could tell you all about him. She and he are very old friends."</p>
+<p>"No birds out of that cover," was Sir Wilfrid's inward
+comment.</p>
+<p>The lamp over Lady Henry's door was already in sight when Sir
+Wilfrid, after some talk of the Montresors, with whom he was going
+to dine that night, carelessly said:</p>
+<p>"That's a very good-looking fellow, that Captain Warkworth, whom
+I saw with Lady Henry last night."</p>
+<p>"Ah, yes. Lady Henry has made great friends with him," said
+Mademoiselle Julie, readily. "She consults him about her memoir of
+her husband."</p>
+<p>"Memoir of her husband!" Sir Wilfrid stopped short. "Heavens
+above! Memoir of Lord Henry?"</p>
+<p>"She is half-way through it. I thought you knew."</p>
+<p>"Well, upon my word! Whom shall we have a memoir of next? Henry
+Delafield! Henry Delafield! Good gracious!"</p>
+<p>And Sir Wilfrid walked along, slashing at the railings with his
+stick, as though the action relieved him. Julie Le Breton quietly
+resumed:</p>
+<p>"I understand that Lord Henry and Captain Warkworth's father
+went through the Indian Mutiny together, and Captain Warkworth has
+some letters--"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I dare say--I dare say," muttered Sir Wilfrid. "What's this
+man home for just now?"</p>
+<p>"Well, I <i>think</i> Lady Henry knows," said Mademoiselle
+Julie, turning to him an open look, like one who, once more, would
+gladly satisfy a questioner if they could. "He talks to her a great
+deal. But why shouldn't he come home?"</p>
+<p>"Because he ought to be doing disagreeable duty with his
+regiment instead of always racing about the world in search of
+something to get his name up," said Sir Wilfrid, rather sharply.
+"At least, that's the view his brother officers mostly take of
+him."</p>
+<p>"Oh," said Mademoiselle Julie, with amiable vagueness, "is there
+anything particular that you suppose he wants?"</p>
+<p>"I am not at all in the secret of his ambitions," said Sir
+Wilfrid, lifting his shoulders. "But you and Lady Henry seemed well
+acquainted with him."</p>
+<p>The straw-colored lashes veered her way.</p>
+<p>"I had some talk with him in the Park this morning," said Julie
+Le Breton, reflectively. "He wants me to copy his father's letters
+for Lady Henry, and to get her to return the originals as soon as
+possible. He feels nervous when they are out of his hands."</p>
+<p>"Hm!" said Sir Wilfrid.</p>
+<p>At that moment Lady Henry's door-bell presented itself. The
+vigor with which Sir Wilfrid rang it may, perhaps, have expressed
+the liveliness of his unspoken scepticism. He did not for one
+moment believe that General Warkworth's letters had been the
+subject of the conversation he had witnessed that morning in the
+Park, nor that filial veneration had had anything whatever to say
+to it.</p>
+<p>Julie Le Breton gave him her hand.</p>
+<p>"Thank you very much," she said, gravely and softly.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid at the moment before had not meant to press it at
+all. But he did press it, aware the while of the most mingled
+feelings.</p>
+<p>"On the contrary, you were very good to allow me this
+conversation. Command me at any time if I can be useful to you and
+Lady Henry."</p>
+<p>Julie Le Breton smiled upon him and was gone.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid ran down the steps, chafing at himself.</p>
+<p>"She somehow gets round one," he thought, with a touch of
+annoyance. "I wonder whether I made any real impression upon her.
+Hm! Let's see whether Montresor can throw any more light upon her.
+He seemed to be pretty intimate. Her 'principles,' eh? A dangerous
+view to take, for a woman of that <i>provenance.</i>"</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>An hour or two later Sir Wilfrid Bury presented himself in the
+Montresors' drawing-room in Eaton Place. He had come home feeling
+it essential to impress upon the cabinet a certain line of action
+with regard to the policy of Russia on the Persian Gulf. But the
+first person he perceived on the hearth-rug, basking before the
+Minister's ample fire, was Lord Lackington. The sight of that
+vivacious countenance, that shock of white hair, that tall form
+still boasting the spareness and almost the straightness of youth,
+that unsuspecting complacency, confused his ideas and made him
+somehow feel the whole world a little topsy-turvy.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, after dinner he got his fifteen minutes of private
+talk with his host, and conscientiously made use of them. Then,
+after an appointment had been settled for a longer conversation on
+another day, both men felt that they had done their duty, and, as
+it appeared, the same subject stirred in both their minds.</p>
+<p>"Well, and what did you think of Lady Henry?" said Montresor,
+with a smile, as he lighted another cigarette.</p>
+<p>"She's very blind," said Sir Wilfrid, "and more rheumatic. But
+else there's not much change. On the whole she wears wonderfully
+well."</p>
+<p>"Except as to her temper, poor lady!" laughed the Minister. "She
+has really tried all our nerves of late. And the worst of it is
+that most of it falls upon that poor woman who lives with her"--the
+Minister lowered his voice--"one of the most interesting and
+agreeable creatures in the world."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid glanced across the table. Lord Lackington was
+telling scandalous tales of his youth to a couple of Foreign Office
+clerks, who sat on either side of him, laughing and spurring him
+on. The old man's careless fluency and fun were evidently
+contagious; animation reigned around him; he was the spoiled child
+of the dinner, and knew it.</p>
+<p>"I gather that you have taken a friendly interest in Miss Le
+Breton," said Bury, turning to his host.</p>
+<p>"Oh, the Duchess and Delafield and I have done our best to
+protect her, and to keep the peace. I am quite sure Lady Henry has
+poured out her grievances to you, hasn't she?"</p>
+<p>"Alack, she has!"</p>
+<p>"I knew she couldn't hold her tongue to you, even for a day. She
+has really been losing her head over it. And it is a thousand
+pities."</p>
+<p>"So you think all the fault's on Lady Henry's side?"</p>
+<p>The Minister gave a shrug.</p>
+<p>"At any rate, I have never myself seen anything to justify Lady
+Henry's state of feeling. On the famous Wednesdays, Mademoiselle
+Julie always appears to make Lady Henry her first thought. And in
+other ways she has really worn herself to death for the old lady.
+It makes one rather savage sometimes to see it."</p>
+<p>"So in your eyes she is a perfect companion?"</p>
+<p>Montresor laughed.</p>
+<p>"Oh, as to perfection--"</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry accuses her of intrigue. You have seen no traces of
+it?"</p>
+<p>The Minister smiled a little oddly.</p>
+<p>"Not as regards Lady Henry. Oh, Mademoiselle Julie is a very
+astute lady."</p>
+<p>A ripple from some source of secret amusement spread over the
+dark-lined face.</p>
+<p>"What do you mean by that?"</p>
+<p>"She knows how to help her friends better than most people. I
+have known three men, at least, <i>made</i> by Mademoiselle Le
+Breton within the last two or three years. She has just got a fresh
+one in tow."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid moved a little closer to his host. They turned
+slightly from the table and seemed to talk into their cigars.</p>
+<p>"Young Warkworth?" said Bury.</p>
+<p>The Minister smiled again and hesitated.</p>
+<p>"Oh, she doesn't bother me, she is much too clever. But she gets
+at me in the most amusing, indirect ways. I know perfectly well
+when she has been at work. There are two or three men--high up, you
+understand--who frequent Lady Henry's evenings, and who are her
+very good friends.... Oh, I dare say she'll get what she wants," he
+added, with nonchalance.</p>
+<p>"Between you and me, do you suspect any direct interest in the
+young man?"</p>
+<p>Montresor shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+<p>"I don't know. Not necessarily. She loves to feel herself a
+power--all the more, I think, because of her anomalous position. It
+is very curious--at bottom very feminine and amusing--and quite
+harmless."</p>
+<p>"You and others don't resent it?"</p>
+<p>"No, not from her," said the Minister, after a pause. "But she
+is rather going it, just now. Three or four batteries have opened
+upon me at once. She must be thinking of little else."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid grew a trifle red. He remembered the comedy of the
+door-step. "Is there anything that he particularly wants?" His tone
+assumed a certain asperity.</p>
+<p>"Well, as for me, I cannot help feeling that Lady Henry has
+something to say for herself. It is very strange--mysterious
+even--the kind of ascendency this lady has obtained for herself in
+so short a time."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I dare say it's hard for Lady Henry to put up with," mused
+Montresor. "Without family, without connections--"</p>
+<p>He raised his head quietly and put on his eye-glasses. Then his
+look swept the face of his companion.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid, with a scarcely perceptible yet significant
+gesture, motioned towards Lord Lackington. Mr. Montresor started.
+The eyes of both men travelled across the table, then met
+again.</p>
+<p>"You know?" said Montresor, under his breath.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid nodded. Then some instinct told him that he had now
+exhausted the number of the initiated.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>When the men reached the drawing-room, which was rather emptily
+waiting for the "reception" Mrs. Montresor was about to hold in it,
+Sir Wilfrid fell into conversation with Lord Lackington. The old
+man talked well, though flightily, with a constant reference of all
+topics to his own standards, recollections, and friendships, which
+was characteristic, but in him not unattractive. Sir Wilfrid
+noticed certain new and pitiful signs of age. The old man was still
+a rattle. But every now and then the rattle ceased abruptly and a
+breath of melancholy made itself felt--like a chill and sudden gust
+from some unknown sea.</p>
+<p>They were joined presently, as the room filled up, by a young
+journalist--an art critic, who seemed to know Lord Lackington and
+his ways. The two fell eagerly into talk about pictures, especially
+of an exhibition at Antwerp, from which the young man had just
+returned.</p>
+<p>"I looked in at Bruges on the way back for a few hours," said
+the new-comer, presently. "The pictures there are much better seen
+than they used to be. When were you there last?" He turned to Lord
+Lackington.</p>
+<p>"Bruges?" said Lord Lackington, with a start. "Oh, I haven't
+been there for twenty years."</p>
+<p>And he suddenly sat down, dangling a paper-knife between his
+hands, and staring at the carpet. His jaw dropped a little. A cloud
+seemed to interpose between him and his companions.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid, with Lady Henry's story fresh in his memory, was
+somehow poignantly conscious of the old man. Did their two minds
+hold the same image--of Lady Rose drawing her last breath in some
+dingy room beside one of the canals that wind through Bruges,
+laying down there the last relics of that life, beauty, and
+intelligence that had once made her the darling of the father, who,
+for some reason still hard to understand, had let her suffer and
+die alone?</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="V"></a>V</h2>
+<br>
+<p>On leaving the Montresors, Sir Wilfrid, seeing that it was a
+fine night with mild breezes abroad, refused a hansom, and set out
+to walk home to his rooms in Duke Street, St. James's. He was so
+much in love with the mere streets, the mere clatter of the
+omnibuses and shimmer of the lamps, after his long absence, that
+every step was pleasure. At the top of Grosvenor Place he stood
+still awhile only to snuff up the soft, rainy air, or to delight
+his eye now with the shining pools which some showers of the
+afternoon had left behind them on the pavement, and now with the
+light veil of fog which closed in the distance of Piccadilly.</p>
+<p>"And there are silly persons who grumble about the fogs!" he
+thought, contemptuously, while he was thus yielding himself heart
+and sense to his beloved London.</p>
+<p>As for him, dried and wilted by long years of cloudless heat, he
+drank up the moisture and the mist with a kind of physical
+passion--the noises and the lights no less. And when he had resumed
+his walk along the crowded street, the question buzzed within him,
+whether he must indeed go back to his exile, either at Teheran, or
+nearer home, in some more exalted post? "I've got plenty of money;
+why the deuce don't I give it up, and come home and enjoy myself?
+Only a few more years, after all; why not spend them here, in one's
+own world, among one's own kind?"</p>
+<p>It was the weariness of the governing Englishman, and it was
+answered immediately by that other instinct, partly physical,
+partly moral, which keeps the elderly man of affairs to his task.
+Idleness? No! That way lies the end. To slacken the rush of life,
+for men of his sort, is to call on death--death, the secret
+pursuer, who is not far from each one of us. No, no! Fight on! It
+was only the long drudgery behind, under alien suns, together with
+the iron certainty of fresh drudgery ahead, that gave value, after
+all, to this rainy, this enchanting Piccadilly--that kept the
+string of feeling taut and all its notes clear.</p>
+<p>"Going to bed, Sir Wilfrid?" said a voice behind him, as he
+turned down St. James's Street.</p>
+<p>"Delafield!" The old man faced round with alacrity. "Where have
+you sprung from?"</p>
+<p>Delafield explained that he had been dining with the
+Crowboroughs, and was now going to his club to look for news of a
+friend's success or failure in a north-country election.</p>
+<p>"Oh, that'll keep!" said Sir Wilfrid. "Turn in with me for half
+an hour. I'm at my old rooms, you know, in Duke Street."</p>
+<p>"All right," said the young man, after what seemed to Sir
+Wilfrid a moment of hesitation.</p>
+<p>"Are you often up in town this way?" asked Bury, as they walked
+on. "Land agency seems to be a profession with mitigations."</p>
+<p>"There is some London business thrown in. We have some large
+milk depots in town that I look after."</p>
+<p>There was just a trace of hurry in the young man's voice, and
+Bury surveyed him with a smile.</p>
+<p>"No other attractions, eh?"</p>
+<p>"Not that I know of. By-the-way, Sir Wilfrid, I never asked you
+how Dick Mason was getting on?"</p>
+<p>"Dick Mason? Is he a friend of yours?"</p>
+<p>"Well, we were at Eton and Oxford together."</p>
+<p>"Were you? I never heard him mention your name."</p>
+<p>The young man laughed.</p>
+<p>"I don't mean to suggest he couldn't live without me. You've
+left him in charge, haven't you, at Teheran?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, I have--worse luck. So you're deeply interested in Dick
+Mason?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, come--I liked him pretty well."</p>
+<p>"Hm--I don't much care about him. And I don't somehow believe
+you do."</p>
+<p>And Bury, with a smile, slipped a friendly hand within the arm
+of his companion.</p>
+<p>Delafield reddened.</p>
+<p>"It's decent, I suppose, to inquire after an old
+school-fellow?"</p>
+<p>"Exemplary. But--there are things more amusing to talk
+about."</p>
+<p>Delafield was silent. Sir Wilfrid's fair mustaches approached
+his ear.</p>
+<p>"I had my interview with Mademoiselle Julie."</p>
+<p>"So I suppose. I hope you did some good."</p>
+<p>"I doubt it. Jacob, between ourselves, the little Duchess hasn't
+been a miracle of wisdom."</p>
+<p>"No--perhaps not," said the other, unwillingly.</p>
+<p>"She realizes, I suppose, that they are connected?"</p>
+<p>"Of course. It isn't very close. Lady Rose's brother married
+Evelyn's aunt, her mother's sister."</p>
+<p>"Yes, that's it. She and Mademoiselle Julie <i>ought</i> to have
+called the same person uncle; but, for lack of certain ceremonies,
+they don't. By-the-way, what became of Lady Rose's younger
+sister?"</p>
+<p>"Lady Blanche? Oh, she married Sir John Moffatt, and has been a
+widow for years. He left her a place in Westmoreland, and she lives
+there generally with her girl."</p>
+<p>"Has Mademoiselle Julie ever come across them?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"She speaks of them?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. We can't tell her much about them, except that the girl
+was presented last year, and went to a few balls in town. But
+neither she nor her mother cares for London."</p>
+<p>"Lady Blanche Moffatt--Lady Blanche Moffatt?" said Sir Wilfrid,
+pausing. "Wasn't she in India this winter?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. I believe they went out in November and are to be home by
+April."</p>
+<p>"Somebody told me they had met her and the girl at Peshawar and
+then at Simla," said Sir Wilfrid, ruminating. "Now I remember!
+She's a great heiress, isn't she, and pretty to boot? I know!
+Somebody told me that fellow Warkworth had been making up to
+her."</p>
+<p>"Warkworth?" Jacob Delafield stood still a moment, and Sir
+Wilfrid caught a sudden contraction of the brow. "That, of course,
+was just a bit of Indian gossip."</p>
+<p>"I don't think so," said Sir Wilfrid, dryly. "My informants were
+two frontier officers--I came from Egypt with them--who had
+recently been at Peshawar; good fellows both of them, not at all
+given to take young ladies' names in vain."</p>
+<p>Jacob made no reply. They had let themselves into the Duke
+Street house and were groping their way up the dim staircase to Sir
+Wilfrid's rooms.</p>
+<p>There all was light and comfort. Sir Wilfrid's valet, much the
+same age as himself, hovered round his master, brought him his
+smoking-coat, offered Delafield cigars, and provided Sir Wilfrid,
+strange to say, with a large cup of tea.</p>
+<p>"I follow Mr. Gladstone," said Sir Wilfrid, with a sigh of
+luxury, as he sank into an easy-chair and extended a very neatly
+made pair of legs and feet to the blaze. "He seems to have slept
+the sleep of the just--on a cup of tea at midnight--through the
+rise and fall of cabinets. So I'm trying the receipt."</p>
+<p>"Does that mean that you are hankering after politics?"</p>
+<p>"Heavens! When you come to doddering, Jacob, it's better to
+dodder in the paths you know. I salute Mr. G.'s physique, that's
+all. Well, now, Jacob, do you know anything about this
+Warkworth?"</p>
+<p>"Warkworth?" Delafield withdrew his cigar, and seemed to choose
+his words a little. "Well, I know what all the world knows."</p>
+<p>"Hm--you seemed very sure just now that he wasn't going to marry
+Miss Moffatt."</p>
+<p>"Sure? I'm not sure of anything," said the young man,
+slowly.</p>
+<p>"Well, what I should like to know," said Sir Wilfrid, cradling
+his teacup in both hands, "is, what particular interest has
+Mademoiselle Julie in that young soldier?"</p>
+<p>Delafield looked into the fire.</p>
+<p>"Has she any?"</p>
+<p>"She seems to be moving heaven and earth to get him what he
+wants. By-the-way, what does he want?"</p>
+<p>"He wants the special mission to Mokembe, as I understand," said
+Delafield, after a moment. "But several other people want it
+too."</p>
+<p>"Indeed!" Sir Wilfrid nodded reflectively. "So there is to be
+one! Well, it's about time. The travellers of the other European
+firms have been going it lately in that quarter. Jacob, your
+mademoiselle also is a bit of an intriguer!"</p>
+<p>Delafield made a restless movement. "Why do you say that?"</p>
+<p>"Well, to say the least of it, frankness is not one of her
+characteristics. I tried to question her about this man. I had seen
+them together in the Park, talking as intimates. So, when our
+conversation had reached a friendly stage, I threw out a feeler or
+two, just to satisfy myself about her. But--"</p>
+<p>He pulled his fair mustaches and smiled.</p>
+<p>"Well?" said the young man, with a kind of reluctant
+interrogation.</p>
+<p>"She played with me, Jacob. But really she overdid it. For such
+a clever woman, I assure you, she overdid it!"</p>
+<p>"I don't see why she shouldn't keep her friendships to herself,"
+said Delafield, with sudden heat.</p>
+<p>"Oh, so you admit it is a friendship?"</p>
+<p>Delafield did not reply. He had laid down his cigar, and with
+his hands on his knees was looking steadily into the fire. His
+attitude, however, was not one of reverie, but rather of a strained
+listening.</p>
+<p>"What is the meaning, Jacob, of a young woman taking so keen an
+interest in the fortunes of a dashing soldier--for, between you and
+me, I hear she is moving heaven and earth to get him this post--and
+then concealing it?"</p>
+<p>"Why should she want her kindnesses talked of?" said the young
+man, impetuously. "She was perfectly right, I think, to fence with
+your questions, Sir Wilfrid. It's one of the secrets of her
+influence that she can render a service--and keep it dark."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid shook his head.</p>
+<p>"She overdid it," he repeated. "However, what do you think of
+the man yourself, Jacob?"</p>
+<p>"Well, I don't take to him," said the other, unwillingly. "He
+isn't my sort of man."</p>
+<p>"And Mademoiselle Julie--you think nothing but well of her? I
+don't like discussing a lady; but, you see, with Lady Henry to
+manage, one must feel the ground as one can."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid looked at his companion, and then stretched his legs
+a little farther towards the fire. The lamp-light shone full on his
+silky eyelashes and beard, on his neatly parted hair, and the
+diamond on his fine left hand. The young man beside him could not
+emulate his easy composure. He fidgeted nervously as he replied,
+with warmth:</p>
+<p>"I think she has had an uncommonly hard time, that she wants
+nothing but what is reasonable, and that if she threw you off the
+scent, Sir Wilfrid, with regard to Warkworth, she was quite within
+her rights. You probably deserved it."</p>
+<p>He threw up his head with a quick gesture of challenge. Sir
+Wilfrid shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+<p>"I vow I didn't," he murmured. "However, that's all right. What
+do you do with yourself down in Essex, Jacob?"</p>
+<p>The lines of the young man's attitude showed a sudden
+unconscious relief from tension. He threw himself back in his
+chair.</p>
+<p>"Well, it's a big estate. There's plenty to do."</p>
+<p>"You live by yourself?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. There's an agent's house--a small one--in one of the
+villages."</p>
+<p>"How do you amuse yourself? Plenty of shooting, I suppose?"</p>
+<p>"Too much. I can't do with more than a certain amount."</p>
+<p>"Golfing?"</p>
+<p>"Oh yes," said the young man, indifferently. "There's a fair
+links."</p>
+<p>"Do you do any philanthropy, Jacob?"</p>
+<p>"I like 'bossing' the village," said Delafield, with a laugh.
+"It pleases one's vanity. That's about all there is to it."</p>
+<p>"What, clubs and temperance, that kind of thing? Can you take
+any real interest in the people?"</p>
+<p>Delafield hesitated.</p>
+<p>"Well, yes," he said, at last, as though he grudged the
+admission. "There's nothing else to take an interest in, is there?
+By-the-way"--he jumped up--"I think I'll bid you good-night, for
+I've got to go down to-morrow in a hurry. I must be off by the
+first train in the morning."</p>
+<p>"What's the matter?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, it's only a wretched old man--that two beasts of women have
+put into the workhouse infirmary against his will. I only heard it
+to-night. I must go and get him out."</p>
+<p>He looked round for his gloves and stick.</p>
+<p>"Why shouldn't he be there?"</p>
+<p>"Because it's an infernal shame!" said the other, shortly. "He's
+an old laborer who'd saved quite a lot of money. He kept it in his
+cottage, and the other day it was all stolen by a tramp. He has
+lived with these two women--his sister-in-law and her daughter--for
+years and years. As long as he had money to leave, nothing was too
+good for him. The shock half killed him, and now that he's a pauper
+these two harpies will have nothing to say to nursing him and
+looking after him. He told me the other day he thought they'd force
+him into the infirmary. I didn't believe it. But while I've been
+away they've gone and done it."</p>
+<p>"Well, what'll you do now?"</p>
+<p>"Get him out."</p>
+<p>"And then?"</p>
+<p>Delafield hesitated. "Well, then, I suppose, he can come to my
+place till I can find some decent woman to put him with."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid rose.</p>
+<p>"I think I'll run down and see you some day. Will there be
+paupers in all the bedrooms?"</p>
+<p>Delafield grinned.</p>
+<p>"You'll find a rattling good cook and a jolly snug little place,
+I can tell you. Do come. But I shall see you again soon. I must be
+up next week, and very likely I shall be at Lady Henry's on
+Wednesday."</p>
+<p>"All right. I shall see her on Sunday, so I can report."</p>
+<p>"Not before Sunday?" Delafield paused. His clear blue eyes
+looked down, dissatisfied, upon Sir Wilfrid.</p>
+<p>"Impossible before. I have all sorts of official people to see
+to-morrow and Saturday. And, Jacob, keep the Duchess quiet. She may
+have to give up Mademoiselle Julie for her bazaar."</p>
+<p>"I'll tell her."</p>
+<p>"By-the-way, is that little person happy?" said Sir Wilfrid, as
+he opened the door to his departing guest. "When I left England she
+was only just married."</p>
+<p>"Oh yes, she's happy enough, though Crowborough's rather an
+ass."</p>
+<p>"How--particularly?"</p>
+<p>Delafield smiled.</p>
+<p>"Well, he's rather a sticky sort of person. He thinks there's
+something particularly interesting in dukes, which makes him a
+bore."</p>
+<p>"Take care, Jacob! Who knows that you won't be a duke yourself
+some day?"</p>
+<p>"What <i>do</i> you mean?" The young man glowered almost
+fiercely upon his old friend.</p>
+<p>"I hear Chudleigh's boy is but a poor creature," said Sir
+Wilfrid, gravely. "Lady Henry doesn't expect him to live."</p>
+<p>"Why, that's the kind that always does live!" cried Delafield,
+with angry emphasis. "And as for Lady Henry, her imagination is a
+perfect charnel-house. She likes to think that everybody's dead or
+dying but herself. The fact is that Mervyn is a good deal stronger
+this year than he was last. Really, Lady Henry--" The tone lost
+itself in a growl of wrath.</p>
+<p>"Well, well," said Sir Wilfrid, smiling, "'A man beduked against
+his will,' etcetera. Good-night, my dear Jacob, and good luck to
+your old pauper."</p>
+<p>But Delafield turned back a moment on the stairs.</p>
+<p>"I say"--he hesitated--"you won't shirk talking to Lady
+Henry?"</p>
+<p>"No, no. Sunday, certainly--honor bright. Oh, I think we shall
+straighten it out."</p>
+<p>Delafield ran down the stairs, and Sir Wilfrid returned to his
+warm room and the dregs of his tea.</p>
+<p>"Now--is he in love with her, and hesitating for social reasons?
+Or--is he jealous of this fellow Warkworth? Or--has she snubbed
+him, and both are keeping it dark? Not very likely, that, in view
+of his prospects. She must want to regularize her position. Or--is
+he not in love with her at all?"</p>
+<p>On which cogitations there fell presently the strokes of many
+bells tolling midnight, and left them still unresolved. Only one
+positive impression remained--that Jacob Delafield had somehow
+grown, vaguely but enormously, in mental and moral bulk during the
+years since he had left Oxford--the years of Bury's Persian exile.
+Sir Wilfrid had been an intimate friend of his dead father, Lord
+Hubert, and on very friendly terms with his lethargic, good-natured
+mother. She, by-the-way, was still alive, and living in London with
+a daughter. He must go and see them.</p>
+<p>As for Jacob, Sir Wilfrid had cherished a particular weakness
+for him in the Eton-jacket stage, and later on, indeed, when the
+lad enjoyed a brief moment of glory in the Eton eleven. But at
+Oxford, to Sir Wilfrid's thinking, he had suffered eclipse--had
+become a somewhat heavy, apathetic, pseudo-cynical youth,
+displaying his mother's inertia without her good temper, too slack
+to keep up his cricket, too slack to work for the honor schools, at
+no time without friends, but an enigma to most of them, and,
+apparently, something of a burden to himself.</p>
+<p>And now, out of that ugly slough, a man had somehow emerged, in
+whom Sir Wilfrid, who was well acquainted with the race, discerned
+the stirring of all sorts of strong inherited things, formless
+still, but struggling to expression.</p>
+<p>"He looked at me just now, when I talked of his being duke, as
+his father would sometimes look."</p>
+<p>His father? Hubert Delafield had been an obstinate, dare-devil,
+heroic sort of fellow, who had lost his life in the Chudleigh
+salmon river trying to save a gillie who had missed his footing. A
+man much hated--and much beloved; capable of the most contradictory
+actions. He had married his wife for money, would often boast of
+it, and would, none the less, give away his last farthing
+recklessly, passionately, if he were asked for it, in some way that
+touched his feelings. Able, too; though not so able as the great
+Duke, his father.</p>
+<p>"Hubert Delafield was never <i>happy</i>, that I can remember,"
+thought Wilfrid Bury, as he sat over his fire, "and this chap has
+the same expression. That woman in Bruton Street would never do for
+him--apart from all the other unsuitability. He ought to find
+something sweet and restful. And yet I don't know. The Delafields
+are a discontented lot. If you plague them, they are inclined to
+love you. They want something hard to get their teeth in. How the
+old Duke adored his termagant of a wife!"</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>It was late on Sunday afternoon before Sir Wilfrid was able to
+present himself in Lady Henry's drawing-room; and when he arrived
+there, he found plenty of other people in possession, and had to
+wait for his chance.</p>
+<p>Lady Henry received him with a brusque "At last," which,
+however, he took with equanimity. He was in no sense behind his
+time. On Thursday, when parting with her, he had pleaded for
+deliberation. "Let me study the situation a little; and don't, for
+Heaven's sake, let's be too tragic about the whole thing."</p>
+<p>Whether Lady Henry was now in the tragic mood or no, he could
+not at first determine. She was no longer confined to the inner
+shrine of the back drawing-room. Her chair was placed in the large
+room, and she was the centre of a lively group of callers who were
+discussing the events of the week in Parliament, with the light and
+mordant zest of people well acquainted with the personalities they
+were talking of. She was apparently better in health, he noticed;
+at any rate, she was more at ease, and enjoying herself more than
+on the previous Wednesday. All her social characteristics were in
+full play; the blunt and careless freedom which made her the good
+comrade of the men she talked with--as good a brain and as hard a
+hitter as they--mingled with the occasional sally or caprice which
+showed her very much a woman.</p>
+<p>Very few other women were there. Lady Henry did not want women
+on Sundays, and was at no pains whatever to hide the fact. But
+Mademoiselle Julie was at the tea-table, supported by an old
+white-haired general, in whom Sir Wilfrid recognized a man recently
+promoted to one of the higher posts in the War Office. Tea,
+however, had been served, and Mademoiselle Le Breton was now
+showing her companion a portfolio of photographs, on which the old
+man was holding forth.</p>
+<p>"Am I too late for a cup?" said Sir Wilfrid, after she had
+greeted him with cordiality. "And what are those pictures?"</p>
+<p>"They are some photos of the Khaibar and Tirah," said
+Mademoiselle Le Breton. "Captain Warkworth brought them to show
+Lady Henry."</p>
+<p>"Ah, the scene of his exploits," said Sir Wilfrid, after a
+glance at them. "The young man distinguished himself, I
+understand?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, very much so," said General M'Gill, with emphasis. "He
+showed brains, and he had luck."</p>
+<p>"A great deal of luck, I hear," said Sir Wilfrid, accepting a
+piece of cake. "He'll get his step up, I suppose. Anything
+else?"</p>
+<p>"Difficult to say. But the good men are always in request," said
+General M'Gill, smiling.</p>
+<p>"By-the-way, I heard somebody mention his name last night for
+this Mokembe mission," said Sir Wilfrid, helping himself to
+tea-cake.</p>
+<p>"Oh, that's quite undecided," said the General, sharply. "There
+is no immediate hurry for a week or two, and the government must
+send the best man possible."</p>
+<p>"No doubt," said Sir Wilfrid.</p>
+<p>It interested him to observe that Mademoiselle Le Breton was no
+longer pale. As the General spoke, a bright color had rushed into
+her cheeks. It seemed to Sir Wilfrid that she turned away and
+busied herself with the photographs in order to hide it.</p>
+<p>The General rose, a thin, soldierly figure, with gray hair that
+drooped forward, and two bright spots of red on the cheek-bones. In
+contrast with the expansiveness of his previous manner to
+Mademoiselle Le Breton, he was now a trifle frowning and stiff--the
+high official once more, and great man.</p>
+<p>"Good-night, Sir Wilfrid. I must be off."</p>
+<p>"How are your sons?" said Sir Wilfrid, as he rose.</p>
+<p>"The eldest is in Canada with his regiment."</p>
+<p>"And the second?"</p>
+<p>"The second is in orders."</p>
+<p>"Overworking himself in the East End, as all the young parsons
+seem to be doing?"</p>
+<p>"That is precisely what he <i>has</i> been doing. But now, I am
+thankful to say, a country living has been offered him, and his
+mother and I have persuaded him to take it."</p>
+<p>"A country living? Where?"</p>
+<p>"One of the Duke of Crowborough's Shropshire livings," said the
+General, after what seemed to be an instant's hesitation.
+Mademoiselle Le Breton had moved away, and was replacing the
+photographs in the drawer of a distant bureau.</p>
+<p>"Ah, one of Crowborough's? Well, I hope it is a living with
+something to live on."</p>
+<p>"Not so bad, as times go," said the General, smiling. "It has
+been a great relief to our minds. There were some chest symptoms;
+his mother was alarmed. The Duchess has been most kind; she took
+quite a fancy to the lad, and--"</p>
+<p>"What a woman wants she gets. Well, I hope he'll like it.
+Good-night, General. Shall I look you up at the War Office some
+morning?"</p>
+<p>"By all means."</p>
+<p>The old soldier, whose tanned face had shown a singular softness
+while he was speaking of his son, took his leave.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid was left meditating, his eyes absently fixed on the
+graceful figure of Mademoiselle Le Breton, who shut the drawer she
+had been arranging and returned to him.</p>
+<p>"Do you know the General's sons?" he asked her, while she was
+preparing him a second cup of tea.</p>
+<p>"I have seen the younger."</p>
+<p>She turned her beautiful eyes upon him. It seemed to Sir Wilfrid
+that he perceived in them a passing tremor of nervous defiance, as
+though she were in some way bracing herself against him. But her
+self-possession was complete.</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry seems in better spirits," he said, bending towards
+her.</p>
+<p>She did not reply for a moment. Her eyes dropped. Then she
+raised them again, and gently shook her head without a word. The
+melancholy energy of her expression gave him a moment's thrill.</p>
+<p>"Is it as bad as ever?" he asked her, in a whisper.</p>
+<p>"It's pretty bad. I've tried to appease her. I told her about
+the bazaar. She said she couldn't spare me, and, of course, I
+acquiesced. Then, yesterday, the Duchess--hush!"</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle!"</p>
+<p>Lady Henry's voice rang imperiously through the room.</p>
+<p>"Yes, Lady Henry."</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle Le Breton stood up expectant.</p>
+<p>"Find me, please, that number of the <i>Revue des Deux
+Mondes</i> which came in yesterday. I can prove it to you in two
+minutes," she said, turning triumphantly to Montresor on her
+right.</p>
+<p>"What's the matter?" said Sir Wilfrid, joining Lady Henry's
+circle, while Mademoiselle Le Breton disappeared into the back
+drawing-room.</p>
+<p>"Oh, nothing," said Montresor, tranquilly. "Lady Henry thinks
+she has caught me out in a blunder--about Favre, and the
+negotiations at Versailles. I dare say she has. I am the most
+ignorant person alive."</p>
+<p>"Then are the rest of us spooks?" said Sir Wilfrid, smiling, as
+he seated himself beside his hostess. Montresor, whose information
+on most subjects was prodigious, laughed and adjusted his
+eye-glass. These battles royal on a date or a point of fact between
+him and Lady Henry were not uncommon. Lady Henry was rarely
+victorious. This time, however, she was confident, and she sat
+frowning and impatient for the book that didn't come.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle Le Breton, indeed, returned from the back
+drawing-room empty-handed; left the room apparently to look
+elsewhere, and came back still without the book.</p>
+<p>"Everything in this house is always in confusion!" said Lady
+Henry, angrily. "No order, no method anywhere!"</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle Julie said nothing. She retreated behind the circle
+that surrounded Lady Henry. But Montresor jumped up and offered her
+his chair.</p>
+<p>"I wish I had you for a secretary, mademoiselle," he said,
+gallantly. "I never before heard Lady Henry ask you for anything
+you couldn't find."</p>
+<p>Lady Henry flushed, and, turning abruptly to Bury, began a new
+topic. Julie quietly refused the seat offered to her, and was
+retiring to an ottoman in the background when the door was thrown
+open and the footman announced:</p>
+<p>"Captain Warkworth."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+<br>
+<p>The new-comer drew all eyes as he approached the group
+surrounding Lady Henry. Montresor put up his glasses and bestowed
+on him a few moments of scrutiny, during which the Minister's
+heavily marked face took on the wary, fighting aspect which his
+department and the House of Commons knew. The statesman slipped in
+for an instant between the trifler coming and the trifler gone.</p>
+<p>As for Wilfrid Bury, he was dazzled by the young man's good
+looks. "'Young Harry with his beaver up!'" he thought, admiring
+against his will, as the tall, slim soldier paid his respects to
+Lady Henry, and, with a smiling word or two to the rest of those
+present, took his place beside her in the circle.</p>
+<p>"Well, have you come for your letters?" said Lady Henry, eying
+him with a grim favor.</p>
+<p>"I think I came--for conversation," was Warkworth's laughing
+reply, as he looked first at his hostess and then at the
+circle.</p>
+<p>"Then I fear you won't get it," said Lady Henry, throwing
+herself back in her chair. "Mr. Montresor can do nothing but
+quarrel and contradict."</p>
+<p>Montresor lifted his hands in wonder.</p>
+<p>"Had I been &AElig;sop," he said, slyly, "I would have added
+another touch to a certain tale. Observe, please!--even after the
+Lamb has been devoured he is still the object of calumny on the
+part of the Wolf! Well, well! Mademoiselle, come and console me.
+Tell me what new follies the Duchess has on foot."</p>
+<p>And, pushing his chair back till he found himself on a level
+with Julie Le Breton, the great man plunged into a lively
+conversation with her. Sir Wilfrid, Warkworth, and a few other
+<i>habitu&eacute;s</i> endeavored meanwhile to amuse Lady Henry.
+But it was not easy. Her brow was lowering, her talk forced.
+Throughout, Sir Wilfrid perceived in her a strained attention
+directed towards the conversation on the other side of the room.
+She could neither see it nor hear it, but she was jealously
+conscious of it. As for Montresor, there was no doubt an element of
+malice in the court he was now paying to Mademoiselle Julie. Lady
+Henry had been thorny over much during the afternoon; even for her
+oldest friend she had passed bounds; he desired perhaps to bring it
+home to her.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Julie Le Breton, after a first moment of reserve and
+depression, had been beguiled, carried away. She yielded to her own
+instincts, her own gifts, till Montresor, drawn on and drawn out,
+found himself floating on a stream of talk, which Julie led first
+into one channel and then into another, as she pleased; and all to
+the flattery and glorification of the talker. The famous Minister
+had come to visit Lady Henry, as he had done for many Sundays in
+many years; but it was not Lady Henry, but her companion, to whom
+his homage of the afternoon was paid, who gave him his moment of
+enjoyment--the moment that would bring him there again. Lady
+Henry's fault, no doubt; but Wilfrid Bury, uneasily aware every now
+and then of the dumb tumult that was raging in the breast of the
+haughty being beside him, felt the pathos of this slow discrowning,
+and was inclined, once more, rather to be sorry for the older woman
+than to admire the younger.</p>
+<p>At last Lady Henry could bear it no longer.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, be so good as to return his father's letters to
+Captain Warkworth," she said, abruptly, in her coldest voice, just
+as Montresor, dropping his--head thrown back and knees crossed--was
+about to pour into the ears of his companion the whole confidential
+history of his appointment to office three years before.</p>
+<p>Julie Le Breton rose at once. She went towards a table at the
+farther end of the large room, and Captain Warkworth followed her.
+Montresor, perhaps repenting himself a little, returned to Lady
+Henry; and though she received him with great coolness, the circle
+round her, now augmented by Dr. Meredith, and another politician or
+two, was reconstituted; and presently, with a conscious effort,
+visible at least to Bury, she exerted herself to hold it, and
+succeeded.</p>
+<p>Suddenly--just as Bury had finished a very neat analysis of the
+Shah's public and private character, and while the applauding
+laughter of the group of intimates amid which he sat told him that
+his epigrams had been good--he happened to raise his eyes towards
+the distant settee where Julie Le Breton was sitting.</p>
+<p>His smile stiffened on his lips. Like an icy wave, a swift and
+tragic impression swept through him. He turned away, ashamed of
+having seen, and hid himself, as it were, with relief, in the
+clamor of amusement awakened by his own remarks.</p>
+<p>What had he seen? Merely, or mainly, a woman's face. Young
+Warkworth stood beside the sofa, on which sat Lady Henry's
+companion, his hands in his pockets, his handsome head bent towards
+her. They had been talking earnestly, wholly forgetting and
+apparently forgotten by the rest of the room. On his side there was
+an air of embarrassment. He seemed to be choosing his words with
+difficulty, his eyes on the floor. Julie Le Breton, on the
+contrary, was looking at him--looking with all her soul, her
+ardent, unhappy soul--unconscious of aught else in the wide
+world.</p>
+<p>"Good God! she is in love with him!" was the thought that rushed
+through Sir Wilfrid's mind. "Poor thing! Poor thing!"</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Sir Wilfrid outstayed his fellow-guests. By seven o'clock all
+were gone. Mademoiselle Le Breton had retired. He and Lady Henry
+were left alone.</p>
+<p>"Shut the doors!" she said, peremptorily, looking round her as
+the last guest disappeared. "I must have some private talk with
+you. Well, I understand you walked home from the Crowboroughs' the
+other night with--that woman."</p>
+<p>She turned sharply upon him. The accent was indescribable. And
+with a fierce hand she arranged the folds of her own thick silk
+dress, as though, for some relief to the stormy feeling within, she
+would rather have torn than smoothed it.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid seated himself beside her, knees crossed,
+finger-tips lightly touching, the fair eyelashes somewhat
+lowered--Calm beside Tempest.</p>
+<p>"I am sorry to hear you speak so," he said, gravely, after a
+pause. "Yes, I talked with her. She met me very fairly, on the
+whole. It seemed to me she was quite conscious that her behavior
+had not been always what it should be, and that she was sincerely
+anxious to change it. I did my best as a peacemaker. Has she made
+no signs since--no advances?"</p>
+<p>Lady Henry threw out her hand in disdain.</p>
+<p>"She confessed to me that she had pledged a great deal of the
+time for which I pay her to Evelyn Crowborough's bazaar, and asked
+what she was to do. I told her, of course, that I would put up with
+nothing of the kind."</p>
+<p>"And were more annoyed, alack! than propitiated by her
+confession?" said Sir Wilfrid, with a shrug.</p>
+<p>"I dare say," said Lady Henry. "You see, I guessed that it was
+not spontaneous; that you had wrung it out of her."</p>
+<p>"What else did you expect me to do?" cried Sir Wilfrid. "I seem,
+indeed, to have jolly well wasted my time."</p>
+<p>"Oh no. You were very kind. And I dare say you might have done
+some good. I was beginning to--to have some returns on myself, when
+the Duchess appeared on the scene."</p>
+<p>"Oh, the little fool!" ejaculated Sir Wilfrid, under his
+breath.</p>
+<p>"She came, of course, to beg and protest. She offered me her
+valuable services for all sorts of superfluous things that I didn't
+want--if only I would spare her Julie for this ridiculous bazaar.
+So then my back was put up again, and I told her a few home truths
+about the way in which she had made mischief and forced Julie into
+a totally false position. On which she flew into a passion, and
+said a lot of silly nonsense about Julie, that showed me, among
+other things, that Mademoiselle Le Breton had broken her solemn
+compact with me, and had told her family history both to Evelyn and
+to Jacob Delafield. That alone would be sufficient to justify me in
+dismissing her. <i>N'est-ce pas?</i>"</p>
+<p>"Oh yes," murmured Sir Wilfrid, "if you want to dismiss
+her."</p>
+<p>"We shall come to that presently," said Lady Henry, shortly.
+"Imagine, please, the kind of difficulties in which these
+confidences, if they have gone any further--and who knows?--may
+land me. I shall have old Lord Lackington--who behaved like a brute
+to his daughter while she was alive, and is, all the same, a
+<i>poseur</i> from top to toe--walking in here one night and
+demanding his granddaughter--spreading lies, perhaps, that I have
+been ill-treating her. Who can say what absurdities may happen if
+it once gets out that she is Lady Rose's child? I could name half a
+dozen people, who come here habitually, who would consider
+themselves insulted if they knew--what you and I know."</p>
+<p>"Insulted? Because her mother--"</p>
+<p>"Because her mother broke the seventh commandment? Oh, dear, no!
+That, in my opinion, doesn't touch people much nowadays. Insulted
+because they had been kept in the dark--that's all. Vanity, not
+morals."</p>
+<p>"As far as I can ascertain," said Sir Wilfrid, meditatively,
+"only the Duchess, Delafield, Montresor, and myself are in the
+secret."</p>
+<p>"Montresor!" cried Lady Henry, beside herself.
+"<i>Montresor!</i> That's new to me. Oh, she shall go at once--at
+once!" She breathed hard.</p>
+<p>"Wait a little. Have you had any talk with Jacob?"</p>
+<p>"I should think not! Evelyn, of course, brings him in
+perpetually--Jacob this and Jacob that. He seems to have been
+living in her pocket, and the three have been intriguing against
+me, morning, noon, and night. Where Julie has found the time I
+can't imagine; I thought I had kept her pretty well occupied."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid surveyed his angry companion and held his peace.</p>
+<p>"So you don't know what Jacob thinks?"</p>
+<p>"Why should I want to know?" said Lady Henry, disdainfully. "A
+lad whom I sent to Eton and Oxford, when his father couldn't pay
+his bills--what does it matter to me what he thinks?"</p>
+<p>"Women are strange folk," thought Sir Wilfrid. "A man wouldn't
+have said that."</p>
+<p>Then, aloud:</p>
+<p>"I thought you were afraid lest he should want to marry
+her?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, let him cut his throat if he likes!" said Lady Henry, with
+the inconsistency of fury. "What does it matter to me?"</p>
+<p>"By-the-way, as to that"--he spoke as though feeling his
+way--"have you never had suspicions in quite another
+direction?"</p>
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+<p>"Well, I hear a good deal in various quarters of the trouble
+Mademoiselle Le Breton is taking--on behalf of that young soldier
+who was here just now--Harry Warkworth."</p>
+<p>Lady Henry laughed impatiently.</p>
+<p>"I dare say. She is always wanting to patronize or influence
+somebody. It's in her nature. She's a born <i>intrigante</i>. If
+you knew her as well as I do, you wouldn't think much of that. Oh
+no--make your mind easy. It's Jacob she wants--it's Jacob she'll
+get, very likely. What can an old, blind creature like me do to
+stop it?"</p>
+<p>"And as Jacob's wife--the wife perhaps of the head of the
+family--you still mean to quarrel with her?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, I <i>do</i> mean to quarrel with her!" and Lady Henry
+lifted herself in her chair, a pale and quivering image of
+war--"Duchess or no Duchess! Did you see the audacious way in which
+she behaved this afternoon?--<i>how</i> she absorbs my guests?--how
+she allows and encourages a man like Montresor to forget
+himself?--eggs him on to put slights on me in my own
+drawing-room!"</p>
+<p>"No, no! You are really unjust," said Sir Wilfrid, laying a kind
+hand upon her arm. "That was not her fault."</p>
+<p>"It <i>is</i> her fault that she is what she is!--that her
+character is such that she <i>forces</i> comparisons between
+us--between <i>her</i> and <i>me!</i>--that she pushes herself into
+a prominence that is intolerable, considering who and what she
+is--that she makes me appear in an odious light to my old friends.
+No, no, Wilfrid, your first instinct was the true one. I shall have
+to bring myself to it, whatever it costs. She must take her
+departure, or I shall go to pieces, morally and physically. To be
+in a temper like this, at my age, shortens one's life--you know
+that."</p>
+<p>"And you can't subdue the temper?" he asked, with a queer
+smile.</p>
+<p>"No, I can't! That's flat. She gets on my nerves, and I'm not
+responsible. <i>C'est fini</i>."</p>
+<p>"Well," he said, slowly, "I hope you understand what it
+means?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I know she has plenty of friends!" she said, defiantly. But
+her old hands trembled on her knee.</p>
+<p>"Unfortunately they were and are yours. At least," he entreated,
+"don't quarrel with everybody who may sympathize with her. Let them
+take what view they please. Ignore it--be as magnanimous as you
+can."</p>
+<p>"On the contrary!" She was now white to the lips. "Whoever goes
+with her gives me up. They must choose--once for all."</p>
+<p>"My dear friend, listen to reason."</p>
+<p>And, drawing his chair close to her, he argued with her for half
+an hour. At the end of that time her gust of passion had more or
+less passed away; she was, to some extent, ashamed of herself, and,
+as he believed, not far from tears.</p>
+<p>"When I am gone she will think of what I have been saying," he
+assured himself, and he rose to take his leave. Her look of
+exhaustion distressed him, and, for all her unreason, he felt
+himself astonishingly in sympathy with her. The age in him held out
+secret hands to the age in her--as against encroaching and
+rebellious youth.</p>
+<p>Perhaps it was the consciousness of this mood in him which at
+last partly appeased her.</p>
+<p>"Well, I'll try again. I'll <i>try</i> to hold my tongue," she
+granted him, sullenly. "But, understand, she, sha'n't go to that
+bazaar!"</p>
+<p>"That's a great pity," was his na&iuml;ve reply. "Nothing would
+put you in a better position than to give her leave."</p>
+<p>"I shall do nothing of the kind," she vowed. "And now
+good-night, Wilfrid--good-night. You're a very good fellow, and if
+I <i>can</i> take your advice, I will."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Lady Henry sat alone in her brightly lighted drawing-room for
+some time. She could neither read nor write nor sew, owing to her
+blindness, and in the reaction from her passion of the afternoon
+she felt herself very old and weary.</p>
+<p>But at last the door opened and Julie Le Breton's light step
+approached.</p>
+<p>"May I read to you?" she said, gently.</p>
+<p>Lady Henry coldly commanded the <i>Observer</i> and her
+knitting.</p>
+<p>She had no sooner, however, begun to knit than her very acute
+sense of touch noticed something wrong with the wool she was
+using.</p>
+<p>"This is not the wool I ordered," she said, fingering it
+carefully. "You remember, I gave you a message about it on
+Thursday? What did they say about it at Winton's?"</p>
+<p>Julie laid down the newspaper and looked in perplexity at the
+ball of wool.</p>
+<p>"I remember you gave me a message," she faltered.</p>
+<p>"Well, what did they say?"</p>
+<p>"I suppose that was all they had."</p>
+<p>Something in the tone struck Lady Henry's quick ears. She raised
+a suspicious face.</p>
+<p>"Did you ever go to Winton's at all?" she said, quickly.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="illus-100.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/illus-100.jpg"><img src=
+"images/illus-100.jpg" width="50%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"LADY HENRY GASPED. SHE FELL BACK INTO HER CHAIR"</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>"I am so sorry. The Duchess's maid was going there," said Julie,
+hurriedly, "and she went for me. I thought I had given her your
+message most carefully."</p>
+<p>"Hm," said Lady Henry, slowly. "So you didn't go to Winton's.
+May I ask whether you went to Shaw's, or to Beatson's, or the
+Stores, or any of the other places for which I gave you
+commissions?" Her voice cut like a knife.</p>
+<p>Julie hesitated. She had grown very white. Suddenly her face
+settled and steadied.</p>
+<p>"No," she said, calmly. "I meant to have done all your
+commissions. But I was persuaded by Evelyn to spend a couple of
+hours with her, and her maid undertook them."</p>
+<p>Lady Henry flushed deeply.</p>
+<p>"So, mademoiselle, unknown to me, you spent two hours of my time
+amusing yourself at Crowborough House. May I ask what you were
+doing there?"</p>
+<p>"I was trying to help the Duchess in her plans for the
+bazaar."</p>
+<p>"Indeed? Was any one else there? Answer me, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>Julie hesitated again, and again spoke with a kind of passionate
+composure.</p>
+<p>"Yes. Mr. Delafield was there."</p>
+<p>"So I supposed. Allow me to assure you, mademoiselle"--Lady
+Henry rose from her seat, leaning on her stick; surely no old face
+was ever more formidable, more withering--"that whatever ambitions
+you may cherish, Jacob Delafield is not altogether the simpleton
+you imagine. I know him better than you. He will take some time
+before he really makes up his mind to marry a woman of your
+disposition--and your history."</p>
+<p>Julie Le Breton also rose.</p>
+<p>"I am afraid, Lady Henry, that here, too, you are in the dark,"
+she said, quietly, though her thin arm shook against her dress. "I
+shall not marry Mr. Delafield. But it is because--I have refused
+him twice."</p>
+<p>Lady Henry gasped. She fell back into her chair, staring at her
+companion.</p>
+<p>"You have--refused him?"</p>
+<p>"A month ago, and last year. It is horrid of me to say a word.
+But you forced me."</p>
+<p>Julie was now leaning, to support herself, on the back of an old
+French chair. Feeling and excitement had blanched her no less than
+Lady Henry, but her fine head and delicate form breathed a will so
+proud, a dignity so passionate, that Lady Henry shrank before
+her.</p>
+<p>"Why did you refuse him?"</p>
+<p>Julie shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+<p>"That, I think, is my affair. But if--I had loved him--I should
+not have consulted your scruples, Lady Henry."</p>
+<p>"That's frank," said Lady Henry. "I like that better than
+anything you've said yet. You are aware that he <i>may</i> inherit
+the dukedom of Chudleigh?"</p>
+<p>"I have several times heard you say so," said the other,
+coldly.</p>
+<p>Lady Henry looked at her long and keenly. Various things that
+Wilfrid Bury had said recurred to her. She thought of Captain
+Warkworth. She wondered.</p>
+<p>Suddenly she held out her hand.</p>
+<p>"I dare say you won't take it, mademoiselle. I suppose I've been
+insulting you. But--you have been playing tricks with me. In a good
+many ways, we're quits. Still, I confess, I admire you a good deal.
+Anyway, I offer you my hand. I apologize for my recent remarks.
+Shall we bury the hatchet, and try and go on as before?"</p>
+<p>Julie Le Breton turned slowly and took the hand--without
+unction.</p>
+<p>"I make you angry," she said, and her voice trembled, "without
+knowing how or why."</p>
+<p>Lady Henry gulped.</p>
+<p>"Oh, it mayn't answer," she said, as their hands dropped. "But
+we may as well have one more trial. And, mademoiselle, I shall be
+delighted that you should assist the Duchess with her
+<i>bazaar</i>."</p>
+<p>Julie shook her head.</p>
+<p>"I don't think I have any heart for it," she said, sadly; and
+then, as Lady Henry sat silent, she approached.</p>
+<p>"You look very tired. Shall I send your maid?"</p>
+<p>That melancholy and beautiful voice laid a strange spell on Lady
+Henry. Her companion appeared to her, for a moment, in a new
+light--as a personage of drama or romance. But she shook off the
+spell.</p>
+<p>"At once, please. Another day like this would put an end to
+me."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+<br>
+<p>Julie le Breton was sitting alone in her own small sitting-room.
+It was the morning of the Tuesday following her Sunday scene with
+Lady Henry, and she was busy with various household affairs. A
+small hamper of flowers, newly arrived from Lady Henry's Surrey
+garden, and not yet unpacked, was standing open on the table, with
+various empty flower-glasses beside it. Julie was, at the moment,
+occupied with the "Stores order" for the month, and Lady Henry's
+cook-housekeeper had but just left the room after delivering an
+urgent statement on the need for "relining" a large number of Lady
+Henry's copper saucepans.</p>
+<p>The room was plain and threadbare. It had been the school-room
+of various generations of Delafields in the past. But for an
+observant eye it contained a good many objects which threw light
+upon its present occupant's character and history. In a small
+bookcase beside the fire were a number of volumes in French
+bindings. They represented either the French classics--Racine,
+Bossuet, Ch&acirc;teaubriand, Lamartine--which had formed the study
+of Julie's convent days, or those other books--George Sand, Victor
+Hugo, Alfred de Musset, Mazzini, Leopardi, together with the poets
+and novelists of revolutionary Russia or Polish nationalism or
+Irish rebellion--which had been the favorite reading of both Lady
+Rose and her lover. They were but a hundred in all; but for Julie
+Le Breton they stood for the bridge by which, at will, memory and
+dreamful pity might carry her back into that vanished life she had
+once shared with her parents--those strange beings, so calm and yet
+so passionate in their beliefs, so wilful and yet so patient in
+their deeds, by whose acts her own experience was still wholly
+conditioned. In her little room there were no portraits of them
+visible. But on a side-table stood a small carved triptych. The
+oblong wings, which were open, contained photographs of figures
+from one of the great Bruges Memlings. The centre was covered by
+two wooden leaves delicately carved, and the leaves were locked.
+The inquisitive housemaid who dusted the room had once tried to
+open them.--in vain.</p>
+<p>On a stand near the fire lay two or three yellow volumes--some
+recent French essays, a volume of memoirs, a tale of Bourget's, and
+so forth. These were flanked by Sir Henry Maine's <i>Popular
+Government</i>, and a recent brilliant study of English policy in
+Egypt--both of them with the name "Richard J. Montresor" on the
+title-page. The last number of Dr. Meredith's paper, <i>The New
+Rambler</i>, was there also; and, with the paper-knife still in its
+leaves, the journal of the latest French traveller in Mokembe, a
+small "H.W." inscribed in the top right-hand corner of its gray
+cover.</p>
+<p>Julie finished her Stores order with a sigh of relief. Then she
+wrote half a dozen business notes, and prepared a few checks for
+Lady Henry's signature. When this was done the two dachshunds, who
+had been lying on the rug spying out her every movement, began to
+jump upon her.</p>
+<p>But Julie laughed in their faces. "It's raining," she said,
+pointing to the window--"<i>raining!</i> So there! Either you won't
+go out at all, or you'll go with John."</p>
+<p>John was the second footman, whom the dogs hated. They returned
+crestfallen to the rug and to a hungry waiting on Providence. Julie
+took up a letter on foreign paper which had reached her that
+morning, glanced at the door, and began to reread its closely
+written sheets. It was from an English diplomat on a visit to
+Egypt, a man on whom the eyes of Europe were at that moment fixed.
+That he should write to a woman at all, on the subjects of the
+letter, involved a compliment <i>hors ligne</i>; that he should
+write with this ease, this abandonment, was indeed remarkable.
+Julie flushed a little as she read. But when she came to the end
+she put it aside with a look of worry. "I <i>wish</i> he'd write to
+Lady Henry," was her thought. "She hasn't had a line from him for
+weeks. I shouldn't wonder if she suspects already. When any one
+talks of Egypt, I daren't open my lips."</p>
+<p>For fear of betraying the very minute and first-hand information
+that was possessed by Lady Henry's companion? With a smile and a
+shrug she locked the letter away in one of the drawers of her
+writing-table, and took up an envelope which had lain beneath it.
+From this--again with a look round her--she half drew out a
+photograph. The grizzled head and spectacled eyes of Dr. Meredith
+emerged. Julie's expression softened; her eyebrows went up a
+little; then she slightly shook her head, like one who protests
+that if something has gone wrong, it isn't--isn't--their fault.
+Unwillingly she looked at the last words of the letter:</p>
+<p>/# "So, remember, I can give you work if you want it, and paying
+work. I would rather give you my life and my all. But these, it
+seems, are commodities for which you have no use. So be it. But if
+you refuse to let me serve you, when the time comes, in such ways
+as I have suggested in this letter, then, indeed, you would be
+unkind--I would almost dare to say ungrateful! Yours always
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+"F. M."<br>
+#/</p>
+<p>This letter also she locked away. But her hand lingered on the
+last of all. She had read it three times already, and knew it
+practically by heart. So she left the sheets undisturbed in their
+envelope. But she raised the whole to her lips, and pressed it
+there, while her eyes, as they slowly filled with tears,
+travelled--unseeing--to the wintry street beyond the window. Eyes
+and face wore the same expression as Wilfrid Bury had surprised
+there--the dumb utterance of a woman hard pressed, not so much by
+the world without as by some wild force within.</p>
+<p>In that still moment the postman's knock was heard in the street
+outside. Julie Le Breton started, for no one whose life is
+dependent on a daily letter can hear that common sound without a
+thrill. Then she smiled sadly at herself. "<i>My</i> joy is over
+for to-day!" And she turned away with the letter in her hand.</p>
+<p>But she did not place it in the same drawer with the others. She
+moved across to the little carved triptych, and, after listening a
+moment to the sounds in the house, she opened its closed doors with
+a gold key that hung on her watch-chain and had been hidden in the
+bosom of her dress.</p>
+<p>The doors fell open. Inside, on a background of dark velvet,
+hung two miniatures, lightly framed in gold and linked together by
+a graceful scroll-work in gold. They were of fine French work, and
+they represented a man and woman, both handsome, young, and of a
+remarkable distinction of aspect. The faces, nevertheless, hardly
+gave pleasure. There was in each of them a look at once absent and
+eager--the look of those who have cared much and ardently for
+"man," and very little, comparatively, for men.</p>
+<p>The miniatures had not been meant for the triptych, nor the
+triptych for them. It had been adapted to them by loving hands; but
+there was room for other things in the velvet-lined hollow, and a
+packet of letters was already reposing there. Julie slipped the
+letter of the morning inside the elastic band which held the
+packet; then she closed and locked the doors, returning the key to
+its place in her dress. Both the lock and hinges of this little
+hiding-place were well and strongly made, and when the wings also
+were shut and locked one saw nothing but a massively framed
+photograph of the Bruges belfry resting on a wooden support.</p>
+<p>She had hardly completed her little task when there was a sudden
+noise of footsteps in the passage outside.</p>
+<p>"Julie!" said a light voice, subdued to a laughing whisper. "May
+I come in?"</p>
+<p>The Duchess stood on the threshold, her small, shell-pink face
+emerging from a masterly study in gray, presented by a most
+engaging costume.</p>
+<p>Julie, in surprise, advanced to meet her visitor, and the old
+butler, who was Miss Le Breton's very good friend, quickly and
+discreetly shut the door upon the two ladies.</p>
+<p>"Oh, my dear!" said the Duchess, throwing herself into Julie's
+arms. "I came up so quietly! I told Hutton not to disturb Lady
+Henry, and I just crept up-stairs, holding my skirts. Wasn't it
+heroic of me to put my poor little head into the lion's den like
+this? But when I got your letter this morning saying you couldn't
+come to me, I vowed I would just see for myself how you were, and
+whether there was anything left of you. Oh, you poor, pale
+thing!"</p>
+<p>And drawing Julie to a chair, the little Duchess sat down beside
+her, holding her friend's hands and studying her face.</p>
+<p>"Tell me what's been happening--I believe you've been crying!
+Oh, the old wretch!"</p>
+<p>"You're quite mistaken," said Julie, smiling. "Lady Henry says I
+may help you with the bazaar."</p>
+<p>"No!" The Duchess threw up her hands in amazement. "How have you
+managed that?"</p>
+<p>"By giving in. But, Evelyn, I'm not coming."</p>
+<p>"Oh, Julie!" The Duchess threw herself back in her chair and
+fixed a pair of very blue and very reproachful eyes on Miss Le
+Breton.</p>
+<p>"No, I'm not coming. If I'm to stay here, even for a time, I
+mustn't provoke her any more. She says I may come, but she doesn't
+mean it."</p>
+<p>"She couldn't mean anything civil or agreeable. How has she been
+behaving--since Sunday?"</p>
+<p>Julie looked uncertain.</p>
+<p>"Oh, there is an armed truce. I was made to have a fire in my
+bedroom last night. And Hutton took the dogs out yesterday."</p>
+<p>The Duchess laughed.</p>
+<p>"And there was quite a scene on Sunday? You don't tell me much
+about it in your letter. But, Julie"--her voice dropped to a
+whisper--"was anything said about Jacob?"</p>
+<p>Julie looked down. A bitterness crept into her face.</p>
+<p>"Yes. I can't forgive myself. I was provoked into telling the
+truth."</p>
+<p>"You did! Well? I suppose Aunt Flora thought it was all your
+fault that he proposed, and an impertinence that you refused?"</p>
+<p>"She was complimentary at the time," said Julie, half smiling.
+"But since--No, I don't feel that she is appeased."</p>
+<p>"Of course not. Affronted, more likely."</p>
+<p>There was a silence. The Duchess was looking at Julie, but her
+thoughts were far away. And presently she broke out, with the
+<i>&eacute;tourderie</i> that became her:</p>
+<p>"I wish I understood it myself, Julie. I know you like him."</p>
+<p>"Immensely. But--we should fight!"</p>
+<p>Miss Le Breton looked up with animation.</p>
+<p>"Oh, that's not a reason," said the Duchess, rather annoyed.</p>
+<p>"It's <i>the</i> reason. I don't know--there is something of
+<i>iron</i> in Mr. Delafield;" and Julie emphasized the words with
+a shrug which was almost a shiver. "And as I'm not in love with
+him, I'm afraid of him."</p>
+<p>"That's the best way of being in love," cried the Duchess. "And
+then, Julie"--she paused, and at last added, na&iuml;vely, as she
+laid her little hands on her friend's knee--"haven't you got
+<i>any</i> ambitions?"</p>
+<p>"Plenty. Oh, I should like very well to play the duchess, with
+you to instruct me," said Julie, caressing the hands. "But I must
+choose my duke. And till the right one appears, I prefer my own
+wild ways."</p>
+<p>"Afraid of Jacob Delafield? How odd!" said the Duchess, with her
+chin on her hands.</p>
+<p>"It may be odd to you," said Julie, with vivacity. "In reality,
+it's not in the least odd. There's the same quality in him that
+there is in Lady Henry--something that beats you down," she added,
+under her breath. "There, that's enough about Mr. Delafield--quite
+enough."</p>
+<p>And, rising, Julie threw up her arms and clasped her hands above
+her head. The gesture was all strength and will, like the
+stretching of a sea-bird's wings.</p>
+<p>The Duchess looked at her with eyes that had begun to waver.</p>
+<p>"Julie, I heard such an odd piece of news last night."</p>
+<p>Julie turned.</p>
+<p>"You remember the questions you asked me about Aileen
+Moffatt?"</p>
+<p>"Perfectly."</p>
+<p>"Well, I saw a man last night who had just come home from Simla.
+He saw a great deal of her, and he says that she and her mother
+were adored in India. They were thought so quaint and sweet--unlike
+other people--and the girl so lovely, in a sort of gossamer way.
+And who do you think was always about with them--at Peshawar first,
+and then at Simla--so that everybody talked? Captain Warkworth! My
+man believed there was an understanding between them."</p>
+<p>Julie had begun to fill the flower-glasses with water and unpack
+the flower-basket. Her back was towards the Duchess. After a moment
+she replied, her hands full of forced narcissuses:</p>
+<p>"Well, that would be a <i>coup</i> for him."</p>
+<p>"I should think so. She is supposed to have half a million in
+coal-mines alone, besides land. Has Captain Warkworth ever said
+anything to you about them?"</p>
+<p>"No. He has never mentioned them."</p>
+<p>The Duchess reflected, her eyes still on Julie's back.</p>
+<p>"Everybody wants money nowadays. And the soldiers are just as
+bad as anybody else. They don't <i>look</i> money, as the City men
+do--that's why we women fall in love with them--but they
+<i>think</i> it, all the same."</p>
+<p>Julie made no reply. The Duchess could see nothing of her. But
+the little lady's face showed the flutter of one determined to
+venture yet a little farther on thin ice.</p>
+<p>"Julie, I've done everything you've asked me. I sent a card for
+the 20th to that <i>rather</i> dreadful woman, Lady Froswick. I was
+very clever with Freddie about that living; and I've talked to Mr.
+Montresor. But, Julie, if you don't mind, I really should like to
+know why you're so keen about it?"</p>
+<p>The Duchess's cheeks were by now one flush. She had a romantic
+affection for Julie, and would not have offended her for the
+world.</p>
+<p>Julie turned round. She was always pale, and the Duchess saw
+nothing unusual.</p>
+<p>"Am I so keen?"</p>
+<p>"Julie, you have done everything in the world for this man since
+he came home."</p>
+<p>"Well, he interested me," said Julie, stepping back to look at
+the effect of one of the vases. "The first evening he was here, he
+saved me from Lady Henry--twice. He's alone in the world, too,
+which attracts me. You see, I happen to know what it's like. An
+only son, and an orphan, and no family interest to push him--"</p>
+<p>"So you thought you'd push him? Oh, Julie, you're a darling--but
+you're rather a wire-puller, aren't you?"</p>
+<p>Julie smiled faintly.</p>
+<p>"Well, perhaps I like to feel, sometimes, that I have a little
+power. I haven't much else."</p>
+<p>The Duchess seized one of her hands and pressed it to her
+cheek.</p>
+<p>"You have power, because every one loves and admires you. As for
+me, I would cut myself in little bits to please you.... Well, I
+only hope, when he's married his heiress, if he does marry her,
+they'll remember what they owe to you."</p>
+<p>Did she feel the hand lying in her own shake? At any rate, it
+was brusquely withdrawn, and Julie walked to the end of the table
+to fetch some more flowers.</p>
+<p>"I don't want any gratitude," she said, abruptly, "from any one.
+Well, now, Evelyn, you understand about the bazaar? I wish I could,
+but I can't."</p>
+<p>"Yes, I understand. Julie!" The Duchess rose impulsively, and
+threw herself into a chair beside the table where she could watch
+the face and movements of Mademoiselle Le Breton. "Julie, I want so
+much to talk to you--about <i>business</i>. You're not to be
+offended. Julie, <i>if</i> you leave Lady Henry, how will you
+manage?"</p>
+<p>"How shall I live, you mean?" said Julie, smiling at the
+euphemism in which this little person, for whom existence had
+rained gold and flowers since her cradle, had enwrapped the hard
+facts of bread-and-butter--facts with which she was so little
+acquainted that she approached them with a certain delicate
+mystery.</p>
+<p>"You must have some money, you know, Julie," said the Duchess,
+timidly, her upraised face and Paris hat well matched by the gay
+poinsettias, the delicate eucharis and arums with which the table
+was now covered.</p>
+<p>"I shall earn some," said Julie, quietly.</p>
+<p>"Oh, but, Julie, you can't be bothered with any other tiresome
+old lady!"</p>
+<p>"No. I should keep my freedom. But Dr. Meredith has offered me
+work, and got me a promise of more."</p>
+<p>The Duchess opened her eyes.</p>
+<p>"Writing! Well, of course, we all know you can do anything you
+want to do. And you won't let anybody help you at all?"</p>
+<p>"I won't let anybody give me money, if that's what you mean,"
+said Julie, smiling. But it was a smile without accent, without
+gayety.</p>
+<p>The Duchess, watching her, said to herself, "Since I came in she
+is changed--quite changed."</p>
+<p>"Julie, you're horribly proud!"</p>
+<p>Julie's face contracted a little.</p>
+<p>"How much 'power' should I have left, do you think--how much
+self-respect--if I took money from my friends?"</p>
+<p>"Well, not money, perhaps. But, Julie, you know all about
+Freddie's London property. It's abominable how much he has. There
+are always a few houses he keeps in his own hands. If Lady Henry
+<i>does</i> quarrel with you, and we could lend you a little
+house--for a time--<i>wouldn't</i> you take it, Julie?"</p>
+<p>Her voice had the coaxing inflections of a child. Julie
+hesitated.</p>
+<p>"Only if the Duke himself offered it," she said, finally, with a
+brusque stiffening of her whole attitude.</p>
+<p>The Duchess flushed and stood up.</p>
+<p>"Oh, well, that's all right," she said, but no longer in the
+same voice. "Remember, I have your promise. Good-bye, Julie, you
+darling!... Oh, by-the-way, what an idiot I am! Here am I
+forgetting the chief thing I came about. Will you come with me to
+Lady Hubert to-night? Do! Freddie's away, and I hate going by
+myself."</p>
+<p>"To Lady Hubert's?" said Julie, starting a little. "I wonder
+what Lady Henry would say?"</p>
+<p>"Tell her Jacob won't be there," said the Duchess, laughing.
+"Then she won't make any difficulties."</p>
+<p>"Shall I go and ask her?"</p>
+<p>"Gracious! let me get out of the house first. Give her a message
+from me that I will come and see her to-morrow morning. We've got
+to make it up, Freddie says; so the sooner it's over, the better.
+Say all the civil things you can to her about to-night, and wire me
+this afternoon. If all's well, I come for you at eleven."</p>
+<p>The Duchess rustled away. Julie was left standing by the table,
+alone. Her face was very still, but her eyes shone, her teeth
+pressed her lip. Unconsciously her hand closed upon a delicate
+blossom of eucharis and crushed it.</p>
+<p>"I'll go," she said, to herself. "Yes, I'll go."</p>
+<p>Her letter of the morning, as it happened, had included the
+following sentences:</p>
+<p>"I think to-night I must put in an appearance at the Hubert
+Delafields', though I own that neither the house nor the son of the
+house is very much to my liking. But I hear that he has gone back
+to the country. And there are a few people who frequent Lady
+Hubert, who might just now be of use."</p>
+<p>Lady Henry gave her consent that Mademoiselle Le Breton should
+accompany the Duchess to Lady Hubert's party almost with effusion.
+"It will be very dull," she said. "My sister-in-law makes a desert
+and calls it society. But if you want to go, go. As to Evelyn
+Crowborough, I am engaged to my dentist to-morrow morning."</p>
+<p>When at night this message was reported to the Duchess, as she
+and Julie were on their way to Rutland Gate, she laughed.</p>
+<p>"How much leek shall I have to swallow? What's to-morrow?
+Wednesday. Hm--cards in the afternoon; in the evening I appear, sit
+on a stool at Lady Henry's feet, and look at you through my glasses
+as though I had never seen you before. On Thursday I leave a French
+book; on Friday I send the baby to see her. Goodness, what a time
+it takes!" said the Duchess, raising her very white and very small
+shoulders. "Well, for my life, I mustn't fail to-morrow night."</p>
+<p>At Lady Hubert's they found a very tolerable, not to say lively,
+gathering, which quite belied Lady Henry's slanders. There was not
+the same conscious brilliance, the same thrill in the air, as
+pertained to the gatherings in Bruton Street. But there was a more
+solid social comfort, such as befits people untroubled by the
+certainty that the world is looking on. The guests of Bruton Street
+laughed, as well-bred people should, at the estimation in which
+Lady Henry's salon was held, by those especially who did not belong
+to it. Still, the mere knowledge of this outside estimate kept up a
+certain tension. At Lady Hubert's there was no tension, and the
+agreeable nobodies who found their way in were not made to blush
+for the agreeable nothings of their conversation.</p>
+<p>Lady Hubert herself made for ease--partly, no doubt, for
+stupidity. She was fair, sleepy, and substantial. Her husband had
+spent her fortune, and ruffled all the temper she had. The Hubert
+Delafields were now, however, better off than they had
+been--investments had recovered--and Lady Hubert's temper was once
+more placid, as Providence had meant it to be. During the coming
+season it was her firm intention to marry her daughter, who now
+stood beside her as she received her guests--a blonde,
+sweet-featured girl, given, however, so it was said, to good works,
+and not at all inclined to trouble herself overmuch about a
+husband.</p>
+<p>The rooms were fairly full; and the entry of the Duchess and
+Mademoiselle Le Breton was one of the incidents of the evening, and
+visibly quickened the pulses of the assembly. The little
+Dresden-china Duchess, with her clothes, her jewels, and her
+smiles, had been, since her marriage, one of the chief favorites of
+fashion. She had been brought up in the depths of the country, and
+married at eighteen. After six years she was not in the least tired
+of her popularity or its penalties. All the life in her dainty
+person, her glancing eyes, and small, smiling lips rose, as it
+were, to meet the stir that she evoked. She vaguely saw herself as
+Titania, and played the part with childish glee. And like Titania,
+as she had more than once ruefully reflected, she was liable to be
+chidden by her lord.</p>
+<p>But the Duke was on this particular evening debating high
+subjects in the House of Lords, and the Duchess was amusing
+herself. Sir Wilfrid Bury, who arrived not long after his
+goddaughter, found her the centre first of a body-guard of cousins,
+including among them apparently a great many handsome young men,
+and then of a small crowd, whose vaguely smiling faces reflected
+the pleasure that was to be got, even at a distance, out of her
+young and merry beauty.</p>
+<p>Julie Le Breton was not with her. But in the next room Sir
+Wilfrid soon perceived the form and face which, in their own way,
+exacted quite as much attention from the world as those of the
+Duchess. She was talking with many people, and, as usual, he could
+not help watching her. Never yet had he seen her wide, black eyes
+more vivid than they were to-night. Now, as on his first sight of
+her, he could not bring himself to call them beautiful. Yet
+beautiful they were, by every canon of form and color. No doubt it
+was something in their expression that offended his own
+well-drilled instincts.</p>
+<p>He found himself thinking suspicious thoughts about most of the
+conversations in which he saw her engaged. Why was she bestowing
+those careful smiles on that intolerable woman, Lady Froswick? And
+what an acquaintance she seemed to have among these elderly
+soldiers, who might at all times be reckoned on at Lady Hubert's
+parties! One gray-haired veteran after another recalled himself to
+her attention, got his few minutes with her, and passed on smiling.
+Certain high officials, too, were no less friendly. Her court, it
+seemed to him, was mainly composed of the middle-aged; to-night, at
+any rate, she left the young to the Duchess. And it was on the
+whole a court of men. The women, as he now perceived, were a trifle
+more reserved. There was not, indeed, a trace of exclusion. They
+were glad to see her; glad, he thought, to be noticed by her. But
+they did not yield themselves--or so he fancied--with the same
+wholeness as their husbands.</p>
+<p>"How old is she?" he asked himself. "About nine-and-twenty?...
+Jacob's age--or a trifle older."</p>
+<p>After a time he lost sight of her, and in the amusement of his
+own evening forgot her. But as the rooms were beginning to thin he
+walked through them, looking for a famous collection of miniatures
+that belonged to Lady Hubert. English family history was one of his
+hobbies, and he was far better acquainted with the Delafield
+statesmen, and the Delafield beauties of the past, than were any of
+their modern descendants. Lady Hubert's Cosways and Plimers had
+made a lively impression upon him in days gone by, and he meant to
+renew acquaintance with them.</p>
+<p>But they had been moved from the room in which he remembered
+them, and he was led on through a series of drawing-rooms, now
+nearly empty, till on the threshold of the last he paused
+suddenly.</p>
+<p>A lady and gentleman rose from a sofa on which they had been
+sitting. Captain Warkworth stood still. Mademoiselle Le Breton
+advanced to the new-comer.</p>
+<p>"Is it very late?" she said, gathering up her fan and gloves.
+"We have been looking at Lady Hubert's miniatures. That lady with
+the muff"--she pointed to the case which occupied a conspicuous
+position in the room--"is really wonderful. Can you tell me, Sir
+Wilfrid, where the Duchess is?"</p>
+<p>"No, but I can help you find her," said that gentleman,
+forgetting the miniatures and endeavoring to look at neither of his
+companions.</p>
+<p>"And I must rush," said Captain Warkworth, looking at his watch.
+"I told a man to come to my rooms at twelve. Heavens!"</p>
+<p>He shook hands with Miss Le Breton and hurried away.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid and Julie moved on together. That he had disturbed a
+most intimate and critical conversation was somehow borne in upon
+Sir Wilfrid. But kind and even romantic as was the old man's inmost
+nature, his feelings were not friendly.</p>
+<p>"How does the biography get on?" he asked his companion, with a
+smile.</p>
+<p>A bright flush appeared in Mademoiselle Le Breton's cheek.</p>
+<p>"I think Lady Henry has dropped it."</p>
+<p>"Ah, well, I don't imagine she will regret it;" he said,
+dryly.</p>
+<p>She made no reply. He mentally accused himself for a brute, and
+then shook off the charge. Surely a few pin-pricks were her desert!
+That she should defend her own secrets was, as Delafield had said,
+legitimate enough. But when a man offers you his services, you
+should not befool him beyond a certain point.</p>
+<p>She must be aware of what he was thinking. He glanced at her
+curiously; at the stately dress gleaming with jet, which no longer
+affected anything of the girl; at the fine but old-fashioned
+necklace of pearls and diamonds--no doubt her mother's--which
+clasped her singularly slender throat. At any rate, she showed
+nothing. She began to talk again of the Delafield miniatures, using
+her fan the while with graceful deliberation; and presently they
+found the Duchess.</p>
+<p>"Is she an adventuress, or is she not?" thought Bury, as his
+hansom carried him away from Rutland Gate. "If she marries Jacob,
+it will be a queer business."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+<br>
+<p>Meanwhile the Duchess had dropped Julie Le Breton at Lady
+Henry's door. Julie groped her way up-stairs through the sleeping
+house. She found her room in darkness, and she turned on no light.
+There was still a last glimmer of fire, and she sank down by it,
+her long arms clasped round her knees, her head thrown back as
+though she listened still to words in her ears.</p>
+<p>"Oh, such a child! Such a dear, simple-minded child! Report
+engaged her to at least ten different people at Simla. She had a
+crowd of cavaliers there--I was one of them. The whole place adored
+her. She is a very rare little creature, but well looked after, I
+can tell you--a long array of guardians in the background."</p>
+<p>How was it possible not to trust that aspect and that smile? Her
+mind travelled back to the autumn days when she had seen them
+first; reviewed the steps, so little noticed at first, so rapid
+lately and full of fate, by which she had come into this bondage
+wherein she stood. She saw the first appearance of the young
+soldier in Lady Henry's drawing-room; her first conversation with
+him; and all the subtle development of that singular relation
+between them, into which so many elements had entered. The
+flattering sense of social power implied both in the homage of this
+young and successful man, and in the very services that she, on her
+side, was able to render him; impulsive gratitude for that homage,
+at a time when her very soul was smarting under Lady Henry's
+contemptuous hostility; and then the sweet advances of a
+"friendship" that was to unite them in a bond, secret and unique, a
+bond that took no account of the commonplaces of love and marriage,
+the link of equal and kindred souls in a common struggle with hard
+and sordid circumstance.</p>
+<p>"I have neither family nor powerful friends," he had written to
+her a few weeks after their first meeting; "all that I have won, I
+have won for myself. Nobody ever made 'interest' for me but you.
+You, too, are alone in the world. You, too, have to struggle for
+yourself. Let us unite our forces--cheer each other, care for each
+other--and keep our friendship a sacred secret from the world that
+would misunderstand it. I will not fail you, I will give you all my
+confidence; and I will try and understand that noble, wounded heart
+of yours, with its memories, and all those singular prides and
+isolations that have been imposed on it by circumstance. I will not
+say, let me be your brother; there is something <i>banal</i> in
+that; 'friend' is good enough for us both; and there is between us
+a community of intellectual and spiritual interest which will
+enable us to add new meaning even to that sacred word. I will write
+to you every day; you shall know all that happens to me; and
+whatever grateful devotion can do to make your life smoother shall
+be done."</p>
+<p>Five months ago was it, that that letter was written?</p>
+<p>Its remembered phrases already rang bitterly in an aching heart.
+Since it reached her, she had put out all her powers as a woman,
+all her influence as an intelligence, in the service of the
+writer.</p>
+<p>And now, here she sat in the dark, tortured by a passion of
+which she was ashamed, before which she was beginning to stand
+helpless in a kind of terror. The situation was developing, and she
+found herself wondering how much longer she would be able to
+control herself or it. Very miserably conscious, too, was she all
+the time that she was now playing for a reward that was secretly,
+tacitly, humiliatingly denied her. How could a poor man, with Harry
+Warkworth's ambitions, think for a moment of marriage with a woman
+in her ambiguous and dependent position? Her common-sense told her
+that the very notion was absurd. And yet, since the Duchess's
+gossip had given point and body to a hundred vague suspicions, she
+was no longer able to calm, to master herself.</p>
+<p>Suddenly a thought of another kind occurred to her. It added to
+her smart that Sir Wilfrid, in their meeting at Lady Hubert's, had
+spoken to her and looked at her with that slight touch of laughing
+contempt. There had been no insincerity in that emotion with which
+she had first appealed to him as her mother's friend; she did truly
+value the old man's good opinion. And yet she had told him
+lies.</p>
+<p>"I can't help it," she said to herself, with a little shiver.
+The story about the biography had been the invention of a moment.
+It had made things easy, and it had a small foundation in the fact
+that Lady Henry had talked vaguely of using the letters lent her by
+Captain Warkworth for the elucidation--perhaps in a <i>Nineteenth
+Century</i> article--of certain passages in her husband's Indian
+career.</p>
+<p>Jacob Delafield, too. There also it was no less clear to her
+than to Sir Wilfrid that she had "overdone it." It was true, then,
+what Lady Henry said of her--that she had an overmastering tendency
+to intrigue--to a perpetual tampering with the plain fact?</p>
+<p>"Well, it is the way in which such people as I defend
+themselves," she said, obstinately, repeating to herself what she
+had said to Sir Wilfrid Bury.</p>
+<p>And then she set against it, proudly, that disinterestedness of
+which, as she vowed to herself, no one but she knew the facts. It
+was true, what she had said to the Duchess and to Sir Wilfrid.
+Plenty of people would give her money, would make her life
+comfortable, without the need for any daily slavery. She would not
+take it. Jacob Delafield would marry her, if she lifted her finger;
+and she would not lift it. Dr. Meredith would marry her, and she
+had said him nay. She hugged the thought of her own unknown and
+unapplauded integrity. It comforted her pride. It drew a veil over
+that wounding laughter which had gleamed for a moment through those
+long lashes of Sir Wilfrid Bury.</p>
+<p>Last of all, as she sank into her restless sleep, came the
+remembrance that she was still under Lady Henry's roof. In the
+silence of the night the difficulties of her situation pressed upon
+and tormented her. What was she to do? Whom was she to trust?</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"Dixon, how is Lady Henry?"</p>
+<p>"Much too ill to come down-stairs, miss. She's very much put
+out; in fact, miss (the maid lowered her voice), you hardly dare go
+near her. But she says herself it would be absurd to attempt
+it."</p>
+<p>"Has Hatton had any orders?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, miss. I've just told him what her ladyship wishes. He's to
+tell everybody that Lady Henry's very sorry, and hoped up to the
+last moment to be able to come down as usual."</p>
+<p>"Has Lady Henry all she wants, Dixon? Have you taken her the
+evening papers?"</p>
+<p>"Oh yes, miss. But if you go in to her much her ladyship says
+you're disturbing her; and if you don't go, why, of course,
+everybody's neglecting her."</p>
+<p>"Do you think I may go and say good-night to her, Dixon?"</p>
+<p>The maid hesitated.</p>
+<p>"I'll ask her, miss--I'll certainly ask her."</p>
+<p>The door closed, and Julie was left alone in the great
+drawing-room of the Bruton Street house. It had been prepared as
+usual for the Wednesday--evening party. The flowers were fresh; the
+chairs had been arranged as Lady Henry liked to have them; the
+parquet floors shone under the electric light; the Gainsboroughs
+seemed to look down from the walls with a gay and friendly
+expectancy.</p>
+<p>For herself, Julie had just finished her solitary dinner, still
+buoyed up while she was eating it by the hope that Lady Henry would
+be able to come down. The bitter winds of the two previous days,
+however, had much aggravated her chronic rheumatism. She was
+certainly ill and suffering; but Julie had known her make such
+heroic efforts before this to keep her Wednesdays going that not
+till Dixon appeared with her verdict did she give up hope.</p>
+<p>So everybody would be turned away. Julie paced the drawing-room
+a solitary figure amid its lights and flowers--solitary and
+dejected. In a couple of hours' time all her particular friends
+would come to the door, and it would be shut against them. "Of
+course, expect me to-night," had been the concluding words of her
+letter of the morning. Several people also had announced themselves
+for this evening whom it was extremely desirable she should see. A
+certain eminent colonel, professor at the Staff College, was being
+freely named in the papers for the Mokembe mission. Never was it
+more necessary for her to keep all the threads of her influence in
+good working order. And these Wednesday evenings offered her the
+occasions when she was most successful, most at her
+ease--especially whenever Lady Henry was not well enough to leave
+the comparatively limited sphere of the back drawing-room.</p>
+<p>Moreover, the gatherings themselves ministered to a veritable
+craving in Julie Le Breton--the craving for society and
+conversation. She shared it with Lady Henry, but in her it was even
+more deeply rooted. Lady Henry had ten talents in the Scriptural
+sense--money, rank, all sorts of inherited bonds and associations.
+Julie Le Breton had but this one. Society was with her both an
+instinct and an art. With the subtlest and most intelligent
+ambition she had trained and improved her natural gift for it
+during the last few years. And now, to the excitement of society
+was added the excitement of a new and tyrannous feeling, for which
+society was henceforth a mere weapon to be used.</p>
+<p>She fumed and fretted for a while in silence. Every now and then
+she would pause in front of one of the great mirrors of the room,
+and look at the reflection of her tall thinness and the trailing
+satin of her gown.</p>
+<p>"The girl--so pretty, in a gossamer sort of way," The words
+echoed in her mind, and vaguely, beside her own image in the glass,
+there rose a vision of girlhood--pale, gold hair, pink cheeks,
+white frock--and she turned away, miserable, from that conscious,
+that intellectual distinction with which, in general, she could
+persuade herself to be very fairly satisfied.</p>
+<p>Hutton, the butler, came in to look at the fire.</p>
+<p>"Will you be sitting here to-night, miss?"</p>
+<p>"Oh no, Hutton. I shall go back to the library. I think the fire
+in my own room is out."</p>
+<p>"I had better put out these lights, anyway," said the man,
+looking round the brilliant room.</p>
+<p>"Oh, certainly," said Julie, and she began to assist him to do
+so.</p>
+<p>Suddenly a thought occurred to her.</p>
+<p>"Hutton!" She went up to him and spoke in a lower tone. "If the
+Duchess of Crowborough comes to-night, I should very much like to
+see her, and I know she wants to see me. Do you think it could
+possibly disturb Lady Henry if you were to show her into the
+library for twenty minutes?"</p>
+<p>The man considered.</p>
+<p>"I don't think there could be anything heard up-stairs, miss. I
+should, of course, warn her grace that her ladyship was ill."</p>
+<p>"Well, then, Hutton, please ask her to come in," said Miss Le
+Breton, hurriedly. "And, Hutton, Dr. Meredith and Mr. Montresor,
+you know how disappointed they'll be not to find Lady Henry at
+home?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, miss. They'll want to know how her ladyship is, no doubt.
+I'll tell them you're in the library. And Captain Warkworth,
+miss?--he's never missed a Wednesday evening for weeks."</p>
+<p>"Oh, well, if he comes--you must judge for yourself, Hutton,"
+said Miss Le Breton, occupying herself with the electric switches.
+"I should like to tell them all--the old friends--how Lady Henry
+is."</p>
+<p>The butler's face was respectful discretion itself.</p>
+<p>"Of course, miss. And shall I bring tea and coffee?"</p>
+<p>"Oh no," said Miss Le Breton, hastily; and then, after
+reflection, "Well, have it ready; but I don't suppose anybody will
+ask for it. Is there a good fire in the library?"</p>
+<p>"Oh yes, miss. I thought you would be coming down there again.
+Shall I take some of these flowers down? The room looks rather
+bare, if anybody's coming in."</p>
+<p>Julie colored a little.</p>
+<p>"Well, you might--not many. And, Hutton, you're sure we can't
+disturb Lady Henry?"</p>
+<p>Hutton's expression was not wholly confident.</p>
+<p>"Her ladyship's very quick of hearing, miss. But I'll shut those
+doors at the foot of the back stairs, and I'll ask every one to
+come in quietly."</p>
+<p>"Thank you, Hutton--thank you. That'll be very good of you. And,
+Hutton--"</p>
+<p>"Yes, miss." The man paused with a large vase of white arums in
+his hand.</p>
+<p>"You'll say a word to Dixon, won't you? If anybody comes in,
+there'll be no need to trouble Lady Henry about it. I can tell her
+to-morrow."</p>
+<p>"Very good, miss. Dixon will be down to her supper
+presently."</p>
+<p>The butler departed. Julie was left alone in the now darkened
+room, lighted only by one lamp and the bright glow of the fire. She
+caught her breath--suddenly struck with the audacity of what she
+had been doing. Eight or ten of these people certainly would come
+in--eight or ten of Lady Henry's "intimates." If Lady Henry
+discovered it--after this precarious truce between them had just
+been patched up!</p>
+<p>Julie made a step towards the door as though to recall the
+butler, then stopped herself. The thought that in an hour's time
+Harry Warkworth might be within a few yards of her, and she not
+permitted to see him, worked intolerably in heart and brain,
+dulling the shrewd intelligence by which she was ordinarily
+governed. She was conscious, indeed, of some profound inner change.
+Life had been difficult enough before the Duchess had said those
+few words to her. But since!</p>
+<p>Suppose he had deceived her at Lady Hubert's party! Through all
+her mounting passion her acute sense of character did not fail her.
+She secretly knew that it was quite possible he had deceived her.
+But the knowledge merely added to the sense of danger which, in
+this case, was one of the elements of passion itself.</p>
+<p>"He must have money--of course he must have money," she was
+saying, feverishly, to herself. "But I'll find ways. Why should he
+marry yet--for years? It would be only hampering him."</p>
+<p>Again she paused before the mirrored wall; and again imagination
+evoked upon the glass the same white and threatening image--her own
+near kinswoman--the child of her mother's sister! How strange!
+Where was the little gossamer creature now--in what safe haven of
+money and family affection, and all the spoiling that money brings?
+From the climbing paths of her own difficult and personal struggle
+Julie Le Breton looked down with sore contempt on such a degenerate
+ease of circumstance. She had heard it said that the mother and
+daughter were lingering abroad for a time on their way home from
+India. Yet was the girl all the while pining for England, thinking
+not of her garden, her horse, her pets, but only of this slim young
+soldier who in a few minutes, perhaps, would knock at Lady Henry's
+door, in quest of Aileen Moffatt's unknown, unguessed-of cousin?
+These thoughts sent wild combative thrills through Julie's pulses.
+She turned to one of the old French clocks. How much longer
+now--till he came?</p>
+<p>"Her ladyship would like to see you, miss."</p>
+<p>The voice was Dixon's, and Julie turned hurriedly, recalling all
+her self-possession. She climbed some steep stairs, still
+unmodernized, to Lady Henry's floor. That lady slept at the back of
+the house, so as to be out of noise. Her room was an old-fashioned
+apartment, furnished about the year Queen Victoria came to the
+throne, with furniture, chintzes, and carpet of the most approved
+early Victorian pattern. What had been ugly then was dingy now; and
+its strong mistress, who had known so well how to assimilate and
+guard the fine decorations and noble pictures of the drawing-rooms,
+would not have a thing in it touched. "It suits me," she would say,
+impatiently, when her stout sister-in-law pleaded placidly for
+white paint and bright colors. "If it's ugly, so am I."</p>
+<p>Fierce, certainly, and forbidding she was on this February
+evening. She lay high on her pillow, tormented by her chronic
+bronchitis and by rheumatic pain, her brows drawn together, her
+vigorous hands clasped before her in an evident tension, as though
+she only restrained herself with difficulty from defying maid,
+doctor, and her own sense of prudence.</p>
+<p>"Well, you have dressed?" she said, sharply, as Julie Le Breton
+entered her room.</p>
+<p>"I did not get your message till I had finished dinner. And I
+dressed before dinner."</p>
+<p>Lady Henry looked her up and down, like a cat ready to
+pounce.</p>
+<p>"You didn't bring me those letters to sign?"</p>
+<p>"No, I thought you were not fit for it."</p>
+<p>"I said they were to go to-night. Kindly bring them at
+once."</p>
+<p>Julie brought them. With groans and flinchings that she could
+not repress, Lady Henry read and signed them. Then she demanded to
+be read to. Julie sat down, trembling. How fast the hands of Lady
+Henry's clock were moving on!</p>
+<p>Mercifully, Lady Henry was already somewhat sleepy, partly from
+weakness, partly from a dose of bromide.</p>
+<p>"I hear nothing," she said, putting out an impatient hand. "You
+should raise your voice. I didn't mean you to shout, of course.
+Thank you--that'll do. Good-night. Tell Hutton to keep the house as
+quiet as he can. People must knock and ring, I suppose; but if all
+the doors are properly shut it oughtn't to bother me. Are you going
+to bed?"</p>
+<p>"I shall sit up a little to write some letters. But--I sha'n't
+be late."</p>
+<p>"Why should you be late?" said Lady Henry, tartly, as she turned
+away.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Julie made her way down-stairs with a beating heart. All the
+doors were carefully shut behind her. When she reached the hall it
+was already half-past ten o'clock. She hurried to the library, the
+large panelled room behind the dining-room. How bright Hutton had
+made it look! Up shot her spirits. With a gay and dancing step she
+went from chair to chair, arranging everything instinctively as she
+was accustomed to do in the drawing-room. She made the flowers less
+stiff; she put on another light; she drew one table forward and
+pushed its fellow back against the wall. What a charming old room,
+after all! What a pity Lady Henry so seldom used it! It was
+panelled in dark oak, while the drawing-room was white. But the
+pictures, of which there were two or three, looked even better here
+than up-stairs. That beautiful Lawrence--a "red boy" in gleaming
+satin--that pair of Hoppners, fine studies in blue, why, who had
+ever seen them before? And another light or two would show them
+still better.</p>
+<p>A loud knock and ring. Julie held her breath. Ah! A distant
+voice in the hall. She moved to the fire, and stood quietly reading
+an evening paper.</p>
+<p>"Captain Warkworth would be glad if you would see him for a few
+minutes, miss. He would like to ask you himself about her
+ladyship."</p>
+<p>"Please ask him to come in, Hutton."</p>
+<p>Hutton effaced himself, and the young man entered, Then Julie
+raised her voice.</p>
+<p>"Remember, please, Hutton, that I <i>particularly</i> want to
+see the Duchess."</p>
+<p>Hutton bowed and retired. Warkworth came forward.</p>
+<p>"What luck to find you like this!"</p>
+<p>He threw her one look--Julie knew it to be a look of
+scrutiny--and then, as she held out her hand, he stooped and kissed
+it.</p>
+<p>"He wants to know that my suspicions are gone," she thought. "At
+any rate, he should believe it."</p>
+<p>"The great thing," she said, with her finger to her lip, "is
+that Lady Henry should hear nothing."</p>
+<p>She motioned her somewhat puzzled guest to a seat on one side of
+the fire, and, herself, fell into another opposite. A wild vivacity
+was in her face and manner.</p>
+<p>"Isn't this amusing? Isn't the room charming? I think I should
+receive very well"--she looked round her--"in my own house."</p>
+<p>"You would receive well in a garret--a stable," he said. "But
+what is the meaning of this? Explain."</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry is ill and is gone to bed. That made her very
+cross--poor Lady Henry! She thinks I, too, am in bed. But you
+see--you forced your way in--didn't you?--to inquire with greater
+minuteness after Lady Henry's health."</p>
+<p>She bent towards him, her eyes dancing.</p>
+<p>"Of course I did. Will there presently be a swarm on my heels,
+all possessed with a similar eagerness, or--?"</p>
+<p>He drew his chair, smiling, a little closer to her. She, on the
+contrary, withdrew hers.</p>
+<p>"There will, no doubt, be six or seven," she said, demurely,
+"who will want personal news. But now, before they come"--her tone
+changed--"is there anything to tell me?"</p>
+<p>"Plenty," he said, drawing a letter out of his pocket. "Your
+writ, my dear lady, runs as easily in the City as elsewhere." And
+he held up an envelope.</p>
+<p>She flushed.</p>
+<p>"You have got your allotment? But I knew you would. Lady
+Froswick promised."</p>
+<p>"And a large allotment, too," he said, joyously. "I am the envy
+of all my friends. Some of them have got a few shares, and have
+already sold them--grumbling. I keep mine three days more on the
+best advice--the price may go higher yet. But, anyway, there"--he
+shook the envelope--"there it is--deliverance from debt--peace of
+mind for the first time since I was a lad at school--the power of
+going, properly fitted out and equipped, to Africa--<i>if</i> I
+go--and not like a beggar--all in that bit of paper, and all the
+work of--some one you and I know. Fairy godmother! tell me, please,
+how to say a proper thank you."</p>
+<p>The young soldier dropped his voice. Those blue eyes which had
+done him excellent service in many different parts of the globe
+were fixed with brilliance on his companion; the lines of a
+full-lipped mouth quivered with what seemed a boyish pleasure. The
+comfort of money relief was never acknowledged more frankly or more
+handsomely.</p>
+<p>Julie hurriedly repressed him. Did she feel instinctively that
+there are thanks which it sometimes humiliates a man to remember,
+lavishly as he may have poured them out at the moment--thanks which
+may easily count in the long run, not for, but against, the donor?
+She rather haughtily asked what she had done but say a chance word
+to Lady Froswick? The shares had to be allotted to somebody. She
+was glad, of course, very glad, if he were relieved from
+anxiety....</p>
+<p>So did she free herself and him from a burdensome gratitude; and
+they passed to discussing the latest chances of the Mokembe
+appointment. The Staff-College Colonel was no doubt formidable; the
+Commander-in-Chief, who had hitherto allowed himself to be much
+talked to on the subject of young Warkworth's claims by several men
+in high place--General M'Gill among them--well known in Lady
+Henry's drawing-room, was perhaps inclining to the new suggestion,
+which was strongly supported by important people in Egypt; he had
+one or two recent appointments on his conscience not quite of the
+highest order, and the Staff-College man, in addition to a fine
+military record, was virtue, poverty, and industry embodied; was
+nobody's cousin, and would, altogether, produce a good effect.</p>
+<p>Could anything more be done, and fresh threads set in
+motion?</p>
+<p>They bandied names a little, Julie quite as subtly and minutely
+informed as the man with regard to all the sources of patronage.
+New devices, fresh modes of approach revealed themselves to the
+woman's quick brain. Yet she did not chatter about them; still less
+parade her own resources. Only, in talking with her, dead walls
+seemed to give way; vistas of hope and possibility opened in the
+very heart of discouragement. She found the right word, the right
+jest, the right spur to invention or effort; while all the time she
+was caressing and appeasing her companion's self-love--placing it
+like a hot-house plant in an atmosphere of expansion and
+content--with that art of hers, which, for the ambitious and
+irritable man, more conscious of the kicks than of the kisses of
+fortune, made conversation with her an active and delightful
+pleasure.</p>
+<p>"I don't know how it is," Warkworth presently declared; "but
+after I have been talking to you for ten minutes the whole world
+seems changed. The sky was ink, and you have turned it rosy. But
+suppose it is all mirage, and you the enchanter?"</p>
+<p>He smiled at her--consciously, superabundantly. It was not easy
+to keep quite cool with Julie Le Breton; the self-satisfaction she
+could excite in the man she wished to please recoiled upon the
+woman offering the incense. The flattered one was apt to be
+foolishly responsive.</p>
+<p>"That is my risk," she said, with a little shrug. "If I make you
+confident, and nothing comes of it--"</p>
+<p>"I hope I shall know how to behave myself," cried Warkworth.
+"You see, you hardly understand--forgive me!--your own personal
+effect. When people are face to face with you, they want to please
+you, to say what will please you, and then they go away, and--"</p>
+<p>"Resolve not to be made fools of?" she said, smiling. "But isn't
+that the whole art--when you're guessing what will happen--to be
+able to strike the balance of half a dozen different
+attractions?"</p>
+<p>"Montresor as the ocean," said Warkworth, musing, "with half a
+dozen different forces tugging at him? Well, dear lady, be the moon
+to these tides, while this humble mortal looks on--and hopes."</p>
+<p>He bent forward, and across the glowing fire their eyes met. She
+looked so cool, so handsome, so little yielding at that moment,
+that, in addition to gratitude and nattered vanity, Warkworth was
+suddenly conscious of a new stir in the blood. It begat, however,
+instant recoil. Wariness!--let that be the word, both for her sake
+and his own. What had he to reproach himself with so far? Nothing.
+He had never offered himself as the lover, as the possible husband.
+They were both <i>esprits faits</i>--they understood each other. As
+for little Aileen, well, whatever had happened, or might happen,
+that was not his secret to give away. And a woman in Julie Le
+Breton's position, and with her intelligence, knows very well what
+the difficulties of her case are. Poor Julie! If she had been Lady
+Henry, what a career she would have made for herself! He was very
+curious as to her birth and antecedents, of which he knew little or
+nothing; with him she had always avoided the subject. She was the
+child, he understood, of English parents who had lived abroad; Lady
+Henry had come across her by chance. But there must be something in
+her past to account for this distinction, this ease with which she
+held her own in what passes as the best of English society.</p>
+<p>Julie soon found herself unwilling to meet the gaze fixed upon
+her. She flushed a little and began to talk of other things.</p>
+<p>"Everybody, surely, is unusually late. It will be annoying,
+indeed, if the Duchess doesn't come."</p>
+<p>"The Duchess is a delicious creature, but not for me," said
+Warkworth, with a laugh. "She dislikes me. Ah, now then for the
+fray!"</p>
+<p>For the outer bell rang loudly, and there were steps in the
+hall.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Julie"--in swept a white whirlwind with the smallest white
+satin shoes twinkling in front of it--"how clever of you--you
+naughty angel! Aunt Flora in bed--and you down here! And I who came
+prepared for such a dose of humble-pie! What a relief! Oh, how do
+you do?"</p>
+<p>The last words were spoken in quite another tone, as the
+Duchess, for the first time perceiving the young officer on the
+more shaded side of the fireplace, extended to him a very high
+wrist and a very stiff hand. Then she turned again to Julie.</p>
+<p>"My dear, there's a small mob in the hall. Mr. Montresor--and
+General Somebody--and Jacob--and Dr. Meredith with a Frenchman. Oh,
+and old Lord Lackington, and Heaven knows who! Hutton told me I
+might come in, so I promised to come first and reconnoitre. But
+what's Hutton to do? You really must take a line. The carriages are
+driving up at a fine rate."</p>
+<p>"I'll go and speak to Hutton," said Julie.</p>
+<p>And she hurried into the hall.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+<br>
+<p>When Miss Le Breton reached the hall, a footman was at the outer
+door reciting Lady Henry's excuses as each fresh carriage drove up;
+while in the inner vestibule, which was well screened from the view
+of the street, was a group of men, still in their hats and
+over-coats, talking and laughing in subdued voices.</p>
+<p>Julie Le Breton came forward. The hats were removed, and the
+tall, stooping form of Montresor advanced.</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry is <i>so</i> sorry," said Julie, in a soft, lowered
+voice. "But I am sure she would like me to give you her message and
+to tell you how she is. She would not like her old friends to be
+alarmed. Would you come in for a moment? There is a fire in the
+library. Mr. Delafield, don't you think that would be best?... Will
+you tell Hutton not to let in <i>anybody</i> else?"</p>
+<p>She looked at him uncertainly, as though appealing to him, as a
+relation of Lady Henry's, to take the lead.</p>
+<p>"By all means," said that young man, after perhaps a moment's
+hesitation, and throwing off his coat.</p>
+<p>"Only <i>please</i> make no noise!" said Miss Le Breton, turning
+to the group. "Lady Henry might be disturbed."</p>
+<p>Every one came in, as it were, on tiptoe. In each face a sense
+of the humor of the situation fought with the consciousness of its
+dangers. As soon as Montresor saw the little Duchess by the fire,
+he threw up his hands in relief.</p>
+<p>"I breathe again," he said, greeting her with effusion.
+"Duchess, where thou goest, I may go. But I feel like a boy robbing
+a hen-roost. Let me introduce my friend, General Fergus. Take us
+both, pray, under your protection!"</p>
+<p>"On the contrary," said the Duchess, as she returned General
+Fergus's bow, "you are both so magnificent that no one would dare
+to protect you."</p>
+<p>For they were both in uniform, and the General was resplendent
+with stars and medals.</p>
+<p>"We have been dining with royalty." said Montresor. "We want
+some relaxation."</p>
+<p>He put on his eye-glasses, looked round the room, and gently
+rubbed his hands.</p>
+<p>"How very agreeable this is! What a charming room! I never saw
+it before. What are we doing here? Is it a party? Why shouldn't it
+be? Meredith, have you introduced M. du Bartas to the Duchess? Ah,
+I see--"</p>
+<p>For Julie Le Breton was already conversing with the
+distinguished Frenchman wearing the rosette of the Legion of Honor
+in his button-hole, who had followed Dr. Meredith into the room. As
+Montresor spoke, however, she came forward, and in a French which
+was a joy to the ear, she presented M. du Bartas, a tall,
+well-built Norman with a fair mustache, first to the Duchess and
+then to Lord Lackington and Jacob.</p>
+<p>"The director of the French Foreign Office," said Montresor, in
+an aside to the Duchess. "He hates us like poison. But if you
+haven't already asked him to dinner--I warned you last week he was
+coming--pray do it at once!"</p>
+<p>Meanwhile the Frenchman, his introductions over, looked
+curiously round the room, studied its stately emptiness, the books
+on the walls under a trellis-work, faintly gilt, the three fine
+pictures; then his eyes passed to the tall and slender lady who had
+addressed him in such perfect French, and to the little Duchess in
+her flutter of lace and satin, the turn of her small neck, and the
+blaze of her jewels. "These Englishwomen overdo their jewels," he
+thought, with distaste. "But they overdo everything. That is a
+handsome fellow, by-the-way, who was with <i>la petite
+f&eacute;e</i> when we arrived."</p>
+<p>And his shrewd, small eyes travelled from Warkworth to the
+Duchess, his mind the while instinctively assuming some hidden
+relation between them.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Montresor was elaborately informing himself as to
+Lady Henry.</p>
+<p>"This is the first time for twenty years that I have not found
+her on a Wednesday evening," he said, with a sudden touch of
+feeling which became him. "At our age, the smallest break in the
+old habit--"</p>
+<p>He sighed, and then quickly threw off his depression.</p>
+<p>"Nonsense! Next week she will be scolding us all with double
+energy. Meanwhile, may we sit down, mademoiselle? Ten minutes? And,
+upon my word, the very thing my soul was longing for--a cup of
+coffee!"</p>
+<p>For at the moment Hutton and two footmen entered with trays
+containing tea and coffee, lemonade and cakes.</p>
+<p>"Shut the door, Hutton, <i>please</i>," Mademoiselle Le Breton
+implored, and the door was shut at once.</p>
+<p>"We mustn't, <i>mustn't</i> make any noise!" she said, her
+finger on her lip, looking first at Montresor and then at
+Delafield. The group laughed, moved their spoons softly, and once
+more lowered their voices.</p>
+<p>But the coffee brought a spirit of festivity. Chairs were drawn
+up. The blazing fire shone out upon a semicircle of people
+representing just those elements of mingled intimacy and novelty
+which go to make conversation. And in five minutes Mademoiselle Le
+Breton was leading it as usual. A brilliant French book had
+recently appeared dealing with certain points of the Egyptian
+question in a manner so interesting, supple, and apparently
+impartial that the attention of Europe had been won. Its author had
+been formerly a prominent official of the French Foreign Office,
+and was now somewhat out of favor with his countrymen. Julie put
+some questions about him to M. du Bartas.</p>
+<p>The Frenchman feeling himself among comrades worthy of his
+steel, and secretly pricked by the presence of an English cabinet
+minister, relinquished the half-disdainful reserve with which he
+had entered, and took pains. He drew the man in question, <i>en
+silhouette</i>, with a hostile touch so sure, an irony so light,
+that his success was instant and great.</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington woke up. Handsome, white-haired dreamer that he
+was, he had been looking into the fire, half--smiling, more
+occupied, in truth, with his own thoughts than with his companions.
+Delafield had brought him in; he did not exactly know why he was
+there, except that he liked Mademoiselle Le Breton, and often
+wondered how the deuce Lady Henry had ever discovered such an
+interesting and delightful person to fill such an uncomfortable
+position. But this Frenchman challenged and excited him. He, too,
+began to talk French, and soon the whole room was talking it, with
+an advantage to Julie Le Breton which quickly made itself apparent.
+In English she was a link, a social conjunction; she eased all
+difficulties, she pieced all threads. But in French her tongue was
+loosened, though never beyond the point of grace, the point of
+delicate adjustment to the talkers round her.</p>
+<p>So that presently, and by insensible gradations, she was the
+queen of the room. The Duchess in ecstasy pinched Jacob Delafield's
+wrist, and forgetting all that she ought to have remembered,
+whispered, rapturously, in his ear, "Isn't she
+enchanting--Julie--to-night?" That gentleman made no answer. The
+Duchess, remembering, shrank back, and spoke no more, till Jacob
+looked round upon her with a friendly smile which set her tongue
+free again.</p>
+<p>M. du Bartas, meanwhile, began to consider this lady in black
+with more and more attention. The talk glided into a general
+discussion of the Egyptian position. Those were the days before
+Arabi, when elements of danger and of doubt abounded, and none knew
+what a month might bring forth. With perfect tact Julie guided the
+conversation, so that all difficulties, whether for the French
+official or the English statesman, were avoided with a skill that
+no one realized till each separate rock was safely passed.
+Presently Montresor looked from her to Du Bartas with a grin. The
+Frenchman's eyes were round with astonishment. Julie had been
+saying the lightest but the wisest things; she had been touching
+incidents and personalities known only to the initiated with a
+restrained gayety which often broke down into a charming shyness,
+which was ready to be scared away in a moment by a tone--too
+serious or too polemical--which jarred with the general key of the
+conversation, which never imposed itself, and was like the ripple
+on a summer sea. But the summer sea has its depths, and this modest
+gayety was the mark of an intimate and first-hand knowledge.</p>
+<p>"Ah, I see," thought Montresor, amused. "P---- has been writing
+to her, the little minx. He seems to have been telling her all the
+secrets. I think I'll stop it. Even she mayn't quite understand
+what should and shouldn't be said before this gentleman."</p>
+<p>So he gave the conversation a turn, and Mademoiselle Le Breton
+took the hint at once. She called others to the front--it was like
+a change of dancers in the ballet--while she rested, no less
+charming as a listener than as a talker, her black eyes turning
+from one to another and radiant with the animation of success.</p>
+<p>But one thing--at last--she had forgotten. She had forgotten to
+impose any curb upon the voices round her. The Duchess and Lord
+Lackington were sparring like a couple of children, and Montresor
+broke in from time to time with his loud laugh and gruff throat
+voice. Meredith, the Frenchman, Warkworth, and General Fergus were
+discussing a grand review which had been held the day before.
+Delafield had moved round to the back of Julie's chair, and she was
+talking to him, while all the time her eyes were on General Fergus
+and her brain was puzzling as to how she was to secure the five
+minutes' talk with him she wanted. He was one of the intimates of
+the Commander-in-Chief. She herself had suggested to Montresor, of
+course in Lady Henry's name, that he should be brought to Bruton
+Street some Wednesday evening.</p>
+<p>Presently there was a little shifting of groups. Julie saw that
+Montresor and Captain Warkworth were together by the fireplace,
+that the young man with his hands held out to the blaze and his
+back to her was talking eagerly, while Montresor, looking outward
+into the room, his great black head bent a little towards his
+companion, was putting sharp little questions from time to time,
+with as few words as might be. Julie understood that an important
+conversation was going on--that Montresor, whose mind various
+friends of hers had been endeavoring to make up for him, was now
+perhaps engaged in making it up for himself.</p>
+<p>With a quickened pulse she turned to find General Fergus beside
+her. What a frank and soldierly countenance!--a little roughly cut,
+with a strong mouth slightly underhung, and a dogged chin, the
+whole lit by eyes that were the chosen homes of truth, humanity,
+and will. Presently she discovered, as they drew their chairs a
+little back from the circle, that she, too, was to be encouraged to
+talk about Warkworth. The General was, of course, intimately
+'acquainted with his professional record; but there were certain
+additional Indian opinions--a few incidents in the young man's
+earlier career, including, especially, a shooting expedition of
+much daring in the very district to which the important Mokembe
+mission was now to be addressed, together with some quotations from
+private letters of her own, or Lady Henry's, which Julie, with her
+usual skill, was able to slip into his ear, all on the assumption,
+delicately maintained, that she was merely talking of a friend of
+Lady Henry's, as Lady Henry herself would have talked, to much
+better effect, had she been present.</p>
+<p>The General gave her a grave and friendly attention. Few men had
+done sterner or more daring feats in the field. Yet here he sat,
+relaxed, courteous, kind, trusting his companions simply, as it was
+his instinct to trust all women. Julie's heart beat fast. What an
+exciting, what an important evening!...</p>
+<p>Suddenly there was a voice in her ear.</p>
+<p>"Do you know, I think we ought to clear out. It must be close on
+midnight."</p>
+<p>She looked up, startled, to see Jacob Delafield. His
+expression--of doubt or discomfort--recalled her at once to the
+realities of her own situation.</p>
+<p>But before she could reply, a sound struck on her ear. She
+sprang to her feet.</p>
+<p>"What was that?" she said.</p>
+<p>A voice was heard in the hall.</p>
+<p>Julie Le Breton caught the chair behind her, and Delafield saw
+her turn pale. But before she or he could speak again, the door of
+the library was thrown open.</p>
+<p>"Good Heavens!" said Montresor, springing to his feet. "Lady
+Henry!"</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>M. du Bartas lifted astonished eyes. On the threshold of the
+room stood an old lady, leaning heavily on two sticks. She was
+deathly pale, and her fierce eyes blazed upon the scene before her.
+Within the bright, fire-lit room the social comedy was being played
+at its best; but here surely was Tragedy--or Fate. Who was she?
+What did it mean?</p>
+<p>The Duchess rushed to her, and fell, of course, upon the one
+thing she should not have said.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Aunt Flora, dear Aunt Flora! But we thought you were too
+ill to come down!"</p>
+<p>"So I perceive," said Lady Henry, putting her aside. "So you,
+and this lady"--she pointed a shaking finger at Julie--"have held
+my reception for me. I am enormously obliged. You have also"--she
+looked at the coffee-cups--"provided my guests with refreshment. I
+thank you. I trust my servants have given you satisfaction.</p>
+<p>"Gentlemen"--she turned to the rest of the company, who stood
+stupefied--"I fear I cannot ask you to remain with me longer. The
+hour is late, and I am--as you see--indisposed. But I trust, on
+some future occasion, I may have the honor--"</p>
+<p>She looked round upon them, challenging and defying them
+all.</p>
+<p>Montresor went up to her.</p>
+<p>"My dear old friend, let me introduce to you M. du Bartas, of
+the French Foreign Office."</p>
+<p>At this appeal to her English hospitality and her social
+chivalry, Lady Henry looked grimly at the Frenchman.</p>
+<p>"M. du Bartas, I am charmed to make your acquaintance. With your
+leave, I will pursue it when I am better able to profit by it.
+To-morrow I will write to you to propose another meeting--should my
+health allow."</p>
+<p>"Enchant&eacute;, madame," murmured the Frenchman, more
+embarrassed than he had ever been in his life. "Permettez--moi de
+vous faire mes plus sinc&egrave;res excuses."</p>
+<p>"Not at all, monsieur, you owe me none."</p>
+<p>Montresor again approached her.</p>
+<p>"Let me tell you," he said, imploringly, "how this has
+happened--how innocent we all are--"</p>
+<p>"Another time, if you please," she said, with a most cutting
+calm. "As I said before, it is late. If I had been equal to
+entertaining you"--she looked round upon them all--"I should not
+have told my butler to make my excuses. As it is, I must beg you to
+allow me to bid you good-night. Jacob, will you kindly get the
+Duchess her cloak? Good-night. Good-night. As you see"--she pointed
+to the sticks which supported her--"I have no hands to-night. My
+infirmities have need of them."</p>
+<p>Montresor approached her again, in real and deep distress.</p>
+<p>"Dear Lady Henry--"</p>
+<p>"Go!" she said, under her breath, looking him in the eyes, and
+he turned and went without a word. So did the Duchess, whimpering,
+her hand in Delafield's arm. As she passed Julie, who stood as
+though turned to stone, she made a little swaying movement towards
+her.</p>
+<p>"Dear Julie!" she cried, imploringly.</p>
+<p>But Lady Henry turned.</p>
+<p>"You will have every opportunity to-morrow," she said. "As far
+as I am concerned, Miss Le Breton will have no engagements."</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington quietly said, "Good-night, Lady Henry," and,
+without offering to shake hands, walked past her. As he came to the
+spot where Julie Le Breton stood, that lady made a sudden,
+impetuous movement towards him. Strange words were on her lips, a
+strange expression in her eyes.</p>
+<p>"<i>You</i> must help me," she said, brokenly. "It is my
+right!"</p>
+<p>Was that what she said? Lord Lackington looked at her in
+astonishment. He did not see that Lady Henry was watching them with
+eagerness, leaning heavily on her sticks, her lips parted in a keen
+expectancy.</p>
+<p>Then Julie withdrew.</p>
+<p>"I beg your pardon," she said, hurriedly. "I beg your pardon.
+Good-night."</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington hesitated. His face took a puzzled expression.
+Then he held out his hand, and she placed hers in it
+mechanically.</p>
+<p>"It will be all right," he whispered, kindly. "Lady Henry will
+soon be herself again. Shall I tell the butler to call for some
+one--her maid?"</p>
+<p>Julie shook her head, and in another moment he, too, was gone.
+Dr. Meredith and General Fergus stood beside her. The General had a
+keen sense of humor, and as he said good-night to this unlawful
+hostess, whose plight he understood no more than his own, his mouth
+twitched with repressed laughter. But Dr. Meredith did not laugh.
+He pressed Julie's hand in both of his. Looking behind him, he saw
+that Jacob Delafield, who had just returned from the hall, was
+endeavoring to appease Lady Henry. He bent towards Julie.</p>
+<p>"Don't deceive yourself," he said, quickly, in a low voice;
+"this is the end. Remember my letter. Let me hear to-morrow."</p>
+<p>As Dr. Meredith left the room, Julie lifted her eyes. Only Jacob
+Delafield and Lady Henry were left.</p>
+<p>Harry Warkworth, too, was gone--without a word? She looked round
+her piteously. She could not remember that he had spoken--that he
+had bade her farewell. A strange pang convulsed her. She scarcely
+heard what Lady Henry was saying to Jacob Delafield. Yet the words
+were emphatic enough.</p>
+<p>"Much obliged to you, Jacob. But when I want your advice in my
+household affairs, I will ask it. You and Evelyn Crowborough have
+meddled a good deal too much in them already. Good-night. Hutton
+will get you a cab."</p>
+<p>And with a slight but imperious gesture, Lady Henry motioned
+towards the door. Jacob hesitated, then quietly took his departure.
+He threw Julie a look of anxious appeal as he went out. But she did
+not see it; her troubled gaze was fixed on Lady Henry.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>That lady eyed her companion with composure, though by now even
+the old lips were wholly blanched.</p>
+<p>"There is really no need for any conversation between us, Miss
+Le Breton," said the familiar voice. "But if there were, I am not
+to-night, as you see, in a condition to say it. So--when you came
+up to say good-night to me--you had determined on this adventure?
+You had been good enough, I see, to rearrange my room--to give my
+servants your orders."</p>
+<p>Julie stood stonily erect. She made her dry lips answer as best
+they could.</p>
+<p>"We meant no harm," she said, coldly. "It all came about very
+simply. A few people came in to inquire after you. I regret they
+should have stayed talking so long."</p>
+<p>Lady Henry smiled in contempt.</p>
+<p>"You hardly show your usual ability by these remarks. The room
+you stand in"--she glanced significantly at the lights and the
+chairs--"gives you the lie. You had planned it all with Hutton, who
+has become your tool, before you came to me. Don't contradict. It
+distresses me to hear you. Well, now we part."</p>
+<p>"Of course. Perhaps to-morrow you will allow me a few last
+words?"</p>
+<p>"I think not. This will cost me dear," said Lady Henry, her
+white lips twitching. "Say them now, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"You are suffering." Julie made an uncertain step forward. "You
+ought to be in bed."</p>
+<p>"That has nothing to do with it. What was your object
+to-night?"</p>
+<p>"I wished to see the Duchess--"</p>
+<p>"It is not worth while to prevaricate. The Duchess was not your
+first visitor."</p>
+<p>Julie flushed.</p>
+<p>"Captain Warkworth arrived first; that was a mere chance."</p>
+<p>"It was to see him that you risked the whole affair. You have
+used my house for your own intrigues."</p>
+<p>Julie felt herself physically wavering under the lash of these
+sentences. But with a great effort she walked towards the
+fireplace, recovered her gloves and handkerchief, which were on the
+mantel-piece, and then turned slowly to Lady Henry.</p>
+<p>"I have done nothing in your service that I am ashamed of. On
+the contrary, I have borne what no one else would have borne. I
+have devoted myself to you and your interests, and you have
+trampled upon and tortured me. For you I have been merely a
+servant, and an inferior--"</p>
+<p>Lady Henry nodded grimly.</p>
+<p>"It is true," she said, interrupting, "I was not able to take
+your romantic view of the office of companion."</p>
+<p>"You need only have taken a human view," said Julie, in a voice
+that pierced; "I was alone, poor--worse than motherless. You might
+have done what you would with me. A little indulgence, and I should
+have been your devoted slave. But you chose to humiliate and crush
+me; and in return, to protect myself, I, in defending myself, have
+been led, I admit it, into taking liberties. There is no way out of
+it. I shall, of course, leave you to-morrow morning."</p>
+<p>"Then at last we understand each other," said Lady Henry, with a
+laugh. "Good-night, Miss Le Breton."</p>
+<p>She moved heavily on her sticks. Julie stood aside to let her
+pass. One of the sticks slipped a little on the polished floor.
+Julie, with a cry, ran forward, but Lady Henry fiercely motioned
+her aside.</p>
+<p>"Don't touch me! Don't come near me!"</p>
+<p>She paused a moment to recover breath and balance. Then she
+resumed her difficult walk. Julie followed her.</p>
+<p>"Kindly put out the electric lights," said Lady Henry, and Julie
+obeyed.</p>
+<p>They entered the hall in which one little light was burning.
+Lady Henry, with great difficulty, and panting, began to pull
+herself up the stairs.</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>do</i> let me help you!" said Julie, in an agony. "You
+will kill yourself. Let me at least call Dixon."</p>
+<p>"You will do nothing of the kind," said Lady Henry, indomitable,
+though tortured by weakness and rheumatism. "Dixon is in my room,
+where I bade her remain. You should have thought of the
+consequences of this before you embarked upon it. If I were to die
+in mounting these stairs, I would not let you help me."</p>
+<p>"Oh!" cried Julie, as though she had been struck, and hid her
+eyes with her hand.</p>
+<p>Slowly, laboriously, Lady Henry dragged herself from step to
+step. As she turned the corner of the staircase, and could
+therefore be no longer seen from below, some one softly opened the
+door of the dining-room and entered the hall.</p>
+<p>Julie looked round her, startled. She saw Jacob Delafield, who
+put his finger to his lip.</p>
+<p>Moved by a sudden impulse, she bowed her head on the banister of
+the stairs against which she was leaning and broke into stifled
+sobs.</p>
+<p>Jacob Delafield came up to her and took her hand. She felt his
+own tremble, and yet its grasp was firm and supporting.</p>
+<p>"Courage!" he said, bending over her. "Try not to give way. You
+will want all your fortitude."</p>
+<p>"Listen!" She gasped, trying vainly to control herself, and they
+both listened to the sounds above them in the dark house--the
+labored breath, the slow, painful step.</p>
+<p>"Oh, she wouldn't let me help her. She said she would rather
+die. Perhaps I have killed her. And I could--I could--yes, I
+<i>could</i> have loved her."</p>
+<p>She was in an anguish of feeling--of sharp and penetrating
+remorse.</p>
+<p>Jacob Delafield held her hand close in his, and when at last the
+sounds had died in the distance he lifted it to his lips.</p>
+<p>"You know that I am your friend and servant," he said, in a
+queer, muffled voice. "You promised I should be."</p>
+<p>She tried to withdraw her hand, but only feebly. Neither
+physically nor mentally had she the strength to repulse him. If he
+had taken her in his arms, she could hardly have resisted. But he
+did not attempt to conquer more than her hand. He stood beside her,
+letting her feel the whole mute, impetuous offer of his
+manhood--thrown at her feet to do what she would with.</p>
+<p>Presently, when once more she moved away, he said to her, in a
+whisper:</p>
+<p>"Go to the Duchess to-morrow morning, as soon as you can get
+away. She told me to say that--Hutton gave me a little note from
+her. Your home must be with her till we can all settle what is
+best. You know very well you have devoted friends. But now
+good-night. Try to sleep. Evelyn and I will do all we can with Lady
+Henry."</p>
+<p>Julie drew herself out of his hold. "Tell Evelyn I will come to
+see her, at any rate, as soon as I can put my things together.
+Good-night."</p>
+<p>And she, too, dragged herself up-stairs sobbing, starting at
+every shadow. All her nerve and daring were gone. The thought that
+she must spend yet another night under the roof of this old woman
+who hated her filled her with terror. When she reached her room she
+locked her door and wept for hours in a forlorn and aching
+misery.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="X"></a>X</h2>
+<br>
+<p>The Duchess was in her morning-room. On the rug, in marked and,
+as it seemed to her plaintive eyes, brutal contrast with the
+endless photographs of her babies and women friends which crowded
+her mantel-piece, stood the Duke, much out of temper. He was a
+powerfully built man, some twenty years older than his wife, with a
+dark complexion, enlivened by ruddy cheeks and prominent, red lips.
+His eyes were of a cold, clear gray; his hair very black, thick,
+and wiry. An extremely vigorous person, more than adequately aware
+of his own importance, tanned and seasoned by the life of his
+class, by the yachting, hunting, and shooting in which his own
+existence was largely spent, slow in perception, and of a sulky
+temper--so one might have read him at first sight. But these
+impressions only took you a certain way in judging the character of
+the Duchess's husband.</p>
+<p>As to the sulkiness, there could be no question on this
+particular morning--though, indeed, his ill-humor deserved a more
+positive and energetic name.</p>
+<p>"You have got yourself and me," he was declaring, "into a most
+disagreeable and unnecessary scrape. This letter of Lady
+Henry's"--he held it up--"is one of the most annoying that I have
+received for many a day. Lady Henry seems to me perfectly
+justified. You <i>have</i> been behaving in a quite unwarrantable
+way. And now you tell me that this woman, who is the cause of it
+all, of whose conduct I thoroughly and entirely disapprove, is
+coming to stay here, in my house, whether I like it or not, and you
+expect me to be civil to her. If you persist, I shall go down to
+Brackmoor till she is pleased to depart. I won't countenance the
+thing at all, and, whatever you may do, <i>I</i> shall apologize to
+Lady Henry."</p>
+<p>"There's nothing to apologize for," cried the drooping Duchess,
+plucking up a little spirit. "Nobody meant any harm. Why shouldn't
+the old friends go in to ask after her? Hutton--that old butler
+that has been with Aunt Flora for twenty years--<i>asked</i> us to
+come in."</p>
+<p>"Then he did what he had no business to do, and he deserves to
+be dismissed at a day's notice. Why, Lady Henry tells me that it
+was a regular party--that the room was all arranged for it by that
+most audacious young woman--that the servants were ordered
+about--that it lasted till nearly midnight, and that the noise you
+all made positively woke Lady Henry out of her sleep. Really,
+Evelyn, that you should have been mixed up in such an affair is
+more unpalatable to me than I can find words to describe." And he
+paced, fuming, up and down before her.</p>
+<p>"Anybody else than Aunt Flora would have laughed," said the
+Duchess, defiantly. "And I declare, Freddie, I won't be scolded in
+such a tone. Besides, if you only knew--"</p>
+<p>She threw back her head and looked at him, her cheeks flushed,
+her lips quivering with a secret that, once out, would perhaps
+silence him at once--would, at any rate, as children do when they
+give a shake to their spillikins, open up a number of new chances
+in the game.</p>
+<p>"If I only knew what?"</p>
+<p>The Duchess pulled at the hair of the little spitz on her lap
+without replying.</p>
+<p>"What is there to know that I don't know?" insisted the Duke.
+"Something that makes the matter still worse, I suppose?"</p>
+<p>"Well, that depends," said the Duchess, reflectively. A gleam of
+mischief had slipped into her face, though for a moment the tears
+had not been far off.</p>
+<p>The Duke looked at his watch.</p>
+<p>"Don't keep me here guessing riddles longer than you can help,"
+he said, impatiently. "I have an appointment in the City at twelve,
+and I want to discuss with you the letter that must be written to
+Lady Henry."</p>
+<p>"That's your affair," said the Duchess. "I haven't made up my
+mind yet whether I mean to write at all. And as for the riddle,
+Freddie, you've seen Miss Le Breton?"</p>
+<p>"Once. I thought her a very pretentious person," said the Duke,
+stiffly.</p>
+<p>"I know--you didn't get on. But, Freddie, didn't she remind you
+of somebody?"</p>
+<p>The Duchess was growing excited. Suddenly she jumped up; the
+little spitz rolled off her lap; she ran to her husband and took
+him by the fronts of his coat.</p>
+<p>"Freddie, you'll be very much astonished." And suddenly
+releasing him, she began to search among the photographs on the
+mantel-piece. "Freddie, you know who that is?" She held up a
+picture.</p>
+<p>"Of course I know. What on earth has that got to do with the
+subject we have been discussing?"</p>
+<p>"Well, it has a good deal to do with it," said the Duchess,
+slowly. "That's my uncle, George Chantrey, isn't it, Lord
+Lackington's second son, who married mamma's sister? Well--oh, you
+won't like it, Freddie, but you've got to know--that's--Julie's
+uncle, too!"</p>
+<p>"What in the name of fortune do you mean?" said the Duke,
+staring at her.</p>
+<p>His wife again caught him by the coat, and, so imprisoning him,
+she poured out her story very fast, very incoherently, and with a
+very evident uncertainty as to what its effect might be.</p>
+<p>And indeed the effect was by no means easy to determine. The
+Duke was first incredulous, then bewildered by the very mixed facts
+which she poured out upon him. He tried to cross-examine her <i>en
+route</i>, but he gained little by that; she only shook him a
+little, insisting the more vehemently on telling the story her own
+way. At last their two impatiences had nearly come to a dead-lock.
+But the Duke managed to free himself physically, and so regained a
+little freedom of mind.</p>
+<p>"Well, upon my word," he said, as he resumed his march up and
+down--"upon my word!" Then, as he stood still before her, "You say
+she is Marriott Dalrymple's daughter?"</p>
+<p>"And Lord Lackington's granddaughter." said the Duchess, panting
+a little from her exertions. "And, oh, what a blind bat you were
+not to see it at once--from the likeness!"</p>
+<p>"As if one had any right to infer such a thing from a likeness!"
+said the Duke, angrily. "Really, Evelyn, your talk is most--most
+unbecoming. It seems to me that Mademoiselle Le Breton has already
+done you harm. All that you have told me, supposing it to be
+true--oh, of course, I know you believe it to be true--only makes
+me"--he stiffened his back--"the more determined to break off the
+connection between her and you. A woman of such antecedents is not
+a fit companion for my wife, independently of the fact that she
+seems to be, in herself, an intriguing and dangerous
+character."</p>
+<p>"How could she help her antecedents?" cried the Duchess.</p>
+<p>"I didn't say she could help them. But if they are what you say,
+she ought--well, she ought to be all the more careful to live in a
+modest and retired way, instead of, as I understand, making herself
+the rival of Lady Henry. I never heard anything so
+preposterous--so--so indecent! She shows no proper sense, and, as
+for you, I deeply regret you should have been brought into any
+contact with such a disgraceful story."</p>
+<p>"Freddie!" The Duchess went into a helpless, half-hysterical fit
+of laughter.</p>
+<p>But the Duke merely expanded, as it seemed, still further--to
+his utmost height and bulk. "Oh, dear," thought the Duchess, in
+despair, "now he is going to be like his mother!" Her strictly
+Evangelical mother-in-law, with whom the Duke had made his bachelor
+home for many years, had been the scourge of her early married
+life; and though for Freddie's sake she had shed a few tears over
+her death, eighteen months before this date, the tears--as indeed
+the Duke had thought at the time--had been only too quickly
+dried.</p>
+<p>There could be no question about it, the Duke was painfully like
+his mother as he replied:</p>
+<p>"I fear that your education, Evelyn, has led you to take such
+things far more lightly than you ought. I am old-fashioned.
+Illegitimacy with me <i>does</i> carry a stigma, and the sins of
+the fathers <i>are</i> visited upon the children. At any rate, we
+who occupy a prominent social place have no right to do anything
+which may lead others to think lightly of God's law. I am sorry to
+speak plainly, Evelyn. I dare say you don't like these sentiments,
+but you know, at least, that I am quite honest in expressing
+them."</p>
+<p>The Duke turned to her, not without dignity. He was and had been
+from his boyhood a person of irreproachable morals--earnest and
+religious according to his lights, a good son, husband, and father.
+His wife looked at him with mingled feelings.</p>
+<p>"Well, all I know is," she said, passionately beating her little
+foot on the carpet before her, "that, by all accounts, the only
+thing to do with Colonel Delaney was to run away from him."</p>
+<p>The Duke shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+<p>"You don't expect me to be much moved by a remark of that kind?
+As to this lady, your story does not affect me in her favor in the
+smallest degree. She has had her education; Lord Lackington gives
+her one hundred pounds a year; if she is a self-respecting woman
+she will look after herself. I <i>don't</i> want to have her here,
+and I beg you won't invite her. A couple of nights, perhaps--I
+don't mind that--but not for longer."</p>
+<p>"Oh, as to that, you may be very sure she won't stay here unless
+you're very particularly nice to her. There'll be plenty of people
+glad--enchanted--to have her! I don't care about that, but what I
+<i>do</i> want is"--the Duchess looked up with calm audacity--"that
+you should find her a house."</p>
+<p>The Duke paused in his walk and surveyed his wife with
+amazement.</p>
+<p>"Evelyn, are you <i>quite</i> mad?"</p>
+<p>"Not in the least. You have more houses than you know what to do
+with, and a <i>great</i> deal more money than anybody in the world
+ought to have. If they ever do set up the guillotine at Hyde Park
+Corner, we shall be among the first--we ought to be!"</p>
+<p>"What is the good of talking nonsense like this, Evelyn?" said
+the Duke, once more consulting his watch. "Let's go back to the
+subject of my letter to Lady Henry."</p>
+<p>"It's most excellent sense!" cried the Duchess, springing up.
+"You <i>have</i> more houses than you know what to do with; and you
+have one house in particular--that little place at the back of
+Cureton Street where Cousin Mary Leicester lived so long--which is
+in your hands still, I know, for you told me so last week--which is
+vacant and furnished--Cousin Mary left you the furniture, as if we
+hadn't got enough!--and it would be the <i>very</i> thing for
+Julie, if only you'd lend it to her till she can turn round."</p>
+<p>The Duchess was now standing up, confronting her lord, her hands
+grasping the chair behind her, her small form alive with eagerness
+and the feminine determination to get her own way, by fair means or
+foul.</p>
+<p>"Cureton Street!" said the Duke, almost at the end of his
+tether. "And how do you propose that this young woman is to
+live--in Cureton Street, or anywhere else?"</p>
+<p>"She means to write," said the Duchess, shortly. "Dr. Meredith
+has promised her work."</p>
+<p>"Sheer lunacy! In six months time you'd have to step in and pay
+all her bills."</p>
+<p>"I should like to see anybody dare to propose to Julie to pay
+her bills!" cried the Duchess, with scorn. "You see, the great pity
+is, Freddie, that you don't know anything at all about her. But
+that house--wasn't it made out of a stable? It has got six rooms, I
+know--three bedrooms up-stairs, and two sitting-rooms and a kitchen
+below. With one good maid and a boy Julie could be perfectly
+comfortable. She would earn four hundred pounds--Dr. Meredith has
+promised her--she has one hundred pounds a year of her own. She
+would pay no rent, of course. She would have just enough to live
+on, poor, dear thing! And she would be able to gather her old
+friends round her when she wanted them. A cup of tea and her
+delightful conversation--that's all they'd ever want."</p>
+<p>"Oh, go on--go on!" said the Duke, throwing himself exasperated
+into an arm-chair; "the ease with which you dispose of my property
+on behalf of a young woman who has caused me most acute annoyance,
+who has embroiled us with a near relation for whom I have a very
+particular respect! <i>Her friends</i>, indeed! Lady Henry's
+friends, you mean. Poor Lady Henry tells me in this letter that her
+circle will be completely scattered. This mischievous woman in
+three years has destroyed what it has taken Lady Henry nearly
+thirty to build up. Now look here, Evelyn"--the Duke sat up and
+slapped his knee--"as to this Cureton Street plan, I will do
+nothing of the kind. You may have Miss Le Breton here for two or
+three nights if you like--I shall probably go down to the
+country--and, of course, I have no objection to make if you wish to
+help her find another situation--"</p>
+<p>"Another situation!" cried the Duchess, beside herself.
+"Freddie, you really are impossible! Do you understand that I
+regard Julie Le Breton as <i>my relation</i>, whatever you may
+say--that I love her dearly--that there are fifty people with money
+and influence ready to help her if you won't, because she is one of
+the most charming and distinguished women in London--that you ought
+to be <i>proud</i> to do her a service--that I want you to have the
+<i>honor</i> of it--there! And if you won't do this little favor
+for me--when I ask and beg it of you--I'll make you remember it for
+a very long time to come--you may be sure of that!"</p>
+<p>And his wife turned upon him as an image of war, her fair hair
+ruffling about her ears, her cheeks and eyes brilliant with
+anger--and something more.</p>
+<p>The Duke rose in silent ferocity and sought for some letters
+which he had left on the mantel-piece.</p>
+<p>"I had better leave you to come to your senses by yourself, and
+as quickly as possible," he said, as he put them into his pockets.
+"No good can come of any more discussion of this sort."</p>
+<p>The Duchess said nothing. She looked out of the window busily,
+and bit her lip. Her silence served her better than her speech, for
+suddenly the Duke looked round, hesitated, threw down a book he
+carried, walked up to her, and took her in his arms.</p>
+<p>"You are a very foolish child," he declared, as he held her by
+main force and kissed away her tears. "You make me lose my
+temper--and waste my time--for nothing."</p>
+<p>"Not at all," said the sobbing Duchess, trying to push herself
+away, and denying him, as best she could, her soft, flushed face.
+"You don't, or you won't, understand! I was--I was very fond of
+Uncle George Chantrey. <i>He</i> would have helped Julie if he were
+alive. And as for you, you're Lord Lackington's godson, and you're
+always preaching what he's done for the army, and what the nation
+owes him--and--and--"</p>
+<p>"Does he know?" said the Duke, abruptly, marvelling at the
+irrelevance of these remarks.</p>
+<p>"No, not a word. Only six people in London know--Aunt Flora, Sir
+Wilfrid Bury"--the Duke made an exclamation--"Mr. Montresor, Jacob,
+you, and I."</p>
+<p>"Jacob!" said the Duke. "What's he got to do with it?"</p>
+<p>The Duchess suddenly saw her opportunity, and rushed upon
+it.</p>
+<p>"Only that he's madly in love with her, that's all. And, to my
+knowledge, she has refused him both last year and this. Of course,
+naturally, if you won't do anything to help her, she'll probably
+marry him--simply as a way out."</p>
+<p>"Well, of all the extraordinary affairs!"</p>
+<p>The Duke released her, and stood bewildered. The Duchess watched
+him in some excitement. He was about to speak, when there was a
+sound in the anteroom. They moved hastily apart. The door was
+thrown open, and the footman announced, "Miss Le Breton."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Julie Le Breton entered, and stood a moment on the threshold,
+looking, not in embarrassment, but with a certain hesitation, at
+the two persons whose conversation she had disturbed. She was pale
+with sleeplessness; her look was sad and weary. But never had she
+been more composed, more elegant. Her closely fitting black cloth
+dress; her strangely expressive face, framed by a large hat, very
+simple, but worn as only the woman of fashion knows how; her
+miraculous yet most graceful slenderness; the delicacy of her
+hands; the natural dignity of her movements--these things produced
+an immediate, though, no doubt, conflicting impression upon the
+gentleman who had just been denouncing her. He bowed, with an
+involuntary deference which he had not at all meant to show to Lady
+Henry's insubordinate companion, and then stood frowning.</p>
+<p>But the Duchess ran forward, and, quite heedless of her husband,
+threw herself into her friend's arms.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Julie, is there anything left of you? I hardly slept a wink
+for thinking of you. What did that old--oh, I forgot--do you know
+my husband? Freddie, this is my <i>great</i> friend, Miss Le
+Breton."</p>
+<p>The Duke bowed again, silently. Julie looked at him, and then,
+still holding the Duchess by the hand, she approached him, a pair
+of very fine and pleading eyes fixed upon his face.</p>
+<p>"You have probably heard from Lady Henry, have you not?" she
+said, addressing him. "In a note I had from her this morning she
+told me she had written to you. I could not help coming to-day,
+because Evelyn has been so kind. But--is it your wish that I should
+come here?"</p>
+<p>The Christian name slipped out unawares, and the Duke winced at
+it. The likeness to Lord Lackington--it was certainly astonishing.
+There ran through his mind the memory of a visit paid long ago to
+his early home by Lord Lackington and two daughters, Rose and
+Blanche. He, the Duke, had then been a boy home from school. The
+two girls, one five or six years older than the other, had been the
+life and charm of the party. He remembered hunting with Lady
+Rose.</p>
+<p>But the confusion in his mind had somehow to be mastered, and he
+made an effort.</p>
+<p>"I shall be glad if my wife is able to be of any assistance to
+you, Miss Le Breton," he said, coldly; "but it would not be honest
+if I were to conceal my opinion--so far as I have been able to form
+it--that Lady Henry has great and just cause of complaint."</p>
+<p>"You are quite right--quite right," said Julie, almost with
+eagerness. "She has, indeed."</p>
+<p>The Duke was taken by surprise. Imperious as he was, and
+stiffened by a good many of those petty prides which the spoiled
+children of the world escape so hardly, he found himself
+hesitating--groping for his words.</p>
+<p>The Duchess meanwhile drew Julie impulsively towards a
+chair.</p>
+<p>"Do sit down. You look so tired."</p>
+<p>But Julie's gaze was still bent upon the Duke. She restrained
+her friend's eager hand, and the Duke collected himself. <i>He</i>
+brought a chair, and Julie seated herself.</p>
+<p>"I am deeply, deeply distressed about Lady Henry," she said, in
+a low voice, by which the Duke felt himself most unwillingly
+penetrated. "I don't--oh no, indeed, I don't defend last night.
+Only--my position has been very difficult lately. I wanted very
+much to see the Duchess--and--it was natural--wasn't it?--that the
+old friends should like to be personally informed about Lady
+Henry's illness? But, of course, they stayed too long; it was my
+fault--I ought to have prevented it."</p>
+<p>She paused. This stern-looking man, who stood with his back to
+the mantel-piece regarding her, Philistine though he was, had yet a
+straight, disinterested air, from which she shrank a little.
+Honestly, she would have liked to tell him the truth. But how could
+she? She did her best, and her account certainly was no more untrue
+than scores of narratives of social incident which issue every day
+from lips the most respected and the most veracious. As for the
+Duchess, she thought it the height of candor and generosity. The
+only thing she could have wished, perhaps, in her inmost heart, was
+that she had <i>not</i> found Julie alone with Harry Warkworth. But
+her loyal lips would have suffered torments rather than accuse or
+betray her friend.</p>
+<p>The Duke meanwhile went through various phases of opinion as
+Julie laid her story before him. Perhaps he was chiefly affected by
+the tone of quiet independence--as from equal to equal--in which
+she addressed him. His wife's cousin by marriage; the granddaughter
+of an old and intimate friend of his own family; the daughter of a
+man known at one time throughout Europe, and himself amply well
+born--all these facts, warm, living, and still efficacious, stood,
+as it were, behind this manner of hers, prompting and endorsing it.
+But, good Heavens! was illegitimacy to be as legitimacy?--to carry
+with it no stains and penalties? Was vice to be virtue, or as good?
+The Duke rebelled.</p>
+<p>"It is a most unfortunate affair, of that there can be no
+doubt," he said, after a moment's silence, when Julie had brought
+her story to an end; and then, more sternly, "I shall certainly
+apologize for my wife's share in it."</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry won't be angry with the Duchess long," said Julie Le
+Breton. "As for me"--her voice sank--"my letter this morning was
+returned to me unopened."</p>
+<p>There was an uncomfortable pause; then Julie resumed, in another
+tone:</p>
+<p>"But what I am now chiefly anxious to discuss is, how can we
+save Lady Henry from any further pain or annoyance? She once said
+to me in a fit of anger that if I left her in consequence of a
+quarrel, and any of her old friends sided with me, she would never
+see them again."</p>
+<p>"I know," said the Duke, sharply. "Her salon will break up. She
+already foresees it."</p>
+<p>"But why?--why?" cried Julie, in a most becoming distress.
+"Somehow, we must prevent it. Unfortunately I must live in London.
+I have the offer of work here--journalist's work which cannot be
+done in the country or abroad. But I would do all I could to shield
+Lady Henry."</p>
+<p>"What about Mr. Montresor?" said the Duke, abruptly. Montresor
+had been the well-known Ch&acirc;teaubriand to Lady Henry's Madame
+R&eacute;camier for more than a generation.</p>
+<p>Julie turned to him with eagerness.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Montresor wrote to me early this morning. The letter
+reached me at breakfast. In Mrs. Montresor's name and his own, he
+asked me to stay with them till my plans developed. He--he was kind
+enough to say he felt himself partly responsible for last
+night."</p>
+<p>"And you replied?" The Duke eyed her keenly.</p>
+<p>Julie sighed and looked down.</p>
+<p>"I begged him not to think any more of me in the matter, but to
+write at once to Lady Henry. I hope he has done so."</p>
+<p>"And so you refused--excuse these questions--Mrs. Montresor's
+invitation?"</p>
+<p>The working of the Duke's mind was revealed in his drawn and
+puzzled brows.</p>
+<p>"Certainly." The speaker looked at him with surprise. "Lady
+Henry would never have forgiven that. It could not be thought of.
+Lord Lackington also"--but her voice wavered.</p>
+<p>"Yes?" said the Duchess, eagerly, throwing herself on a stool at
+Julie's feet and looking up into her face.</p>
+<p>"He, too, has written to me. He wants to help me. But--I can't
+let him."</p>
+<p>The words ended in a whisper. She leaned back in her chair, and
+put her handkerchief to her eyes. It was very quietly done, and
+very touching. The Duchess threw a lightning glance at her husband;
+and then, possessing herself of one of Julie's hands, she kissed it
+and murmured over it.</p>
+<p>"Was there ever such a situation?" thought the Duke, much
+shaken. "And she has already, if Evelyn is to be believed, refused
+the chance--the practical certainty--of being Duchess of
+Chudleigh!"</p>
+<p>He was a man with whom a <i>gran rifiuto</i> of this kind
+weighed heavily. His moral sense exacted such things rather of
+other people than himself. But, when made, he could appreciate
+them.</p>
+<p>After a few turns up and down the room, he walked up to the two
+women.</p>
+<p>"Miss Le Breton," he said, in a far more hurried tone than was
+usual to him, "I cannot approve--and Evelyn ought not to
+approve--of much that has taken place during your residence with
+Lady Henry. But I understand that your post was not an easy one,
+and I recognize the forbearance of your present attitude. Evelyn is
+much distressed about it all. On the understanding that you will do
+what you can to soften this breach for Lady Henry, I shall be, glad
+if you will allow me to come partially to your assistance."</p>
+<p>Julie looked up gravely, her eyebrows lifting. The Duke found
+himself reddening as he went on.</p>
+<p>"I have a little house near here--a little furnished
+house--Evelyn will explain to you. It happens to be vacant. If you
+will accept a loan of it, say for six months"--the Duchess
+frowned--"you will give me pleasure. I will explain my action to
+Lady Henry, and endeavor to soften her feelings."</p>
+<p>He paused. Miss Le Breton's face was grateful, touched with
+emotion, but more than hesitating.</p>
+<p>"You are very good. But I have no claim upon you at all. And I
+can support myself."</p>
+<p>A touch of haughtiness slipped into her manner as she gently
+rose to her feet. "Thank God, I did not offer her money!" thought
+the Duke, strangely perturbed.</p>
+<p>"Julie, dear Julie," implored the Duchess. "It's such a tiny
+little place, and it is quite musty for want of living in. Nobody
+has set foot in it but the caretaker for two years, and it would be
+really a kindness to us to go and live there--wouldn't it, Freddie?
+And there's all the furniture just as it was, down to the bellows
+and the snuffers. If you'd only use it and take care of it; Freddie
+hasn't liked to sell it, because it's all old family stuff, and he
+was very fond of Cousin Mary Leicester. Oh, do say yes, Julie! They
+shall light the fires, and I'll send in a few sheets and things,
+and you'll feel as though you'd been there for years. Do,
+Julie!"</p>
+<p>Julie shook her head.</p>
+<p>"I came here," she said, in a voice that was still unsteady, "to
+ask for advice, not favors. But it's very good of you."</p>
+<p>And with trembling fingers she began to refasten her veil.</p>
+<p>"Julie!--where are you going?" cried the Duchess "You're staying
+here."</p>
+<p>"Staying here?" said Julie, turning round upon her. "Do you
+think I should be a burden upon you, or any one?"</p>
+<p>"But, Julie, you told Jacob you would come."</p>
+<p>"I have come. I wanted your sympathy, and your counsel. I wished
+also to confess myself to the Duke, and to point out to him how
+matters could be made easier for Lady Henry."</p>
+<p>The penitent, yet dignified, sadness of her manner and voice
+completed the discomfiture--the temporary discomfiture--of the
+Duke.</p>
+<p>"Miss Le Breton," he said, abruptly, coming to stand beside her,
+"I remember your mother."</p>
+<p>Julie's eyes filled. Her hand still held her veil, but it paused
+in its task.</p>
+<p>"I was a small school-boy when she stayed with us," resumed the
+Duke. "She was a beautiful girl. She let me go out hunting with
+her. She was very kind to me, and I thought her a kind of goddess.
+When I first heard her story, years afterwards, it shocked me
+awfully. For her sake, accept my offer. I don't think lightly of
+such actions as your mother's--not at all. But I can't bear to
+think of her daughter alone and friendless in London."</p>
+<p>Yet even as he spoke he seemed to be listening to another
+person. He did not himself understand the feelings which animated
+him, nor the strength with which his recollections of Lady Rose had
+suddenly invaded him.</p>
+<p>Julie leaned her arms on the mantel-piece, and hid her face. She
+had turned her back to them, and they saw that she was crying
+softly.</p>
+<p>The Duchess crept up to her and wound her arms round her.</p>
+<p>"You will, Julie!--you will! Lady Henry has turned you
+out-of-doors at a moment's notice. And it was a great deal my
+fault. You <i>must</i> let us help you!"</p>
+<p>Julie did not answer, but, partially disengaging herself, and
+without looking at him, she held out her hand to the Duke.</p>
+<p>He pressed it with a cordiality that amazed him.</p>
+<p>"That's right--that's right. Now, Evelyn, I leave you to make
+the arrangements. The keys shall be here this afternoon. Miss Le
+Breton, of course, stays here till things are settled. As for me, I
+must really be off to my meeting. One thing, Miss Le Breton--"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"I think," he said, gravely, "you ought to reveal yourself to
+Lord Lackington."</p>
+<p>She shrank.</p>
+<p>"You'll let me take my own time for that?" was her appealing
+reply.</p>
+<p>"Very well--very well. We'll speak of it again."</p>
+<p>And he hurried away. As he descended his own stairs astonishment
+at what he had done rushed upon him and overwhelmed him.</p>
+<p>"How on earth am I ever to explain the thing to Lady Henry?"</p>
+<p>And as he went citywards in his cab, he felt much more guilty
+than his wife had ever done. What <i>could</i> have made him behave
+in this extraordinary, this preposterous way? A touch of foolish
+romance--immoral romance--of which he was already ashamed? Or the
+one bare fact that this woman had refused Jacob Delafield?</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+<br>
+<p>"Here it is," said the Duchess, as the carriage stopped. "Isn't
+it an odd little place?"</p>
+<p>And as she and Julie paused on the pavement, Julie looked
+listlessly at her new home. It was a two-storied brick house, built
+about 1780. The front door boasted a pair of Ionian columns and a
+classical canopy or pediment. The windows had still the original
+small panes; the <i>mansarde</i> roof, with its one dormer, was
+untouched. The little house had rather deep eaves; three windows
+above; two, and the front door, below. It wore a prim,
+old-fashioned air, a good deal softened and battered, however, by
+age, and it stood at the corner of two streets, both dingily quiet,
+and destined, no doubt, to be rebuilt before long in the general
+rejuvenation of Mayfair.</p>
+<p>As the Duchess had said, it occupied the site of what had
+once--about 1740--been the westerly end of a mews belonging to
+houses in Cureton Street, long since pulled down. The space filled
+by these houses was now occupied by one great mansion and its
+gardens. The rest of the mews had been converted into three-story
+houses of a fair size, looking south, with a back road between them
+and the gardens of Cureton House. But at the southwesterly corner
+of what was now Heribert Street, fronting west and quite out of
+line and keeping with the rest, was this curious little place,
+built probably at a different date and for some special family
+reason. The big planes in the Cureton House gardens came close to
+it and overshadowed it; one side wall of the house, in fact, formed
+part of the wall of the garden.</p>
+<p>The Duchess, full of nervousness, ran up the steps, put in the
+key herself, and threw open the door. An elderly Scotchwoman, the
+caretaker, appeared from the back and stood waiting to show them
+over.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Julie, perhaps it's <i>too</i> queer and musty!" cried the
+Duchess, looking round her in some dismay. "I thought, you know, it
+would be a little out-of-the-way and quaint--unlike other
+people--just what you ought to have. But--"</p>
+<p>"I think it's delightful," said Julie, standing absently before
+a case of stuffed birds, somewhat moth-eaten, which took up a good
+deal of space in the little hall. "I love stuffed birds."</p>
+<p>The Duchess glanced at her uneasily. "What is she thinking
+about?" she wondered. But Julie roused herself.</p>
+<p>"Why, it looks as though everything here had gone to sleep for a
+hundred years," she said, gazing in astonishment at the little
+hall, with its old clock, its two or three stiff hunting-pictures,
+its drab-painted walls, its poker-work chest.</p>
+<p>And the drawing-room! The caretaker had opened the windows. It
+was a mild March day, and there were misty sun-gleams stealing
+along the lawns of Cureton House. None entered the room itself, for
+its two semi-circular windows looked north over the gardens. Yet it
+was not uncheerful. Its faded curtains of blue rep, its buff walls,
+on which the pictures and miniatures in their tarnished gilt frames
+were arranged at intervals in stiff patterns and groups; the
+Italian glass, painted with dilapidated Cupids, over the
+mantel-piece; the two or three Sheraton arm-chairs and settees,
+covered with threadbare needle-work from the days of "Evelina"; a
+carpet of old and well-preserved Brussels--blue arabesques on a
+white ground; one or two pieces of old satin-wood furniture, very
+fine and perfect; a heavy centre-table, its cloth garnished with
+some early Victorian wool-work, and a pair of pink glass vases; on
+another small table close by, of a most dainty and spindle-legged
+correctness, a set of Indian chessmen under a glass shade; and on
+another a collection of tiny animals, stags and dogs for the most
+part, deftly "pinched" out of soft paper, also under glass, and as
+perfect as when their slender limbs were first fashioned by Cousin
+Mary Leicester's mother, somewhere about the year that Marie
+Antoinette mounted the scaffold. These various elements, ugly and
+beautiful, combined to make a general effect--clean, fastidious,
+frugal, and refined--that was, in truth, full of a sort of acid
+charm.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I like it! I like it so much!" cried Julie, throwing
+herself down into one of the straight-backed arm-chairs and looking
+first round the walls and then through the windows to the gardens
+outside.</p>
+<p>"My dear," said the Duchess, flitting from one thing to another,
+frowning and a little fussed, "those curtains won't do at all. I
+must send some from home."</p>
+<p>"No, no, Evelyn. Not a thing shall be changed. You shall lend it
+me just as it is or not at all. What a character it has! I
+<i>taste</i> the person who lived here."</p>
+<p>"Cousin Mary Leicester?" said the Duchess. "Well, she was rather
+an oddity. She was Low Church, like my mother-in-law; but, oh, so
+much nicer! Once I let her come to Grosvenor Square and speak to
+the servants about going to church. The groom of the chambers said
+she was 'a dear old lady, and if she were <i>his</i> cousin he
+wouldn't mind her being a bit touched,' My maid said she had no
+idea poke-bonnets could be so <i>sweet</i>. It made her understand
+what the Queen looked like when she was young. And none of them
+have ever been to church since that I can make out. There was one
+very curious thing about Cousin Mary Leicester," added the Duchess,
+slowly--"she had second sight. She <i>saw</i> her old mother, in
+this room, once or twice, after she had been dead for years. And
+she saw Freddie once, when he was away on a long voyage--"</p>
+<p>"Ghosts, too!" said Julie, crossing her hands before her with a
+little shiver--"that completes it."</p>
+<p>"Sixty years," said the Duchess, musing. "It was a long
+time--wasn't it?--to live in this little house, and scarcely ever
+leave it. Oh, she had quite a circle of her own. For many years her
+funny little sister lived here, too. And there was a time, Freddie
+says, when there was almost a rivalry between them and two other
+famous old ladies who lived in Bruton Street--what <i>was</i> their
+name? Oh, the Miss Berrys! Horace Walpole's Miss Berrys. All sorts
+of famous people, I believe, have sat in these chairs. But the Miss
+Berrys won."</p>
+<p>"Not in years? Cousin Mary outlived them."</p>
+<p>"Ah, but she was dead long before she died," said the Duchess as
+she came to perch on the arm of Julie's chair, and threw her arm
+round her friend's neck. "After her little sister departed this
+life she became a very silent, shrivelled thing--except for her
+religion--and very few people saw her. She took a fancy to
+me--which was odd, wasn't it, when I'm such a worldling?--and she
+let me come in and out. Every morning she read the Psalms and
+Lessons, with her old maid, who was just her own age--in this very
+chair. And two or three times a month Freddie would slip round and
+read them with her--you know Freddie's very religious. And then
+she'd work at flannel petticoats for the poor, or something of that
+kind, till lunch. Afterwards she'd go and read the Bible to people
+in the workhouse or in hospital. When she came home, the butler
+brought her the <i>Times</i>; and sometimes you'd find her by the
+fire, straining her old eyes over 'a little Dante.' And she always
+dressed for dinner--everything was quite smart--and her old butler
+served her. Afterwards her maid played dominoes or spillikins with
+her--all her life she never touched a card--and they read a
+chapter, and Cousin Mary played a hymn on that funny little old
+piano there in the corner, and at ten they all went to bed. Then,
+one morning, the maid went in to wake her, and she saw her dear
+sharp nose and chin against the light, and her hands like that, in
+front of her--and--well, I suppose, she'd gone to play hymns in
+heaven--dear Cousin Mary! Julie, isn't it strange the kind of lives
+so many of us have to lead? Julie"--the little Duchess laid her
+cheek against her friend's--"do you believe in another life?"</p>
+<p>"You forget I'm a Catholic," said Julie, smiling rather
+doubtfully.</p>
+<p>"<i>Are</i> you, Julie? I'd forgotten."</p>
+<p>"The good nuns at Bruges took care of that."</p>
+<p>"Do you ever go to mass?"</p>
+<p>"Sometimes."</p>
+<p>"Then you're not a good Catholic, Julie?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Julie, after a pause, "not at all. But it sometimes
+catches hold of me."</p>
+<p>The old clock in the hall struck. The Duchess sprang up.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Julie, I have got to be at Clarisse's by four. I
+<i>promised</i> her I'd go and settle about my Drawing-room dress
+to-day. Let's see the rest of the house."</p>
+<p>And they went rapidly through it. All of it was stamped with the
+same character, representing, as it were, the meeting-point between
+an inherited luxury and a personal asceticism. Beautiful chairs, or
+cabinets transported sixty years before from one of the old
+Crowborough houses in the country to this little abode, side by
+side with things the cheapest and the commonest--all that Cousin
+Mary Leicester could ever persuade herself to buy with her own
+money. For all the latter part of her life she had been half a
+mystic and half a great lady, secretly hating the luxury from which
+she had not the strength to free herself, dressing ceremoniously,
+as the Duchess had said, for a solitary dinner, and all the while
+going in sore remembrance of a Master who "had not where to lay his
+head."</p>
+<p>At any rate, there was an ample supply of household stuff for a
+single woman and her maids. In the china cupboard there were still
+the old-fashioned Crown Derby services, the costly cut glass, the
+Leeds and Wedgewood dessert dishes that Cousin Mary Leicester had
+used for half a century. The caretaker produced the keys of the
+iron-lined plate cupboard, and showed its old-world contents, clean
+and in order.</p>
+<p>"Why, Julie! If we'd only ordered the dinner I might have come
+to dine with you to-night!" cried the Duchess, enjoying and peering
+into everything like a child with its doll's house. "And the
+linen--gracious!" as the doors of another cupboard were opened to
+her. "But now I remember, Freddie said nothing was to be touched
+till he made up his mind what to do with the little place. Why,
+there's everything!"</p>
+<p>And they both looked in astonishment at the white, fragrant
+rows, at the worn monogram in the corners of the sheets, at the
+little bags of lavender and pot-pourri ranged along the
+shelves.</p>
+<p>Suddenly Julie turned away and sat down by an open window,
+carrying her eyes far from the house and its stores.</p>
+<p>"It is too much, Evelyn," she said, sombrely. "It oppresses me.
+I don't think I can live up to it."</p>
+<p>"Julie!" and again the little Duchess came to stand caressingly
+beside her. "Why, you must have sheets--and knives and forks! Why
+should you get ugly new ones, when you can use Cousin Mary's? She
+would have loved you to have them."</p>
+<p>"She would have hated me with all her strength," said Miss Le
+Breton, probably with much truth.</p>
+<p>The two were silent a little. Through Julie's stormy heart there
+swept longings and bitternesses inexpressible. What did she care
+for the little house and all its luxuries! She was sorry that she
+had fettered herself with it.... Nearly four o'clock in the
+afternoon, and no letter--not a word!</p>
+<p>"Julie," said the Duchess, softly, in her ear, "you know you
+can't live here alone. I'm afraid Freddie would make a fuss."</p>
+<p>"I've thought of that," said Julie, wearily. "But, shall we
+really go on with it, Evelyn?"</p>
+<p>The Duchess looked entreaty. Julie repented, and, drawing her
+friend towards her, rested her head against the chinchilla
+cloak.</p>
+<p>"I'm tired, I suppose," she said, in a low voice. "Don't think
+me an ungrateful wretch. Well, there's my foster-sister and her
+child."</p>
+<p>"Madame Bornier and the little cripple girl?" cried the Duchess.
+"Excellent! Where are they?"</p>
+<p>"L&eacute;onie is in the French Governesses' Home, as it
+happens, looking out for a situation, and the child is in the
+Orthop&aelig;dic Hospital. They've been straightening her foot.
+It's wonderfully better, and she's nearly ready to come out."</p>
+<p>"Are they nice, Julie?"</p>
+<p>"Th&eacute;r&egrave;se is an angel--you must be the one thing or
+the other, apparently, if you're a cripple. And as for
+L&eacute;onie--well, if she comes here, nobody need be anxious
+about my finances. She'd count every crust and cinder. We couldn't
+keep any English servant; but we could get a Belgian one."</p>
+<p>"But is she nice?" repeated the Duchess.</p>
+<p>"I'm used to her," said Julie, in the same inanimate voice.</p>
+<p>Suddenly the clock in the hall below struck four.</p>
+<p>"Heavens!" cried the Duchess. "You don't know how Clarisse keeps
+you to your time. Shall I go on, and send the carriage back for
+you?"</p>
+<p>"Don't trouble about me. I should like to look round me here a
+little longer."</p>
+<p>"You'll remember that some of our fellow-criminals may look in
+after five? Dr. Meredith and Lord Lackington said, as we were
+getting away last night--oh, how that doorstep of Aunt Flora's
+burned my shoes!--that they should come round. And Jacob is coming;
+he'll stay and dine. And, Julie, I've asked Captain Warkworth to
+dine to-morrow night."</p>
+<p>"Have you? That's noble of you--for you don't like him."</p>
+<p>"I don't know him!" cried the Duchess, protesting. "If you like
+him--of course it's all right. Was he--was he very agreeable last
+night?" she added, slyly.</p>
+<p>"What a word to apply to anybody or anything connected with last
+night!"</p>
+<p>"Are you very sore, Julie?"</p>
+<p>"Well, on this very day of being turned out it hurts. I wonder
+who is writing Lady Henry's letters for her this afternoon?"</p>
+<p>"I hope they are not getting written," said the Duchess,
+savagely; "and that she's missing you abominably. Good-bye--<i>au
+revoir!</i> If I am twenty minutes late with Clarisse, I sha'n't
+get any fitting, duchess or no duchess."</p>
+<p>And the little creature hurried off; not so fast, however, but
+that she found time to leave a number of parting instructions as to
+the house with the Scotch caretaker, on her way to her
+carriage.</p>
+<p>Julie rose and made her way down to the drawing-room again. The
+Scotchwoman saw that she wanted to be alone and left her.</p>
+<p>The windows were still open to the garden outside. Julie
+examined the paths, the shrubberies, the great plane-trees; she
+strained her eyes towards the mansion itself. But not much of it
+could be seen. The little house at the corner had been carefully
+planted out.</p>
+<p>What wealth it implied--that space and size, in London!
+Evidently the house was still shut up. The people who owned it were
+now living the same cumbrous, magnificent life in the country which
+they would soon come up to live in the capital. Honors, parks,
+money, birth--all were theirs, as naturally as the sun rose. Julie
+envied and hated the big house and all it stood for; she flung a
+secret defiance at this coveted and elegant Mayfair that lay around
+her, this heart of all that is recognized, accepted, carelessly
+sovereign in our "materialized" upper class.</p>
+<p>And yet all the while she knew that it was an unreal and passing
+defiance. She would not be able in truth to free herself from the
+ambition to live and shine in this world of the English rich and
+well born. For, after all, as she told herself with rebellious
+passion, it was or ought to be her world. And yet her whole being
+was sore from the experiences of these three years with Lady
+Henry--from those, above all, of the preceding twenty-four hours.
+She wove no romance about herself. "I should have dismissed myself
+long ago," she would have said, contemptuously, to any one who
+could have compelled the disclosure of her thoughts. But the long
+and miserable struggle of her self-love with Lady Henry's
+arrogance, of her gifts with her circumstances; the presence in
+this very world, where she had gained so marked a personal success,
+of two clashing estimates of herself, both of which she perfectly
+understood--the one exalting her, the other merely implying the
+cool and secret judgment of persons who see the world as it
+is--these things made a heat and poison in her blood.</p>
+<p>She was not good enough, not desirable enough, to be the wife of
+the man she loved. Here was the plain fact that stung and
+stung.</p>
+<p>Jacob Delafield had thought her good enough! She still felt the
+pressure of his warm, strong fingers, the touch of his kiss upon
+her hand. What a paradox was she living in! The Duchess might well
+ask: why, indeed, had she refused Jacob Delafield--that first time?
+As to the second refusal, that needed no explanation, at least for
+herself. When, upon that winter day, now some six weeks past, which
+had beheld Lady Henry more than commonly tyrannical, and her
+companion more than commonly weary and rebellious, Delafield's
+stammered words--as he and she were crossing Grosvenor Square in
+the January dusk--had struck for the second time upon her ear, she
+was already under Warkworth's charm. But before--the first time?
+She had come to Lady Henry firmly determined to marry as soon and
+as well as she could--to throw off the slur on her life--to
+regularize her name and place in the world. And then the possible
+heir of the Chudleighs proposes to her--and she rejects him!</p>
+<p>It was sometimes difficult for her now to remember all the whys
+and wherefores of this strange action of which she was secretly so
+proud. But the explanation was in truth not far from that she had
+given to the Duchess. The wild strength in her own nature had
+divined and shrunk from a similar strength in Delafield's. Here,
+indeed, one came upon the fact which forever differentiated her
+from the adventuress, had Sir Wilfrid known. She wanted money and
+name; there were days when she hungered for them. But she would not
+give too reckless a price for them. She was a personality, a
+soul--not a vulgar woman--not merely callous or greedy. She dreaded
+to be miserable; she had a thirst for happiness, and the heart was,
+after all, stronger than the head.</p>
+<p>Jacob Delafield? No! Her being contracted and shivered at the
+thought of him. A will tardily developed, if all accounts of his
+school and college days were true, but now, as she believed,
+invincible; a mystic; an ascetic; a man under whose modest or
+careless or self-mocking ways she, with her eye for character,
+divined the most critical instincts, and a veracity, iron, scarcely
+human--a man before whom one must be always posing at one's
+best--that was a personal risk too great to take for a Julie Le
+Breton.</p>
+<p>Unless, indeed, if it came to this--that one must think no more
+of love--but only of power--why, then--</p>
+<p>A ring at the door, resounding through the quiet side street.
+After a minute the Scotchwoman opened the drawing-room door.</p>
+<p>"Please, miss, is this meant for you?"</p>
+<p>Julie took the letter in astonishment. Then through the door she
+saw a man standing in the hall and recognized Captain Warkworth's
+Indian servant.</p>
+<p>"I don't understand him," said the Scotchwoman, shaking her
+head.</p>
+<p>Julie went out to speak with him. The man had been sent to
+Crowborough House with instructions to inquire for Miss Le Breton
+and deliver his note. The groom of the chambers, misinterpreting
+the man's queer English, and thinking the matter urgent--the note
+was marked "immediate"--had sent him after the ladies to Heribert
+Street.</p>
+<p>The man was soon feed and dismissed, and Miss Le Breton took the
+letter back to the drawing-room.</p>
+<p>So, after all, he had not failed; there on her lap was her daily
+letter. Outside the scanty March sun, now just setting, was
+touching the garden with gold. Had it also found its way into
+Julie's eyes?</p>
+<p>Now for his explanation:</p>
+<p>/# "First, how and where are you? I called in Bruton Street at
+noon. Hutton told me you had just gone to Crowborough House.
+Kind--no, wise little Duchess! She honors herself in sheltering
+you.</p>
+<p>"I could not write last night--I was too uncertain, too anxious.
+All I said might have jarred. This morning came your note, about
+eleven. It was angelic to think so kindly and thoughtfully of a
+friend--angelic to write such a letter at such a time. You
+announced your flight to Crowborough House, but did not say when,
+so I crept to Bruton Street, seeing Lady Henry in every lamp-post,
+got a few clandestine words with Hutton, and knew, at least, what
+had happened to you--outwardly and visibly.</p>
+<p>"Last night did you think me a poltroon to vanish as I did? It
+was the impulse of a moment. Mr. Montresor had pulled me into a
+corner of the room, away from the rest of the party, nominally to
+look at a picture, really that I might answer a confidential
+question he had just put to me with regard to a disputed incident
+in the Afridi campaign. We were in the dark and partly behind a
+screen. Then the door opened. I confess the sight of Lady Henry
+paralyzed me. A great, murderous, six-foot Afridi--that would have
+been simple enough. But a woman--old and ill and furious--with that
+Medusa's face--no! My nerves suddenly failed me. What right had I
+in her house, after all? As she advanced into the room, I slipped
+out behind her. General Fergus and M. du Bartas joined me in the
+hall. We walked to Bond Street together. They were divided between
+laughter and vexation. I should have laughed--if I could have
+forgotten you.</p>
+<p>"But what could I have done for you, dear lady, if I had stayed
+out the storm? I left you with three or four devoted adherents, who
+had, moreover, the advantage over me of either relationship or old
+acquaintance with Lady Henry. Compared to them, I could have done
+nothing to shield you. Was it not best to withdraw? Yet all the way
+home I accused myself bitterly. Nor did I feel, when I reached
+home, that one who had not grasped your hand under fire had any
+right to rest or sleep. But anxiety for you, regrets for myself,
+took care of that; I got my deserts.</p>
+<p>"After all, when the pricks and pains of this great wrench are
+over, shall we not all acknowledge that it is best the crash should
+have come? You have suffered and borne too much. Now we shall see
+you expand in a freer and happier life. The Duchess has asked me to
+dinner to-morrow--the note has just arrived--so that I shall soon
+have the chance of hearing from you some of those details I so much
+want to know. But before then you will write?</p>
+<p>"As for me, I am full of alternate hopes and fears. General
+Fergus, as we walked home, was rather silent and bearish--I could
+not flatter myself that he had any friendly intentions towards me
+in his mind. But Montresor was more than kind, and gave me some
+fresh opportunities of which I was very glad to avail myself. Well,
+we shall know soon.</p>
+<p>"You told me once that if, or when, this happened, you would
+turn to your pen, and that Dr. Meredith would find you openings.
+That is not to be regretted, I think. You have great gifts, which
+will bring you pleasure in the using. I have got a good deal of
+pleasure out of my small ones. Did you know that once, long ago,
+when I was stationed at Gibraltar, I wrote a military novel?</p>
+<p>"No, I don't pity you because you will need to turn your
+intellect to account. You will be free, and mistress of your fate.
+That, for those who, like you and me, are the 'children of their
+works,' as the Spaniards say, is much.</p>
+<p>"Dear friend--kind, persecuted friend!--I thought of you in the
+watches of the night--I think of you this morning. Let me soon have
+news of you." #/</p>
+<p>Julie put the letter down upon her knee. Her face stiffened.
+Nothing that she had ever received from him yet had rung so
+false.</p>
+<p>Grief? Complaint? No! Just a calm grasp of the game--a quick
+playing of the pieces--so long as the game was there to play. If he
+was appointed to this mission, in two or three weeks he would be
+gone--to the heart of Africa. If not--</p>
+<p>Anyway, two or three weeks were hers. Her mind seemed to settle
+and steady itself.</p>
+<p>She got up and went once more carefully through the house,
+giving her attention to it. Yes, the whole had character and a kind
+of charm. The little place would make, no doubt, an interesting and
+distinguished background for the life she meant to put into it. She
+would move in at once--in three days at most. Ways and means were
+for the moment not difficult. During her life with Lady Henry she
+had saved the whole of her own small <i>rentes</i>. Three hundred
+pounds lay ready to her hand in an investment easily realized. And
+she would begin to earn at once.</p>
+<p>Th&eacute;r&egrave;se--that should be her room--the cheerful,
+blue-papered room with the south window. Julie felt a strange rush
+of feeling as she thought of it. How curious that these
+two--L&eacute;onie and little Th&eacute;r&egrave;se--should be thus
+brought back into her life! For she had no doubt whatever that they
+would accept with eagerness what she had to offer. Her
+foster-sister had married a school-master in one of the Communal
+schools of Bruges while Julie was still a girl at the convent.
+L&eacute;onie's lame child had been much with her grandmother, old
+Madame Le Breton. To Julie she had been at first unwelcome and
+repugnant. Then some quality in the frail creature had unlocked the
+girl's sealed and often sullen heart.</p>
+<p>While she had been living with Lady Henry, these two, the mother
+and child, had been also in London; the mother, now a widow,
+earning her bread as an inferior kind of French governess, the
+child boarded out with various persons, and generally for long
+periods of the year in hospital or convalescent home. To visit her
+in her white hospital bed--to bring her toys and flowers, or merely
+kisses and chat--had been, during these years, the only work of
+charity on Julie's part which had been wholly secret,
+disinterested, and constant.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+<br>
+<p>It was a somewhat depressed company that found its straggling
+way into the Duchess's drawing-room that evening between tea and
+dinner.</p>
+<p>Miss Le Breton did not appear at tea. The Duchess believed that,
+after her inspection of the house in Heribert Street, Julie had
+gone on to Bloomsbury to find Madame Bornier. Jacob Delafield was
+there, not much inclined to talk, even as Julie's champion. And,
+one by one, Lady Henry's oldest <i>habitu&eacute;s</i>, the
+"criminals" of the night before, dropped in.</p>
+<p>Dr. Meredith arrived with a portfolio containing what seemed to
+be proof-sheets.</p>
+<p>"Miss Le Breton not here?" he said, as he looked round him.</p>
+<p>The Duchess explained that she might be in presently. The great
+man sat down, his portfolio carefully placed beside him, and drank
+his tea under what seemed a cloud of preoccupation.</p>
+<p>Then appeared Lord Lackington and Sir Wilfrid Bury. Montresor
+had sent a note from the House to say that if the debate would let
+him he would dash up to Grosvenor Square for some dinner, but could
+only stay an hour.</p>
+<p>"Well, here we are again--the worst of us!" said the Duchess,
+presently, with a sigh of bravado, as she handed Lord Lackington
+his cup of tea and sank back in her chair to enjoy her own.</p>
+<p>"Speak for yourselves, please," said Sir Wilfrid's soft, smiling
+voice, as he daintily relieved his mustache of some of the
+Duchess's cream.</p>
+<p>"Oh, that's all very well," said the Duchess, throwing up a hand
+in mock annoyance; "but why weren't you there?"</p>
+<p>"I knew better."</p>
+<p>"The people who keep out of scrapes are not the people one
+loves," was the Duchess's peevish reply.</p>
+<p>"Let him alone," said Lord Lackington, coming for some more
+tea-cake. "He will get his deserts. Next Wednesday he will be
+<i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> with Lady Henry."</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry is going to Torquay to-morrow," said Sir Wilfrid,
+quietly.</p>
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+<p>There was a general chorus of interrogation, amid which the
+Duchess made herself heard.</p>
+<p>"Then you've seen her?"</p>
+<p>"To-day, for twenty minutes--all she was able to bear. She was
+ill yesterday. She is naturally worse to-day. As to her state of
+mind--"</p>
+<p>The circle of faces drew eagerly nearer.</p>
+<p>"Oh, it's war," said Sir Wilfrid, nodding--"undoubtedly
+war--upon the Cave--if there is a Cave."</p>
+<p>"Well, poor things, we must have something to shelter us!" cried
+the Duchess. "The Cave is being aired to-day."</p>
+<p>The interrogating faces turned her way. The Duchess explained
+the situation, and drew the house in Heribert Street--with its
+Cyclops-eye of a dormer window, and its Ionian columns--on the
+tea-cloth with her nail.</p>
+<p>"Ah," said Sir Wilfrid, crossing his knees reflectively. "Ah,
+that makes it serious."</p>
+<p>"Julie must have a place to live in," said the Duchess,
+stiffly.</p>
+<p>"I suppose Lady Henry would reply that there are still a few
+houses in London which do not belong to her kinsman, the Duke of
+Crowborough."</p>
+<p>"Not perhaps to be had for the lending, and ready to step into
+at a day's notice," said Lord Lackington, with his queer smile,
+like the play of sharp sunbeams through a mist. "That's the worst
+of our class. The margin between us and calamity is too wide. We
+risk too little. Nobody goes to the workhouse."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid looked at him curiously. "Do I catch your meaning?"
+he said, dropping his voice; "is it that if there had been no
+Duchess, and no Heribert Street, Miss Le Breton would have managed
+to put up with Lady Henry?"</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington smiled again. "I think it probable.... As it is,
+however, we are all the gainers. We shall now see Miss Julie at her
+ease and ours."</p>
+<p>"You have been for some time acquainted with Miss Le
+Breton?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, some time. I don't exactly remember. Lady Henry, of course,
+is an old friend of mine, as she is of yours. Sometimes she is rude
+to me. Then I stay away. But I always go back. She and I can
+discuss things and people that nobody else recollects--no, as far
+as that's concerned, you're not in it, Bury. Only this winter,
+somehow, I have often gone round to see Lady Henry, and have found
+Miss Le Breton instead so attractive--"</p>
+<p>"Precisely," said Sir Wilfrid, laughing; "the whole case in a
+nutshell."</p>
+<p>"What puzzles me," continued his companion, in a musing voice,
+"is how she can be so English as she is--with her foreign bringing
+up. She has a most extraordinary instinct for people--people in
+London--and their relations. I have never known her make a mistake.
+Yet it is only five years since she began to come to England at
+all; and she has lived but three with Lady Henry. It was clear, I
+thought, that neither she nor Lady Henry wished to be questioned.
+But, do you, for instance--I have no doubt Lady Henry tells you
+more than she tells me--do you know anything of Mademoiselle
+Julie's antecedents?"</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid started. Through his mind ran the same reflection as
+that to which the Duke had given expression in the morning--"<i>she
+ought to reveal herself!</i>" Julie Le Breton had no right to leave
+this old man in his ignorance, while those surrounding him were in
+the secret. Thereby she made a spectacle of her mother's
+father--made herself and him the sport of curious eyes. For who
+could help watching them--every movement, every word? There was a
+kind of indelicacy in it.</p>
+<p>His reply was rather hesitating. "Yes, I happen to know
+something. But I feel sure Miss Le Breton would prefer to tell you
+herself. Ask her. While she was with Lady Henry there were reasons
+for silence--"</p>
+<p>"But, of course, I'll ask her," said his companion, eagerly, "if
+you suppose that I may. A more hungry curiosity was never raised in
+a human breast than in mine with regard to this dear lady. So
+charming, handsome, and well bred--and so forlorn! That's the
+paradox of it. The personality presupposes a <i>milieu</i>--else
+how produce it? And there is no <i>milieu</i>, save this little
+circle she has made for herself through Lady Henry.... Ah, and you
+think I may ask her? I will--that's flat--I will!"</p>
+<p>And the old man gleefully rubbed his hands, face and form full
+of the vivacity of his imperishable youth.</p>
+<p>"Choose your time and place," said Sir Wilfrid, hastily. "There
+are very sad and tragic circumstances--"</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington looked at him and nodded gayly, as much as to
+say, "You distrust me with the sex? Me, who have had the whip-hand
+of them since my cradle!"</p>
+<p>Suddenly the Duchess interrupted. "Sir Wilfrid, you have seen
+Lady Henry; which did she mind most--the coming-in or the
+coffee?"</p>
+<p>Bury returned, smiling, to the tea-table.</p>
+<p>"The coming-in would have been nothing if it had led quickly to
+the going-out. It was the coffee that ruined you."</p>
+<p>"I see," said the Duchess, pouting--"it meant that it was
+possible for us to enjoy ourselves without Lady Henry. That was the
+offence."</p>
+<p>"Precisely. It showed that you <i>were</i> enjoying yourselves.
+Otherwise there would have been no lingering, and no coffee."</p>
+<p>"I never knew coffee so fatal before," sighed the Duchess. "And
+now"--it was evident that she shrank from the answer to her own
+question--"she is really irreconcilable?"</p>
+<p>"Absolutely. Let me beg you to take it for granted."</p>
+<p>"She won't see any of us--not me?"</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid hesitated.</p>
+<p>"Make the Duke your ambassador."</p>
+<p>The Duchess laughed, and flushed a little.</p>
+<p>"And Mr. Montresor?"</p>
+<p>"Ah," said Sir Wilfrid in another tone, "that's not to be
+lightly spoken of."</p>
+<p>"You don't mean--"</p>
+<p>"How many years has that lasted?" said Sir Wilfrid,
+meditatively.</p>
+<p>"Thirty, I think--if not more. It was Lady Henry who told him of
+his son's death, when his wife daren't do it."</p>
+<p>There was a silence. Montresor had lost his only son, a
+subaltern in the Lancers, in the action of Alumbagh, on the way to
+the relief of Lucknow.</p>
+<p>Then the Duchess broke out:</p>
+<p>"I know that you think in your heart of hearts that Julie has
+been in fault, and that we have all behaved abominably!"</p>
+<p>"My dear lady," said Sir Wilfrid, after a moment, "in Persia we
+believe in fate; I have brought the trick home."</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, that's it!" exclaimed Lord Lackington--it! When Lady
+Henry wanted a companion--and fate brought her Miss Le
+Breton--"</p>
+<p>"Last night's coffee was already drunk," put in Sir Wilfrid.</p>
+<p>Meredith's voice, raised and a trifle harsh, made itself
+heard.</p>
+<p>"Why you should dignify an ugly jealousy by fine words I don't
+know. For some women--women like our old friend--gratitude is hard.
+That is the moral of this tale."</p>
+<p>"The only one?" said Sir Wilfrid, not without a mocking twist of
+the lip.</p>
+<p>"The only one that matters. Lady Henry had found, or might have
+found, a daughter--"</p>
+<p>"I understand she bargained for a companion."</p>
+<p>"Very well. Then she stands upon her foolish rights, and loses
+both daughter and companion. At seventy, life doesn't forgive you a
+blunder of that kind."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid silently shook his head. Meredith threw back his
+blanched mane of hair, his deep eyes kindling under the implied
+contradiction.</p>
+<p>"I am an old comrade of Lady Henry's," he said, quickly. "My
+record, you'll find, comes next to yours, Bury. But if Lady Henry
+is determined to make a quarrel of this, she must make it. I regret
+nothing."</p>
+<p>"What madness has seized upon all these people?" thought Bury,
+as he withdrew from the discussion. The fire, the unwonted fire, in
+Meredith's speech and aspect, amazed him. From the corner to which
+he had retreated he studied the face of the journalist. It was a
+face subtly and strongly lined by much living--of the intellectual,
+however, rather than the physical sort; breathing now a studious
+dignity, the effect of the broad sweep of brow under the
+high-peaked lines of grizzled hair, and now broken, tempestuous,
+scornful, changing with the pliancy of an actor. The head was sunk
+a little in the shoulders, as though dragged back by its own
+weight. The form which it commanded had the movements of a man no
+less accustomed to rule in his own sphere than Montresor
+himself.</p>
+<p>To Sir Wilfrid the famous editor was still personally
+mysterious, after many years of intermittent acquaintance. He was
+apparently unmarried; or was there perhaps a wife, picked up in a
+previous state of existence, and hidden away with her offspring at
+Clapham or Hornsey or Peckham? Bury could remember, years before, a
+dowdy old sister, to whom Lady Henry had been on occasion formally
+polite. Otherwise, nothing. What were the great man's origins and
+antecedents--his family, school, university? Sir Wilfrid did not
+know; he did not believe that any one knew. An amazing mastery of
+the German, and, it was said, the Russian tongues, suggested a
+foreign education; but neither on this ground nor any other
+connected with his personal history did Meredith encourage the
+inquirer. It was often reported that he was of Jewish descent, and
+there were certain traits, both of feature and character, that lent
+support to the notion. If so, the strain was that of Heine or
+Disraeli, not the strain of Commerce.</p>
+<p>At any rate, he was one of the most powerful men of his day--the
+owner, through <i>The New Rambler</i>, of an influence which now
+for some fifteen years had ranked among the forces to be reckoned
+with. A man in whom politics assumed a tinge of sombre poetry; a
+man of hatreds, ideals, indignations, yet of habitually sober
+speech. As to passions, Sir Wilfrid could have sworn that, wife or
+no wife, the man who could show that significance of mouth and eye
+had not gone through life without knowing the stress and shock of
+them.</p>
+<p>Was he, too, beguiled by this woman?--<i>he, too?</i> For a
+little behind him, beside the Duchess, sat Jacob Delafield; and,
+during his painful interview that day with Lady Henry, Sir Wilfrid
+had been informed of several things with regard to Jacob Delafield
+he had not known before. So she had refused him--this lady who was
+now the heart of this whirlwind? Permanently? Lady Henry had poured
+scorn on the notion. She was merely sure of him; could keep him in
+a string to play with as she chose. Meanwhile the handsome soldier
+was metal more attractive. Sir Wilfrid reflected, with an inward
+shrug, that, once let a woman give herself to such a fury as
+possessed Lady Henry, and there did not seem to be much to choose
+between her imaginings and those of the most vulgar of her sex.</p>
+<p>So Jacob could be played with--whistled on and whistled off as
+Miss Le Breton chose? Yet his was not a face that suggested it, any
+more than the face of Dr. Meredith. The young man's countenance was
+gradually changing its aspect for Sir Wilfrid, in a somewhat
+singular way, as old impressions of his character died away and new
+ones emerged. The face, now, often recalled to Bury a portrait by
+some Holbeinesque master, which he had seen once in the Basle
+Museum and never forgotten. A large, thin-lipped mouth that,
+without weakness, suggested patience; the long chin of a man of
+will; nose, bluntly cut at the tip, yet in the nostril and bridge
+most delicate; grayish eyes, with a veil of reverie drawn, as it
+were, momentarily across them, and showing behind the veil a kind
+of stern sweetness; fair hair low on the brow, which was heavy, and
+made a massive shelter for the eyes. So looked the young German who
+had perhaps heard Melanchthon; so, in this middle nineteenth
+century, looked Jacob Delafield. No, anger makes obtuse; that, no
+doubt, was Lady Henry's case. At any rate, in Delafield's presence
+her theory did not commend itself.</p>
+<p>But if Delafield had not echoed them, the little Duchess had
+received Meredith's remarks with enthusiasm.</p>
+<p>"Regret! No, indeed! Why should we regret anything, except that
+Julie has been miserable so long? She <i>has</i> had a bad time.
+Every day and all day. Ah, you don't know--none of you. You haven't
+seen all the little things as I have."</p>
+<p>"The errands, and the dogs," said Sir William, slyly.</p>
+<p>The Duchess threw him a glance half conscious, half resentful,
+and went on:</p>
+<p>"It has been one small torture after another. Even when a
+person's old you can't bear more than a certain amount, can you?
+You oughtn't to. No, let's be thankful it's all over, and
+Julie--our dear, delightful Julie--who has done everybody in this
+room all sorts of kindnesses, hasn't she?"</p>
+<p>An assenting murmur ran round the circle.</p>
+<p>"Julie's <i>free</i>! Only she's <i>very</i> lonely. We must see
+to that, mustn't we? Lady Henry can buy another companion
+to-morrow--she will. She has heaps of money and heaps of friends,
+and she'll tell her own story to them all. But Julie has only us.
+If we desert her--"</p>
+<p>"Desert her!" said a voice in the distance, half amused, half
+electrical. Bury thought it was Jacob's.</p>
+<p>"Of course we sha'n't desert her!" cried the Duchess. "We shall
+rally round her and carry her through. If Lady Henry makes herself
+disagreeable, then we'll fight. If not, we'll let her cool down.
+Oh, Julie, darling--here you are!"</p>
+<p>The Duchess sprang up and caught her entering friend by the
+hand.</p>
+<p>"And here are we," with a wave round the circle. "This is your
+court--your St. Germain."</p>
+<p>"So you mean me to die in exile," said Julie, with a quavering
+smile, as she drew off her gloves. Then she looked at her friends.
+"Oh, how good of you all to come! Lord Lackington!" She went up to
+him impetuously, and he, taken by surprise, yielded his hands,
+which she took in both hers. "It was foolish, I know, but you don't
+think it was so <i>bad</i>, do you?"</p>
+<p>She gazed up at him wistfully. Her lithe form seemed almost to
+cling to the old man. Instinctively, Jacob, Meredith, Sir Wilfrid
+Bury withdrew their eyes. The room held its breath. As for Lord
+Lackington, he colored like a girl.</p>
+<p>"No, no; a mistake, perhaps, for all of us; but more ours than
+yours, mademoiselle--much more! Don't fret. Indeed, you look as if
+you hadn't slept, and that mustn't be. You must think that, sooner
+or later, it was bound to come. Lady Henry will soften in time, and
+you will know so well how to meet her. But now we have your future
+to think of. Only sit down. You mustn't look so tired. Where have
+you been wandering?"</p>
+<p>And with a stately courtesy, her hand still in his, he took her
+to a chair and helped her to remove her heavy cloak.</p>
+<p>"My future!" She shivered as she dropped into her seat.</p>
+<p>How weary and beaten-down she looked--the heroine of such a
+turmoil! Her eyes travelled from face to face,
+shrinking--unconsciously appealing. In the dim, soft color of the
+room, her white face and hands, striking against her black dress,
+were strangely living and significant. They spoke command--through
+weakness, through sex. For that, in spite of intellectual
+distinction, was, after all, her secret. She breathed
+femininity--the old common spell upon the blood.</p>
+<p>"I don't know why you're all so kind to me," she murmured. "Let
+me disappear. I can go into the country and earn my living there.
+Then I shall be no more trouble."</p>
+<p>Unseen himself, Sir Wilfrid surveyed her. He thought her a
+consummate actress, and revelled in each new phase.</p>
+<p>The Duchess, half laughing, half crying, began to scold her
+friend. Delafield bent over Julie Le Breton's chair.</p>
+<p>"Have you had some tea?"</p>
+<p>The smile in his eyes provoked a faint answer in hers. While she
+was declaring that she was in no need whatever of physical
+sustenance, Meredith advanced with his portfolio. He looked the
+editor merely, and spoke with a business-like brevity.</p>
+<p>"I have brought the sheets of the new Shelley book, Miss Le
+Breton. It is due for publication on the 22d. Kindly let me have
+your review within a week. It may run to two columns--possibly even
+two and a half. You will find here also the particulars of one or
+two other things--let me know, please, what you will
+undertake."</p>
+<p>Julie put out a languid hand for the portfolio.</p>
+<p>"I don't think you ought to trust me."</p>
+<p>"What do you want of her?" said Lord Lackington, briskly.
+"'Chatter about Harriet?' I could write you reams of that myself. I
+once saw Harriet."</p>
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+<p>Meredith, with whom the Shelley cult was a deep-rooted passion,
+started and looked round; then sharply repressed the eagerness on
+his tongue and sat down by Miss Le Breton, with whom, in a lowered
+voice, he began to discuss the points to be noticed in the sheets
+handed over to her. No stronger proof could he have given of his
+devotion to her. Julie knew it, and, rousing herself, she met him
+with a soft attention and docility; thus tacitly relinquishing, as
+Bury noticed with amusement, all talk of "disappearance."</p>
+<p>Only with himself, he suspected, was the fair lady ill at ease.
+And, indeed, it was so. Julie, by her pallor, her humility, had
+thrown herself, as it were, into the arms of her friends, and each
+was now vying with the other as to how best to cheer and console
+her. Meanwhile her attention was really bent upon her critic--her
+only critic in this assembly; and he discovered various attempts to
+draw him into conversation. And when Lord Lackington, discomfited
+by Meredith, had finished discharging his literary recollections
+upon him, Sir Wilfrid became complaisant; Julie slipped in and held
+him.</p>
+<p>Leaning her chin on both hands, she bent towards him, fixing him
+with her eyes. And in spite of his antagonism he no longer felt
+himself strong enough to deny that the eyes were beautiful,
+especially with this tragic note in them of fatigue and pain.</p>
+<p>"Sir Wilfrid"--she spoke in low entreaty--"you <i>must</i> help
+me to prevent any breach between Lady Henry and Mr. Montresor."</p>
+<p>He looked at her gayly.</p>
+<p>"I fear," he said, "you are too late. That point is settled, as
+I understand from herself."</p>
+<p>"Surely not--so soon!"</p>
+<p>"There was an exchange of letters this morning."</p>
+<p>"Oh, but you can prevent it--you must!" She clasped her
+hands.</p>
+<p>"No," he said, slowly, "I fear you must accept it. Their
+relation was a matter of old habit. Like other things old and
+frail, it bears shock and disturbance badly."</p>
+<p>She sank back in her chair, raising her hands and letting them
+fall with a gesture of despair.</p>
+<p>One little stroke of punishment--just one! Surely there was no
+cruelty in that. Sir Wilfrid caught the Horatian lines dancing
+through his head:</p>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Just oblige me and touch<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With your wand that minx
+Chloe--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But don't hurt her much!"<br>
+<p>Yet here was Jacob interposing!--Jacob, who had evidently been
+watching his mild attempt at castigation, no doubt with
+disapproval. Lover or no lover--what did the man expect? Under his
+placid exterior, Sir Wilfrid's mind was, in truth, hot with
+sympathy for the old and helpless.</p>
+<p>Delafield bent over Miss Le Breton.</p>
+<p>"You will go and rest? Evelyn advises it."</p>
+<p>She rose to her feet, and most of the party rose, too.</p>
+<p>"Good-bye--good-bye," said Lord Lackington, offering her a
+cordial hand. "Rest and forget. Everything blows over. And at
+Easter you must come to me in the country. Blanche will be with me,
+and my granddaughter Aileen, if I can tempt them away from Italy.
+Aileen's a little fairy; you'd be charmed with her. Now mind,
+that's a promise. You must certainly come."</p>
+<p>The Duchess had paused in her farewell nothings with Sir Wilfrid
+to observe her friend. Julie, with her eyes on the ground, murmured
+thanks; and Lord Lackington, straight as a dart to-night, carrying
+his seventy-five years as though they were the merest trifle, made
+a stately and smiling exit. Julie looked round upon the faces left.
+In her own heart she read the same judgment as in their eyes:
+"<i>The old man must know!</i>"</p>
+<p>The Duke came into the drawing-room half an hour later in quest
+of his wife. He was about to leave town by a night train for the
+north, and his temper was, apparently, far from good.</p>
+<p>The Duchess was stretched on the sofa in the firelight, her
+hands behind her head, dreaming. Whether it was the sight of so
+much ease that jarred on the Duke's ruffled nerves or no, certain
+it is that he inflicted a thorny good-bye. He had seen Lady Henry,
+he said, and the reality was even worse than he had supposed. There
+was absolutely nothing to be said for Miss Le Breton, and he was
+ashamed of himself to have been so weakly talked over in the matter
+of the house. His word once given, of course, there was an end of
+it--for six months. After that, Miss Le Breton must provide for
+herself. Meanwhile, Lady Henry refused to receive the Duchess, and
+would be some time before she forgave himself. It was all most
+annoying, and he was thankful to be going away, for, Lady Rose or
+no Lady Rose, he really could not have entertained the lady with
+civility.</p>
+<p>"Oh, well, never mind, Freddie," said the Duchess, springing up.
+"She'll be gone before you come back, and I'll look after her."</p>
+<p>The Duke offered a rather sulky embrace, walked to the door, and
+came back.</p>
+<p>"I really very much dislike this kind of gossip," he said,
+stiffly, "but perhaps I had better say that Lady Henry believes
+that the affair with Delafield was only one of several. She talks
+of a certain Captain Warkworth--"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said the Duchess, nodding. "I know; but he sha'n't have
+Julie."</p>
+<p>Her smile completed the Duke's annoyance.</p>
+<p>"What have you to do with it? I beg, Evelyn--I insist--that you
+leave Miss Le Breton's love affairs alone."</p>
+<p>"You forget, Freddie, that she is my <i>friend</i>."</p>
+<p>The little creature fronted him, all wilfulness and breathing
+hard, her small hands clasped on her breast.</p>
+<p>With an angry exclamation the Duke departed.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>At half-past eight a hansom dashed up to Crowborough House.
+Montresor emerged.</p>
+<p>He found the two ladies and Jacob Delafield just beginning
+dinner, and stayed with them an hour; but it was not an hour of
+pleasure. The great man was tired with work and debate, depressed
+also by the quarrel with his old friend. Julie did not dare to put
+questions, and guiltily shrank into herself. She divined that a
+great price was being paid on her behalf, and must needs bitterly
+ask whether anything that she could offer or plead was worth
+it--bitterly suspect, also, that the query had passed through other
+minds than her own.</p>
+<p>After dinner, as Montresor rose with the Duchess to take his
+leave, Julie got a word with him in the corridor.</p>
+<p>"You will give me ten minutes' talk?" she said, lifting her pale
+face to him. "You mustn't, mustn't quarrel with Lady Henry because
+of me."</p>
+<p>He drew himself up, perhaps with a touch of haughtiness.</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry could end it in a moment. Don't, I beg of you,
+trouble your head about the matter. Even as an old friend, one must
+be allowed one's self-respect."</p>
+<p>"But mayn't I--"</p>
+<p>"Nearly ten o'clock!" he cried, looking at his watch. "I must be
+off this moment. So you are going to the house in Heribert Street?
+I remember Lady Mary Leicester perfectly. As soon as you are
+settled, tell me, and I will present myself. Meanwhile "--he smiled
+and bent his black head towards her--"look in to-morrow's papers
+for some interesting news."</p>
+<p>He sprang into his hansom and was gone.</p>
+<p>Julie went slowly up-stairs. Of course she understood. The long
+intrigue had reached its goal, and within twelve hours the
+<i>Times</i> would announce the appointment of Captain Warkworth,
+D.S.O., to the command of the Mokembe military mission. He would
+have obtained his heart's desire--through her.</p>
+<p>How true were those last words, perhaps only Julie knew. She
+looked back upon all the manoeuvres and influences she had brought
+to bear--flattery here, interest or reciprocity there, the lures of
+Crowborough House, the prestige of Lady Henry's drawing-room. Wheel
+by wheel she had built up her cunning machine, and the machine had
+worked. No doubt the last completing touch had been given the night
+before. Her culminating offence against Lady Henry--the occasion of
+her disgrace and banishment--had been to Warkworth the
+stepping-stone of fortune.</p>
+<p>What "gossamer girl" could have done so much? She threw back her
+head proudly and heard the beating of her heart.</p>
+<p>Lady Henry was fiercely forgotten. She opened the drawing-room
+door, absorbed in a counting of the hours till she and Warkworth
+should meet.</p>
+<p>Then, amid the lights and shadows of the Duchess's drawing-room,
+Jacob Delafield rose and came towards her. Her exaltation dropped
+in a moment. Some testing, penetrating influence seemed to breathe
+from this man, which filled her with a moral discomfort, a curious
+restlessness. Did he guess the nature of her feeling for Warkworth?
+Was he acquainted with the efforts she had been making for the
+young soldier? She could not be sure; he had never given her the
+smallest sign. Yet she divined that few things escaped him where
+the persons who touched his feelings were concerned. And
+Evelyn--the dear chatterbox--certainly suspected.</p>
+<p>"How tired you are!" he said to her, gently. "What a day it has
+been for you! Evelyn is writing letters. Let me bring you the
+papers--and please don't talk."</p>
+<p>She submitted to a sofa, to an adjusted light, to the papers on
+her knee. Then Delafield withdrew and took up a book.</p>
+<p>She could not rest, however; visions of the morrow and of
+Warkworth's triumphant looks kept flashing through her. Yet all the
+while Delafield's presence haunted her--she could not forget him,
+and presently she addressed him.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Delafield!"</p>
+<p>He heard the low voice and came.</p>
+<p>"I have never thanked you for your goodness last night. I do
+thank you now--most earnestly."</p>
+<p>"You needn't. You know very well what I would do to serve you if
+I could."</p>
+<p>"Even when you think me in the wrong?" said Julie, with a
+little, hysterical laugh.</p>
+<p>Her conscience smote her. Why provoke this intimate
+talk--wantonly--with the man she had made suffer? Yet her
+restlessness, which was partly nervous fatigue, drove her on.</p>
+<p>Delafield flushed at her words.</p>
+<p>"How have I given you cause to say that?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, you are very transparent. One sees that you are always
+troubling yourself about the right and wrong of things."</p>
+<p>"All very well for one's self," said Delafield, trying to laugh.
+"I hope I don't seem to you to be setting up as a judge of other
+people's right and wrong?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, you do!" she said, passionately. Then, as he winced,
+"No, I don't mean that. But you do judge--it is in your nature--and
+other people feel it."</p>
+<p>"I didn't know I was such a prig," said Delafield, humbly. "It
+is true I am always puzzling over things."</p>
+<p>Julie was silent. She was indeed secretly convinced that he no
+more approved the escapade of the night before than did Sir Wilfrid
+Bury. Through the whole evening she had been conscious of a
+watchful anxiety and resistance on his part. Yet he had stood by
+her to the end--so warmly, so faithfully.</p>
+<p>He sat down beside her, and Julie felt a fresh pang of remorse,
+perhaps of alarm. Why had she called him to her? What had they to
+do with each other? But he soon reassured her. He began to talk of
+Meredith, and the work before her--the important and glorious work,
+as he na&iuml;vely termed it, of the writer.</p>
+<p>And presently he turned upon her with sudden feeling.</p>
+<p>"You accused me, just now, of judging what I have no business to
+judge. If you think that I regret the severance of your relation
+with Lady Henry, you are quite, quite mistaken. It has been the
+dream of my life this last year to see you free--mistress of your
+own life. It--it made me mad that you should be ordered about like
+a child--dependent upon another person's will."</p>
+<p>She looked at him curiously.</p>
+<p>"I know. That revolts you always--any form of command? Evelyn
+tells me that you carry it to curious lengths with your servants
+and laborers."</p>
+<p>He drew back, evidently disconcerted.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I try some experiments. They generally break down."</p>
+<p>"You try to do without servants, Evelyn says, as much as
+possible."</p>
+<p>"Well, if I do try, I don't succeed," he said, laughing.
+"But"--his eyes kindled--"isn't it worth while, during a bit of
+one's life, to escape, if one can, from some of the paraphernalia
+in which we are all smothered? Look there! What right have I to
+turn my fellow-creatures into bedizened automata like that?"</p>
+<p>And he threw out an accusing hand towards the two powdered
+footmen, who were removing the coffee-cups and making up the fire
+in the next room, while the magnificent groom of the chambers stood
+like a statue, receiving some orders from the Duchess.</p>
+<p>Julie, however, showed no sympathy.</p>
+<p>"They are only automata in the drawing-room. Down-stairs they
+are as much alive as you or I."</p>
+<p>"Well, let us put it that I prefer other kinds of luxury," said
+Delafield. "However, as I appear to have none of the qualities
+necessary to carry out my notions, they don't get very far."</p>
+<p>"You would like to shake hands with the butler?" said Julie,
+musing. "I knew a case of that kind. But the butler gave
+warning."</p>
+<p>Delafield laughed.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps the simpler thing would be to do without the
+butler."</p>
+<p>"I am curious," she said, smiling--"very curious. Sir Wilfrid,
+for instance, talks of going down to stay with you?"</p>
+<p>"Why not? He'd come off extremely well. There's an ex-butler,
+and an ex-cook of Chudleigh's settled in the village. When I have a
+visitor, they come in and take possession. We live like
+fighting-cocks."</p>
+<p>"So nobody knows that, in general, you live like a workman?"</p>
+<p>Delafield looked impatient.</p>
+<p>"Somebody seems to have been cramming Evelyn with ridiculous
+tales, and she's been spreading them. I must have it out with
+her."</p>
+<p>"I expect there is a good deal in them," said Julie. Then,
+unexpectedly, she raised her eyes and gave him a long and rather
+strange look. "Why do you dislike having servants and being waited
+upon so much, I wonder? Is it--you won't be angry?--that you have
+such a strong will, and you do these things to tame it?"</p>
+<p>Delafield made a sudden movement, and Julie had no sooner spoken
+the words than she regretted them.</p>
+<p>"So you think I should have made a jolly tyrannical
+slave-owner?" said Delafield, after a moment's pause.</p>
+<p>Julie bent towards him with a charming look of appeal--almost of
+penitence. "On the contrary, I think you would have been as good to
+your slaves as you are to your friends."</p>
+<p>His eyes met hers quietly.</p>
+<p>"Thank you. That was kind of you. And as to giving orders, and
+getting one's way, don't suppose I let Chudleigh's estate go to
+ruin! It's only"--he hesitated--"the small personal tyrannies of
+every day that I'd like to minimize. They brutalize half the
+fellows I know."</p>
+<p>"You'll come to them," said Julie, absently. Then she colored,
+suddenly remembering the possible dukedom that awaited him.</p>
+<p>His brow contracted a little, as though he understood. He made
+no reply. Julie, with her craving to be approved--to say what
+pleased--could not leave it there.</p>
+<p>"I wish I understood," she said, softly, after a moment, "what,
+or who it was that gave you these opinions."</p>
+<p>Getting still no answer, she must perforce meet the gray eyes
+bent upon her, more expressively, perhaps, than their owner knew.
+"That you shall understand," he said, after a minute, in a voice
+which was singularly deep and full, "whenever you choose to
+ask."</p>
+<p>Julie shrank and drew back.</p>
+<p>"Very well," she said, trying to speak lightly. "I'll hold you
+to that. Alack! I had forgotten a letter I must write."</p>
+<p>And she pretended to write it, while Delafield buried himself in
+the newspapers.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="XIII"></a>XIII</h2>
+<br>
+<p>Julie's curiosity--passing and perfunctory as it was--concerning
+the persons and influences that had worked upon Jacob Delafield
+since his college days, was felt in good earnest by not a few of
+Delafield's friends. For he was a person rich in friends, reserved
+as he generally was, and crotchety as most of them thought him. The
+mixture of self-evident strength and manliness in his physiognomy
+with something delicate and evasive, some hindering element of
+reflection or doubt, was repeated in his character. On the one side
+he was a robust, healthy Etonian, who could ride, shoot, and golf
+like the rest of his kind, who used the terse, slangy ways of
+speech of the ordinary Englishman, who loved the land and its
+creatures, and had a natural hatred for a poacher; and on another
+he was a man haunted by dreams and spiritual voices, a man for
+whom, as he paced his tired horse homeward after a day's run, there
+would rise on the grays and purples of the winter dusk far-shining
+"cities of God" and visions of a better life for man. He read much
+poetry, and the New Testament spoke to him imperatively, though in
+no orthodox or accustomed way. Ruskin, and the earlier work of
+Tolstoy, then just beginning to take hold of the English mind, had
+affected his thought and imagination, as the generation before him
+had been affected by Carlyle, Emerson, and George Sand.</p>
+<p>This present phase of his life, however, was the outcome of much
+that was turbulent and shapeless in his first youth. He seemed to
+himself to have passed through Oxford under a kind of eclipse. All
+that he could remember of two-thirds of his time there was an
+immoderate amount of eating, drinking, and sleeping. A heavy animal
+existence, disturbed by moments of unhappiness and remorse, or, at
+best, lightened by intervals and gleams of friendship with two or
+three men who tried to prod him out of his lethargy, and cherished
+what appeared, to himself in particular, a strange and unreasonable
+liking for him. Such, to his own thinking, had been his Oxford
+life, up to the last year of his residence there.</p>
+<p>Then, when he was just making certain of an ignominious failure
+in the final schools, he became more closely acquainted with one of
+the college tutors, whose influence was to be the spark which
+should at last fire the clay. This modest, heroic, and learned man
+was a paralyzed invalid, owing to an accident in the prime of life.
+He had lost the use of his lower limbs--"dead from the waist down."
+Yet such was the strength of his moral and intellectual life that
+he had become, since the catastrophe, one of the chief forces of
+his college. The invalid-chair on which he wheeled himself,
+recumbent, from room to room, and from which he gave his lectures,
+was, in the eyes of Oxford, a symbol not of weakness, but of
+touching and triumphant victory. He gave himself no airs of
+resignation or of martyrdom. He simply lived his life--except
+during those crises of weakness or pain when his friends were shut
+out--as though it were like any other life, save only for what he
+made appear an insignificant physical limitation. Scholarship,
+college business or college sports, politics and literature--his
+mind, at least, was happy, strenuous, and at home in them all. To
+have pitied him would have been a mere impertinence. While in his
+own heart, which never grieved over himself, there were treasures
+of compassion for the weak, the tempted, and the unsuccessful,
+which spent themselves in secret, simple ways, unknown to his most
+intimate friends.</p>
+<p>This man's personality it was which, like the branch of healing
+on bitter waters, presently started in Jacob Delafield's nature
+obscure processes of growth and regeneration. The originator of
+them knew little of what was going on. He was Delafield's tutor for
+Greats, in the ordinary college routine; Delafield took essays to
+him, and occasionally lingered to talk. But they never became
+exactly intimate. A few conversations of "pith and moment"; a warm
+shake of the hand and a keen look of pleasure in the blue eyes of
+the recumbent giant when, after one year of superhuman but belated
+effort, Delafield succeeded in obtaining a second class; a little
+note of farewell, affectionate and regretful, when Delafield left
+the university; an occasional message through a common
+friend--Delafield had little more than these to look back upon,
+outside the discussions of historical or philosophical subjects
+which had entered into their relation as pupil and teacher.</p>
+<p>And now the paralyzed tutor was dead, leaving behind him a
+volume of papers on classical subjects, the reputation of an
+admirable scholar, and the fragrance of a dear and honored name.
+His pupils had been many; they counted among the most distinguished
+of England's youth; and all of them owed him much. Few people
+thought of Delafield when the list of them was recited; and yet, in
+truth, Jacob's debt was greater than any; for he owed this man
+nothing less than his soul.</p>
+<p>No doubt the period at Oxford had been rather a period of
+obscure conflict than of mere idleness and degeneracy, as it had
+seemed to be. But it might easily have ended in physical and moral
+ruin, and, as it was--thanks to Courtenay--Delafield went out to
+the business of life, a man singularly master of himself,
+determined to live his own life for his own ends.</p>
+<p>In the first place, he was conscious, like many other young men
+of his time, of a strong repulsion towards the complexities and
+artificialities of modern society. As in the forties, a time of
+social stir was rising out of a time of stagnation. Social
+settlements were not yet founded, but the experiments which led to
+them were beginning. Jacob looked at the life of London, the clubs
+and the country-houses, the normal life of his class, and turned
+from it in aversion. He thought, sometimes, of emigrating, in
+search of a new heaven and a new earth, as men emigrated in the
+forties.</p>
+<p>But his mother and sister were alone in the world--his mother a
+somewhat helpless being, his sister still very young and unmarried.
+He could not reconcile it to his conscience to go very far from
+them.</p>
+<p>He tried the bar, amid an inner revolt that only increased with
+time. And the bar implied London, and the dinners and dances of
+London, which, for a man of his family, the probable heir to the
+lands and moneys of the Chudleighs, were naturally innumerable. He
+was much courted, in spite, perhaps because, of his oddities; and
+it was plain to him that with only a small exercise of those
+will-forces he felt accumulating within him, most of the normal
+objects of ambition were within his grasp. The English aristocratic
+class, as we all know, is no longer exclusive. It mingles freely
+with the commoner world on apparently equal terms. But all the
+while its personal and family cohesion is perhaps greater than
+ever. The power of mere birth, it seemed to Jacob, was hardly less
+in the England newly possessed of household suffrage than in the
+England of Charles James Fox's youth, though it worked through
+other channels. And for the persons in command of this power, a
+certain <i>appareil de vie</i> was necessary, taken for granted. So
+much income, so many servants, such and such habits--these things
+imposed themselves. Life became a soft and cushioned business, with
+an infinity of layers between it and any hard reality--a round pea
+in a silky pod.</p>
+<p>And he meanwhile found himself hungry to throw aside these tamed
+and trite forms of existence, and to penetrate to the harsh, true,
+simple things behind. His imagination and his heart turned towards
+the primitive, indispensable labors on which society rests--the
+life of the husbandman, the laborer, the smith, the woodman, the
+builder; he dreamed the old, enchanted dream of living with nature;
+of becoming the brother not of the few, but of the many. He was
+still reading in chambers, however, when his first cousin, the
+Duke, a melancholy semi-invalid, a widower, with an only son
+tuberculous almost from his birth, arrived from abroad. Jacob was
+brought into new contact with him. The Duke liked him, and offered
+him the agency of his Essex property. Jacob accepted, partly that
+he might be quit of the law, partly that he might be in the country
+and among the poor, partly for reasons, or ghosts of reasons,
+unavowed even to himself. The one terror that haunted his life was
+the terror of the dukedom. This poor, sickly lad, the heir, with
+whom he soon made warm friends, and the silent, morbid Duke, with
+the face of Charles V. at St. Just--he became, in a short time,
+profoundly and pitifully attached to them. It pleased him to serve
+them; above all did it please him to do all he could, and to incite
+others to do all they could, to keep these two frail persons
+cheered and alive. His own passionate dread lest he should suddenly
+find himself in their place, gave a particular poignancy to the
+service he was always ready to render them of his best.</p>
+<p>The Duke's confidence in him had increased rapidly. Delafield
+was now about to take over the charge of another of the Duke's
+estates, in the Midlands, and much of the business connected with
+some important London property was also coming into his hands. He
+had made himself a good man of business where another's interests
+were concerned, and his dreams did no harm to the Duke's revenues.
+He gave, indeed, a liberal direction to the whole policy of the
+estate, and, as he had said to Julie, the Duke did not forbid
+experiments.</p>
+<p>As to his own money, he gave it away as wisely as he could,
+which is, perhaps, not saying very much for the schemes and
+Quixotisms of a young man of eight-and-twenty. At any rate, he gave
+it away--to his mother and sister first, then to a variety of
+persons and causes. Why should he save a penny of it? He had some
+money of his own, besides his income from the Duke. It was
+disgusting that he should have so much, and that it should be,
+apparently, so very easy for him to have indefinitely more if he
+wanted it.</p>
+<p>He lived in a small cottage, in the simplest, plainest way
+compatible with his work and with the maintenance of two decently
+furnished rooms for any friend who might chance to visit him. He
+read much and thought much. But he was not a man of any commanding
+speculative or analytic ability. It would have been hard for him to
+give any very clear or logical account of himself and his deepest
+beliefs. Nevertheless, with every year that passed he became a more
+remarkable <i>character</i>--his will stronger, his heart gentler.
+In the village where he lived they wondered at him a good deal, and
+often laughed at him. But if he had left them, certainly the
+children and the old people would have felt as though the sun had
+gone out.</p>
+<p>In London he showed little or nothing of his peculiar ways and
+pursuits; was, in fact, as far as anybody knew--outside half a
+dozen friends--just the ordinary, well-disposed young man, engaged
+in a business that every one understood. With Lady Henry, his
+relations, apart from his sympathy with Julie Le Breton, had been
+for some time rather difficult. She made gratitude hard for one of
+the most grateful of men. When the circumstances of the Hubert
+Delafields had been much straitened, after Lord Hubert's death,
+Lady Henry had come to their aid, and had, in particular, spent
+fifteen hundred pounds on Jacob's school and college education. But
+there are those who can make a gift burn into the bones of those
+who receive it. Jacob had now saved nearly the whole sum, and was
+about to repay her. Meanwhile his obligation, his relationship, and
+her age made it natural, or rather imperative, that he should be
+often in her house; but when he was with her the touch of arrogant
+brutality in her nature, especially towards servants and
+dependants, roused him almost to fury. She knew it, and would often
+exercise her rough tongue merely for the pleasure of tormenting
+him.</p>
+<p>No sooner, therefore, had he come to know the fragile,
+distinguished creature whom Lady Henry had brought back with her
+one autumn as her companion than his sympathies were instantly
+excited, first by the mere fact that she was Lady Henry's
+dependant, and then by the confidence, as to her sad story and
+strange position, which she presently reposed in him and his cousin
+Evelyn. On one or two occasions, very early in his acquaintance
+with her, he was a witness of some small tyranny of Lady Henry's
+towards her. He saw the shrinking of the proud nature, and the pain
+thrilled through his own nerves as though the lash had touched
+himself. Presently it became a joy to him whenever he was in town
+to conspire with Evelyn Crowborough for her pleasure and relief. It
+was the first time he had ever conspired, and it gave him sometimes
+a slight shock to see how readily these two charming women lent
+themselves, on occasion, to devices that had the aspect of
+intrigue, and involved a good deal of what, in his own case, he
+would have roundly dubbed lying. And, in truth, if he had known,
+they did not find him a convenient ally, and he was by no means
+always in their confidence.</p>
+<p>Once, about six months after Julie's arrival in Bruton Street,
+he met her on a spring morning crossing Kensington Gardens with the
+dogs. She looked startlingly white and ill, and when he spoke to
+her with eager sympathy her mouth quivered and her dark eyes
+clouded with tears. The sight produced an extraordinary effect on a
+man large-hearted and simple, for whom women still moved in an
+atmosphere of romance. His heart leaped within him as she let
+herself be talked with and comforted. And when her delicate hand
+rested in his as they said good-bye, he was conscious of
+feelings--wild, tumultuous feelings--to which, in his walk homeward
+through the spring glades of the park, he gave impetuous
+course.</p>
+<p>Romantic, indeed, the position was, for romance rests on
+contrast. Jacob, who knew Julie Le Breton's secret, was thrilled or
+moved by the contrasts of her existence at every turn. Her success
+and her subjection; the place in Lady Henry's circle which Lady
+Henry had, in the first instance, herself forced her to take,
+contrasted with the shifts and evasions, the poor, tortuous ways by
+which, alas! she must often escape Lady Henry's later jealousy; her
+intellectual strength and her most feminine weaknesses; these
+things stirred and kept up in Jacob a warm and passionate pity. The
+more clearly he saw the specks in her glory, the more vividly did
+she appear to him a princess in distress, bound by physical or
+moral fetters not of her own making. None of the well-born,
+well-trained damsels who had been freely thrown across his path had
+so far beguiled him in the least. Only this woman of doubtful birth
+and antecedents, lonely, sad, and enslaved amid what people called
+her social triumphs, stole into his heart--beautified by what he
+chose to consider her misfortunes, and made none the less
+attractive by the fact that as he pursued, she retreated; as he
+pressed, she grew cold.</p>
+<p>When, indeed, after their friendship had lasted about a year, he
+proposed to her and she refused him, his passion, instead of
+cooling, redoubled. It never occurred to him to think that she had
+done a strange thing from the worldly point of view--that would
+have involved an appreciation of himself, as a prize in the
+marriage market, he would have loathed to make. But he was one of
+the men for whom resistance enhances the value of what they desire,
+and secretly he said to himself, "Persevere!" When he was repelled
+or puzzled by certain aspects of her character, he would say to
+himself:</p>
+<p>"It is because she is alone and miserable. Women are not meant
+to be alone. What soft, helpless creatures they are!--even when
+intellectually they fly far ahead of us. If she would but put her
+hand in mine I would so serve and worship her, she would have no
+need for these strange things she does--the doublings and ruses of
+the persecuted." Thus the touches of falsity that repelled Wilfrid
+Bury were to Delafield's passion merely the stains of rough travel
+on a fair garment.</p>
+<p>But she refused him, and for another year he said no more. Then,
+as things got worse and worse for her, he spoke
+again--ambiguously--a word or two, thrown out to sound the waters.
+Her manner of silencing him on this second occasion was not what it
+had been before. His suspicions were aroused, and a few days later
+he divined the Warkworth affair.</p>
+<p>When Sir Wilfrid Bury spoke to him of the young officer's
+relations to Mademoiselle Le Breton, Delafield's stiff defence of
+Julie's prerogatives in the matter masked the fact that he had just
+gone through a week of suffering, wrestling his heart down in
+country lanes; a week which had brought him to somewhat curious
+results.</p>
+<p>In the first place, as with Sir Wilfrid, he stood up stoutly for
+her rights. If she chose to attach herself to this man, whose
+business was it to interfere? If he was worthy and loved her, Jacob
+himself would see fair play, would be her friend and supporter.</p>
+<p>But the scraps of gossip about Captain Warkworth which the
+Duchess--who had disliked the man at first sight--gathered from
+different quarters and confided to Jacob were often disquieting. It
+was said that at Simla he had entrapped this little heiress, and
+her obviously foolish and incapable mother, by devices generally
+held to be discreditable; and it had taken two angry guardians to
+warn him off. What was the state of the case now no one exactly
+knew; though it was shrewdly suspected that the engagement was only
+dormant. The child was known to have been in love with him; in two
+years more she would be of age; her fortune was enormous, and
+Warkworth was a poor and ambitious man.</p>
+<p>There was also an ugly tale of a civilian's wife in a hill
+station, referring to a date some years back; but Delafield did not
+think it necessary to believe it.</p>
+<p>As to his origins--there again, Delafield, making cautious
+inquiries, came across some unfavorable details, confided to him by
+a man of Warkworth's own regiment. His father had retired from the
+army immediately after the Mutiny, broken in health, and much
+straitened in means. Himself belonging to a family of the poorer
+middle class, he had married late, a good woman not socially his
+equal, and without fortune. They settled in the Isle of Wight, on
+his half-pay, and harassed by a good many debts. Their two
+children, Henry and Isabella, were then growing up, and the
+parents' hopes were fixed upon their promising and good-looking
+son. With difficulty they sent him to Charterhouse and a "crammer."
+The boy coveted a "crack" regiment; by dint of mustering all the
+money and all the interest they could, they procured him his
+heart's desire. He got unpardonably into debt; the old people's
+resources were lessening, not expanding; and ultimately the poor
+father died broken down by the terror of bankruptcy for himself and
+disgrace for Henry. The mother still survived, in very straitened
+circumstances.</p>
+<p>"His sister," said Delafield's informant, "married one of the
+big London tailors, whom she met first on the Ryde pier. I happen
+to know the facts, for my father and I have been customers of his
+for years, and one day, hearing that I was in Warkworth's regiment,
+he told me some stories of his brother-in-law in a pretty hostile
+tone. His sister, it appears, has often financed him of late. She
+must have done. How else could he have got through? Warkworth may
+be a fine, showy fellow when there's fighting about. In private
+life he's one of the most self-indulgent dogs alive. And yet he's
+ashamed of the sister and her husband, and turns his back on them
+whenever he can. Oh, he's not a person of nice feeling, is
+Warkworth--but, mark my words, he'll be one of the most successful
+men in the army."</p>
+<p>There was one side. On the other was to be set the man's
+brilliant professional record; his fine service in this recent
+campaign; the bull-dog defence of an isolated fort, which insured
+the safety of most important communications; contempt of danger,
+thirst, exposure; the rescue of a wounded comrade from the glacis
+of the fort, under a murderous fire; facts, all of them, which had
+fired the public imagination and brought his name to the front. No
+such acts as these could have been done by any mere self-indulgent
+pretender.</p>
+<p>Delafield reserved his judgment. He set himself to watch. In his
+inmost heart there was a strange assumption of the right to watch,
+and, if need be, to act. Julie's instinct had told her truly.
+Delafield, the individualist, the fanatic for freedom--he, also,
+had his instinct of tyranny. She should not destroy herself, the
+dear, weak, beloved woman! He would prevent it.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Thus, during these hours of transition, Delafield thought much
+of Julie. Julie, on the other hand, had no sooner said good-night
+to him after the conversation described in the last chapter than
+she drove him from her thoughts--one might have said, with
+vehemence.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The <i>Times</i> of the following morning duly contained the
+announcement of the appointment of Captain Warkworth, D.S.O., of
+the Queen's Grays, to the command of the military mission to
+Mokembe recently determined on by her Majesty's government. The
+mission would proceed to Mokembe as soon as possible, but of two
+officers who on the ground of especial knowledge would form part of
+it, under Captain Warkworth's command, one was at present in Canada
+and the other at the Cape. It would, therefore, hardly be possible
+for the mission to start from the coast for the interior before the
+beginning of May. In the same paper certain promotions and
+distinctions on account of the recent Mahsud campaign were
+reprinted from the <i>Gazette</i>. Captain Henry Warkworth's brevet
+majority was among them.</p>
+<p>The <i>Times</i> leader on the announcement pointed out that the
+mission would be concerned with important frontier questions, still
+more with the revival of the prestige of England in regions where a
+supine government had allowed it to wither unaccountably. Other
+powers had been playing a filching and encroaching game at the
+expense of the British lion in these parts, and it was more than
+time that he should open his sleepy eyes upon what was going on. As
+to the young officer who was to command the mission, the great
+journal made a few civil though guarded remarks. His record in the
+recent campaign was indeed highly distinguished; still it could
+hardly be said that, take it as a whole, his history so far gave
+him a claim to promotion so important as that which he had now
+obtained.</p>
+<p>Well, now he had his chance. English soldiers had a way of
+profiting by such chances. The <i>Times</i> courteously gave him
+the benefit of the doubt, prophesying that he would rise to the
+occasion and justify the choice of his superiors.</p>
+<p>The Duchess looked over Julie's shoulder as she read.</p>
+<p>"Schemer," she said, as she dropped a kiss on the back of
+Julie's neck, "I hope you're satisfied. The <i>Times</i> doesn't
+know what to make of it."</p>
+<p>Julie put down the paper with a glowing cheek.</p>
+<p>"They'll soon know," she said, quietly.</p>
+<p>"Julie, do you believe in him so much?"</p>
+<p>"What does it matter what I think? It is not I who have
+appointed him."</p>
+<p>"Not so sure," laughed the Duchess. "As if he would have had a
+chance without you. Whom did he know last November when you took
+him up?"</p>
+<p>Julie moved to and fro, her hands behind her. The tremor on her
+lip, the light in her eye showed her sense of triumph.</p>
+<p>"What have I done," she said, laughing, "but push a few stones
+out of the way of merit?"</p>
+<p>"Some of them were heavy," said the Duchess, making a little
+face. "Need I invite Lady Froswick any more?"</p>
+<p>Julie threw her arms about her.</p>
+<p>"Evelyn, what a darling you've been! Now I'll never worry you
+again."</p>
+<p>"Oh, for some people I would do ten times as much!" cried the
+Duchess. "But, Julie, I wish I knew why you think so well of this
+man. I--I don't always hear very nice things about him."</p>
+<p>"I dare say not," said Julie, flushing. "It is easy to hate
+success."</p>
+<p>"No, come, we're not as mean as that!" cried the Duchess. "I vow
+that all the heroes I've ever known had a ripping time. Julie"--she
+kissed her friend impulsively--"Julie, don't like him too much. I
+don't think he's good enough."</p>
+<p>"Good enough for what?" said Julie's bitter voice. "Make
+yourself easy about Captain Warkworth, Evelyn; but please
+understand--<i>anything</i> is good enough for me. Don't let your
+dear head be troubled about my affairs. They are never serious, and
+nothing counts--except," she added, recklessly, "that I get a
+little amusement by the way."</p>
+<p>"Julie," cried the Duchess, "as if Jacob--"</p>
+<p>Julie frowned and released herself; then she laughed.</p>
+<p>"Nothing that one ever says about ordinary mortals applies to
+Mr. Delafield. He is, of course, <i>hors concours</i>."</p>
+<p>"Julie!"</p>
+<p>"It is you, Evelyn, who make me <i>m&eacute;chante</i>. I could
+be grateful--and excellent friends with that young man--in my own
+way."</p>
+<p>The Duchess sighed, and held her tongue with difficulty.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>When the successful hero arrived that night for dinner he found
+a solitary lady in the drawing-room.</p>
+<p>Was this, indeed, Julie Le Breton--this soft, smiling vision in
+white?</p>
+<p>He expected to have found a martyr, pale and wan from the shock
+of the catastrophe which had befallen her, and, even amid the
+intoxication of his own great day, he was not easy as to how she
+might have taken his behavior on the fatal night. But here was some
+one, all joy, animation, and indulgence--a glorified Julie who trod
+on air. Why? Because good-fortune had befallen her friend? His
+heart smote him. He had never seen her so touching, so charming.
+Since the incubus of Lady Henry's house and presence had been
+removed she seemed to have grown years younger. A white muslin
+dress of her youth, touched here and there by the Duchess's maid,
+replaced the familiar black satin. When Warkworth first saw her he
+paused unconsciously in surprise.</p>
+<p>Then he advanced to meet her, broadly smiling, his blue eyes
+dancing.</p>
+<p>"You got my note this morning?"</p>
+<p>"Yes," she said, demurely. "You were much too kind, and
+much--much too absurd. I have done nothing."</p>
+<p>"Oh, nothing, of course." Then, after a moment: "Are you going
+to tie me to that fiction, or am I to be allowed a little decent
+sincerity? You know perfectly well that you have done it all.
+There, there; give me your hand."</p>
+<p>She gave it, shrinking, and he kissed it joyously.</p>
+<p>"Isn't it jolly!" he said, with a school-boy's delight as he
+released her hand. "I saw Lord M---- this morning." He named the
+Prime Minister. "Very civil, indeed. Then the
+Commander-in-Chief--and Montresor gave me half an hour. It is all
+right. They are giving me a capital staff. Excellent fellows, all
+of them. Oh, you'll see, I shall pull it through--I shall pull it
+through. By George! it is a chance!"</p>
+<p>And he stood radiant, rubbing his hands over the blaze.</p>
+<p>The Duchess came in accompanied by an elderly cousin of the
+Duke's, a white-haired, black-gowned spinster, Miss Emily
+Lawrence--one of those single women, travelled, cultivated, and
+good, that England produces in such abundance.</p>
+<p>"Well, so you're going," said the Duchess, to Warkworth. "And I
+hear that we ought to think you a lucky man."</p>
+<p>"Indeed you ought, and you must," he said, gayly. "If only the
+climate will behave itself. The blackwater fever has a way of
+killing you in twenty-four hours if it gets hold of you; but short
+of that--"</p>
+<p>"Oh, you will be quite safe," said the Duchess. "Let me
+introduce you to Miss Lawrence. Emily, this is Captain
+Warkworth."</p>
+<p>The elderly lady gave a sudden start. Then she quietly put on
+her spectacles and studied the young soldier with a pair of
+intelligent gray eyes.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Nothing could have been more agreeable than Warkworth at dinner.
+Even the Duchess admitted as much. He talked easily, but not too
+much, of the task before him; told amusing tales of his sporting
+experience of years back in the same regions which were now to be
+the scene of his mission; discussed the preparations he would have
+to make at Denga, the coast town, before starting on his five
+weeks' journey to the interior; drew the native porter and the
+native soldier, not to their advantage, and let fall, by the way,
+not a few wise or vivacious remarks as to the races, resources, and
+future of this illimitable and mysterious Africa--this cavern of
+the unknown, into which the waves of white invasion, one upon
+another, were now pressing fast and ceaselessly, towards what goal,
+only the gods knew.</p>
+<p>A few other men were dining; among them two officers from the
+staff of the Commander-in-Chief. Warkworth, much their junior,
+treated them with a skilful deference; but through the talk that
+prevailed his military competence and prestige appeared plainly
+enough, even to the women. His good opinion of himself was indeed
+sufficiently evident; but there was no crude vainglory. At any
+rate, it was a vainglory of youth, ability, and good looks,
+ratified by these budding honors thus fresh upon him, and no one
+took it amiss.</p>
+<p>When the gentlemen returned to the drawing-room, Warkworth and
+Julie once more found themselves together, this time in the
+Duchess's little sitting-room at the end of the long suite of
+rooms.</p>
+<p>"When do you go?" she asked him, abruptly.</p>
+<p>"Not for about a month." He mentioned the causes of delay.</p>
+<p>"That will bring you very late--into the worst of the heat?" Her
+voice had a note of anxiety.</p>
+<p>"Oh, we shall all be seasoned men. And after the first few days
+we shall get into the uplands."</p>
+<p>"What do your home people say?" she asked him, rather shyly. She
+knew, in truth, little about them.</p>
+<p>"My mother? Oh, she will be greatly pleased. I go down to the
+Isle of Wight for a day or two to see her to-morrow. But now, dear
+lady, that is enough of my wretched self. You--do you stay on here
+with the Duchess?"</p>
+<p>She told him of the house in Heribert Street. He listened with
+attention.</p>
+<p>"Nothing could be better. You will have a most distinguished
+little setting of your own, and Lady Henry will repent at leisure.
+You won't be lonely?"</p>
+<p>"Oh no!" But her smile was linked with a sigh.</p>
+<p>He came nearer to her.</p>
+<p>"You should never be lonely if I could help it," he said, in a
+low voice.</p>
+<p>"When people are nameless and kinless," was her passionate
+reply, in the same undertone as his, "they must be lonely."</p>
+<p>He looked at her with eagerness. She lay back in the firelight,
+her beautiful brow and eyes softly illuminated. He felt within him
+a sudden snapping of restraints. Why--why refuse what was so
+clearly within his grasp? Love has many manners--many
+entrances--and many exits.</p>
+<p>"When will you tell me all that I want to know about you?" he
+said, bending towards her with tender insistence. "There is so much
+I have to ask."</p>
+<p>"Oh, some time," she said, hurriedly, her pulses quickening.
+"Mine is not a story to be told on a great day like this."</p>
+<p>He was silent a moment, but his face spoke for him.</p>
+<p>"Our friendship has been a beautiful thing, hasn't it?" he said,
+at last, in a voice of emotion. "Look here!" He thrust his hand
+into his breast-pocket and half withdrew it. "Do you see where I
+carry your letters?"</p>
+<p>"You shouldn't--they are not worthy."</p>
+<p>"How charming you are in that dress--in that light! I shall
+always see you as you are to-night."</p>
+<p>A silence. Excitement mounted in their veins. Suddenly he
+stooped and kissed her hands. They looked into each other's eyes,
+and the seconds passed like hours.</p>
+<p>Presently, in the nearer drawing-room, there was a sound of
+approaching voices and they moved apart.</p>
+<p>"Julie, Emily Lawrence is going," said the Duchess's voice,
+pitched in what seemed to Julie a strange and haughty note.
+"Captain Warkworth, Miss Lawrence thinks that you and she have
+common friends--Lady Blanche Moffatt and her daughter."</p>
+<p>Captain Warkworth murmured some conventionality, and passed into
+the next drawing-room with Miss Lawrence.</p>
+<p>Julie rose to her feet, the color dying out of her face, her
+passionate eyes on the Duchess, who stood facing her friend,
+guiltily pale, and ready to cry.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="XIV"></a>XIV</h2>
+<br>
+<p>On the morning following these events, Warkworth went down to
+the Isle of Wight to see his mother. On the journey he thought much
+of Julie. They had parted awkwardly the night before. The evening,
+which had promised so well, had, after all, lacked finish and
+point. What on earth had that tiresome Miss Lawrence wanted with
+him? They had talked of Simla and the Moffatts. The conversation
+had gone in spurts, she looking at him every now and then with eyes
+that seemed to say more than her words. All that she had actually
+said was perfectly insignificant and trivial. Yet there was
+something curious in her manner, and when the time came for him to
+take his departure she had bade him a frosty little farewell.</p>
+<p>She had described herself once or twice as a <i>great</i> friend
+of Lady Blanche Moffatt. Was it possible?</p>
+<p>But if Lady Blanche, whose habits of sentimental indiscretion
+were ingrained, <i>had</i> gossiped to this lady, what then? Why
+should he be frowned on by Miss Lawrence, or anybody else? That
+malicious talk at Simla had soon exhausted itself. His present
+appointment was a triumphant answer to it all. His
+slanderers--including Aileen's ridiculous guardians--could only
+look foolish if they pursued the matter any further. What "trap"
+was there--what <i>m&eacute;salliance</i>? A successful soldier was
+good enough for anybody. Look at the first Lord Clyde, and scores
+besides.</p>
+<p>The Duchess, too. Why had she treated him so well at first, and
+so cavalierly after dinner? Her manners were really too
+uncertain.</p>
+<p>What was the matter, and why did she dislike him? He pondered
+over it a good deal, and with much soreness of spirit. Like many
+men capable of very selfish or very cruel conduct, he was extremely
+sensitive, and took keen notice of the fact that a person liked or
+disliked him.</p>
+<p>If the Duchess disliked him it could not be merely on account of
+the Simla story, even though the old maid might conceivably have
+given her a jaundiced account. The Duchess knew nothing of Aileen,
+and was little influenced, so far as he had observed her, by
+considerations of abstract justice or propriety, affecting persons
+whom she had never seen.</p>
+<p>No, she was Julie's friend, the little wilful lady, and it was
+for Julie she ruffled her feathers, like an angry dove.</p>
+<p>So his thoughts had come back to Julie, though, indeed, it
+seemed to him that they were never far from her. As he looked
+absently from the train windows on the flying landscape, Julie's
+image hovered between him and it--a magic sun, flooding soul and
+senses with warmth. How unconsciously, how strangely his feelings
+had changed towards her! That coolness of temper and nerve he had
+been able to preserve towards her for so long was, indeed, breaking
+down. He recognized the danger, and wondered where it would lead
+him. What a fascinating, sympathetic creature!--and, by George!
+what she had done for him!</p>
+<p>Aileen! Aileen was a little sylph, a pretty child-angel,
+white-winged and innocent, who lived in a circle of convent
+thoughts, knowing nothing of the world, and had fallen in love with
+him as the first man who had ever made love to her. But this
+intelligent, full-blooded woman, who could understand at a word, or
+a half word, who had a knowledge of affairs which many a
+high-placed man might envy, with whom one never had a dull
+moment--this courted, distinguished Julie Le Breton--his mind
+swelled with half-guilty pride at the thought that for six months
+he had absorbed all her energies, that a word from him could make
+her smile or sigh, that he could force her to look at him with eyes
+so melting and so troubled as those with which she had given him
+her hands--her slim, beautiful hands--that night in Grosvenor
+Square.</p>
+<p>How freedom became her! Dependency had dropped from her, like a
+cast-off cloak, and beside her fresh, melancholy charm, the airs
+and graces of a child of fashion and privilege like the little
+Duchess appeared almost cheap and trivial. Poor Julie! No doubt
+some social struggle was before her. Lady Henry was strong, after
+all, in this London world, and the solider and stupider people who
+get their way in the end were not, she thought, likely to side with
+Lady Henry's companion in a quarrel where the facts of the story
+were unquestionably, at first sight, damaging to Miss Le Breton.
+Julie would have her hours of bitterness and humiliation; and she
+would conquer by boldness, if she conquered at all--by originality,
+by determining to live her own life. That would preserve for her
+the small circle, if it lost her the large world. And the small
+circle was what she lived for, what she ought, at any rate, to live
+for.</p>
+<p>It was not likely she would marry. Why should she desire it?
+From any blundering tragedy a woman of so acute a brain would, of
+course, know how to protect herself. But within the limits of her
+life, why should she refuse herself happiness, intimacy, love?</p>
+<p>His heart beat fast; his thoughts were in a whirl. But the train
+was nearing Portsmouth, and with an effort he recalled his mind to
+the meeting with his mother, which was then close upon him.</p>
+<p>He spent nearly a week in the little cottage at Sea View, and
+Mrs. Warkworth got far more pleasure than usual, poor lady, out of
+his visit. She was a thin, plain woman, not devoid of either
+ability or character. But life had gone hardly with her, and since
+her husband's death what had been reserve had become melancholy.
+She had always been afraid of her only son since they had sent him
+to Charterhouse, and he had become so much "finer" than his
+parents. She knew that he must consider her a very ignorant and
+narrow-minded person; when he was with her she was humiliated in
+her own eyes, though as soon as he was gone she resumed what was in
+truth a leading place among her own small circle.</p>
+<p>She loved him, and was proud of him; yet at the bottom of her
+heart she had never absolved him from his father's death. But for
+his extravagance, and the misfortunes he had brought upon them, her
+old general would be alive still--pottering about in the spring
+sunshine, spudding the daisies from the turf, or smoking his pipe
+beneath the thickening trees. Silently her heart still yearned and
+hungered for the husband of her youth; his son did not replace
+him.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, when he came down to her with this halo of glory
+upon him, and smoked up and down her small garden through the mild
+spring days, gossiping to her of all the great things that had
+befallen him, repeating to her, word for word, his conversation
+with the Prime Minister, and his interview with the
+Commander-in-Chief, or making her read all the letters of
+congratulation he had received, her mother's heart thawed within
+her as it had not done for long. Her ears told her that he was
+still vain and a boaster; her memory held the indelible records of
+his past selfishness; but as he walked beside her, his fair hair
+blown back from his handsome brow, and eyes that were so much
+younger than the rest of the face, his figure as spare and boyish
+now as when he had worn the colors of the Charterhouse eleven, she
+said to herself, in that inward and unsuspected colloquy she was
+always holding with her own heart about him, that if his father
+could have seen him now he would have forgiven him everything.
+According to her secret Evangelical faith, God "deals" with every
+soul he has created--through joy or sorrow, through good or evil
+fortune. He had dealt with herself through anguish and loss. Henry,
+it seemed, was to be moulded through prosperity. His good fortune
+was already making a better man of him.</p>
+<p>Certainly he was more affectionate and thoughtful than before.
+He would have liked to give her money, of which he seemed to have
+an unusual store; but she bade him keep what he had for his own
+needs. Her own little bit of money, saved from the wreck of their
+fortunes, was enough for her. Then he went into Ryde and brought
+her back a Shetland shawl and a new table-cloth for her little
+sitting-room, which she accepted with a warmer kiss than she had
+given him for years.</p>
+<p>He left her on a bright, windy morning which flecked the blue
+Solent with foam and sent the clouds racing to westward. She walked
+back along the sands, thinking anxiously of the African climate and
+the desert hard-ships he was going to face. And she wondered what
+significance there might be in the fact that he had written twice
+during his stay with her to a Miss Le Breton, whose name,
+nevertheless, he had not mentioned in their conversations. Well, he
+would marry soon, she supposed, and marry well, in circles out of
+her ken. With the common prejudice of the English middle class, she
+hoped that if this Miss Le Breton were his choice, she might be
+only French in name and not in blood.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Warkworth sped up to London in high spirits, enjoying
+the comforts of a good conscience.</p>
+<p>He drove first to his club, where a pile of letters awaited
+him--some letters of congratulation, others concerned with the
+business of his mission. He enjoyed the first, noticing jealously
+who had and who had not written to him; then he applied himself to
+the second. His mind worked vigorously and well; he wrote his
+replies in a manner that satisfied him. Then throwing himself into
+a chair, with a cigar, he gave himself up to the close and shrewd
+planning of the preparations necessary for his five weeks' march,
+or to the consideration of two or three alternative lines of action
+which would open before him as soon as he should find himself
+within the boundaries of Mokembe. Some five years before, the
+government of the day had sent a small expedition to this Debatable
+Land, which had failed disastrously, both from the diplomatic and
+the military points of view. He went backward and forward to the
+shelves of the fine "Service" library which surrounded him, taking
+down the books and reports which concerned this expedition. He
+buried himself in them for an hour, then threw them aside with
+contempt. What blunders and short-sight everywhere! The general
+public might well talk of the stupidity of English officers. And
+blunders so easily avoided, too! It was sickening. He felt within
+himself a fulness of energy and intelligence, a perspicacity of
+brain which judged mistakes of this kind unpardonable.</p>
+<p>As he was replacing some of the books he had been using in the
+shelves, the club began to fill up with men coming in to lunch. A
+great many congratulated him; and a certain number who of old had
+hardly professed to know him greeted him with cordiality. He found
+himself caught in a series of short but flattering conversations,
+in which he bore himself well--neither over-discreet nor too elate.
+"I declare that fellow's improved," said one man, who might
+certainly have counted as Warkworth's enemy the week before, to his
+companion at table. "The government's been beastly remiss so far.
+Hope he'll pull it off. Ripping chance, anyway. Though what they
+gave it to him for, goodness knows! There were a dozen fellows, at
+least, did as well as he in the Mahsud business. And the
+Staff-College man had a thousand times more claim."</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, Warkworth felt the general opinion friendly, a
+little surprised, no doubt, but showing that readiness to believe
+in the man coming to the front, which belongs much more to the
+generous than to the calculating side of the English character.
+Insensibly his mental and moral stature rose. He exchanged a few
+words on his way out with one of the most distinguished members of
+the club, a man of European reputation, whom he had seen the week
+before in the Commander-in-Chief's room at the War Office. The
+great man spoke to him with marked friendliness, and Warkworth
+walked on air as he went his way. Potentially he felt himself the
+great man's equal; the gates of life seemed to be opening before
+him.</p>
+<p>And with the rise of fortune came a rush of magnanimous
+resolution. No more shady episodes; no more mean devices; no more
+gambling, and no more debt. <i>Major</i> Warkworth's sheet was
+clean, and it should remain so. A man of his prospects must run
+straight.</p>
+<p>He felt himself at peace with all the world. By-the-way, just
+time to jump into a cab and get to Park Crescent in time for his
+sister's luncheon. His last interview with his brother-in-law had
+not been agreeable. But now--he felt for the check-book in his
+pocket--he was in a position to repay at least half the last sum of
+money which Bella had lent him. He would go and give it her now,
+and report news of the mother. And if the two chicks were
+there--why, he had a free hour and he would take them to the
+Zoo--he vowed he would!--give them something pleasant to remember
+their uncle by.</p>
+<p>And a couple of hours later a handsome, soldierly man might have
+been seen in the lion-house at the Zoo, leading a plump little girl
+by either hand. Rose and Katie Mullins enjoyed a golden time, and
+started a wholly new adoration for the uncle who had so far taken
+small notice of them, and was associated in their shrewd, childish
+minds rather with tempests at home than buns abroad. But this time
+buns, biscuits, hansom-drives and elephant-rides were showered upon
+them by an uncle who seemed to make no account of money, while his
+gracious and captivating airs set their little hearts beating in a
+common devotion.</p>
+<p>"Now go home--go home, little beggars!" said that golden
+gentleman, as he packed them into a hansom and stood on the step to
+accept a wet kiss on his mustache from each pink mouth. "Tell your
+mother all about it, and don't forget your uncle Harry. There's a
+shilling for each of you. Don't you spend it on sweets. You're
+quite fat enough already. Good-bye!"</p>
+<p>"That's the hardest work I've done for many a long day," he said
+to himself, with a sigh of relief, as the hansom drove away. "I
+sha'n't turn nurse-maid when other trades fail. But they're nice
+little kids all the same.</p>
+<p>"Now, then, Cox's--and the City"--he ran over the list of his
+engagements for the afternoon--"and by five o'clock shall I find my
+fair lady--at home--and established? Where on earth is Heribert
+Street?"</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>He solved the question, for a few minutes after five he was on
+Miss Le Breton's doorstep. A quaint little house--and a strange
+parlor-maid! For the door was opened to him by a large-eyed, sickly
+child, who looked at him with the bewilderment of one trying to
+follow out instructions still strange to her.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="illus-242.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/illus-242.jpg"><img src=
+"images/illus-242.jpg" width="50%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"HE ENTERED UPON A MERRY SCENE"</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>"Yes, sir, Miss Le Breton is in the drawing-room," she said, in
+a sweet, deliberate voice with a foreign accent, and she led the
+way through the hall.</p>
+<p>Poor little soul--what a twisted back, and what a limp! She
+looked about fourteen, but was probably older. Where had Julie
+discovered her?</p>
+<p>Warkworth looked round him at the little hall with its relics of
+country-house sports and amusements; his eye travelled through an
+open door to the little dining-room and the Russell pastels of Lady
+Mary's parents, as children, hanging on the wall. The
+<i>character</i> of the little dwelling impressed itself at once.
+Smiling; he acknowledged its congruity with Julie. Here was a lady
+who fell on her feet!</p>
+<p>The child, leading him, opened the door to the left.</p>
+<p>"Please walk in, sir," she said, shyly, and stood aside.</p>
+<p>As the door opened, Warkworth was conscious of a noise of
+tongues.</p>
+<p>So Julie was not alone? He prepared his manner accordingly.</p>
+<p>He entered upon a merry scene. Jacob Delafield was standing on a
+chair, hanging a picture, while Dr. Meredith and Julie, on either
+side, directed or criticised the operation. Meredith carried
+picture-cord and scissors; Julie the hammer and nails. Meredith was
+expressing the profoundest disbelief in Jacob's practical
+capacities; Jacob was defending himself hotly; and Julie laughed at
+both.</p>
+<p>Towards the other end of the room stood the tea-table, between
+the fire and an open window. Lord Lackington sat beside it, smiling
+to himself, and stroking a Persian kitten. Through the open window
+the twinkling buds on the lilacs in the Cureton House garden shone
+in the still lingering sun. A recent shower had left behind it
+odors of earth and grass. Even in this London air they spoke of the
+spring--the spring which already in happier lands was drawing veils
+of peach and cherry blossom, over the red Sienese earth or the
+green terraces of Como. The fire crackled in the grate. The pretty,
+old-fashioned room was fragrant with hyacinth and narcissus;
+Julie's books lay on the tables; Julie's hand and taste were
+already to be felt everywhere. And Lord Lackington with the kitten,
+beside the fire, gave the last touch of home and domesticity.</p>
+<p>"So I find you established?" said Warkworth, smiling, to the
+lady with the nails, while Delafield nodded to him from the top of
+the steps and Meredith ceased to chatter.</p>
+<p>"I haven't a hand, I fear," said Julie. "Will you have some tea?
+Ah, L&eacute;onie, tu vas en faire de nouveau, n'est-ce pas, pour
+ce monsieur?"</p>
+<p>A little woman in black, with a shawl over her shoulders, had
+just glided into the room. She had a small, wrinkled face, bright
+eyes, and a much-flattened nose.</p>
+<p>"Tout de suite, monsieur," she said, quickly, and disappeared
+with the teapot. Warkworth guessed, of course, that she was Madame
+Bornier, the foster-sister--the "Propriety" of this
+<i>m&eacute;nage</i>.</p>
+<p>"Can't I help?" he said to Julie, with a look at Delafield.</p>
+<p>"It's just done," she said, coldly, handing a nail to Delafield.
+"<i>Just</i> a trifle more to the right. Ecco! Perfection!"</p>
+<p>"Oh, you spoil him," said Meredith, "And not one word of praise
+for me!"</p>
+<p>"What have you done?" she said, laughing. "Tangled the
+cord--that's all!"</p>
+<p>Warkworth turned away. His face, so radiant as he entered, had
+settled into sharp, sudden lines. What was the meaning of this
+voice, this manner? He remembered that to his three letters he had
+received no word of reply. But he had interpreted that to mean that
+she was in the throes of moving and could find no time to
+write.</p>
+<p>As he neared the tea-table, Lord Lackington looked up. He
+greeted the new-comer with the absent stateliness he generally put
+on when his mind was in a state of confusion as to a person's
+identity.</p>
+<p>"Well, so they're sending you to D----? There'll be a row there
+before long. Wish you joy of the missionaries!"</p>
+<p>"No, not D----," said Warkworth, smiling. "Nothing so amusing.
+Mokembe's my destination."</p>
+<p>"Oh, Mokembe!" said Lord Lackington, a little abashed. "That's
+where Cecil Ray, Lord R's second son, was killed last
+year--lion-hunting? No, it was of fever that he died. By-the-way, a
+vile climate!"</p>
+<p>"In the plains, yes," said Warkworth, seating himself. "As to
+the uplands, I understand they are to be the Switzerland of
+Africa."</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington did not appear to listen.</p>
+<p>"Are you a homoeopath?" he said, suddenly, rising to his full
+and immense stature and looking down with eagerness on
+Warkworth.</p>
+<p>"No. Why?"</p>
+<p>"Because it's your only chance, for those parts. If Cecil Ray
+had had their medicines with him he'd be alive now. Look here; when
+do you start?" The speaker took out his note-book.</p>
+<p>"In rather less than a month I start for Denga."</p>
+<p>"All right. I'll send you a medicine-case--from Epps. If you're
+ill, take 'em."</p>
+<p>"You're very good."</p>
+<p>"Not at all. It's my hobby--one of the last." A broad, boyish
+smile flashed over the handsome old face. "Look at me; I'm
+seventy-five, and I can tire out my own grandsons at riding and
+shooting. That comes of avoiding all allopathic messes like the
+devil. But the allopaths are such mean fellows they filch all our
+ideas."</p>
+<p>The old man was off. Warkworth submitted to five minutes'
+tirade, stealing a glance sometimes at the group of Julie,
+Meredith, and Delafield in the farther window--at the happy ease
+and fun that seemed to prevail in it. He fiercely felt himself shut
+out and trampled on.</p>
+<p>Suddenly, Lord Lackington pulled up, his instinct for
+declamation qualified by an equally instinctive dread of boring or
+being bored. "What did you think of Montresor's statement?" he
+said, abruptly, referring to a batch of army reforms that Montresor
+the week before had endeavored to recommend to a sceptical House of
+Commons.</p>
+<p>"All very well, as far as it goes," said Warkworth, with a
+shrug.</p>
+<p>"Precisely! We English want an army and a navy; we don't like it
+when those fellows on the Continent swagger in our faces, and yet
+we won't pay either for the ships or the men. However, now that
+they've done away with purchase--Gad! I could fight them in the
+streets for the way in which they've done it!--now that they've
+turned the army into an examination-shop, tempered with jobbery,
+whatever we do, we shall go to the deuce. So it don't matter."</p>
+<p>"You were against the abolition?"</p>
+<p>"I was, sir--with Wellington and Raglan and everybody else of
+any account. And as for the violence, the disgraceful violence with
+which it was carried--"</p>
+<p>"Oh no, no," said Warkworth, laughing. "It was the Lords who
+behaved abominably, and it'll do a deal of good."</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington's eyes flashed.</p>
+<p>"I've had a long life," he said, pugnaciously. "I began as a
+middy in the American war of 1812, that nobody remembers now. Then
+I left the sea for the army. I knocked about the world. I commanded
+a brigade in the Crimea--"</p>
+<p>"Who doesn't remember that?" said Warkworth, smiling.</p>
+<p>The old man acknowledged the homage by a slight inclination of
+his handsome head.</p>
+<p>"And you may take my word for it that this new system will not
+give you men worth <i>a tenth part</i> of those fellows who bought
+and bribed their way in under the old. The philosophers may like
+it, or lump it, but so it is."</p>
+<p>Warkworth dissented strongly. He was a good deal of a
+politician, himself a "new man," and on the side of "new men." Lord
+Lackington warmed to the fight, and Warkworth, with bitterness in
+his heart--because of that group opposite--was nothing loath to
+meet him. But presently he found the talk taking a turn that
+astonished him. He had entered upon a drawing-room discussion of a
+subject which had, after all, been settled, if only by what the
+Tories were pleased to call the <i>coup d'&eacute;tat</i> of the
+Royal Warrant, and no longer excited the passions of a few years
+back. What he had really drawn upon himself was a hand-to-hand
+wrestle with a man who had no sooner provoked contradiction than he
+resented it with all his force, and with a determination to crush
+the contradictor.</p>
+<p>Warkworth fought well, but with a growing amazement at the tone
+and manner of his opponent. The old man's eyes darted war-flames
+under his finely arched brows. He regarded the younger with a more
+and more hostile, even malicious air; his arguments grew personal,
+offensive; his shafts were many and barbed, till at last Warkworth
+felt his face burning and his temper giving way.</p>
+<p>"What <i>are</i> you talking about?" said Julie Le Breton, at
+last, rising and coming towards them.</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington broke off suddenly and threw himself into his
+chair.</p>
+<p>Warkworth rose from his.</p>
+<p>"We had better have been handing nails," he said, "but you
+wouldn't give us any work." Then, as Meredith and Delafield
+approached, he seized the opportunity of saying, in a low
+voice:</p>
+<p>"Am I not to have a word?"</p>
+<p>She turned with composure, though it seemed to him she was very
+pale.</p>
+<p>"Have you just come back from the Isle of Wight?"</p>
+<p>"This morning." He looked her in the eyes. "You got my
+letters?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, but I have had no time for writing. I hope you found your
+mother well."</p>
+<p>"Very well, thank you. You have been hard at work?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, but the Duchess and Mr. Delafield have made it all
+easy."</p>
+<p>And so on, a few more insignificant questions and answers.</p>
+<p>"I must go," said Delafield, coming up to them, "unless there is
+any more work for me to do. Good-bye, Major, I congratulate you.
+They have given you a fine piece of work."</p>
+<p>Warkworth made a little bow, half ironical. Confound the
+fellow's grave and lordly ways! He did not want his
+congratulations.</p>
+<p>He lingered a little, sorely, full of rage, yet not knowing how
+to go.</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington's eyes ceased to blaze, and the kitten ventured
+once more to climb upon his knee. Meredith, too, found a
+comfortable arm-chair, and presently tried to beguile the kitten
+from his neighbor. Julie sat erect between them, very silent, her
+thin, white hands on her lap, her head drooped a little, her eyes
+carefully restrained from meeting Warkworth's. He meanwhile leaned
+against the mantel-piece, irresolute.</p>
+<p>Meredith, it was clear, made himself quite happy and at home in
+the little drawing-room. The lame child came in and took a stool
+beside him. He stroked her head and talked nonsense to her in the
+intervals of holding forth to Julie on the changes necessary in
+some proofs of his which he had brought back. Lord Lackington, now
+quite himself again, went back to dreams, smiling over them, and
+quite unaware that the kitten had been slyly ravished from him. The
+little woman in black sat knitting in the background. It was all
+curiously intimate and domestic, only Warkworth had no part in
+it.</p>
+<p>"Good-bye, Miss Le Breton," he said, at last, hardly knowing his
+own voice. "I am dining out."</p>
+<p>She rose and gave him her hand. But it dropped from his like a
+thing dead and cold. He went out in a sudden suffocation of rage
+and pain; and as he walked in a blind haste to Cureton Street, he
+still saw her standing in the old-fashioned, scented room, so
+coldly graceful, with those proud, deep eyes.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>When he had gone, Julie moved to the window and looked out into
+the gathering dusk. It seemed to her as if those in the room must
+hear the beating of her miserable heart.</p>
+<p>When she rejoined her companions, Dr. Meredith had already risen
+and was stuffing various letters and papers into his pockets with a
+view to departure.</p>
+<p>"Going?" said Lord Lackington. "You shall see the last of me,
+too, Mademoiselle Julie."</p>
+<p>And he stood up. But she, flushing, looked at him with a wistful
+smile.</p>
+<p>"Won't you stay a few minutes? You promised to advise me about
+Th&eacute;r&egrave;se's drawings."</p>
+<p>"By all means."</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington sat down again. The lame child, it appeared, had
+some artistic talent, which Miss Le Breton wished to cultivate.
+Meredith suddenly found his coat and hat, and, with a queer look at
+Julie, departed in a hurry.</p>
+<p>"Th&eacute;r&egrave;se, darling," said Julie, "will you go
+up-stairs, please, and fetch me that book from my room that has
+your little drawings inside it?"</p>
+<p>The child limped away on her errand. In spite of her lameness
+she moved with wonderful lightness and swiftness, and she was back
+again quickly with a calf-bound book in her hand.</p>
+<p>"L&eacute;onie!" said Julie, in a low voice, to Madame
+Bornier.</p>
+<p>The little woman looked up startled, nodded, rolled up her
+knitting in a moment, and was gone.</p>
+<p>"Take the book to his lordship, Th&eacute;r&egrave;se," she
+said, and then, instead of moving with the child, she again walked
+to the window, and, leaning her head against it, looked out. The
+hand hanging against her dress trembled violently.</p>
+<p>"What did you want me to look at, my dear?" said Lord
+Lackington, taking the book in his hand and putting on his
+glasses.</p>
+<p>But the child was puzzled and did not know. She gazed at him
+silently with her sweet, docile look.</p>
+<p>"Run away, Th&eacute;r&egrave;se, and find mother," said Julie,
+from the window.</p>
+<p>The child sped away and closed the door behind her.</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington adjusted his glasses and opened the book. Two or
+three slips of paper with drawings upon them fluttered out and fell
+on the table beneath. Suddenly there was a cry. Julie turned round,
+her lips parted.</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington walked up to her.</p>
+<p>"Tell me what this means," he said, peremptorily. "How did you
+come by it?"</p>
+<p>It was a volume of George Sand. He pointed, trembling, to the
+name and date on the fly-leaf--"Rose Delaney, 1842."</p>
+<p>"It is mine," she said, softly, dropping her eyes.</p>
+<p>"But how--how, in God's name, did you come by it?"</p>
+<p>"My mother left it to me, with all her other few books and
+possessions."</p>
+<p>There was a pause. Lord Lackington came closer.</p>
+<p>"Who was your mother?" he said, huskily.</p>
+<p>The words in answer were hardly audible. Julie stood before him
+like a culprit, her beautiful head humbly bowed.</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington dropped the book and stood bewildered.</p>
+<p>"Rose's child?" he said--"Rose's child?"</p>
+<p>Then, approaching her, he placed his hand on her arm.</p>
+<p>"Let me look at you," he commanded.</p>
+<p>Julie raised her eyes to him, and at the same time dumbly held
+out to him a miniature she had been keeping hidden in her hand. It
+was one of the miniatures from the locked triptych.</p>
+<p>He took it, looked from the pictured to the living face, then,
+turning away with a groan, he covered his face with his hands and
+fell again into the chair from which he had risen.</p>
+<p>Julie hurried to him. Her own eyes were wet with tears. After a
+moment's hesitation she knelt down beside him.</p>
+<p>"I ought to ask your pardon for not having told you before," she
+murmured.</p>
+<p>It was some time before Lord Lackington looked up. When at last
+his hands dropped, the face they uncovered was very white and
+old.</p>
+<p>"So you," he said, almost in a whisper, "are the child she wrote
+to me about before she died?"</p>
+<p>Julie made a sign of assent.</p>
+<p>"How old are you?"</p>
+<p>"Twenty-nine."</p>
+<p>"<i>She</i> was thirty-two when I saw her last."</p>
+<p>There was a silence. Julie lifted one of his hands and kissed
+it. But he took no notice.</p>
+<p>"You know that I was going to her, that I should have reached
+her in time"--the words seemed wrung from him--"but that I was
+myself dangerously ill?"</p>
+<p>"I know. I remember it all."</p>
+<p>"Did she speak of me?"</p>
+<p>"Not often. She was very reserved, you remember. But not long
+before she died--she seemed half asleep--I heard her say,
+'Papa!--Blanche!' and she smiled."</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington's face contracted, and the slow tears of old age
+stood in his eyes.</p>
+<p>"You are like her in some ways," he said, brusquely, as though
+to cover his emotion; "but not very like her."</p>
+<p>"She always thought I was like you."</p>
+<p>A cloud came over Lord Lackington's face. Julie rose from her
+knees and sat beside him. He lost himself a few moments amid the
+painful ghosts of memory. Then, turning to her abruptly, he
+said:</p>
+<p>"You have wondered, I dare say, why I was so hard--why, for
+seventeen years, I cast her off?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, often. You could have come to see us without anybody
+knowing. Mother loved you very much."</p>
+<p>Her voice was low and sad. Lord Lackington rose, fidgeted
+restlessly with some of the small ornaments on the mantel-piece,
+and at last turned to her.</p>
+<p>"She brought dishonor," he said, in the same stifled voice, "and
+the women of our family have always been stainless. But that I
+could have forgiven. After a time I should have resumed
+relations--private relations--with her. But it was your father who
+stood in the way. I was then--I am now--you saw me with that young
+fellow just now--quarrelsome and hot-tempered. It is my nature." He
+drew himself up obstinately. "I can't help it. I take great pains
+to inform myself, then I cling to my opinions tenaciously, and in
+argument my temper gets the better of me. Your father, too, was
+hot-tempered. He came, with my consent, once to see me--after your
+mother had left her husband--to try and bring about some
+arrangement between us. It was the Chartist time. He was a Radical,
+a Socialist of the most extreme views. In the course of our
+conversation something was said that excited him. He went off at
+score. I became enraged, and met him with equal violence. We had a
+furious argument, which ended in each insulting the other past
+forgiveness. We parted enemies for life. I never could bring myself
+to see him afterwards, nor to run the risk of seeing him. Your
+mother took his side and espoused his opinions while he lived.
+After his death, I suppose, she was too proud and sore to write to
+me. I wrote to her once--it was not the letter it might have been.
+She did not reply till she felt herself dying. That is the
+explanation of what, no doubt, must seem strange to you."</p>
+<br>
+<a name="illus-254.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/illus-254.jpg"><img src=
+"images/illus-254.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"'FOR MY ROSE'S CHILD,' HE SAID, GENTLY"</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>He turned to her almost pleadingly. A deep flush had replaced
+the pallor of his first emotion, as though in the presence of these
+primal realities of love, death, and sorrow which she had recalled
+to him, his old quarrel, on a political difference, cut but a
+miserable figure.</p>
+<p>"No," she said, sadly, "not very strange. I understood my
+father--my dear father," she added, with soft, deliberate
+tenderness.</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington was silent a little, then he threw her a sudden,
+penetrating look.</p>
+<p>"You have been in London three years. You ought to have told me
+before."</p>
+<p>It was Julie's turn to color.</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry bound me to secrecy."</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry did wrong," he said, with emphasis. Then he asked,
+jealously, with a touch of his natural irascibility, "Who else has
+been in the secret?"</p>
+<p>"Four people, at most--the Duchess, first of all. I couldn't
+help it," she pleaded. "I was so unhappy with Lady Henry."</p>
+<p>"You should have come to me. It was my right."</p>
+<p>"But"--she dropped her head--"you had made it a condition that I
+should not trouble you."</p>
+<p>He was silenced; and once more he leaned against the
+mantel-piece and hid his face from her, till, by a secret impulse,
+both moved. She rose and approached him; he laid his hands on her
+arms. With his persistent instinct for the lovely or romantic he
+perceived, with sudden pleasure, the grave, poetic beauty of her
+face and delicate form. Emotion had softened away all that was
+harsh; a quivering charm hovered over the features. With a strange
+pride, and a sense of mystery, he recognized his daughter and his
+race.</p>
+<p>"For my Rose's child," he said, gently, and, stooping, he kissed
+her on the brow. She broke out into weeping, leaning against his
+shoulder, while the old man comforted and soothed her.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="XV"></a>XV</h2>
+<br>
+<p>After the long conversation between herself and Lord Lackington
+which followed on the momentous confession of her identity, Julie
+spent a restless and weary evening, which passed into a restless
+and weary night. Was she oppressed by this stirring of old
+sorrows?--haunted afresh by her parents' fate?</p>
+<p>Ah! Lord Lackington had no sooner left her than she sank
+motionless into her chair, and, with the tears excited by the
+memories of her mother still in her eyes, she gave herself up to a
+desperate and sombre brooding, of which Warkworth's visit of the
+afternoon was, in truth, the sole cause, the sole subject.</p>
+<p>Why had she received him so? She had gone too far--much too far.
+But, somehow, she had not been able to bear it--that buoyant,
+confident air, that certainty of his welcome. No! She would show
+him that she was <i>not</i> his chattel, to be taken or left on his
+own terms. The, careless good-humor of his blue eyes was too much,
+after those days she had passed through.</p>
+<p>He, apparently, to judge from his letters to her from the Isle
+of Wight, had been conscious of no crisis whatever. Yet he must
+have seen from the little Duchess's manner, as she bade farewell to
+him that night at Crowborough House, that something was wrong. He
+must have realized that Miss Lawrence was an intimate friend of the
+Moffatts, and that--Or was he really so foolish as to suppose that
+his quasi-engagement to this little heiress, and the encouragement
+given him, in defiance of the girl's guardians, by her silly and
+indiscreet mother, were still hidden and secret matters?--that he
+could still conceal them from the world, and deny them to
+Julie?</p>
+<p>Her whole nature was sore yet from her wrestle with the Duchess
+on that miserable evening.</p>
+<p>"Julie, I can't help it! I know it's impertinent--but--Julie,
+darling!--do listen! What business has that man to make love to you
+as he does, when all the time--Yes, he does make love to you--he
+does! Freddie had a most ill-natured letter from Lady Henry this
+morning. Of course he had--and of course she'll write that kind of
+letter to as many people as she can. And it wouldn't matter a bit,
+if--But, you see, you <i>have</i> been moving heaven and earth for
+him! And now his manner to you" (while the sudden flush burned her
+cheek, Julie wondered whether by chance the Duchess had seen
+anything of the yielded hands and the kiss) "and that ill-luck of
+his being the first to arrive, last night, at Lady Henry's! Oh,
+Julie, he's a wretch--<i>he is!</i> Of course he is in love with
+you. That's natural enough. But all the time--listen, that nice
+woman told me the whole story--he's writing regularly to that
+little girl. She and her mother, in spite of the guardians, regard
+it as an engagement signed and sealed, and all his friends believe
+he's <i>quite</i> determined to marry her because of the money. You
+may think me an odious little meddler, Julie, if you like, but I
+vow I could stab him to the heart, with all the pleasure in
+life!"</p>
+<p>And neither the annoyance, nor the dignity, nor the ridicule of
+the supposed victim--not Julie's angry eyes, nor all her mocking
+words from tremulous lips--had availed in the least to silence the
+tumult of alarmed affection in the Duchess's breast. Her Julie had
+been flouted and trifled with; and if she was so blind, so
+infatuated, as not to see it, she should at least be driven to
+realize what other people felt about it.</p>
+<p>So she had her say, and Julie had been forced, willy-nilly, upon
+discussion and self-defence--nay, upon a promise also. Pale, and
+stiffly erect, yet determined all the same to treat it as a
+laughing matter, she had vouchsafed the Duchess some kind of
+assurance that she would for the future observe a more cautious
+behavior towards Warkworth. "He is my <i>friend</i>, and whatever
+any one may say, he shall remain so," she had said, with a smiling
+stubbornness which hid something before which the little Duchess
+shrank. "But, of course, if I can do anything to please you,
+Evelyn--you know I like to please you."</p>
+<p>But she had never meant, she had never promised to forswear his
+society, to ban him from the new house. In truth she would rather
+have left home and friends and prospects, at one stroke, rather
+than have pledged herself to anything of the sort. Evelyn should
+never bind her to that.</p>
+<p>Then, during his days of absence, she had passed through wave
+after wave of feeling, while all the time to the outer eye she was
+occupied with nothing but the settlement into Lady Mary's strange
+little house. She washed, dusted, placed chairs and tables. And
+meanwhile a wild expectancy of his first letter possessed her.
+Surely there would be some anxiety in it, some fear, some
+disclosure of himself, and of the struggle in his mind between
+interest and love?</p>
+<p>Nothing of the kind. His first letter was the letter of one sure
+of his correspondent, sure of his reception and of his ground; a
+happy and intimate certainty shone through its phrases; it was the
+letter, almost, of a lover whose doubts are over.</p>
+<p>The effect of it was to raise a tempest, sharp and obscure, in
+Julie's mind. The contrast between the <i>pose</i> of the letter
+and the sly reality behind bred a sudden anguish of jealousy,
+concerned not so much with Warkworth as with this little, unknown
+creature, who, without any effort, any desert--by the mere virtue
+of money and blood--sat waiting in arrogant expectancy till what
+she desired should come to her. How was it possible to feel any
+compunction towards her? Julie felt none.</p>
+<p>As to the rest of Miss Lawrence's gossip--that Warkworth was
+supposed to have "behaved badly," to have led the pretty child to
+compromise herself with him at Simla in ways which Simla society
+regarded as inadmissible and "bad form"; that the guardians had
+angrily intervened, and that he was under a promise, habitually
+broken by the connivance of the girl's mother, not to see or
+correspond with the heiress till she was twenty-one, in other
+words, for the next two years--what did these things matter to her?
+Had she ever supposed that Warkworth, in regard to money or his
+career, was influenced by any other than the ordinary worldly
+motives? She knew very well that he was neither saint nor ascetic.
+These details--or accusations--did not, properly speaking, concern
+her at all. She had divined and accepted his character, in all its
+average human selfishness and faultiness, long ago. She loved him
+passionately in spite of it--perhaps, if the truth were known,
+because of it.</p>
+<p>As for the marrying, or rather the courting, for money, that
+excited in her no repulsion whatever. Julie, in her own way, was a
+great romantic; but owing to the economic notions of marriage,
+especially the whole conception of the <i>dot</i>, prevailing in
+the French or Belgian minds amid whom she had passed her later
+girlhood, she never dreamed for a moment of blaming Warkworth for
+placing money foremost in his plans of matrimony. She resembled one
+of the famous <i>amoureuses</i> of the eighteenth century, who in
+writing to the man she loved but could not marry, advises him to
+take a wife to mend his fortunes, and proposes to him various
+tempting morsels--<i>une jeune personne</i>, sixteen, with neither
+father nor mother, only a brother. "They will give her on her
+marriage thirteen thousand francs a year, and the aunt will be
+quite content to keep her and look after her for some time." And if
+that won't do--"I know a man who would be only too happy to have
+you for a son-in-law; but his daughter is only eleven; she is an
+only child, however, and she will be <i>very</i> rich. You know,
+<i>mon ami</i>, I desire your happiness above all things; how to
+procure it--there lies the chief interest of my life."</p>
+<p>This notion of things, more or less disguised, was to Julie
+customary and familiar; and it was no more incompatible in her with
+the notions and standards of high sentiment, such as she might be
+supposed to have derived from her parents, than it is in the Latin
+races generally.</p>
+<p>No doubt it had been mingled in her, especially since her
+settlement in Lady Henry's house, with the more English idea of
+"falling in love"--the idea which puts personal choice first in
+marriage, and makes the matter of dowry subordinate to that
+mysterious election and affinity which the Englishman calls "love."
+Certainly, during the winter, Julie had hoped to lead Warkworth to
+marry her. As a poor man, of course, he must have money. But her
+secret feeling had been that her place in society, her influence
+with important people, had a money value, and that he would
+perceive this.</p>
+<p>Well, she had been a mere trusting fool, and he had deceived
+her. There was his crime--not in seeking money and trusting to
+money. He had told her falsehoods and misled her. He was doing it
+still. His letter implied that he loved her? Possibly. It implied
+to Julie's ear still more plainly that he stood tacitly and
+resolutely by Aileen Moffatt and her money, and that all he was
+prepared to offer to the dear friend of his heart was a more or
+less ambiguous relation, lasting over two years perhaps--till his
+engagement might be announced.</p>
+<p>A dumb and bitter anger mounted within her. She recalled the
+manner in which he had evaded her first questions, and her opinion
+became very much that of the Duchess. She had, indeed, been mocked,
+and treated like a child. So she sent no answer to his first
+letter, and when his second came she forbade herself to open it. It
+lay there on her writing-table. At night she transferred it to the
+table beside her bed, and early in the spring dawn her groping
+fingers drew it trembling towards her and slipped it under her
+pillow. By the time the full morning had come she had opened it,
+read and reread it--had bathed it, indeed, with her tears.</p>
+<p>But her anger persisted, and when Warkworth appeared on her
+threshold it flamed into sudden expression. She would make him
+realize her friends, her powerful friends--above all, she would
+make him realize Delafield.</p>
+<p>Well, now it was done. She had repelled her lover. She had shown
+herself particularly soft and gracious to Delafield. Warkworth now
+would break with her--might, perhaps, be glad of the chance to
+return safely and without further risks to his heiress.</p>
+<p>She sat on in the dark, thinking over every word, every look.
+Presently Th&eacute;r&egrave;se stole in.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, le souper sera bient&ocirc;t pr&ecirc;t."</p>
+<p>Julie rose wearily, and the child slipped a thin hand into
+hers.</p>
+<p>"J'aime tant ce vieux monsieur," she said, softly. "Je l'aime
+tant!"</p>
+<p>Julie started. Her thoughts had wandered far, indeed, from Lord
+Lackington.</p>
+<p>As she went up-stairs to her little room her heart reproached
+her. In their interview the old man had shown great sweetness of
+feeling, a delicate and remorseful tenderness, hardly to have been
+looked for in a being so fantastic and self-willed. The shock of
+their conversation had deepened the lines in a face upon which age
+had at last begun to make those marks which are not another beauty,
+but the end of beauty. When she had opened the door for him in the
+dusk, Julie had longed, indeed, to go with him and soothe his
+solitary evening. His unmarried son, William, lived with him
+intermittently; but his wife was dead. Lady Blanche seldom came to
+town, and, for the most part, he lived alone in the fine house in
+St. James's Square, of which she had heard her mother talk.</p>
+<p>He liked her--had liked her from the first. How natural that she
+should tend and brighten his old age--how natural, and how
+impossible! He was not the man to brave the difficulties and
+discomforts inseparable from the sudden appearance of an
+illegitimate granddaughter in his household, and if he had been,
+Julie, in her fierce, new-born independence, would have shrunk from
+such a step. But she had been drawn to him; her heart had yearned
+to her kindred.</p>
+<p>No; neither love nor kindred were for her. As she entered the
+little, bare room over the doorway, which she had begun to fill
+with books and papers, and all the signs of the literary trade, she
+miserably bid herself be content with what was easily and certainly
+within her grasp. The world was pleased to say that she had a
+remarkable social talent. Let her give her mind to the fight with
+Lady Henry, and prove whether, after all, the salon could not be
+acclimatized on English soil. She had the literary instinct and
+aptitude, and she must earn money. She looked at her half-written
+article, and sighed to her books to save her.</p>
+<p>That evening Th&eacute;r&egrave;se, who adored her, watched her
+with a wistful and stealthy affection. Her idol was strangely sad
+and pale. But she asked no questions. All she could do was to hover
+about "mademoiselle" with soft, flattering services, till
+mademoiselle went to bed, and then to lie awake herself, quietly
+waiting till all sounds in the room opposite had died away, and she
+might comfort her dumb and timid devotion with the hope that Julie
+slept.</p>
+<p>Sleep, however, or no sleep, Julie was up early next day. Before
+the post arrived she was already dressed, and on the point of
+descending to the morning coffee, which, in the old, frugal, Bruges
+fashion, she and L&eacute;onie and the child took in the kitchen
+together. Lady Henry's opinion of her as a soft and luxurious
+person dependent on dainty living was, in truth, absurdly far from
+the mark. After those years of rich food and many servants in Lady
+Henry's household, she had resumed the penurious Belgian ways at
+once, without effort--indeed, with alacrity. In the morning she
+helped L&eacute;onie and Th&eacute;r&egrave;se with the housework.
+Her quick fingers washed and rubbed and dusted. In less than a week
+she knew every glass and cup in Cousin Mary Leicester's well-filled
+china cupboard, and she and Th&eacute;r&egrave;se between them kept
+the two sitting-rooms spotless. She who had at once made friends
+and tools of Lady Henry's servants, disdained, so it appeared, to
+be served beyond what was absolutely necessary in her own house. A
+charwoman, indeed, came in the morning for the roughest work, but
+by ten o'clock she was gone, and Julie, Madame Bornier, and the
+child remained in undisputed possession. Little, flat-nosed, silent
+Madame Bornier bought and brought in all they ate. She denounced
+the ways, the viands, the brigand's prices of English
+<i>fournisseurs</i>, but it seemed to Julie, all the same, that she
+handled them with a Napoleonic success. She bought as the French
+poor buy, so far as the West End would let her, and Julie had soon
+perceived that their expenditure, even in this heart of Mayfair,
+would be incredibly small. Whereby she felt herself more and more
+mistress of her fate. By her own unaided hands would she provide
+for herself and her household. Each year there should be a little
+margin, and she would owe no man anything. After six months, if she
+could not afford to pay the Duke a fair rent for his house--always
+supposing he allowed her to remain in it--she would go
+elsewhere.</p>
+<p>As she reached the hall, clad in an old serge dress, which was a
+survival from Bruges days, Th&eacute;r&egrave;se ran up to her with
+the letters.</p>
+<p>Julie looked through them, turned and went back to her room. She
+had expected the letter which lay on the top, and she must brace
+herself to read it.</p>
+<p>It began abruptly:</p>
+<p>/# "You will hardly wonder that I should write at once to ask if
+you have no explanation to give me of your manner of this
+afternoon. Again and again I go over what happened, but no light
+comes. It was as though you had wiped out all the six months of our
+friendship; as though I had become for you once more the merest
+acquaintance. It is impossible that I can have been mistaken. You
+meant to make me--and others?--clearly understand--what? That I no
+longer deserved your kindness--that you had broken altogether with
+the man on whom you had so foolishly bestowed it?</p>
+<p>"My friend, what have I done? How have I sinned? Did that sour
+lady, who asked me questions she had small business to ask, tell
+you tales that have set your heart against me? But what have
+incidents and events that happened, or may have happened, in India,
+got to do with our friendship, which grew up for definite reasons
+and has come to mean so much--has it not?--to both of us? I am not
+a model person, Heaven knows!--very far from it. There are scores
+of things in my life to be ashamed of. And please remember that
+last year I had never seen you; if I had, much might have gone
+differently.</p>
+<p>"But how can I defend myself? I owe you so much. Ought not that,
+of itself, to make you realize how great is your power to hurt me,
+and how small are my powers of resistance? The humiliations you can
+inflict upon me are infinite, and I have no rights, no weapons,
+against you.</p>
+<p>"I hardly know what I am saying. It is very late, and I am
+writing this after a dinner at the club given me by two or three of
+my brother officers. It was a dinner in my honor, to congratulate
+me on my good fortune. They are good fellows, and it should have
+been a merry time. But my half hour in your room had killed all
+power of enjoyment for me. They found me a wretched companion, and
+we broke up early. I came home through the empty streets, wishing
+myself, with all my heart, away from England--facing the desert.
+Let me just say this. It is not of good omen that now, when I want
+all my faculties at their best, I should suddenly find myself
+invaded by this distress and despondency. You have some
+responsibility now in my life and career; if you would, you cannot
+get rid of it. You have not increased the chances of your friend's
+success in his great task.</p>
+<p>"You see how I restrain myself. I could write as madly as I
+feel--violently and madly. But of set purpose we pitched our
+relation in a certain key and measure; and I try, at least, to keep
+the measure, if the music and the charm must go. But why, in God's
+name, should they go? Why have you turned against me? You have
+listened to slanderers; you have secretly tried me by tests that
+are not in the bargain, and you have judged and condemned me
+without a hearing, without a word. I can tell you I am pretty
+sore.</p>
+<p>"I will come and see you no more in company for the present. You
+gave me a footing with you, which has its own dignity. I'll guard
+it; not even from you will I accept anything else. But--unless,
+indeed, the grove is cut down and the bird flown forever--let me
+come when you are alone. Then charge me with what you will. I am an
+earthy creature, struggling through life as I best can, and, till I
+saw you, struggling often, no doubt, in very earthy ways. I am not
+a philosopher, nor an idealist, with expectations, like Delafield.
+This rough-and-tumble world is all I know. It's good enough for
+me--good enough to love a friend in, as--I vow to God, Julie!--I
+have loved you.</p>
+<p>"There, it's out, and you must put up with it. I couldn't help
+it. I am too miserable.</p>
+<p>"But--</p>
+<p>"But I won't write any more. I shall stay in my rooms till
+twelve o'clock. You owe me promptness." #/</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Julie put down the letter.</p>
+<p>She looked round her little study with a kind of despair--the
+despair perhaps of the prisoner who had thought himself delivered,
+only to find himself caught in fresh and stronger bonds. As for
+ambition, as for literature--here, across their voices, broke this
+voice of the senses, this desire of "the moth for the star." And
+she was powerless to resist it. Ah, why had he not accepted his
+dismissal--quarrelled with her at once and forever?</p>
+<p>She understood the letter perfectly--what it offered, and what
+it tacitly refused. An intimate and exciting friendship--for two
+years. For two years he was ready to fill up such time as he could
+spare from his clandestine correspondence with her cousin, with
+this romantic, interesting, but unprofitable affection. And
+then?</p>
+<p>She fell again upon his letter. Ah, but there was a new note in
+it--a hard, strained note, which gave her a kind of desperate joy.
+It seemed to her that for months she had been covetously listening
+for it in vain.</p>
+<p>She was beginning to be necessary to him; he had
+<i>suffered</i>--through her. Never before could she say that to
+herself. Pleasure she had given him, but not pain; and it is pain
+that is the test and consecration of--</p>
+<p>Of what?... Well, now for her answer. It was short.</p>
+<p>/# "I am very sorry you thought me rude. I was tired with
+talking and unpacking, and with literary work--housework, too, if
+the truth were known. I am no longer a fine lady, and must slave
+for myself. The thought, also, of an interview with Lord Lackington
+which faced me, which I went through as soon as you, Dr. Meredith,
+and Mr. Delafield had gone, unnerved me. You were good to write to
+me, and I am grateful indeed. As to your appointment, and your
+career, you owe no one anything. Everything is in your own hands. I
+rejoice in your good fortune, and I beg that you will let no false
+ideas with regard to me trouble your mind.</p>
+<p>"This afternoon at five, if you can forgive me, you will find
+me. In the early afternoon I shall be in the British Museum, for my
+work's sake." #/</p>
+<p>She posted her letter, and went about her daily housework,
+oppressed the while by a mental and moral nausea. As she washed and
+tidied and dusted, a true housewife's love growing up in her for
+the little house and its charming, old-world appointments--a sort
+of mute relation between her and it, as though it accepted her for
+mistress, and she on her side vowed it a delicate and prudent
+care--she thought how she could have delighted in this life which
+had opened upon her had it come to her a year ago. The tasks set
+her by Meredith were congenial and within her power. Her
+independence gave her the keenest pleasure. The effort and
+conquests of the intellect--she had the mind to love them, to
+desire them; and the way to them was unbarred.</p>
+<p>What plucked her back?</p>
+<p>A tear fell upon the old china cup that she was dusting. A sort
+of maternal element had entered into her affection for Warkworth
+during the winter. She had upheld him and fought for him. And now,
+like a mother, she could not tear the unworthy object from her
+heart, though all the folly of their pseudo-friendship and her
+secret hopes lay bare before her.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Warkworth came at five.</p>
+<p>He entered in the dusk; a little pale, with his graceful head
+thrown back, and that half-startled, timid look in his wide, blue
+eyes--that misleading look--which made him the boy still, when he
+chose.</p>
+<p>Julie was standing near the window as he came in. As she turned
+and saw him there, a flood of tenderness and compunction swept over
+her. He was going away. What if she never saw him again?</p>
+<p>She shuddered and came forward rapidly, eagerly. He read the
+meaning of her movement, her face; and, wringing her hands with a
+violence that hurt her, he drew a long breath of relief.</p>
+<p>"Why--why"--he said, under his breath--"have you made me so
+unhappy?"</p>
+<p>The blood leaped in her veins. These, indeed, were new words in
+a new tone.</p>
+<p>"Don't let us reproach each other," she said. "There is so much
+to say. Sit down."</p>
+<p>To-day there were no beguiling spring airs. The fire burned
+merrily in the grate; the windows were closed.</p>
+<p>A scent of narcissus--the Duchess had filled the tables with
+flowers--floated in the room. Amid its old-fashioned and
+distinguished bareness--tempered by flowers, and a litter of
+foreign books--Julie seemed at last to have found her proper frame.
+In her severe black dress, opening on a delicate vest of white, she
+had a muselike grace; and the wreath made by her superb black hair
+round the fine intelligence of her brow had never been more
+striking. Her slender hands busied themselves with Cousin Mary
+Leicester's tea-things; and every movement had in Warkworth's eyes
+a charm to which he had never yet been sensible, in this manner, to
+this degree.</p>
+<p>"Am I really to say no more of yesterday?" he said, looking at
+her nervously.</p>
+<p>Her flush, her gesture, appealed to him.</p>
+<p>"Do you know what I had before me--that day--when you came in?"
+she said, softly.</p>
+<p>"No. I cannot guess. Ah, you said something about Lord
+Lackington?"</p>
+<p>She hesitated. Then her color deepened.</p>
+<p>"You don't know my story. You suppose, don't you, that I am a
+Belgian with English connections, whom Lady Henry met by chance?
+Isn't that how you explain me?"</p>
+<p>Warkworth had pushed aside his cup.</p>
+<p>"I thought--"</p>
+<p>He paused in embarrassment, but there was a sparkle of
+astonished expectancy in his eyes.</p>
+<p>"My mother"--she looked away into the blaze of the fire, and her
+voice choked a little--"my mother was Lord Lackington's
+daughter."</p>
+<p>"Lord Lackington's daughter?" echoed Warkworth, in stupefaction.
+A rush of ideas and inferences sped through his mind. He thought of
+Lady Blanche--things heard in India--and while he stared at her in
+an agitated silence the truth leaped to light.</p>
+<p>"Not--not Lady Rose Delaney?" he said, bending forward to
+her.</p>
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+<p>"My father was Marriott Dalrymple. You will have heard of him. I
+should be Julie Dalrymple, but--they could never marry--because of
+Colonel Delaney."</p>
+<p>Her face was still turned away.</p>
+<p>All the details of that famous scandal began to come back to
+him. His companion, her history, her relations to others, to
+himself, began to appear to him in the most astonishing new lights.
+So, instead of the mere humble outsider, she belonged all the time
+to the best English blood? The society in which he had met her was
+full of her kindred. No doubt the Duchess knew--and Montresor....
+He was meshed in a net of thoughts perplexing and confounding, of
+which the total result was perhaps that she appeared to him as she
+sat there, the slender outline so quiet and still, more attractive
+and more desirable than ever. The mystery surrounding her in some
+way glorified her, and he dimly perceived that so it must have been
+for others.</p>
+<p>"How did you ever bear the Bruton Street life?" he said,
+presently, in a low voice of wonder. "Lady Henry knew?"</p>
+<p>"Oh yes!"</p>
+<p>"And the Duchess?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. She is a connection of my mother's."</p>
+<p>Warkworth's mind went back to the Moffatts. A flush spread
+slowly over the face of the young officer. It was indeed an
+extraordinary imbroglio in which he found himself.</p>
+<p>"How did Lord Lackington take it?" he asked, after a pause.</p>
+<p>"He was, of course, much startled, much moved. We had a long
+talk. Everything is to remain just the same. He wishes to make me
+an allowance, and, if he persists, I suppose I can't hurt him by
+refusing. But for the present I have refused. It is more amusing to
+earn one's own living." She turned to him with a sharp brightness
+in her black eyes. "Besides, if Lord Lackington gives me money, he
+will want to give me advice. And I would rather advise myself."</p>
+<p>Warkworth sat silent a moment. Then he took a great resolve.</p>
+<p>"I want to speak to you," he said, suddenly, putting out his
+hand to hers, which lay on her knee.</p>
+<p>She turned to him, startled.</p>
+<p>"I want to have no secrets from you," he said, drawing his
+breath quickly. "I told you lies one day, because I thought it was
+my duty to tell lies. Another person was concerned. But now I
+can't. Julie!--you'll let me call you so, won't you? The name is
+already"--he hesitated; then the words rushed out--"part of my
+life! Julie, it's quite true, there is a kind of understanding
+between your little cousin Aileen and me. At Simla she attracted me
+enormously. I lost my head one day in the woods, when she--whom we
+were all courting--distinguished me above two or three other men
+who were there. I proposed to her upon a sudden impulse, and she
+accepted me. She is a charming, soft creature. Perhaps I wasn't
+justified. Perhaps she ought to have had more chance of seeing the
+world. Anyway, there was a great row. Her guardians insisted that I
+had behaved badly. They could not know all the details of the
+matter, and I was not going to tell them. Finally I promised to
+withdraw for two years."</p>
+<p>He paused, anxiously studying her face. It had grown very white,
+and, he thought, very cold. But she quickly rose, and, looking down
+upon him, said:</p>
+<p>"Nothing of that is news to me. Did you think it was?"</p>
+<p>And moving to the tea-table, she began to make provision for a
+fresh supply of tea.</p>
+<p>Both words and manner astounded him. He, too, rose and followed
+her.</p>
+<p>"How did you first guess?" he said, abruptly.</p>
+<p>"Some gossip reached me." She looked up with a smile. "That's
+what generally happens, isn't it?"</p>
+<p>"There are no secrets nowadays," he said, sorely. "And then,
+there was Miss Lawrence?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, there was Miss Lawrence."</p>
+<p>"Did you think badly of me?"</p>
+<p>"Why should I? I understand Aileen is very pretty, and--"</p>
+<p>"And will have a large fortune. You understand that?" he said,
+trying to carry it off lightly.</p>
+<p>"The fact is well known, isn't it?"</p>
+<p>He sat down, twisting his hat between his hands. Then with an
+exclamation he dashed it on the floor, and, rising, he bent over
+Julie, his hands in his pockets.</p>
+<p>"Julie," he said, in a voice that shook her, "don't, for God's
+sake, give me up! I have behaved abominably, but don't take your
+friendship from me. I shall soon be gone. Our lives will go
+different ways. That was settled--alack!--before we met. I am
+honorably bound to that poor child. She cares for me, and I can't
+get loose. But these last months have been happy, haven't they?
+There are just three weeks left. At present the strongest feeling
+in my heart is--" He paused for his word, and he saw that she was
+looking through the window to the trees of the garden, and that,
+still as she was, her lip quivered.</p>
+<p>"What shall I say?" he resumed, with emotion. "It seems to me
+our case stands all by itself, alone in the world. We have three
+weeks--give them to me. Don't let's play at cross purposes any
+more. I want to be sincere--I want to hide nothing from you in
+these days. Let us throw aside convention and trust each other, as
+friends may, so that when I go we may say to each other, 'Well, it
+was worth the pain. These have been days of gold--we shall get no
+better if we live to be a hundred.'"</p>
+<p>She turned her face to him in a tremulous amazement and there
+were tears on her cheek. Never had his aspect been so winning. What
+he proposed was, in truth, a mean thing; all the same, he proposed
+it nobly.</p>
+<p>It was in vain that something whispered in her ear: "This girl
+to whom he describes himself as 'honorably bound' has a fortune of
+half a million. He is determined to have both her money and my
+heart." Another inward voice, tragically generous, dashed down the
+thought, and, at the moment, rightly; for as he stood over her,
+breathless and imperious, to his own joy, to his own exaltation,
+Warkworth was conscious of a new sincerity flowing in a tempestuous
+and stormy current through all the veins of being.</p>
+<p>With a sombre passion which already marked an epoch in their
+relation, and contained within itself the elements of new and
+unforeseen developments, she gazed silently into his face. Then,
+leaning back in her chair, she once more held out to him both her
+hands.</p>
+<p>He gave an exclamation of joy, kissed the hands tenderly, and
+sat down beside her.</p>
+<p>"Now, then, all your cares, all your thoughts, all your griefs
+are to be mine--till fate call us. And I have a thousand things to
+tell you, to bless you for, to consult you about. There is not a
+thought in my mind that you shall not know--bad, good, and
+indifferent--if you care to turn out the rag-bag. Shall I begin
+with the morning--my experiences at the club, my little nieces at
+the Zoo?" He laughed, but suddenly grew serious again. "No, your
+story first; you owe it me. Let me know all that concerns you. Your
+past, your sorrows, ambitions--everything."</p>
+<p>He bent to her imperiously. With a faint, broken smile, her
+hands still in his, she assented. It was difficult to begin, then
+difficult to control the flood of memory; and it had long been dark
+when Madame Bornier, coming in to light the lamp and make up the
+fire, disturbed an intimate and searching conversation, which had
+revealed the two natures to each other with an agitating
+fulness.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Yet the results of this memorable evening upon Julie Le Breton
+were ultimately such as few could have foreseen.</p>
+<p>When Warkworth had left her, she went to her own room and sat
+for a long while beside the window, gazing at the dark shrubberies
+of the Cureton House garden, at the few twinkling, distant
+lights.</p>
+<p>The vague, golden hopes she had cherished through these past
+months of effort and scheming were gone forever. Warkworth would
+marry Aileen Moffatt, and use her money for an ambitious career.
+After these weeks now lying before them--weeks of dangerous
+intimacy, dangerous emotion--she and he would become as strangers
+to each other. He would be absorbed by his profession and his rich
+marriage. She would be left alone to live her life.</p>
+<p>A sudden terror of her own weakness overcame her. No, she could
+not be alone. She must place a barrier between herself and
+this--this strange threatening of illimitable ruin that sometimes
+rose upon her from the dark. "I have no prejudices," she had said
+to Sir Wilfrid. There were many moments when she felt a fierce
+pride in the element of lawlessness, of defiance, that seemed to be
+her inheritance from her parents. But to-night she was afraid of
+it.</p>
+<p>Again, if love was to go, <i>power</i>, the satisfaction of
+ambition, remained. She threw a quick glance into the future--the
+future beyond these three weeks. What could she make of it? She
+knew well that she was not the woman to resign herself to a mere
+pining obscurity.</p>
+<p>Jacob Delafield? Was it, after all, so impossible?</p>
+<p>For a few minutes she set herself deliberately to think out what
+it would mean to marry him; then suddenly broke down and wept, with
+inarticulate cries and sobs, with occasional reminiscences of her
+old convent's prayers, appeals half conscious, instinctive, to a
+God only half believed.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="XVI"></a>XVI</h2>
+<br>
+<p>Delafield was walking through the Park towards Victoria Gate. A
+pair of beautiful roans pulled up suddenly beside him, and a little
+figure with a waving hand bent to him from a carriage.</p>
+<p>"Jacob, where are you off to? Let me give you a lift?"</p>
+<p>The gentleman addressed took off his hat.</p>
+<p>"Much obliged to you, but I want some exercise. I say, where did
+Freddie get that pair?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know, he doesn't tell me. Jacob, you must get in. I
+want to speak to you."</p>
+<p>Rather unwillingly, Delafield obeyed, and away they sped.</p>
+<p>"J'ai un tas de choses &agrave; vous dire," she said, speaking
+low, and in French, so as to protect herself from the servants in
+front. "Jacob, I'm <i>very</i> unhappy about Julie."</p>
+<p>Delafield frowned uncomfortably.</p>
+<p>"Why? Hadn't you better leave her alone?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, of course, I know you think me a chatterbox. I don't care.
+You <i>must</i> let me tell you some fresh news about her. It
+<i>isn't</i> gossip, and you and I are her best friends. Oh,
+Freddie's so disagreeable about her. Jacob, you've got to help and
+advise a little. Now, do listen. It's your duty--your downright
+catechism duty."</p>
+<p>And she poured into his reluctant ear the tale which Miss Emily
+Lawrence nearly a fortnight before had confided to her.</p>
+<p>"Of course," she wound up, "you'll say it's only what we knew or
+guessed long ago. But you see, Jacob, we didn't <i>know</i>. It
+might have been just gossip. And then, besides"--she frowned and
+dropped her voice till it was only just audible--"this horrid man
+hadn't made our Julie so--so conspicuous, and Lady Henry hadn't
+turned out such a toad--and, altogether, Jacob, I'm dreadfully
+worried."</p>
+<p>"Don't be," said Jacob, dryly.</p>
+<p>"And what a creature!" cried the Duchess, unheeding. "They say
+that poor Moffatt child will soon have fretted herself ill, if the
+guardians don't give way about the two years."</p>
+<p>"What two years?"</p>
+<p>"The two years that she must wait--till she is twenty-one. Oh,
+Jacob, you know that!" exclaimed the Duchess, impatient with him.
+"I've told you scores of times."</p>
+<p>"I'm not in the least interested in Miss Moffatt's affairs."</p>
+<p>"But you ought to be, for they concern Julie," cried the
+Duchess. "Can't you imagine what kind of things people are saying?
+Lady Henry has spread it about that it was all to see him she
+bribed the Bruton Street servants to let her give the Wednesday
+party as usual--that she had been flirting with him abominably for
+months, and using Lady Henry's name in the most impertinent ways.
+And now, suddenly, everybody seems to know <i>something</i> about
+this Indian engagement. You may imagine it doesn't look very well
+for our poor Julie. The other night at Chatton House I was furious.
+I made Julie go. I wanted her to show herself, and keep up her
+friends. Well, it was <i>horrid</i>! One or two old frights, who
+used to be only too thankful to Julie for reminding Lady Henry to
+invite them, put their noses in the air and behaved odiously. And
+even some of the nicer ones seemed changed--I could see Julie felt
+it."</p>
+<p>"Nothing of all that will do her any real harm," said Jacob,
+rather contemptuously.</p>
+<p>"Well, no. I know, of course, that her real friends will never
+forsake her--never, never! But, Jacob"--the Duchess hesitated, her
+charming little face furrowed with thought--"if only so much of it
+weren't true. She herself--"</p>
+<p>"Please, Evelyn," said Delafield, with decision, "don't tell me
+anything she may have said to you."</p>
+<p>The Duchess flushed.</p>
+<p>"I shouldn't have betrayed any confidence," she said, proudly.
+"And I must consult with some one who cares about her. Dr. Meredith
+lunched with me to-day, and he said a few words to me afterwards.
+He's quite anxious, too--and unhappy. Captain Warkworth's always
+there--always! Even I have been hardly able to see her the last few
+days. Last Sunday they took the little lame child and went into the
+country for the whole day--"</p>
+<p>"Well, what is there to object to in that?" cried Jacob.</p>
+<p>"I didn't say there was anything to object to," said the
+Duchess, looking at him with eyes half angry, half perplexed. "Only
+it's so unlike her. She had promised to be at home that afternoon
+for several old friends, and they found her flown, without a word.
+And think how sweet Julie is always about such things--what
+delicious notes she writes, how she hates to put anybody out or
+disappoint them! And now, not a word of excuse to anybody. And she
+looks so <i>ill</i>--so white, so fixed--like a person in a dream
+which she can't shake off. I'm just miserable about her. And I
+hate, <i>hate</i> that man--engaged to her own cousin all the
+time!" cried the little Duchess, under her breath, as she
+passionately tore some violets at her waist to pieces and flung
+them out of the carriage. Then she turned to Jacob.</p>
+<p>"But, of course, if you don't care twopence about all this,
+Jacob, it's no good talking to you!"</p>
+<p>Her taunt fell quite unnoticed. Jacob turned to her with smiling
+composure.</p>
+<p>"You have forgotten, my dear Evelyn, all this time, that
+Warkworth goes away--to mid-Africa--in little more than two
+weeks."</p>
+<p>"I wish it was two minutes," said the Duchess, fuming.</p>
+<p>Delafield made no reply for a while. He seemed to be studying
+the effect of a pale shaft of sunlight which had just come stealing
+down through layers of thin gray cloud to dance upon the
+Serpentine. Presently, as they left the Serpentine behind them, he
+turned to his companion with more apparent sympathy.</p>
+<p>"We can't do anything, Evelyn, and we've no right whatever to
+talk of alarm, or anxiety--to <i>talk</i> of it, mind! It's--it's
+disloyal. Forgive me," he added, hastily, "I know you don't gossip.
+But it fills me with rage that other people should be doing
+it."</p>
+<p>The brusquerie of his manner disconcerted the little lady beside
+him. She recovered herself, however, and said, with a touch of
+sarcasm, tempered by a rather trembling lip:</p>
+<p>"Your rage won't prevent their gossiping, Mr. Jacob, I thought,
+perhaps, your <i>friendship</i> might have done something to stop
+it--to--to influence Julie," she added, uncertainly.</p>
+<p>"My friendship, as you call it, is of no use whatever," he said,
+obstinately. "Warkworth will go away, and if you and others do
+their best to protect Miss Le Breton, talk will soon die out.
+Behave as if you had never heard the man's name before--stare the
+people down. Why, good Heavens! you have a thousand arts! But, of
+course, if the little flame is to be blown into a blaze by a score
+of so-called friends--"</p>
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+<p>The Duchess did not take his rebukes kindly, not having, in
+truth, deserved them.</p>
+<p>"You are rude and unkind, Jacob," she said, almost with the
+tears in her eyes. "And you don't understand--it is because I
+myself am so anxious--"</p>
+<p>"For that reason, play the part with all your might," he said,
+unyieldingly. "Really, even you and I oughtn't to talk of it any
+more. But there <i>is</i> one thing I want very much to know about
+Miss Le Breton."</p>
+<p>He bent towards her, smiling, though in truth he was disgusted
+with himself, vexed with her, and out of tune with all the
+world.</p>
+<p>The Duchess made a little face.</p>
+<p>"All very well, but after such a lecture as you have indulged
+in, I think I prefer not to say any more about Julie."</p>
+<p>"Do. I'm ashamed of myself--except that I don't retract one
+word, not one. Be kind, all the same, and tell me--if you know--has
+she spoken to Lord Lackington?"</p>
+<p>The Duchess still frowned, but a few more apologetic expressions
+on his part restored a temper that had always a natural tendency to
+peace. Indeed, Jacob's <i>boutades</i> never went long unpardoned.
+An only child herself, he, her first cousin, had played the part of
+brother in her life, since the days when she first tottered in long
+frocks, and he had never played it in any mincing fashion. His
+words were often blunt. She smarted and forgave--much more quickly
+than she forgave her husband. But then, with him, she was in
+love.</p>
+<p>So she presently vouchsafed to give Jacob the news that Lord
+Lackington at last knew the secret--that he had behaved well--had
+shown much feeling, in fact--so that poor Julie--</p>
+<p>But Jacob again cut short the sentimentalisms, the little
+touching phrases in which the woman delighted.</p>
+<p>"What is he going to do for her?" he said, impatiently. "Will he
+make any provision for her? Is there any way by which she can live
+in his house--take care of him?"</p>
+<p>The Duchess shook her head.</p>
+<p>"At seventy-five one can't begin to explain a thing as big as
+that. Julie perfectly understands, and doesn't wish it."</p>
+<p>"But as to money?" persisted Jacob.</p>
+<p>"Julie says nothing about money. How odd you are, Jacob! I
+thought that was the last thing needful in your eyes."</p>
+<p>Jacob did not reply. If he had, he would probably have said that
+what was harmful or useless for men might be needful for women--for
+the weakness of women. But he kept silence, while the vague
+intensity of the eyes, the pursed and twisted mouth, showed that
+his mind was full of thoughts.</p>
+<p>Suddenly he perceived that the carriage was nearing Victoria
+Gate. He called to the coachman to stop, and jumped out.</p>
+<p>"Good-bye, Evelyn. Don't bear me malice. You're a good friend,"
+he said in her ear--"a real good friend. But don't let people talk
+to you--not even elderly ladies with the best intentions. I tell
+you it will be a fight, and one of the best weapons is"--he touched
+his lips significantly, smiled at her, and was gone.</p>
+<p>The Duchess passed out of the Park. Delafield turned as though
+in the direction of the Marble Arch, but as soon as the carriage
+was out of sight he paused and quickly retraced his steps towards
+Kensington Gardens. Here, in this third week of March, some of the
+thorns and lilacs were already in leaf. The grass was springing,
+and the chatter of many sparrows filled the air. Faint patches of
+sun flecked the ground between the trees, and blue hazes, already
+redeemed from the dreariness of winter, filled the dim planes of
+distance and mingled with the low, silvery clouds. He found a quiet
+spot, remote from nursery-maids and children, and there he wandered
+to and fro, indefinitely, his hands behind his back. All the
+anxieties for which he had scolded his cousin possessed him, only
+sharpened tenfold; he was in torture, and he was helpless.</p>
+<p>However, when at last he emerged from his solitude, and took a
+hansom to the Chudleigh estate office in Spring Gardens, he
+resolutely shook off the thoughts which had been weighing upon him.
+He took his usual interest in his work, and did it with his usual
+capacity.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Towards five o'clock in the afternoon, Delafield found himself
+in Cureton Street. As he turned down Heribert Street he saw a cab
+in front of him. It stopped at Miss Le Breton's door, and Warkworth
+jumped out. The door was quickly opened to him, and he went in
+without having turned his eyes towards the man at the far corner of
+the street.</p>
+<p>Delafield paused irresolute. Finally he walked back to his club
+in Piccadilly, where he dawdled over the newspapers till nearly
+seven.</p>
+<p>Then he once more betook himself to Heribert Street.</p>
+<p>"Is Miss Le Breton at home?"</p>
+<p>Th&eacute;r&egrave;se looked at him with a sudden flickering of
+her clear eyes.</p>
+<p>"I think so, sir," she said, with soft hesitation, and she
+slowly led him across the hall.</p>
+<p>The drawing-room door opened. Major Warkworth emerged.</p>
+<p>"Ah, how do you do?" he said, shortly, staring in a kind of
+bewilderment as he saw Delafield. Then he hurriedly looked for his
+hat, ran down the stairs, and was gone.</p>
+<p>"Announce me, please," said Delafield, peremptorily, to the
+little girl. "Tell Miss Le Breton that I am here." And he drew back
+from the open door of the drawing-room. Th&eacute;r&egrave;se
+slipped in, and reappeared.</p>
+<p>"Please to walk in, sir," she said, in her shy, low voice, and
+Delafield entered. From the hall he had caught one involuntary
+glimpse of Julie, standing stiff and straight in the middle of the
+room, her hands clasped to her breast--a figure in pain. When he
+went in, she was in her usual seat by the fire, with her embroidery
+frame in front of her.</p>
+<p>"May I come in? It is rather late."</p>
+<p>"Oh, by all means! Do you bring me any news of Evelyn? I haven't
+seen her for three days."</p>
+<p>He seated himself beside her. It was hard, indeed, for him to
+hide all signs of the tumult within. But he held a firm grip upon
+himself.</p>
+<p>"I saw Evelyn this afternoon. She complained that you had had no
+time for her lately."</p>
+<p>Julie bent over her work. He saw that her fingers were so
+unsteady that she could hardly make them obey her.</p>
+<p>"There has been a great deal to do, even in this little house.
+Evelyn forgets; she has an army of servants; we have only our hands
+and our time."</p>
+<p>She looked up, smiling. He made no reply, and the smile died
+from her face, suddenly, as though some one had blown out a light.
+She returned to her work, or pretended to. But her aspect had left
+him inwardly shaken. The eyes, disproportionately large and
+brilliant, were of an emphasis almost ghastly, the usually clear
+complexion was flecked and cloudy, the mouth dry-lipped. She looked
+much older than she had done a fortnight before. And the fact was
+the more noticeable because in her dress she had now wholly
+discarded the touch of stateliness--almost old-maidishness--which
+had once seemed appropriate to the position of Lady Henry's
+companion. She was wearing a little gown of her youth, a blue
+cotton, which two years before had been put aside as too slight and
+juvenile. Never had the form within it seemed so girlish, so
+appealing. But the face was heart-rending.</p>
+<p>After a pause he moved a little closer to her.</p>
+<p>"Do you know that you are looking quite ill?"</p>
+<p>"Then my looks are misleading. I am very well."</p>
+<p>"I am afraid I don't put much faith in that remark. When do you
+mean to take a holiday?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, very soon. L&eacute;onie, my little housekeeper, talks of
+going to Bruges to wind up all her affairs there and bring back
+some furniture that she has warehoused. I may go with her. I, too,
+have some property stored there. I should go and see some old
+friends--the <i>soeurs</i>, for instance, with whom I went to
+school. In the old days I was a torment to them, and they were
+tyrants to me. But they are quite nice to me now--they give me
+<i>patisserie</i>, and stroke my hands and spoil me."</p>
+<p>And she rattled on about the friends she might revisit, in a
+hollow, perfunctory way, which set him on edge.</p>
+<p>"I don't see that anything of that kind will do you any good.
+You want rest of mind and body. I expect those last scenes with
+Lady Henry cost you more than you knew. There are wounds one does
+not notice at the time--"</p>
+<p>"Which afterwards bleed inwardly?" She laughed. "No, no, I am
+not bleeding for Lady Henry. By-the-way, what news of her?"</p>
+<p>"Sir Wilfrid told me to-day that he had had a letter. She is at
+Torquay, and she thinks there are too many curates at Torquay. She
+is not at all in a good temper."</p>
+<p>Julie looked up.</p>
+<p>"You know that she is trying to punish me. A great many people
+seem to have been written to."</p>
+<p>"That will blow over."</p>
+<p>"I don't know. How confident I was at one time that, if there
+was a breach, it would be Lady Henry that would suffer! It makes me
+hot to remember some things I said--to Sir Wilfrid, in particular.
+I see now that I shall not be troubled with society in this little
+house."</p>
+<p>"It is too early for you to guess anything of that kind."</p>
+<p>"Not at all! London is pretty full. The affair has made a noise.
+Those who meant to stand by me would have called, don't you
+think?"</p>
+<p>The quivering bitterness of her face was most pitiful in Jacob's
+eyes.</p>
+<p>"Oh, people take their time," he said, trying to speak
+lightly.</p>
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+<p>"It's ridiculous that I should care. One's self-love, I
+suppose--<i>that</i> bleeds! Evelyn has made me send out cards for
+a little house-warming. She said I must. She made me go to that
+smart party at Chatton House the other night. It was a great
+mistake. People turned their backs on me. And this, too, will be a
+mistake--and a failure."</p>
+<p>"You were kind enough to send me a card."</p>
+<p>"Yes--and you must come?"</p>
+<p>She looked at him with a sudden nervous appeal, which made
+another tug on his self-control.</p>
+<p>"Of course I shall come."</p>
+<p>"Do you remember your own saying--that awful evening--that I had
+devoted friends? Well, we shall soon see."</p>
+<p>"That depends only on yourself," he replied, with gentle
+deliberation.</p>
+<p>She started--threw him a doubtful look.</p>
+<p>"If you mean that I must take a great deal of trouble, I am
+afraid I can't. I am too tired."</p>
+<p>And she sank back in her chair.</p>
+<p>The sigh that accompanied the words seemed to him involuntary,
+unconscious.</p>
+<p>"I didn't mean that--altogether," he said, after a moment.</p>
+<p>She moved restlessly.</p>
+<p>"Then, really, I don't know what you meant. I suppose all
+friendship depends on one's self."</p>
+<p>She drew her embroidery frame towards her again, and he was left
+to wonder at his own audacity. "Do you know," she said, presently,
+her eyes apparently busy with her silks, "that I have told Lord
+Lackington?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. Evelyn gave me that news. How has the old man
+behaved?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, very well--most kindly. He has already formed a habit,
+almost, of 'dropping in' upon me at all hours. I have had to
+appoint him times and seasons, or there would be no work done. He
+sits here and raves about young Mrs. Delaray--you know he is
+painting her portrait, for the famous series?--and draws her
+profile on the backs of my letters. He recites his speeches to me;
+he asks my advice as to his fights with his tenants or his miners.
+In short, I'm adopted--I'm almost the real thing."</p>
+<p>She smiled, and then again, as she turned over her silks, he
+heard her sigh--a long breath of weariness. It was strange and
+terrible in his ear--the contrast between this unconscious sound,
+drawn as it were from the oppressed heart of pain, and her
+languidly, smiling words.</p>
+<p>"Has he spoken to you of the Moffatts?" he asked her, presently,
+not looking at her.</p>
+<p>A sharp crimson color rushed over her face.</p>
+<p>"Not much. He and Lady Blanche are not great friends. And I have
+made him promise to keep my secret from her till I give him leave
+to tell it."</p>
+<p>"It will have to be known to her some time, will it not?"</p>
+<p>"Perhaps," she said, impatiently. "Perhaps, when I can make up
+my mind."</p>
+<p>Then she pushed aside her frame and would talk no more about
+Lord Lackington. She gave him, somehow, the impression of a person
+suffocating, struggling for breath and air. And yet her hand was
+icy, and she presently went to the fire, complaining of the east
+wind; and as he put on the coal he saw her shiver.</p>
+<p>"Shall I force her to tell me everything?" he thought to
+himself.</p>
+<p>Did she divine the obscure struggle in his mind? At any rate she
+seemed anxious to cut short their
+<i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i>. She asked him to come and
+look at some engravings which the Duchess had sent round for the
+embellishment of the dining-room. Then she summoned Madame Bornier,
+and asked him a number of questions on L&eacute;onie's behalf, with
+reference to some little investment of the ex-governess's savings,
+which had been dropping in value. Meanwhile, as she kept him
+talking, she leaned herself against the lintel of the door,
+forgetting every now and then that any one else was there, and
+letting the true self appear, like some drowned thing floating into
+sight. Delafield disposed of Madame Bornier's affairs, hardly
+knowing what he said, but showing in truth his usual conscience and
+kindness. Then when L&eacute;onie was contented, Julie saw the
+little cripple crossing the hall, and called to her.</p>
+<p>"Ah, ma ch&eacute;rie! How is the poor little foot?"</p>
+<p>And turning to Delafield, she explained volubly that
+Th&eacute;r&egrave;se had given herself a slight twist on the
+stairs that morning, pressing the child to her side the while with
+a tender gesture. The child nestled against her.</p>
+<p>"Shall maman keep back supper?" Th&eacute;r&egrave;se half
+whispered, looking at Delafield.</p>
+<p>"No, no, I must go!" cried Delafield, rousing himself and
+looking for his hat.</p>
+<p>"I would ask you to stay," said Julie, smiling, "just to show
+off L&eacute;onie's cooking; but there wouldn't be enough for a
+great big man. And you're probably dining with dukes."</p>
+<p>Delafield disclaimed any such intention, and they went back to
+the drawing-room to look for his hat and stick. Julie still had her
+arm round Th&eacute;r&egrave;se and would not let the child go. She
+clearly avoided being left alone with him; and yet it seemed, even
+to his modesty, that she was loath to see him depart. She talked
+first of her little <i>m&eacute;nage</i>, as though proud of their
+daily economies and contrivances; then of her literary work and its
+prospects; then of her debt to Meredith. Never before had she thus
+admitted him to her domestic and private life. It was as though she
+leaned upon his sympathy, his advice, his mere neighborhood. And
+her pale, changed face had never seemed to him so beautiful--never,
+in fact, truly beautiful till now. The dying down of the brilliance
+and energy of the strongly marked character, which had made her the
+life of the Bruton Street salon, into this mildness, this
+despondency, this hidden weariness, had left her infinitely more
+lovely in his eyes. But how to restrain himself much longer from
+taking the sad, gracious woman in his arms and coercing her into
+sanity and happiness!</p>
+<p>At last he tore himself away.</p>
+<p>"You won't forget Wednesday?" she said to him, as she followed
+him into the hall.</p>
+<p>"No. Is there anything else that you wish--that I could do?"</p>
+<p>"No, nothing. But if there is I will ask."</p>
+<p>Then, looking up, she shrank from something in his
+face--something accusing, passionate, profound.</p>
+<p>He wrung her hand.</p>
+<p>"Promise that you will ask."</p>
+<p>She murmured something, and he turned away.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>She came back alone into the drawing-room.</p>
+<p>"Oh, what a good man!" she said, sighing. "What a good man!"</p>
+<p>And then, all in a moment, she was thankful that he was
+gone--that she was alone with and mistress of her pain.</p>
+<p>The passion and misery which his visit had interrupted swept
+back upon her in a rushing swirl, blinding and choking every sense.
+Ah, what a scene, to which his coming had put an end--scene of
+bitterness, of recrimination, not restrained even by this impending
+anguish of parting!</p>
+<p>It came as a close to a week during which she and Warkworth had
+been playing the game which they had chosen to play, according to
+its appointed rules--the delicacies and restraints of friendship
+masking, and at the same time inflaming, a most unhappy, poisonous,
+and growing love. And, finally, there had risen upon them a
+storm-wave of feeling--tyrannous, tempestuous--bursting in reproach
+and agitation, leaving behind it, bare and menacing, the old, ugly
+facts, unaltered and unalterable.</p>
+<p>Warkworth was little less miserable than herself. That she knew.
+He loved her, as it were, to his own anger and surprise. And he
+suffered in deserting her, more than he had ever suffered yet
+through any human affection.</p>
+<p>But his purpose through it all remained stubbornly fixed; that,
+also, she knew. For nearly a year Aileen Moffatt's fortune and
+Aileen Moffatt's family connections had entered into all his
+calculations of the future. Only a few more years in the army, then
+retirement with ample means, a charming wife, and a seat in
+Parliament. To jeopardize a plan so manifestly desirable, so easy
+to carry out, so far-reaching in its favorable effects upon his
+life, for the sake of those hard and doubtful alternatives in which
+a marriage with Julie would involve him, never seriously entered
+his mind. When he suffered he merely said to himself, steadily,
+that time would heal the smart for both of them.</p>
+<p>"Only one thing would be absolutely fatal for all of us--that I
+should break with Aileen."</p>
+<p>Julie read these obscure processes in Warkworth's mind with
+perfect clearness. She was powerless to change them; but that
+afternoon she had, at any rate, beaten her wings against the bars,
+and the exhaustion and anguish of her revolt, her reproaches, were
+still upon her.</p>
+<p>The spring night had fallen. The room was hot, and she threw a
+window open. Some thorns in the garden beneath had thickened into
+leaf. They rose in a dark mass beneath the window. Overhead, beyond
+the haze of the great city, a few stars twinkled, and the dim roar
+of London life beat from all sides upon this quiet corner which
+still held Lady Mary's old house.</p>
+<p>Julie's eyes strained into the darkness; her head swam with
+weakness and weariness. Suddenly she gave a cry--she pressed her
+hands to her heart. Upon the darkness outside there rose a face, so
+sharply drawn, so life-like, that it printed itself forever upon
+the quivering tissues of the brain. It was Warkworth's face, not as
+she had seen it last, but in some strange extremity of physical
+ill--drawn, haggard, in a cold sweat--the eyes glazed, the hair
+matted, the parched lips open as though they cried for help. She
+stood gazing. Then the eyes turned, and the agony in them looked
+out upon her.</p>
+<p>Her whole sense was absorbed by the phantom; her being hung upon
+it. Then, as it faded on the quiet trees, she tottered to a chair
+and hid her face. Common sense told her that she was the victim of
+her own tired nerves and tortured fancy. But the memory of Cousin
+Mary Leicester's second sight, of her "visions" in this very room,
+crept upon her and gripped her heart. A ghostly horror seized her
+of the room, the house, and her own tempestuous nature. She groped
+her way out, in blind and hurrying panic--glad of the lamp in the
+hall, glad of the sounds in the house, glad, above all, of
+Th&eacute;r&egrave;se's thin hands as they once more stole lovingly
+round her own.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="XVII"></a>XVII</h2>
+<br>
+<p>The Duchess and Julie were in the large room of Burlington
+House. They had paused before a magnificent Turner of the middle
+period, hitherto unseen by the public, and the Duchess was reading
+from the catalogue in Julie's ear.</p>
+<p>She had found Julie alone in Heribert Street, surrounded by
+books and proofs, endeavoring, as she reported, to finish a piece
+of work for Dr. Meredith. Distressed by her friend's pale cheeks,
+the Duchess had insisted on dragging her from the prison-house and
+changing the current of her thoughts. Julie, laughing, hesitating,
+indignant, had at last yielded--probably in order to avoid another
+<i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> and another scene with the
+little, impetuous lady, and now the Duchess had her safe and was
+endeavoring to amuse her.</p>
+<p>But it was not easy. Julie, generally so instructed and
+sympathetic, so well skilled in the difficult art of seeing
+pictures with a friend, might, to-day, never have turned a phrase
+upon a Constable or a Romney before. She tried, indeed, to turn
+them as usual; but the Duchess, sharply critical and attentive
+where her beloved Julie was concerned, perceived the difference
+acutely! Alack, what languor, what fatigue! Evelyn became more and
+more conscious of an inward consternation.</p>
+<p>"But, thank goodness, he goes to-morrow--the villain! And when
+that's over, it will be all right."</p>
+<p>Julie, meanwhile, knew that she was observed, divined, and
+pitied. Her pride revolted, but it could wring from her nothing
+better than a passive resistance. She could prevent Evelyn from
+expressing her thoughts; she could not so command her own bodily
+frame that the Duchess should not think. Days of moral and mental
+struggle, nights of waking, combined with the serious and sustained
+effort of a new profession, had left their mark. There are,
+moreover, certain wounds to self-love and self-respect which poison
+the whole being.</p>
+<p>"Julie! you <i>must</i> have a holiday!" cried the Duchess,
+presently, as they sat down to rest.</p>
+<p>Julie replied that she, Madame Bornier, and the child were going
+to Bruges for a week.</p>
+<p>"Oh, but that won't be comfortable enough! I'm sure I could
+arrange something. Think of all our tiresome houses--eating their
+heads off!"</p>
+<p>Julie firmly refused. She was going to renew old friendships at
+Bruges; she would be made much of; and the prospect was as pleasant
+as any one need wish.</p>
+<p>"Well, of course, if you have made up your mind. When do you
+go?"</p>
+<p>"In three or four days--just before the Easter rush. And
+you?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, we go to Scotland to fish. We must, of course, be killing
+something. How long, darling, will you be away?"</p>
+<p>"About ten days." Julie pressed the Duchess's little hand in
+acknowledgment of the caressing word and look.</p>
+<p>"By-the-way, didn't Lord Lackington invite you? Ah, there he
+is!"</p>
+<p>And suddenly, Lord Lackington, examining with fury a picture of
+his own which some rascally critic had that morning pronounced to
+be "Venetian school" and not the divine Giorgione himself, lifted
+an angry countenance to find the Duchess and Julie beside him.</p>
+<p>The start which passed through him betrayed itself. He could not
+yet see Julie with composure. But when he had pressed her hand and
+inquired after her health, he went back to his grievance, being
+indeed rejoiced to have secured a pair of listeners.</p>
+<p>"Really, the insolence of these fellows in the press! I shall
+let the Academy know what I think of it. Not a rag of mine shall
+they ever see here again. Ears and little fingers, indeed! Idiots
+and owls!"</p>
+<p>Julie smiled. But it had to be explained to the Duchess that a
+wise man, half Italian, half German, had lately arisen who proposed
+to judge the authenticity of a picture by its ears, assisted by any
+peculiarities of treatment in the little fingers.</p>
+<p>"What nonsense!" said the Duchess, with a yawn. "If I were an
+artist, I should always draw them different ways."</p>
+<p>"Well, not exactly," said Lord Lackington, who, as an artist
+himself, was unfortunately debarred from statements of this
+simplicity. "But the <i>ludicrous</i> way in which these fools
+overdo their little discoveries!"</p>
+<p>And he walked on, fuming, till the open and unmeasured
+admiration of the two ladies for his great Rembrandt, the gem of
+his collection, now occupying the place of honor in the large room
+of the Academy, restored him to himself.</p>
+<p>"Ah, even the biggest ass among them holds his tongue about
+that!" he said, exultantly. "But, hallo! What does that call
+itself?" He looked at a picture in front of him, then at the
+catalogue, then at the Duchess.</p>
+<p>"That picture is ours," said the Duchess. "Isn't it a dear? It's
+a Leonardo da Vinci."</p>
+<p>"Leonardo fiddlesticks!" cried Lord Lackington. "Leonardo,
+indeed! What absurdity! Really, Duchess, you should tell
+Crowborough to be more careful about his things. We mustn't give
+handles to these fellows."</p>
+<p>"What do you mean?" said the Duchess, offended. "If it isn't a
+Leonardo, pray what is it?"</p>
+<p>"Why, a bad school copy, of course!" said Lord Lackington,
+hotly. "Look at the eyes"--he took out a pencil and pointed--"look
+at the neck, look at the fingers!"</p>
+<p>The Duchess pouted.</p>
+<p>"Oh!" she said. "Then there is something in fingers!"</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington's face suddenly relaxed. He broke into a shout
+of laughter, <i>bon enfant</i> that he was; and the Duchess
+laughed, too; but under cover of their merriment she, mindful of
+quite other things, drew him a little farther away from Julie.</p>
+<p>"I thought you had asked her to Nonpareil for Easter?" she said,
+in his ear, with a motion of her pretty head towards Julie in the
+distance.</p>
+<p>"Yes, but, my dear lady, Blanche won't come home! She and Aileen
+put it off, and put it off. Now she says they mean to spend May in
+Switzerland--may perhaps be away the whole summer! I had counted on
+them for Easter. I am dependent on Blanche for hostess. It is
+really too bad of her. Everything has broken down, and William and
+I (he named his youngest son) are going to the Uredales' for a
+fortnight."</p>
+<p>Lord Uredale, his eldest son, a sportsman and farmer, troubled
+by none of his father's originalities, reigned over the second
+family "place," in Herefordshire, beside the Wye.</p>
+<p>"Has Aileen any love affairs yet?" said the Duchess, abruptly,
+raising her face to his.</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington looked surprised.</p>
+<p>"Not that I know of. However, I dare say they wouldn't tell me.
+I'm a sieve, I know. Have you heard of any? Tell me." He stooped to
+her with roguish eagerness. "I like to steal a march on
+Blanche."</p>
+<p>So he knew nothing--while half their world was talking! It was
+very characteristic, however. Except for his own hobbies, artistic,
+medical, or military, Lord Lackington had walked through life as a
+Johnny Head-in-Air, from his youth till now. His children had not
+trusted him with their secrets, and he had never discovered them
+for himself.</p>
+<p>"Is there any likeness between Julie and Aileen?" whispered the
+Duchess.</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington started. Both turned their eyes towards Julie,
+as she stood some ten yards away from them, in front of a refined
+and mysterious profile of the cinque-cento--some lady, perhaps, of
+the d'Este or Sforza families, attributed to Ambrogio da Predis. In
+her soft, black dress, delicately folded and draped to hide her
+excessive thinness, her small toque fitting closely over her wealth
+of hair, her only ornaments a long and slender chain set with uncut
+jewels which Lord Lackington had brought her the day before, and a
+bunch of violets which the Duchess had just slipped into her belt,
+she was as rare and delicate as the picture. But she turned her
+face towards them, and Lord Lackington made a sudden
+exclamation.</p>
+<p>"No! Good Heavens, no! Aileen was a dancing-sprite when I saw
+her last, and this poor girl!--Duchess, why does she look like
+that? So sad, so bloodless!"</p>
+<p>He turned upon her impetuously, his face frowning and
+disturbed.</p>
+<p>The Duchess sighed.</p>
+<p>"You and I have just got to do all we can for her," she said,
+relieved to see that Julie had wandered farther away, as though it
+pleased her to be left to herself.</p>
+<p>"But I would do anything--everything!" cried Lord Lackington.
+"Of course, none of us can undo the past. But I offered yesterday
+to make full provision for her. She has refused. She has the most
+Quixotic notions, poor child!"</p>
+<p>"No, let her earn her own living yet awhile. It will do her
+good. But--shall I tell you secrets?" The Duchess looked at him,
+knitting her small brows.</p>
+<p>"Tell me what I ought to know--no more," he said, gravely, with
+a dignity contrasting oddly with his school-boy curiosity in the
+matter of little Aileen's lover.</p>
+<p>The Duchess hesitated. Just in front of her was a picture of the
+Venetian school representing St. George, Princess Saba, and the
+dragon. The princess, a long and slender victim, with bowed head
+and fettered hands, reminded her of Julie. The dragon--perfidious,
+encroaching wretch!--he was easy enough of interpretation. But from
+the blue distance, thank Heaven! spurs the champion. Oh, ye
+heavenly powers, give him wings and strength! "St. George--St.
+George to the rescue!"</p>
+<p>"Well," she said, slowly, "I can tell you of some one who is
+very devoted to Julie--some one worthy of her. Come with me."</p>
+<p>And she took him away into the next room, still talking in his
+ear.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>When they returned, Lord Lackington was radiant. With a new
+eagerness he looked for Julie's distant figure amid the groups
+scattered about the central room. The Duchess had sworn him to
+secrecy, indeed; and he meant to be discretion itself. But--Jacob
+Delafield! Yes, that, indeed, would be a solution. His pride was
+acutely pleased; his affection--of which he already began to feel
+no small store for this charming woman of his own blood, this poor
+granddaughter <i>de la main gauche</i>--was strengthened and
+stimulated. She was sad now and out of spirits, poor thing,
+because, no doubt, of this horrid business with Lady Henry, to
+whom, by-the-way, he had written his mind. But time would see to
+that--time--gently and discreetly assisted by himself and the
+Duchess. It was impossible that she should finally hold out against
+such a good fellow--impossible, and most unreasonable. No. Rose's
+daughter would be brought back safely to her mother's world and
+class, and poor Rose's tragedy would at last work itself out for
+good. How strange, romantic, and providential!</p>
+<p>In such a mood did he now devote himself to Julie. He chattered
+about the pictures; he gossiped about their owners; he excused
+himself for the absence of "that gad-about Blanche"; he made her
+promise him a Whitsuntide visit instead, and whispered in her ear,
+"You shall have <i>her</i> room"; he paid her the most handsome and
+gallant attentions, natural to the man of fashion <i>par
+excellence</i>, mingled with something intimate, brusque,
+capricious, which marked her his own, and of the family.
+Seventy-five!--with that step, that carriage of the shoulders, that
+vivacity! Ridiculous!</p>
+<p>And Julie could not but respond.</p>
+<p>Something stole into her heart that had never yet lodged there.
+She must love the old man--she did. When he left her for the
+Duchess her eyes followed him--her dark-rimmed, wistful eyes.</p>
+<p>"I must be off," said Lord Lackington, presently, buttoning up
+his coat. "This, ladies, has been dalliance. I now go to my duties.
+Read me in the <i>Times</i> to-morrow. I shall make a rattling
+speech. You see, I shall rub it in."</p>
+<p>"Montresor?" said the Duchess.</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington nodded. That afternoon he proposed to strew the
+floor of the House of Lords with the <i>d&eacute;bris</i> of
+Montresor's farcical reforms.</p>
+<p>Suddenly he pulled himself up.</p>
+<p>"Duchess, look round you, at those two in the doorway. Isn't
+it--by George, it is!--Chudleigh and his boy!"</p>
+<p>"Yes--yes, it is," said the Duchess, in some excitement. "Don't
+recognize them. Don't speak to him. Jacob implored me not."</p>
+<p>And she hurried her companions along till they were well out of
+the track of the new-comers; then on the threshold of another room
+she paused, and, touching Julie on the arm, said, in a whisper:</p>
+<p>"Now look back. That's Jacob's Duke, and his poor, poor
+boy!"</p>
+<p>Julie threw a hurried glance towards the two figures; but that
+glance impressed forever upon her memory a most tragic sight.</p>
+<p>A man of middle height, sallow, and careworn, with jet-black
+hair and beard, supported a sickly lad, apparently about seventeen,
+who clung to his arm and coughed at intervals. The father moved as
+though in a dream. He looked at the pictures with unseeing,
+lustreless eyes, except when the boy asked him a question. Then he
+would smile, stoop his head and answer, only to resume again
+immediately his melancholy passivity. The boy, meanwhile, his lips
+gently parted over his white teeth, his blue eyes wide open and
+intent upon the pictures, his emaciated cheeks deeply flushed, wore
+an aspect of patient suffering, of docile dependence, peculiarly
+touching.</p>
+<p>It was evident the father and son thought of none but each
+other. From time to time the man would make the boy rest on one of
+the seats in the middle of the room, and the boy would look up and
+chatter to his companion standing before him. Then again they would
+resume their walk, the boy leaning on his father. Clearly the poor
+lad was marked for death; clearly, also, he was the desire of his
+father's heart.</p>
+<p>"The possessor, and the heir, of perhaps the finest houses and
+the most magnificent estates in England," said Lord Lackington,
+with a shrug of pity. "And Chudleigh would gladly give them all to
+keep that boy alive."</p>
+<p>Julie turned away. Strange thoughts had been passing and
+repassing through her brain.</p>
+<p>Then, with angry loathing, she flung her thoughts from her. What
+did the Chudleigh inheritance matter to her? That night she said
+good-bye to the man she loved. These three miserable, burning weeks
+were done. Her heart, her life, would go with Warkworth to Africa
+and the desert. If at the beginning of this period of passion--so
+short in prospect, and, to look back upon, an eternity--she had
+ever supposed that power or wealth could make her amends for the
+loss of her lover, she was in no mood to calculate such
+compensations to-day. Parting was too near, the anguish in her
+veins too sharp.</p>
+<p>"Jacob takes them to Paris to-morrow," said the Duchess to Lord
+Lackington. "The Duke has heard of some new doctor."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>An hour or two later, Sir Wilfrid Bury, in the smoking-room of
+his club, took out a letter which he had that morning received from
+Lady Henry Delafield and gave it a second reading.</p>
+<p>/# "So I hear that mademoiselle's social prospects are not,
+after all, so triumphant as both she and I imagined. I gave the
+world credit for more fools than it seems actually to possess; and
+she--well, I own I am a little puzzled. Has she taken leave of her
+senses? I am told that she is constantly seen with this man; that
+in spite of all denials there can be no doubt of his engagement to
+the Moffatt girl; and that <i>en somme</i> she has done herself no
+good by the whole affair. But, after all, poor soul, she is
+disinterested. She stands to gain nothing, as I understand; and she
+risks a good deal. From this comfortable distance, I really find
+something touching in her behavior.</p>
+<p>"She gives her first 'Wednesday,' I understand, to-morrow.
+'Mademoiselle Le Breton at home!' I confess I am curious. By all
+means go, and send me a full report. Mr. Montresor and his wife
+will certainly be there. He and I have been corresponding, of
+course. He wishes to persuade me that he feels himself in some way
+responsible for mademoiselle's position, and for my dismissal of
+her; that I ought to allow him in consequence full freedom of
+action. I cannot see matters in the same light. But, as I tell him,
+the change will be all to his advantage. He exchanges a fractious
+old woman, always ready to tell him unpleasant truths, for one who
+has made flattery her <i>m&eacute;tier</i>. If he wants quantity
+she will give it him. Quality he can dispense with--as I have seen
+for some time past.</p>
+<p>"Lord Lackington has written me an impertinent letter. It seems
+she has revealed herself, and <i>il s'en prend &agrave; moi</i>,
+because I kept the secret from him, and because I have now dared to
+dismiss his granddaughter. I am in the midst of a reply which
+amuses me. He is to cast off his belongings as he pleases; but when
+a lady of the Chantrey blood--no matter how she came by
+it--condescends to enter a paid employment, legitimate or
+illegitimate, she must be treated <i>en reine</i>, or Lord L. will
+know the reason why. 'Here is one hundred pounds a year, and let me
+hear no more of you,' he says to her at sixteen. Thirteen years
+later I take her in, respect his wishes, and keep the secret. She
+misbehaves herself, and I dismiss her. Where is the grievance? He
+himself made her a <i>lectrice</i>, and now complains that she is
+expected to do her duty in that line of life. He himself banished
+her from the family, and now grumbles that I did not at once foist
+her upon him. He would like to escape the odium of his former
+action by blaming me; but I am not meek, and I shall make him
+regret his letter.</p>
+<p>"As for Jacob Delafield, don't trouble yourself to write me any
+further news of him. He has insulted me lately in a way I shall not
+soon forgive--nothing to do, however, with the lady who says she
+refused him. Whether her report be veracious or no matters nothing
+to me, any more than his chances of succeeding to the Captain's
+place. He is one of the ingenious fools who despise the old ways of
+ruining themselves, and in the end achieve it as well as the
+commoner sort. He owes me a good deal, and at one time it pleased
+me to imagine that he was capable both of affection and gratitude.
+That is the worst of being a woman; we pass from one illusion to
+another; love is only the beginning; there are a dozen to come
+after.</p>
+<p>"You will scold me for a bitter tongue. Well, my dear Wilfrid, I
+am not gay here. There are too many women, too many church
+services, and I see too much of my doctor. I pine for London, and I
+don't see why I should have been driven out of it by an
+<i>intrigante</i>.</p>
+<p>"Write to me, my dear Wilfrid. I am not quite so bad as I paint
+myself; say to yourself she has arthritis, she is sixty-five, and
+her new companion reads aloud with a twang; then you will only
+wonder at my moderation." #/</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid returned the letter to his pocket. That day, at
+luncheon with Lady Hubert, he had had the curiosity to question
+Susan Delafield, Jacob's fair-haired sister, as to the reasons for
+her brother's quarrel with Lady Henry.</p>
+<p>It appeared that being now in receipt of what seemed to himself,
+at any rate, a large salary as his cousin's agent, he had thought
+it his duty to save up and repay the sums which Lady Henry had
+formerly spent upon his education.</p>
+<p>His letter enclosing the money had reached that lady during the
+first week of her stay at Torquay. It was, no doubt, couched in
+terms less cordial or more formal than would have been the case
+before Miss Le Breton's expulsion. "Not that he defends her
+altogether," said Susan Delafield, who was herself inclined to side
+with Lady Henry; "but as Lady Henry has refused to see him since,
+it was not much good being friendly, was it?"</p>
+<p>Anyway, the letter and its enclosure had completed a breach
+already begun. Lady Henry had taken furious offence; the check had
+been insultingly returned, and had now gone to swell the finances
+of a London hospital.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid was just reflecting that Jacob's honesty had better
+have waited for a more propitious season, when, looking up, he saw
+the War Minister beside him, in the act of searching for a
+newspaper.</p>
+<p>"Released?" said Bury, with a smile.</p>
+<p>"Yes, thank Heaven. Lackington is, I believe, still pounding at
+me in the House of Lords. But that amuses him and doesn't hurt
+me."</p>
+<p>"You'll carry your resolutions?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, dear, yes, with no trouble at all," said the Minister,
+almost with sulkiness, as he threw himself into a chair and looked
+with distaste at the newspaper he had taken up.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid surveyed him.</p>
+<p>"We meet to-night?" he said, presently.</p>
+<p>"You mean in Heribert Street? I suppose so," said Montresor,
+without cordiality.</p>
+<p>"I have just got a letter from her ladyship."</p>
+<p>"Well, I hope it is more agreeable than those she writes to me.
+A more unreasonable old woman--"</p>
+<p>The tired Minister took up <i>Punch</i>, looked at a page, and
+flung it down again. Then he said:</p>
+<p>"Are you going?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know. Lady Henry gives me leave, which makes me feel
+myself a kind of spy."</p>
+<p>"Oh, never mind. Come along. Mademoiselle Julie will want all
+our support. I don't hear her as kindly spoken of just now as I
+should wish."</p>
+<p>"No. Lady Henry has more personal hold than we thought."</p>
+<p>"And Mademoiselle Julie less tact. Why, in the name of goodness,
+does she go and get herself talked about with the particular man
+who is engaged to her little cousin? You know, by-the-way, that the
+story of her parentage is leaking out fast? Most people seem to
+know something about it."</p>
+<p>"Well, that was bound to come. Will it do her good or harm?"</p>
+<p>"Harm, for the present. A few people are straitlaced, and a good
+many feel they have been taken in. But, anyway, this flirtation is
+a mistake."</p>
+<p>"Nobody really knows whether the man is engaged to the Moffatt
+girl or no. The guardians have forbidden it."</p>
+<p>"At any rate, everybody is kind enough to say so. It's a blunder
+on Mademoiselle Julie's part. As to the man himself, of course,
+there is nothing to say. He is a very clever fellow." Montresor
+looked at his companion with a sudden stiffness, as though defying
+contradiction. "He will do this piece of work that we have given
+him to do extremely well."</p>
+<p>"The Mokembe mission?"</p>
+<p>Montresor nodded.</p>
+<p>"He had very considerable claims, and was appointed entirely on
+his military record. All the tales as to Mademoiselle's
+influence--with me, for instance--that Lady Henry has been putting
+into circulation are either absurd fiction or have only the very
+smallest foundation in fact."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid smiled amicably and diverted the conversation.</p>
+<p>"Warkworth starts at once?"</p>
+<p>"He goes to Paris to-morrow. I recommended him to see Pattison,
+the Military Secretary there, who was in the expedition of five
+years back."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"This hasn't gone as well as it ought," said Dr. Meredith, in
+the ear of the Duchess.</p>
+<p>They were standing inside the door of Julie's little
+drawing-room. The Duchess, in a dazzling frock of white and silver,
+which placed Clarisse among the divinities of her craft, looked
+round her with a look of worry.</p>
+<p>"What's the matter with the tiresome creatures? Why is everybody
+going so early? And there are not half the people here who ought to
+be here."</p>
+<p>Meredith shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+<p>"I saw you at Chatton House the other night," he said, in the
+same tone.</p>
+<p>"Well?" said the Duchess, sharply.</p>
+<p>"It seemed to me there was something of a demonstration."</p>
+<p>"Against Julie? Let them try it!" said the little lady, with
+evasive defiance. "We shall be too strong for them."</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry is putting her back into it. I confess I never
+thought she would be either so venomous or so successful."</p>
+<p>"Julie will come out all right."</p>
+<p>"She would--triumphantly--if--"</p>
+<p>The Duchess glanced at him uneasily.</p>
+<p>"I believe you are overworking her. She looks skin and
+bone."</p>
+<p>Dr. Meredith shook his head.</p>
+<p>"On the contrary, I have been holding her back. But it seems she
+wants to earn a good deal of money."</p>
+<p>"That's so absurd," cried the Duchess, "when there are people
+only pining to give her some of theirs."</p>
+<p>"No, no," said the journalist, brusquely. "She is quite right
+there. Oh, it would be all right if she were herself. She would
+make short work of Lady Henry. But, Mademoiselle Julie"--for she
+glided past them, and he raised his voice--"sit down and rest
+yourself. Don't take so much trouble."</p>
+<p>She flung them a smile.</p>
+<p>"Lord Lackington is going," and she hurried on.</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington was standing in a group which contained Sir
+Wilfrid Bury and Mr. Montresor.</p>
+<p>"Well, good-bye, good-bye," he said, as she came up to him. "I
+must go. I'm nearly asleep."</p>
+<p>"Tired with abusing me?" said Montresor, nonchalantly, turning
+round upon him.</p>
+<p>"No, only with trying to make head or tail of you," said
+Lackington, gayly. Then he stooped over Julie.</p>
+<p>"Take care of yourself. Come back rosier--and
+<i>fatter</i>."</p>
+<p>"I'm perfectly well. Let me come with you."</p>
+<p>"No, don't trouble yourself." For she had followed him into the
+hall and found his coat for him. All the arrangements for her
+little "evening" had been of the simplest. That had been a point of
+pride with her. Madame Bornier and Th&eacute;r&egrave;se dispensing
+tea and coffee in the dining-room, one hired parlor-maid, and she
+herself active and busy everywhere. Certain French models were in
+her head, and memories of her mother's bare little salon in Bruges,
+with its good talk, and its thinnest of thin refreshments--a few
+cups of weak tea, or glasses of <i>eau sucr&eacute;e</i>, with a
+plate of <i>patisserie</i>.</p>
+<p>The hired parlor-maid was whistling for a cab in the service of
+some other departing guest; so Julie herself put Lord Lackington
+into his coat, much to his discomfort.</p>
+<p>"I don't think you ought to have come," she said to him, with
+soft reproach. "Why did you have that fainting fit before
+dinner?"</p>
+<p>"I say! Who's been telling tales?"</p>
+<p>"Sir Wilfrid Bury met your son, Mr. Chantrey, at dinner."</p>
+<p>"Bill can never hold his tongue. Oh, it was nothing; not with
+the proper treatment, mind you. Of course, if the allopaths were to
+get their knives into me--but, thank God! I'm out of that
+<i>gal&egrave;re</i>. Well, in a fortnight, isn't it? We shall both
+be in town again. I don't like saying good-bye."</p>
+<p>And he took both her hands in his.</p>
+<p>"It all seems so strange to me still--so strange!" he
+murmured.</p>
+<p>"Next week I shall see mamma's grave," said Julie, under her
+breath. "Shall I put some flowers there for you?"</p>
+<p>The fine blue eyes above her wavered. He bent to her.</p>
+<p>"Yes. And write to me. Come back soon. Oh, you'll see. Things
+will all come right, perfectly right, in spite of Lady Henry."</p>
+<p>Confidence, encouragement, a charming raillery, an enthusiastic
+tenderness--all these beamed upon her from the old man's tone and
+gesture. She was puzzled. But with another pressure of the hand he
+was gone. She stood looking after him. And as the carriage drove
+away, the sound of the wheels hurt her. It was the withdrawal of
+something protecting--something more her own, when all was said,
+than anything else which remained to her.</p>
+<p>As she returned to the drawing-room, Dr. Meredith intercepted
+her.</p>
+<p>"You want me to send you some work to take abroad?" he said, in
+a low voice. "I shall do nothing of the kind."</p>
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+<p>"Because you ought to have a complete holiday."</p>
+<p>"Very well. Then I sha'n't be able to pay my way," she said,
+with a tired smile.</p>
+<p>"Remember the doctor's bills if you fall ill."</p>
+<p>"Ill! I am never ill," she said, with scorn. Then she looked
+round the room deliberately, and her gaze returned to her
+companion. "I am not likely to be fatigued with society, am I?" she
+added, in a voice that did not attempt to disguise the bitterness
+within.</p>
+<p>"My dear lady, you are hardly installed."</p>
+<p>"I have been here a month--the critical month. Now was the
+moment to stand by me, or throw me over--n'est-ce pas? This is my
+first party, my house-warming. I gave a fortnight's notice; I asked
+about sixty people, whom I knew <i>well</i>. Some did not answer at
+all. Of the rest, half declined--rather curtly, in many instances.
+And of those who accepted, not all are here. And, oh, how it
+dragged!"</p>
+<p>Meredith looked at her rather guiltily, not knowing what to say.
+It was true the evening had dragged. In both their minds there rose
+the memory of Lady Henry's "Wednesdays," the beautiful rooms, the
+varied and brilliant company, the power and consideration which had
+attended Lady Henry's companion.</p>
+<p>"I suppose," said Julie, shrugging her shoulders, "I had been
+thinking of the French <i>ma&icirc;tresses de salon</i>, like a
+fool; of Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse--or Madame Mohl--imagining
+that people would come to <i>me</i> for a cup of tea and an
+agreeable hour. But in England, it seems, people must be paid to
+talk. Talk is a business affair--you give it for a
+consideration."</p>
+<p>"No, no! You'll build it up," said Meredith. In his heart of
+hearts he said to himself that she had not been herself that night.
+Her wonderful social instincts, her memory, her adroitness, had
+somehow failed her. And from a hostess strained, conscious, and
+only artificially gay, the little gathering had taken its note.</p>
+<p>"You have the old guard, anyway," added the journalist, with a
+smile, as he looked round the room. The Duchess, Delafield,
+Montresor and his wife, General McGill, and three or four other old
+<i>habitu&eacute;s</i> of the Bruton Street evenings were scattered
+about the little drawing-room. General Fergus, too, was there--had
+arrived early, and was staying late. His frank soldier's face, the
+accent, cheerful, homely, careless, with which he threw off talk
+full of marrow, talk only possible--for all its simplicity--to a
+man whose life had been already closely mingled with the fortunes
+of his country, had done something to bind Julie's poor little
+party together. Her eye rested on him with gratitude. Then she
+replied to Meredith.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Montresor will scarcely come again."</p>
+<p>"What do you mean? Ungrateful lady! Montresor! who has already
+sacrificed Lady Henry and the habits of thirty years to your
+<i>beaux yeux</i>!"</p>
+<p>"That is what he will never forgive me," said Julie, sadly. "He
+has satisfied his pride, and I--have lost a friend."</p>
+<p>"Pessimist! Mrs. Montresor seemed to me most friendly."</p>
+<p>Julie laughed.</p>
+<p>"<i>She</i>, of course, is enchanted. Her husband has never been
+her own till now. She married him, subject to Lady Henry's rights.
+But all that she will soon forget--and my existence with it."</p>
+<p>"I won't argue. It only makes you more stubborn," said Meredith.
+"Ah, still they come!"</p>
+<p>For the door opened to admit the tall figure of Major
+Warkworth.</p>
+<p>"Am I very late?" he said, with a surprised look as he glanced
+at the thinly scattered room. Julie greeted him, and he excused
+himself on the ground of a dinner which had begun just an hour
+late, owing to the tardiness of a cabinet minister.</p>
+<p>Meredith observed the young man with some attention, from the
+dark corner in which Julie had left him. The gossip of the moment
+had reached him also, but he had not paid much heed to it. It
+seemed to him that no one knew anything first-hand of the Moffatt
+affair. And for himself, he found it difficult to believe that
+Julie Le Breton was any man's dupe.</p>
+<p>She must marry, poor thing! Of course she must marry. Since it
+had been plain to him that she would never listen to his own suit,
+this great-hearted and clear-brained man had done his best to
+stifle in himself all small or grasping impulses. But this
+fellow--with his inferior temper and morale--alack! why are the
+clever women such fools?</p>
+<p>If only she had confided in him--her old and tried friend--he
+thought he could have put things before her, so as to influence
+without offending her. But he suffered--had always suffered--from
+the jealous reserve which underlay her charm, her inborn tendency
+to secretiveness and intrigue.</p>
+<p>Now, as he watched her few words with Warkworth, it seemed to
+him that he saw the signs of some hidden relation. How flushed she
+was suddenly, and her eyes so bright!</p>
+<p>He was not allowed much time or scope, however, for observation.
+Warkworth took a turn round the room, chatted a little with this
+person and that, then, on the plea that he was off to Paris early
+on the following morning, approached his hostess again to take his
+leave.</p>
+<p>"Ah, yes, you start to-morrow," said Montresor, rising. "Well,
+good luck to you--good luck to you."</p>
+<p>General Fergus, too, advanced. The whole room, indeed, awoke to
+the situation, and all the remaining guests grouped themselves
+round the young soldier. Even the Duchess was thawed a little by
+this actual moment of departure. After all, the man was going on
+his country's service.</p>
+<p>"No child's play, this mission, I can assure you," General
+McGill had said to her. "Warkworth will want all the powers he
+has--of mind or body."</p>
+<p>The slim, young fellow, so boyishly elegant in his well-cut
+evening-dress, received the ovation offered to him with an evident
+pleasure which tried to hide itself in the usual English ways. He
+had been very pale when he came in. But his cheek reddened as
+Montresor grasped him by the hand, as the two generals bade him a
+cordial godspeed, as Sir Wilfrid gave him a jesting message for the
+British representative in Egypt, and as the ladies present accorded
+him those flattering and admiring looks that woman keeps for
+valor.</p>
+<p>Julie counted for little in these farewells. She stood
+<i>apart</i> and rather silent. "<i>They</i> have had their
+good-bye," thought the Duchess, with a thrill she could not
+help.</p>
+<p>"Three days in Paris?" said Sir Wilfrid. "A fortnight to
+Denga--and then how long before you start for the interior?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, three weeks for collecting porters and supplies. They're
+drilling the escort already. We should be off by the middle of
+May."</p>
+<p>"A bad month," said General Fergus, shrugging his shoulders.</p>
+<p>"Unfortunately, affairs won't wait. But I am already stiff with
+quinine," laughed Warkworth--"or I shall be by the time I get to
+Denga. Good-bye--good-bye."</p>
+<p>And in another moment he was gone. Miss Le Breton had given him
+her hand and wished him "Bon voyage," like everybody else.</p>
+<p>The party broke up. The Duchess kissed her Julie with peculiar
+tenderness; Delafield pressed her hand, and his deep, kind eyes
+gave her a lingering look, of which, however, she was quite
+unconscious; Meredith renewed his half-irritable, half-affectionate
+counsels of rest and recreation; Mrs. Montresor was conventionally
+effusive; Montresor alone bade the mistress of the house a somewhat
+cold and perfunctory farewell. Even Sir Wilfrid was a little
+touched, he knew not why; he vowed to himself that his report to
+Lady Henry on the morrow should contain no food for malice, and
+inwardly he forgave Mademoiselle Julie the old romancings.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h2>
+<br>
+<p>It was twenty minutes since the last carriage had driven away.
+Julie was still waiting in the little hall, pacing its squares of
+black-and-white marble, slowly, backward and forward.</p>
+<p>There was a low knock on the door.</p>
+<p>She opened it. Warkworth appeared on the threshold, and the high
+moon behind him threw a bright ray into the dim hall, where all but
+one faint light had been extinguished. She pointed to the
+drawing-room.</p>
+<p>"I will come directly. Let me just go and ask L&eacute;onie to
+sit up."</p>
+<p>Warkworth went into the drawing-room. Julie opened the
+dining-room door. Madame Bornier was engaged in washing and putting
+away the china and glass which had been used for Julie's modest
+refreshments.</p>
+<p>"L&eacute;onie, you won't go to bed? Major Warkworth is
+here."</p>
+<p>Madame Bornier did not raise her head.</p>
+<p>"How long will he be?"</p>
+<p>"Perhaps half an hour."</p>
+<p>"It is already past midnight."</p>
+<p>"L&eacute;onie, he goes to-morrow."</p>
+<p>"Tr&egrave;s bien. Mais--sais-tu, ma ch&egrave;re, ce n'est pas
+convenable, ce que tu fais l&agrave;!"</p>
+<p>And the older woman, straightening herself, looked her
+foster-sister full in the face. A kind of watch-dog anxiety, a
+sulky, protesting affection breathed from her rugged features.</p>
+<p>Julie went up to her, not angrily, but rather with a pleading
+humility.</p>
+<p>The two women held a rapid colloquy in low tones--Madame Bornier
+remonstrating, Julie softly getting her way.</p>
+<p>Then Madame Bornier returned to her work, and Julie went to the
+drawing-room.</p>
+<p>Warkworth sprang up as she entered. Both paused and wavered.
+Then he went up to her, and roughly, irresistibly, drew her into
+his arms. She held back a moment, but finally yielded, and clasping
+her hands round his neck she buried her face on his breast.</p>
+<p>They stood so for some minutes, absolutely silent, save for her
+hurried breathing, his head bowed upon hers.</p>
+<p>"Julie, how can we say good-bye?" he whispered, at last.</p>
+<p>She disengaged herself, and, seeing his face, she tried for
+composure.</p>
+<p>"Come and sit down."</p>
+<p>She led him to the window, which he had thrown open as he
+entered the room, and they sat beside it, hand in hand. A mild
+April night shone outside. Gusts of moist air floated in upon them.
+There were dim lights and shadows in the garden and on the
+shuttered facade of the great house.</p>
+<p>"Is it forever?" said Julie, in a low, stifled voice.
+"Good-bye--forever?"</p>
+<p>She felt his hand tremble, but she did not look at him. She
+seemed to be reciting words long since spoken in the mind.</p>
+<p>"You will be away--perhaps a year? Then you go back to India,
+and then--"</p>
+<p>She paused.</p>
+<p>Warkworth was physically conscious, as it were, of a letter he
+carried in his coat-pocket--a letter from Lady Blanche Moffatt
+which had reached him that morning, the letter of a <i>grande
+dame</i>, reduced to undignified remonstrance by sheer maternal
+terror--terror for the health and life of a child as fragile and
+ethereal as a wild rose in May. Reports had reached her; but
+no--they could not be true! She bade him be thankful that not a
+breath of suspicion had yet touched Aileen. As for herself, let him
+write and reassure her at once. Otherwise--</p>
+<p>And the latter part of the letter conveyed a veiled menace that
+Warkworth perfectly understood.</p>
+<p>No--in that direction, no escape; his own past actions closed
+him in. And henceforth, it was clear, he must walk more warily.</p>
+<p>But how blame himself for these feelings of which he was now
+conscious towards Julie Le Breton--the strongest, probably, that a
+man not built for passion would ever know. His relation towards her
+had grown upon him unawares, and now their own hands were about to
+cut it at the root. What blame to either of them? Fate had been at
+work; and he felt himself glorified by a situation so tragically
+sincere, and by emotions of which a month before he would have
+secretly held himself incapable.</p>
+<p>Resolutely, in this last meeting with Julie, he gave these
+emotions play. He possessed himself of her cold hands as she put
+her desolate question--"And then?"--and kissed them fervently.</p>
+<p>"Julie, if you and I had met a year ago, what happened in India
+would never have happened. You know that!"</p>
+<p>"Do I? But it only hurts me to <i>think it away</i> like that.
+There it is--it has happened."</p>
+<p>She turned upon him suddenly.</p>
+<p>"Have you any picture of her?"</p>
+<p>He hesitated.</p>
+<p>"Yes," he said, at last.</p>
+<p>"Have you got it here?"</p>
+<p>"Why do you ask, dear one? This one evening is <i>ours</i>."</p>
+<p>And again he tried to draw her to him. But she persisted.</p>
+<p>"I feel sure you have it. Show it me."</p>
+<p>"Julie, you and you only are in my thoughts!"</p>
+<p>"Then do what I ask." She bent to him with a wild, entreating
+air; her lips almost touched his cheek. Unwillingly he drew out a
+letter-case from his breast-pocket, and took from it a little
+photograph which he handed to her.</p>
+<p>She looked at it with eager eyes. A face framed, as it were, out
+of snow and fire lay in her hand, a thing most delicate, most
+frail, yet steeped in feeling and significance--a child's face with
+its soft curls of brown hair, and the upper lip raised above the
+white, small teeth, as though in a young wonder; yet behind its
+sweetness, what suggestions of a poetic or tragic sensibility! The
+slender neck carried the little head with girlish dignity; the
+clear, timid eyes seemed at once to shrink from and trust the
+spectator.</p>
+<p>Julie returned the little picture, and hid her face with her
+hands. Warkworth watched her uncomfortably, and at last drew her
+hands away.</p>
+<p>"What are you thinking of?" he said, almost with violence.
+"Don't shut me out!"</p>
+<p>"I am not jealous now," she said, looking at him piteously. "I
+don't hate her. And if she knew all--she couldn't--hate me."</p>
+<p>"No one could hate her. She is an angel. But she is not my
+Julie!" he said, vehemently, and he thrust the little picture into
+his pocket again.</p>
+<p>"Tell me," she said, after a pause, laying her hand on his knee,
+"when did you begin to think of me--differently? All the winter,
+when we used to meet, you never--you never loved me then?"</p>
+<p>"How, placed as I was, could I let myself think of love? I only
+knew that I wanted to see you, to talk to you, to write to
+you--that the day when we did not meet was a lost day. Don't be so
+proud!" He tried to laugh at her. "You didn't think of me in any
+special way, either. You were much too busy making bishops, or
+judges, or academicians. Oh, Julie, I was so afraid of you in those
+early days!"</p>
+<p>"The first night we met," she said, passionately, "I found a
+carnation you had worn in your button-hole. I put it under my
+pillow, and felt for it in the dark like a talisman. You had stood
+between me and Lady Henry twice. You had smiled at me and pressed
+my hand--not as others did, but as though you understood <i>me</i>,
+myself--as though, at least, you wished to understand. Then came
+the joy of joys, that I could help you--that I could do something
+for you. Ah, how it altered life for me! I never turned the corner
+of a street that I did not count on the chance of seeing you
+beyond--suddenly--on my path. I never heard your voice that it did
+not thrill me from head to foot. I never made a new friend or
+acquaintance that I did not ask myself first how I could thereby
+serve you. I never saw you come into the room that my heart did not
+leap. I never slept but you were in my dreams. I loathed London
+when you were out of it. It was paradise when you were there."</p>
+<p>Straining back from him as he still held her hands, her whole
+face and form shook with the energy of her confession. Her
+wonderful hair, loosened from the thin gold bands in which it had
+been confined during the evening, fell in a glossy confusion about
+her brow and slender neck; its black masses, the melting brilliance
+of the eyes, the tragic freedom of the attitude gave both to form
+and face a wild and poignant beauty.</p>
+<p>Warkworth, beside her, was conscious first of amazement, then of
+a kind of repulsion--a kind of fear--till all else was lost in a
+hurry of joy and gratitude.</p>
+<p>The tears stood on his cheek. "Julie, you shame me--you trample
+me into the earth!"</p>
+<p>He tried to gather her in his arms, but she resisted, Caresses
+were not what those eyes demanded--eyes feverishly bright with the
+memory of her own past dreams, Presently, indeed, she withdrew
+herself from him. She rose and closed the window; she put the lamp
+in another place; she brought her rebellious hair into order.</p>
+<p>"We must not be so mad," she said, with a quivering smile, as
+she again seated herself, but at some distance from him. "You see,
+for me the great question is "--her voice became low and
+rapid--"What am I going to do with the future? For you it is all
+plain. We part to-night. You have your career, your marriage. I
+withdraw from your life--absolutely. But for me--"</p>
+<p>She paused. It was the manner of one trying to see her way in
+the dark.</p>
+<p>"Your social gifts," said Warkworth, in agitation, "your
+friends, Julie--these will occupy your mind. Then, of course, you
+will, you must marry! Oh, you'll soon forget me, Julie! I pray you
+may!"</p>
+<p>"My social gifts?" she repeated, disregarding the rest of his
+speech. "I have told you already they have broken down. Society
+sides with Lady Henry. I am to be made to know my place--I do know
+it!"</p>
+<p>"The Duchess will fight for you."</p>
+<p>She laughed.</p>
+<p>"The Duke won't let her--nor shall I."</p>
+<p>"You'll marry," he repeated, with emotion. "You'll find some one
+worthy of you--some one who will give you the great position for
+which you were born."</p>
+<p>"I could have it at any moment," she said, looking him quietly
+in the eyes.</p>
+<p>Warkworth drew back, conscious of a disagreeable shock. He had
+been talking in generalities, giving away the future with that
+fluent prodigality, that easy prophecy which costs so little. What
+did she mean?</p>
+<p>"<i>Delafield?"</i> he cried.</p>
+<p>And he waited for her reply--which lingered--in a tense and
+growing eagerness. The notion had crossed his mind once or twice
+during the winter, only to be dismissed as ridiculous. Then, on the
+occasion of their first quarrel, when Julie had snubbed him in
+Delafield's presence and to Delafield's advantage, he had been
+conscious of a momentary alarm. But Julie, who on that one and only
+occasion had paraded her intimacy with Delafield, thenceforward
+said not a word of him, and Warkworth's jealousy had died for lack
+of fuel. In relation to Julie, Delafield had been surely the mere
+shadow and agent of his little cousin the Duchess--a friendly,
+knight-errant sort of person, with a liking for the distressed.
+What! the heir-presumptive of Chudleigh Abbey, and one of the most
+famous of English dukedoms, when even he, the struggling, penurious
+officer, would never have dreamed of such a match?</p>
+<p>Julie, meanwhile, heard only jealousy in his exclamation, and it
+caressed her ear, her heart. She was tempted once more, woman-like,
+to dwell upon the other lover, and again something compelling and
+delicate in her feeling towards Delafield forbade.</p>
+<p>"No, you mustn't make me tell you any more," she said, putting
+the name aside with a proud gesture. "It would be poor and mean.
+But it's true. I have only to put out my hand for what you call 'a
+great position,' I have refused to put it out. Sometimes, of
+course, it has dazzled me. To-night it seems to me--dust and ashes.
+No; when we two have said good-bye, I shall begin life again. And
+this time I shall live it in my own way, for my own ends. I'm very
+tired. Henceforth 'I'll walk where my own nature would be
+leading--it vexes me to choose another guide.'"</p>
+<p>And as she spoke the words of one of the chainless souls of
+history, in a voice passionately full and rich, she sprang to her
+feet, and, drawing her slender form to its full height, she locked
+her hands behind her, and began to pace the room with a wild, free
+step.</p>
+<p>Every nerve in Warkworth's frame was tingling. He was carried
+out of himself, first by the rebellion of her look and manner, then
+by this fact, so new, so astounding, which her very evasion had
+confirmed. During her whole contest with Lady Henry, and now, in
+her present ambiguous position, she had Delafield, and through
+Delafield the English great world, in the hollow of her hand? This
+nameless woman--no longer in her first youth. And she had refused?
+He watched her in a speechless wonder and incredulity.</p>
+<p>The thought leaped. "And this sublime folly--this madness--was
+for <i>me</i>?"</p>
+<p>It stirred and intoxicated him. Yet she was not thereby raised
+in his eyes. Nay, the contrary. With the passion which was rapidly
+mounting in his veins there mingled--poor Julie!--a curious
+diminution of respect.</p>
+<p>"Julie!" He held out his hand to her peremptorily. "Come to me
+again. You are so wonderful to-night, in that white dress--like a
+wild muse. I shall always see you so. Come!"</p>
+<p>She obeyed, and gave him her hands, standing beside his chair.
+But her face was still absorbed.</p>
+<p>"To be free," she said, under her breath--"free, like my
+parents, from all these petty struggles and conventions!"</p>
+<p>Then she felt his kisses on her hands, and her expression
+changed.</p>
+<p>"How we cheat ourselves with words!" she whispered, trembling,
+and, withdrawing one hand, she smoothed back the light-brown curls
+from his brow with that protecting tenderness which had always
+entered into her love for him. "To-night we are
+here--together--this one last night! And to-morrow, at this time,
+you'll be in Paris; perhaps you'll be looking out at the
+lights--and the crowds on the Boulevard--and the chestnut-trees.
+They'll just be in their first leaf--I know so well!--and the
+little thin leaves will be shining so green under the lamps--and I
+shall be here--and it will be all over and done with--forever. What
+will it matter whether I am free or not free? I shall be
+<i>alone</i>! That's all a woman knows."</p>
+<p>Her voice died away. Warkworth rose. He put his arms round her,
+and she did not resist.</p>
+<p>"Julie," he said in her ear, "why should you be alone?"</p>
+<p>A silence fell between them.</p>
+<p>"I--I don't understand," she said, at last.</p>
+<p>"Julie, listen! I shall be three days in Paris, but my business
+can be perfectly done in one. What if you met me there after
+to-morrow? What harm would it be? We are not babes, we two. We
+understand life. And who would have any right to blame or to
+meddle? Julie, I know a little inn in the valley of the
+Bi&egrave;vre, quite near Paris, but all wood and field. No English
+tourists ever go there. Sometimes an artist or two--but this is not
+the time of year. Julie, why shouldn't we spend our last two days
+there--together--away from all the world, before we say good-bye?
+You've been afraid here of prying people--of the Duchess even--of
+Madame Bornier--how she scowls at me sometimes! Why shouldn't we
+sweep all that away--and be happy! Nobody should ever--nobody
+<i>could</i> ever know." His voice dropped, became still more
+hurried and soft. "We might go as brother and sister--that would be
+quite simple. You are practically French. I speak French well. Who
+is to have an idea, a suspicion of our identity? The spring there
+is mild and warm. The Bois de Verri&egrave;res close by is full of
+flowers. When my father was alive, and I was a child, we went once,
+to economize, for a year, to a village a mile or two away. But I
+knew this place quite well. A lovely, green, quiet spot! With your
+poetical ideas, Julie, you would delight in it. Two days--wandering
+in the woods--together! Then I put you into the train for Brussels,
+and I go my way. But to all eternity, Julie, those days will have
+been ours!"</p>
+<p>At the first words, almost, Julie had disengaged herself.
+Pushing him from her with both hands, she listened to him in a dumb
+amazement. The color first deserted her face, then returned in a
+flood.</p>
+<p>"So you despise me?" she said, catching her breath.</p>
+<p>"No. I adore you."</p>
+<p>She fell upon a chair and hid her eyes. He first knelt beside
+her, arguing and soothing; then he paced up and down before her,
+talking very fast and low, defending and developing the scheme,
+till it stood before them complete and tempting in all its
+details.</p>
+<p>Julie did not look up, nor did she speak. At last, Warkworth,
+full of tears, and stifled with his own emotions, threw open the
+window again in a craving for air and coolness. A scent of fresh
+leaves and moistened earth floated up from the shrubbery beneath
+the window. The scent, the branching trees, the wide, mild spaces
+of air brought relief. He leaned out, bathing his brow in the
+night. A tumult of voices seemed to be echoing through his mind,
+dominated by one which held the rest defiantly in check.</p>
+<p>"Is she a mere girl, to be 'led astray'? A moment of
+happiness--what harm?--for either of us?"</p>
+<p>Then he returned to Julie.</p>
+<p>"Julie!" He touched her shoulder, trembling. Had she banished
+him forever? It seemed to him that in these minutes he had passed
+through an infinity of experience. Was he not the nobler, the more
+truly man? Let the moralists talk.</p>
+<p>"Julie!" he repeated, in an anguish.</p>
+<p>She raised her head, and he saw that she had been crying. But
+there was in her face a light, a wildness, a yearning that
+reassured him. She put her arm round him and pressed her cheek to
+his. He divined that she, too, had lived and felt a thousand hours
+in one. With a glow of ecstatic joy he began to talk to her again,
+her head resting on his shoulder, her slender hands crushed in
+his.</p>
+<p>And Julie, meanwhile, was saying to herself, "Either I go to
+him, as he asks, or in a few minutes I must send him
+away--forever."</p>
+<p>And then as she clung to him, so warm and near, her strength
+failed her. Nothing in the world mattered to her at that moment but
+this handsome, curly head bowed upon her own, this voice that
+called her all the names of love, this transformation of the man's
+earlier prudence, or ambition, or duplicity, into this eager
+tenderness, this anguish in separation....</p>
+<p>"Listen, dear!" He whispered to her. "All my business can be got
+through the day before you come. I have two men to see. A day will
+be ample. I dine at the Embassy to-morrow night--that is arranged;
+the day after I lunch with the Military Secretary; then--a thousand
+regrets, but I must hurry on to meet some friends in Italy. So I
+turn my back on Paris, and for two days I belong to Julie--and she
+to me. Say yes, Julie--my Julie!"</p>
+<p>He bent over her, his hands framing her face.</p>
+<p>"Say yes," he urged, "and put off for both of us that
+word--<i>alone</i>!"</p>
+<p>His low voice sank into her heart. He waited, till his strained
+sense caught the murmured words which conveyed to him the madness
+and the astonishment of victory.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>L&eacute;onie had shut up the house, in a grim silence, and had
+taken her way up-stairs to bed.</p>
+<p>Julie, too, was in her room. She sat on the edge of her bed, her
+head drooped, her hands clasped before her absently, like Hope
+still listening for the last sounds of the harp of life. The candle
+beside her showed her, in the big mirror opposite, her grace, the
+white confusion of her dress.</p>
+<p>She had expected reaction, but it did not come. She was still
+borne on a warm tide of will and energy. All that she was about to
+do seemed to her still perfectly natural and right. Petty scruples,
+conventional hesitations, the refusal of life's great
+moments--these are what are wrong, these are what disgrace!</p>
+<p>Romance beckoned to her, and many a secret tendency towards the
+lawless paths of conduct, infused into her by the associations and
+affections of her childhood. The <i>horror naturalis</i> which
+protects the great majority of women from the wilder ways of
+passion was in her weakened or dormant. She was the illegitimate
+child of a mother who had defied law for love, and of that fact she
+had been conscious all her life.</p>
+<p>A sharp contempt, indeed, arose within her for the
+interpretation that the common mind would be sure to place upon her
+action.</p>
+<p>"What matter! I am my own mistress--responsible to no one. I
+choose for myself--I dare for myself!"</p>
+<p>And when at last she rose, first loosening and then twisting the
+black masses of her hair, it seemed to her that the form in the
+glass was that of another woman, treading another earth. She
+trampled cowardice under foot; she freed herself from--"was uns
+alle b&auml;ndigt, das Gemeine!"</p>
+<p>Then as she stood before the oval mirror in a classical frame,
+which adorned the mantel-piece of what had once been Lady Mary
+Leicester's room, her eye was vaguely caught by the little family
+pictures and texts which hung on either side of it. Lady Mary and
+her sister as children, their plain faces emerging timidly from
+their white, high-waisted frocks; Lady 'Mary's mother, an old lady
+in a white coif and kerchief, wearing a look austerely kind; on the
+other side a clergyman, perhaps the brother of the old lady, with a
+similar type of face, though gentler--a face nourished on the
+<i>Christian Year</i>; and above and below them two or three
+card-board texts, carefully illuminated by Lady Mary Leicester
+herself:</p>
+<p>"Thou, Lord, knowest my down-sitting and my uprising."</p>
+<p>"Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."</p>
+<p>"Fear not, little flock. It is your Father's good pleasure to
+give you the kingdom."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Julie observed these fragments, absently at first, then with
+repulsion. This Anglican pietism, so well fed, so narrowly
+sheltered, which measured the universe with its foot-rule, seemed
+to her quasi-Catholic eye merely fatuous and hypocritical. It is
+not by such forces, she thought, that the true world of men and
+women is governed.</p>
+<p>As she turned away she noticed two little Catholic pictures,
+such as she had been accustomed in her convent days to carry in her
+books of devotion, carefully propped up beneath the texts.</p>
+<p>"Ah, Th&eacute;r&egrave;se!" she said to herself, with a sudden
+feeling of pain. "Is the child asleep?"</p>
+<p>She listened. A little cough sounded from the neighboring room.
+Julie crossed the landing.</p>
+<p>"Th&eacute;r&egrave;se! tu ne dors pas encore?"</p>
+<p>A voice said, softly, in the darkness, "Je t'attendais,
+mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>Julie went to the child's bed, put down her candle, and stooped
+to kiss her.</p>
+<p>The child's thin hand caressed her cheek.</p>
+<p>"Ah, it will be good--to be in Bruges--with mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>Julie drew herself away.</p>
+<p>"I sha'n't be there to-morrow, dear."</p>
+<p>"Not there! Oh, mademoiselle!"</p>
+<p>The child's voice was pitiful.</p>
+<p>"I shall join you there. But I find I must go to Paris first.
+I--I have some business there."</p>
+<p>"But maman said--"</p>
+<p>"Yes, I have only just made up my mind. I shall tell maman
+to-morrow morning,"</p>
+<p>"You go alone, mademoiselle?"</p>
+<p>"Why not, dear goose?"</p>
+<p>"Vous &ecirc;tes fatigu&eacute;e. I would like to come with you,
+and carry your cloak and the umbrellas."</p>
+<p>"You, indeed!" said Julie. "It would end, wouldn't it, in my
+carrying you--besides the cloak and the umbrellas?"</p>
+<p>Then she knelt down beside the child and took her in her
+arms.</p>
+<p>"Do you love me, Th&eacute;r&egrave;se?"</p>
+<p>The child drew a long breath. With her little, twisted hands she
+stroked the beautiful hair so close to her.</p>
+<p>"Do you, Th&eacute;r&egrave;se?"</p>
+<p>A kiss fell on Julie's cheek.</p>
+<p>"Ce soir, j'ai beaucoup pri&eacute; la Sainte Vierge pour vous!"
+she said, in a timid and hurried whisper.</p>
+<p>Julie made no immediate reply. She rose from her knees, her hand
+still clasped in that of the crippled girl.</p>
+<p>"Did you put those pictures on my mantel-piece,
+Th&eacute;r&egrave;se?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+<p>The child hesitated.</p>
+<p>"It does one good to look at them--n'est-ce pas?--when one is
+sad?"</p>
+<p>"Why do you suppose I am sad?"</p>
+<p>Th&eacute;r&egrave;se was silent a moment; then she flung her
+little skeleton arms round Julie, and Julie felt her crying.</p>
+<p>"Well, I won't be sad any more," said Julie, comforting her.
+"When we're all in Bruges together, you'll see."</p>
+<p>And smiling at the child, she tucked her into her white bed and
+left her.</p>
+<p>Then from this exquisite and innocent affection she passed back
+into the tumult of her own thoughts and plans. Through the restless
+night her parents were often in her mind. She was the child of
+revolt, and as she thought of the meeting before her she seemed to
+be but entering upon a heritage inevitable from the beginning. A
+sense of enfranchisement, of passionate enlargement, upheld her, as
+of a life coming to its fruit.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"Creil!"</p>
+<p>A flashing vision of a station and its lights, and the Paris
+train rushed on through cold showers of sleet and driving wind, a
+return of winter in the heart of spring.</p>
+<p>On they sped through the half-hour which still divided them from
+the Gare du Nord. Julie, in her thick veil, sat motionless in her
+corner. She was not conscious of any particular agitation. Her mind
+was strained not to forget any of Warkworth's directions. She was
+to drive across immediately to the Gare de Sceaux, in the Place
+Denfert-Rochereau, where he would meet her. They were to dine at an
+obscure inn near the station, and go down by the last train to the
+little town in the wooded valley of the Bi&egrave;vre, where they
+were to stay.</p>
+<p>She had her luggage with her in the carriage. There would be no
+custom-house delays.</p>
+<p>Ah, the lights of Paris beginning! She peered into the rain,
+conscious of a sort of home-coming joy. She loved the French world
+and the French sights and sounds--these tall, dingy houses of the
+<i>banlieue</i>, the dregs of a great architecture; the
+advertisements; the look of the streets.</p>
+<p>The train slackened into the Nord Station. The blue-frocked
+porters crowded into the carriages.</p>
+<p>"C'est tout, madame? Vous n'avez pas de grands bagages?"</p>
+<p>"No, nothing. Find me a cab at once."</p>
+<p>There was a great crowd outside. She hurried on as quickly as
+she could, revolving what was to be said if any acquaintance were
+to accost her. By great good luck, and by travelling second class
+both in the train and on the boat, she had avoided meeting anybody
+she knew. But the Nord Station was crowded with English people, and
+she pushed her way through in a nervous terror.</p>
+<p>"Miss Le Breton!"</p>
+<p>She turned abruptly. In the white glare of the electric lights
+she did not at first recognize the man who had spoken to her. Then
+she drew back. Her heart beat wildly. For she had distinguished the
+face of Jacob Delafield.</p>
+<p>He came forward to meet her as she passed the barrier at the end
+of the platform, his aspect full of what seemed to her an
+extraordinary animation, significance, as though she were
+expected.</p>
+<p>"Miss Le Breton! What an astonishing, what a fortunate meeting!
+I have a message for you from Evelyn."</p>
+<p>"From Evelyn?" She echoed the words mechanically as she shook
+hands.</p>
+<p>"Wait a moment," he said, leading her aside towards the
+waiting-room, while the crowd that was going to the <i>douane</i>
+passed them by. Then he turned to Julie's porter.</p>
+<p>"Attendez un instant."</p>
+<p>The man sulkily shook his head, dropped Julie's bag at their
+feet, and hurried off in search of a more lucrative job.</p>
+<p>"I am going back to-night," added Delafield, hurriedly. "How
+strange that I should have met you, for I have very sad news for
+you! Lord Lackington had an attack this morning, from which he
+cannot recover. The doctors give him perhaps forty-eight hours. He
+has asked for you--urgently. The Duchess tells me so in a long
+telegram I had from her to-day. But she supposed you to be in
+Bruges. She has wired there. You will go back, will you not?"</p>
+<p>"Go back?" said Julie, staring at him helplessly. "Go back
+to-night?"</p>
+<p>"The evening train starts in little more than an hour. You would
+be just in time, I think, to see the old man alive."</p>
+<p>She still looked at him in bewilderment, at the blue eyes under
+the heavily moulded brows, and the mouth with its imperative, and
+yet eager--or tremulous?--expression. She perceived that he hung
+upon her answer.</p>
+<p>She drew her hand piteously across her eyes as though to shut
+out the crowds, the station, and the urgency of this personality
+beside her. Despair was in her heart. How to consent? How to
+refuse?</p>
+<p>"But my friends," she stammered--"the friends with whom I was
+going to stay--they will be alarmed."</p>
+<p>"Could you not telegraph to them? They would understand, surely.
+The office is close by."</p>
+<p>She let herself be hurried along, not knowing what to do.
+Delafield walked beside her. If she had been able to observe him,
+she must have been struck afresh by the pale intensity, the
+controlled agitation of his face.</p>
+<p>"Is it really so serious?" she asked, pausing a moment, as
+though in resistance.</p>
+<p>"It is the end. Of that there can be no question. You have
+touched his heart very deeply. He longs to see her, Evelyn says.
+And his daughter and granddaughter are still abroad--Miss Moffatt,
+indeed, is ill at Florence with a touch of diphtheria. He is alone
+with his two sons. You will go?"</p>
+<p>Even in her confusion, the strangeness of it all was borne in
+upon her--his insistence, the extraordinary chance of their
+meeting, his grave, commanding manner.</p>
+<p>"How could you know I was here?" she said, in bewilderment.</p>
+<p>"I didn't know," he said, slowly. "But, thank God, I have met
+you. I dread to think of your fatigue, but you will be glad just to
+see him again--just to give him his last wish--won't you?" he said,
+pleadingly. "Here is the telegraph-office. Shall I do it for
+you?"</p>
+<p>"No, thank you. I--I must think how to word it. Please
+wait."</p>
+<p>She went in alone. As she took the pencil into her hands a low
+groan burst from her lips. The man writing in the next compartment
+turned round in astonishment. She controlled herself and began to
+write. There was no escape. She must submit; and all was over.</p>
+<p>She telegraphed to Warkworth, care of the Chef de Gare, at the
+Sceaux Station, and also to the country inn.</p>
+<p>"Have met Mr. Delafield by chance at Nord Station. Lord
+Lackington dying. Must return to-night. Where shall I write?
+Good-bye."</p>
+<p>When it was done she could hardly totter out of the office.
+Delafield made her take his arm.</p>
+<p>"You must have some food. Then I will go and get a sleeping-car
+for you to Calais. There will be no crowd to-night. At Calais I
+will look after you if you will allow me."</p>
+<p>"You are crossing to-night?" she said, vaguely. Her lips framed
+the words with difficulty.</p>
+<p>"Yes. I came over with my cousins yesterday."</p>
+<p>She asked nothing more. It did not occur to her to notice that
+he had no luggage, no bag, no rug, none of the paraphernalia of
+travel. In her despairing fatigue and misery she let him guide her
+as he would.</p>
+<p>He made her take some soup, then some coffee, all that she could
+make herself swallow. There was a dismal period of waiting, during
+which she was hardly conscious of where she was or of what was
+going on round her.</p>
+<p>Then she found herself in the sleeping-car, in a reserved
+compartment, alone. Once more the train moved through the night.
+The miles flew by--the miles that forever parted her from
+Warkworth.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="XIX"></a>XIX</h2>
+<br>
+<p>The train was speeding through the forest country of Chantilly.
+A pale moon had risen, and beneath its light the straight forest
+roads, interminably long, stretched into the distance; the vaporous
+masses of young and budding trees hurried past the eye of the
+traveller; so, also, the white hamlets, already dark and silent;
+the stations with their lights and figures; the great wood-piles
+beside the line.</p>
+<p>Delafield, in his second-class carriage, sat sleepless and
+erect. The night was bitterly cold. He wore the light overcoat in
+which he had left the H&ocirc;tel du Rhin that afternoon for a
+stroll before dinner, and had no other wrap or covering. But he
+felt nothing, was conscious of nothing but the rushing current of
+his own thoughts.</p>
+<p>The events of the two preceding days, the meaning of them, the
+significance of his own action and its consequences--it was with
+these materials that his mind dealt perpetually, combining,
+interpreting, deducing, now in one way, now in another. His mood
+contained both excitement and dread. But with a main temper of
+calmness, courage, invincible determination, these elements did not
+at all interfere.</p>
+<p>The day before, he had left London with his cousins, the Duke of
+Chudleigh, and young Lord Elmira, the invalid boy. They were bound
+to Paris to consult a new doctor, and Jacob had offered to convey
+them there. In spite of all the apparatus of servants and couriers
+with which they were surrounded, they always seemed to him, on
+their journeys, a singularly lonely and hapless pair, and he knew
+that they leaned upon him and prized his company.</p>
+<p>On the way to Paris, at the Calais buffet, he had noticed Henry
+Warkworth, and had given him a passing nod. It had been understood
+the night before in Heribert Street that they would both be
+crossing on the morrow.</p>
+<p>On the following day--the day of Julie's journey--Delafield, who
+was anxiously awaiting the return of his two companions from their
+interview with the great physician they were consulting, was
+strolling up the Rue de la Paix, just before luncheon, when,
+outside the H&ocirc;tel Mirabeau, he ran into a man whom he
+immediately perceived to be Warkworth.</p>
+<p>Politeness involved the exchange of a few sentences, although a
+secret antagonism between the two men had revealed itself from the
+first day of their meeting in Lady Henry's drawing-room. Each word
+of their short conversation rang clearly through Delafield's
+memory.</p>
+<p>"You are at the 'Rhin'?" said Warkworth.</p>
+<p>"Yes, for a couple more days. Shall we meet at the Embassy
+to-morrow?"</p>
+<p>"No. I dined there last night. My business here is done. I start
+for Rome to-night."</p>
+<p>"Lucky man. They have put on a new fast train, haven't
+they?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. You leave the Gare de Lyon at 7.15, and you are at Rome
+the second morning, in good time."</p>
+<p>"Magnificent! Why don't we all rush south? Well, good-bye again,
+and good luck."</p>
+<p>They touched hands perfunctorily and parted.</p>
+<p>This happened about mid-day. While Delafield and his cousins
+were lunching, a telegram from the Duchess of Crowborough was
+handed to Jacob. He had wired to her early in the morning to ask
+for the address in Paris of an old friend of his, who was also a
+cousin of hers. The telegram contained:</p>
+<p>/# "Thirty-six Avenue Friedland. Lord Lackington heart-attack
+this morning. Dying. Has asked urgently for Julie. Blanche Moffatt
+detained Florence by daughter's illness. All circumstances most
+sad. Woman Heribert Street gave me Bruges address. Have wired Julie
+there." #/</p>
+<p>The message set vibrating in Delafield's mind the tender memory
+which already existed there of his last talk with Julie, of her
+strange dependence and gentleness, her haunting and pleading
+personality. He hoped with all his heart she might reach the old
+man in time, that his two sons, Uredale and William, would treat
+her kindly, and that it would be found when the end came that he
+had made due provision for her as his granddaughter.</p>
+<p>But he had small leisure to give to thoughts of this kind. The
+physician's report in the morning had not been encouraging, and his
+two travelling companions demanded all the sympathy and support he
+could give them. He went out with them in the afternoon to the
+H&ocirc;tel de la Terrasse at St. Germain. The Duke, a nervous
+hypochondriac, could not sleep in the noise of Paris, and was
+accustomed to a certain apartment in this well-known hotel, which
+was often reserved for him. Jacob left them about six o'clock to
+return to Paris. He was to meet one of the Embassy
+attach&eacute;s--an old Oxford friend--at the Caf&eacute; Gaillard
+for dinner. He dressed at the "Rhin," put on an overcoat, and set
+out to walk to the Rue Gaillard about half-past seven. As he
+approached the "Mirabeau," he saw a cab with luggage standing at
+the door. A man came out with the hotel <i>concierge</i>. To his
+astonishment, Delafield recognized Warkworth.</p>
+<p>The young officer seemed in a hurry and out of temper. At any
+rate, he jumped into the cab without taking any notice of the two
+<i>sommeliers</i> and the <i>concierge</i> who stood round
+expectant of francs, and when the <i>concierge</i> in his stiffest
+manner asked where the man was to drive, Warkworth put his head out
+of the window and said, hastily, to the <i>cocher</i>:</p>
+<p>"D'abord, &agrave; la Gare de Sceaux! Puis, je vous dirai. Mais
+d&eacute;p&ecirc;chez-vous!"</p>
+<p>The cab rolled away, and Delafield walked on.</p>
+<p>Half-past seven, striking from all the Paris towers! And
+Warkworth's intention in the morning was to leave the Gare de Lyon
+at 7.15. But it seemed he was now bound, at 7.30, for the Gare de
+Sceaux, from which point of departure it was clear that no
+reasonable man would think of starting for the Eternal City.</p>
+<p>"<i>D'abord,</i> &agrave; la Gare de Sceaux!"</p>
+<p>Then he was not catching a train?--at any rate, immediately. He
+had some other business first, and was perhaps going to the station
+to deposit his luggage?</p>
+<p>Suddenly a thought, a suspicion, flashed through Delafield's
+mind, which set his heart thumping in his breast. In after days he
+was often puzzled to account for its origin, still more for the
+extraordinary force with which it at once took possession of all
+his energies. In his more mystical moments of later life he rose to
+the secret belief that God had spoken to him.</p>
+<p>At any rate, he at once hailed a cab, and, thinking no more of
+his dinner engagement, he drove post-haste to the Nord Station. In
+those days the Calais train arrived at eight. He reached the
+station a few minutes before it appeared. When at last it drew up,
+amid the crowd on the platform it took him only a few seconds to
+distinguish the dark and elegant head of Julie Le Breton.</p>
+<p>A pang shot through him that pierced to the very centre of life.
+He was conscious of a prayer for help and a clear mind. But on his
+way to the station he had rapidly thought out a plan on which to
+act should this mad notion in his brain turn out to have any
+support in reality.</p>
+<p>It had so much support that Julie Le Breton was there--in
+Paris--and not at Bruges, as she had led the Duchess to suppose.
+And when she turned her startled face upon him, his wild fancy
+became, for himself, a certainty.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"Amiens! Cinq minutes d'arr&ecirc;t."</p>
+<p>Delafield got out and walked up and down the platform. He passed
+the closed and darkened windows of the sleeping-car; and it seemed
+to his abnormally quickened sense that he was beside her, bending
+over her, and that he said to her:</p>
+<p>"Courage! You are saved! Let us thank God!"</p>
+<p>A boy from the refreshment-room came along, wheeling a barrow on
+which were tea and coffee.</p>
+<p>Delafield eagerly drank a cup of tea and put his hand into his
+pocket to pay for it. He found there three francs and his ticket.
+After paying for the tea he examined his purse. That contained an
+English half-crown.</p>
+<p>So he had had with him just enough to get his own second-class
+ticket, her first-class, and a sleeping-car. That was good fortune,
+seeing that the bulk of his money, with his return ticket, was
+reposing in his dressing-case at the H&ocirc;tel du Rhin.</p>
+<p>"En voiture! En voiture, s'il vous pla&icirc;t!"</p>
+<p>He settled himself once more in his corner, and the train rushed
+on. This time it was the strange hour at the Gare du Nord which he
+lived through again, her white face opposite to him in the
+refreshment-room, the bewilderment and misery she had been so
+little able to conceal, her spasmodic attempts at conversation, a
+few vague words about Lord Lackington or the Duchess, and then
+pauses, when her great eyes, haggard and weary, stared into
+vacancy, and he knew well enough that her thoughts were with
+Warkworth, and that she was in fierce rebellion against his
+presence there, and this action into which he had forced her.</p>
+<p>As for him, he perfectly understood the dilemma in which she
+stood. Either she must accept the duty of returning to the
+death-bed of the old man, her mother's father, or she must confess
+her appointment with Warkworth.</p>
+<p>Yet--suppose he had been mistaken? Well, the telegram from the
+Duchess covered his whole action. Lord Lackington <i>was</i> dying;
+and apart from all question of feeling, Julie Le Breton's friends
+must naturally desire that he should see her, acknowledge her
+before his two sons, and, with their consent, provide for her
+before his death.</p>
+<p>But, ah, he had not been mistaken! He remembered her hurried
+refusal when he had asked her if he should telegraph for her to her
+Paris "friends"--how, in a sudden shame, he had turned away that he
+might not see the beloved false face as she spoke, might not seem
+to watch or suspect her.</p>
+<p>He had just had time to send off a messenger, first to his
+friend at the Caf&eacute; Gaillard, and then to the H&ocirc;tel du
+Rhin, before escorting her to the sleeping-car.</p>
+<p>Ah, how piteous had been that dull bewilderment with which she
+had turned to him!</p>
+<p>"But--my ticket?"</p>
+<p>"Here they are. Oh, never mind--we will settle in town. Try to
+sleep. You must be very tired."</p>
+<p>And then it seemed to him that her lips trembled, like those of
+a miserable child; and surely, surely, she must hear that mad
+beating of his pulse!</p>
+<p>Boulogne was gone in a flash. Here was the Somme, stretched in a
+pale silver flood beneath the moon--a land of dunes and stunted
+pines, of wide sea-marshes, over which came the roar of the
+Channel. Then again the sea was left behind, and the rich Picard
+country rolled away to right and left. Lights here and there, in
+cottage or villa--the lights, perhaps, of birth or
+death--companions of hope or despair.</p>
+<p>Calais!</p>
+<p>The train moved slowly up to the boat-side. Delafield jumped
+out. The sleeping-car was yielding up its passengers. He soon made
+out the small black hat and veil, the slender form in the dark
+travelling-dress.</p>
+<p>Was she fainting? For she seemed to him to waver as he
+approached her, and the porter who had taken her rugs and bag was
+looking at her in astonishment. In an instant he had drawn her arm
+within his, and was supporting her as he best could,</p>
+<p>"The car was very hot, and I am so tired. I only want some
+air."</p>
+<p>They reached the deck.</p>
+<p>"You will go down-stairs?"</p>
+<p>"No, no--some air!" she murmured, and he saw that she could
+hardly keep her feet.</p>
+<p>But in a few moments they had reached the shelter on the upper
+deck usually so well filled with chairs and passengers on a day
+crossing. Now it was entirely deserted. The boat was not full, the
+night was cold and stormy, and the stream of passengers had poured
+down into the shelter of the lower deck.</p>
+<p>Julie sank into a chair. Delafield hurriedly loosened the shawl
+she carried with her from its attendant bag and umbrella, and
+wrapped it round her.</p>
+<p>"It will be a rough crossing," he said, in her ear. "Can you
+stand it on deck?"</p>
+<p>"I am a good sailor. Let me stay here."</p>
+<p>Her eyes closed. He stooped over her in an anguish. One of the
+boat officials approached him.</p>
+<p>"Madame ferait mieux de descendre, monsieur. La travers&eacute;e
+ne sera pas bonne."</p>
+<p>Delafield explained that the lady must have air, and was a good
+sailor. Then he pressed into the man's hand his three francs, and
+sent him for brandy and an extra covering of some kind. The man
+went unwillingly.</p>
+<p>During the whole bustle of departure, Delafield saw nothing but
+Julie's helpless and motionless form; he heard nothing but the
+faint words by which, once or twice, she tried to convey to him
+that she was not unconscious.</p>
+<p>The brandy came. The man who brought it again objected to
+Julie's presence on deck. Delafield took no heed. He was absorbed
+in making Julie swallow some of the brandy.</p>
+<p>At last they were off. The vessel glided slowly out of the old
+harbor, and they were immediately in rough water.</p>
+<p>Delafield was roused by a peremptory voice at his elbow.</p>
+<p>"This lady ought not to stay here, sir. There is plenty of room
+in the ladies' cabin."</p>
+<p>Delafield looked up and recognized the captain of the boat, the
+same man who, thirty-six hours before, had shown special civilities
+to the Duke of Chudleigh and his party.</p>
+<p>"Ah, you are Captain Whittaker," he said.</p>
+<p>The shrewd, stout man who had accosted him raised his eyebrows
+in astonishment.</p>
+<p>Delafield drew him aside a moment. After a short conversation
+the captain lifted his cap and departed, with a few words to the
+subordinate officer who had drawn his attention to the matter.
+Henceforward they were unmolested, and presently the officer
+brought a pillow and striped blanket, saying they might be useful
+to the lady. Julie was soon comfortably placed, lying down on the
+seat under the wooden shelter. Delicacy seemed to suggest that her
+companion should leave her to herself.</p>
+<p>Jacob walked up and down briskly, trying to shake off the cold
+which benumbed him. Every now and then he paused to look at the
+lights on the receding French coast, at its gray phantom line
+sweeping southward under the stormy moon, or disappearing to the
+north in clouds of rain. There was a roar of waves and a dashing of
+spray. The boat, not a large one, was pitching heavily, and the few
+male passengers who had at first haunted the deck soon
+disappeared.</p>
+<p>Delafield hung over the surging water in a strange exaltation,
+half physical, half moral. The wild salt strength and savor of the
+sea breathed something akin to that passionate force of will which
+had impelled him to the enterprise in which he stood. No mere man
+of the world could have dared it; most men of the world, as he was
+well aware, would have condemned or ridiculed it. But for one who
+saw life and conduct <i>sub specie &aelig;ternitatis</i> it had
+seemed natural enough.</p>
+<p>The wind blew fierce and cold. He made his way back to Julie's
+side. To his surprise, she had raised herself and was sitting
+propped up against the corner of the seat, her veil thrown
+back.</p>
+<p>"You are better?" he said, stooping to her, so as to be heard
+against the boom of the waves. "This rough weather does not affect
+you?"</p>
+<p>She made a negative sign. He drew his camp-stool beside her.
+Suddenly she asked him what time it was. The haggard nobleness of
+her pale face amid the folds of black veil, the absent passion of
+the eye, thrilled to his heart. Where were her thoughts?</p>
+<p>"Nearly four o'clock." He drew out his watch. "You see it is
+beginning to lighten,"</p>
+<p>And he pointed to the sky, in which that indefinable lifting of
+the darkness which precedes the dawn was taking place, and to the
+far distances of sea, where a sort of livid clarity was beginning
+to absorb and vanquish that stormy play of alternate dark and
+moonlight which had prevailed when they left the French shore.</p>
+<p>He had hardly spoken, when he felt that her eyes were fixed upon
+him.</p>
+<p>To look at his watch, he had thrown open his long Newmarket
+coat, forgetting that in so doing he disclosed the evening-dress in
+which he had robed himself at the H&ocirc;tel du Rhin for his
+friend's dinner at the Caf&eacute; Gaillard.</p>
+<p>He hastily rebuttoned his coat, and turned his face seaward once
+more. But he heard her voice, and was obliged to come close to her
+that he might catch the words.</p>
+<p>"You have given me your wraps," she said, with difficulty. "You
+will suffer."</p>
+<p>"Not at all. You have your own rug, and one that the captain
+provided. I keep myself quite warm with moving about."</p>
+<p>There was a pause. His mind began to fill with alarm. He was not
+of the men who act a part with ease; but, having got through so
+far, he had calculated on preserving his secret.</p>
+<p>Flight was best, and he was just turning away when a gesture of
+hers arrested him. Again he stooped till their faces were near
+enough to let her voice reach him.</p>
+<p>"Why are you in evening-dress?"</p>
+<p>"I had intended to dine with a friend. There was not time to
+change."</p>
+<p>"Then you did not mean to cross to-night?"</p>
+<p>He delayed a moment, trying to collect his thoughts.</p>
+<p>"Not when I dressed for dinner, but some sudden news decided
+me."</p>
+<p>Her head fell back wearily against the support behind it. The
+eyes closed, and he, thinking she would perhaps sleep, was about to
+rise from his seat, when the pressure of her hand upon his arm
+detained him. He sat still and the hand was withdrawn.</p>
+<p>There was a lessening of the roar in their ears. Under the lee
+of the English shore the wind was milder, the "terror-music" of the
+sea less triumphant. And over everything was stealing the first
+discriminating touch of the coming light. Her face was clear now;
+and Delafield, at last venturing to look at her, saw that her eyes
+were open again, and trembled at their expression. There was in
+them a wild suspicion. Secretly, steadily, he nerved himself to
+meet the blow that he foresaw.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Delafield, have you told me all the truth?"</p>
+<p>She sat up as she spoke, deadly pale but rigid. With an
+impatient hand she threw off the wraps which had covered her. Her
+face commanded an answer.</p>
+<p>"Certainly I have told you the truth."</p>
+<p>"Was it the whole truth? It seems--it seems to me that you were
+not prepared yourself for this journey--that there is some
+mystery--which I do not understand--which I resent!"</p>
+<p>"But what mystery? When I saw you, I of course thought of
+Evelyn's telegram."</p>
+<p>"I should like to see that telegram."</p>
+<p>He hesitated. If he had been more skilled in the little
+falsehoods of every day he would simply have said that he had left
+it at the hotel. But he lost his chance. Nor at the moment did he
+clearly perceive what harm it would do to show it to her. The
+telegram was in his pocket, and he handed it to her.</p>
+<p>There was a dim oil-lamp in the shelter. With difficulty she
+held the fluttering paper up and just divined the words. Then the
+wind carried it away and blew it overboard. He rose and leaned
+against the edge of the shelter, looking down upon her. There was
+in his mind a sense of something solemn approaching, round which
+this sudden lull of blast and wave seemed to draw a "wind-warm
+space," closing them in.</p>
+<p>"Why did you come with me?" she persisted, in an agitation she
+could now scarcely control. "It is evident you had not meant to
+travel. You have no luggage, and you are in evening-dress. And I
+remember now--you sent two letters from the station!"</p>
+<p>"I wished to be your escort."</p>
+<p>Her gesture was almost one of scorn at the evasion.</p>
+<p>"Why were you at the station at all? Evelyn had told you I was
+at Bruges. And--you were dining out. I--I can't understand!"</p>
+<p>She spoke with a frowning intensity, a strange queenliness, in
+which was neither guilt nor confusion.</p>
+<p>A voice spoke in Delafield's heart. "Tell her!" it said.</p>
+<p>He bent nearer to her.</p>
+<p>"Miss Le Breton, with what friends were you going to stay in
+Paris?"</p>
+<p>She breathed quick.</p>
+<p>"I am not a school-girl, I think, that I should be asked
+questions of that kind."</p>
+<p>"But on your answer depends mine."</p>
+<p>She looked at him in amazement. His gentle kindness had
+disappeared. She saw, instead, that Jacob Delafield whom her
+instinct had divined from the beginning behind the modest and
+courteous outer man, the Jacob Delafield of whom she had told the
+Duchess she was afraid.</p>
+<p>But her passion swept every other thought out of its way. With
+dim agony and rage she began to perceive that she had been
+duped.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Delafield"--she tried for calm--"I don't understand your
+attitude, but, so far as I do understand it, I find it intolerable.
+If you have deceived me--"</p>
+<p>"I have not deceived you. Lord Lackington is dying."</p>
+<p>"But that is not why you were at the station," she repeated,
+passionately. "Why did you meet the English train?"</p>
+<p>Her eyes, clear now in the cold light, shone upon him
+imperiously.</p>
+<p>Again the inner voice said: "Speak--get away from
+conventionalities. Speak--soul to soul!"</p>
+<p>He sat down once more beside her. His gaze sought the ground.
+Then, with sharp suddenness, he looked her in the face.</p>
+<p>"Miss Le Breton, you were going to Paris to meet Major
+Warkworth?"</p>
+<p>She drew back.</p>
+<p>"And if I was?" she said, with a wild defiance.</p>
+<p>"I had to prevent it, that was all."</p>
+<p>His tone was calm and resolution itself.</p>
+<p>"Who--who gave you authority over me?"</p>
+<p>"One may save--even by violence. You were too precious to be
+allowed to destroy yourself."</p>
+<p>His look, so sad and strong, the look of a deep compassion,
+fastened itself upon her. He felt himself, indeed, possessed by a
+force not his own, that same force which in its supreme degree made
+of St. Francis "the great tamer of souls."</p>
+<p>"Who asked you to be our judge? Neither I nor Major Warkworth
+owe you anything."</p>
+<p>"No. But I owed you help--as a man--as your friend. The truth
+was somehow borne in upon me. You were risking your honor--I threw
+myself in the way."</p>
+<p>Every word seemed to madden her.</p>
+<p>"What--what could you know of the circumstances?" cried her
+choked, laboring voice. "It is unpardonable--an outrage! You know
+nothing either of him or of me."</p>
+<p>She clasped her hands to her breast in a piteous, magnificent
+gesture, as though she were defending her lover and her love.</p>
+<p>"I know that you have suffered much," he said, dropping his eyes
+before her, "but you would suffer infinitely more if--"</p>
+<p>"If you had not interfered." Her veil had fallen over her face
+again. She flung it back in impatient despair. "Mr. Delafield, I
+can do without your anxieties."</p>
+<p>"But not"--he spoke slowly--"without your own self-respect."</p>
+<p>Julie's face trembled. She hid it in her hands.</p>
+<p>"Go!" she said. "Go!"</p>
+<p>He went to the farther end of the ship and stood there
+motionless, looking towards the land but seeing nothing. On all
+sides the darkness was lifting, and in the distance there gleamed
+already the whiteness that was Dover. His whole being was shaken
+with that experience which comes so rarely to cumbered and
+superficial men--the intimate wrestle of one personality with
+another. It seemed to him he was not worthy of it.</p>
+<p>After some little time, when only a quarter of an hour lay
+between the ship and Dover pier, he went back to Julie.</p>
+<p>She was sitting perfectly still, her hands clasped in front of
+her, her veil drawn down.</p>
+<p>"May I say one word to you?" he said, gently.</p>
+<p>She did not speak.</p>
+<p>"It is this. What I have confessed to you to-night is, of
+course, buried between us. It is as though it had never been said.
+I have given you pain. I ask your pardon from the bottom of my
+heart, and, at the same time"--his voice trembled--"I thank God
+that I had the courage to do it!"</p>
+<p>She threw him a glance that showed her a quivering lip and the
+pallor of intense emotion.</p>
+<p>"I know you think you were right," she said, in a voice dull and
+strained, "but henceforth we can only be enemies. You have
+tyrannized over me in the name of standards that you revere and I
+reject. I can only beg you to let my life alone for the
+future."</p>
+<p>He said nothing. She rose, dizzily, to her feet. They were
+rapidly approaching the pier.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="illus-356.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/illus-356.jpg"><img src=
+"images/illus-356.jpg" width="50%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"HER HANDS CLASPED IN FRONT OF HER"</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>With the cold aloofness of one who feels it more dignified to
+submit than to struggle, she allowed him to assist her in landing.
+He put her into the Victoria train, travelling himself in another
+carriage.</p>
+<p>As he walked beside her down the platform of Victoria Station,
+she said to him:</p>
+<p>"I shall be obliged if you will tell Evelyn that I have
+returned."</p>
+<p>"I go to her at once."</p>
+<p>She suddenly paused, and he saw that she was looking helplessly
+at one of the newspaper placards of the night before. First among
+its items appeared: "Critical state of Lord Lackington."</p>
+<p>He hardly knew how far she would allow him to have any further
+communication with her, but her pale exhaustion made it impossible
+not to offer to serve her.</p>
+<p>"It would be early to go for news now," he said, gently. "It
+would disturb the house. But in a couple of hours from now"--the
+station clock pointed to 6.15--"if you will allow me, I will leave
+the morning bulletin at your door."</p>
+<p>She hesitated.</p>
+<p>"You must rest, or you will have no strength for nursing," he
+continued, in the same studiously guarded tone. "But if you would
+prefer another messenger--"</p>
+<p>"I have none," and she raised her hand to her brow in mute,
+unconscious confession of an utter weakness and bewilderment.</p>
+<p>"Then let me go," he said, softly.</p>
+<p>It seemed to him that she was so physically weary as to be
+incapable either of assent or resistance. He put her into her cab,
+and gave the driver his directions. She looked at him uncertainly.
+But he did not offer his hand. From those blue eyes of his there
+shot out upon her one piercing glance--manly, entreating, sad. He
+lifted his hat and was gone.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="XX"></a>XX</h2>
+<br>
+<p>"Jacob, what brings you back so soon?" The Duchess ran into the
+room, a trim little figure in her morning dress of blue-and-white
+cloth, with her small spitz leaping beside her.</p>
+<p>Delafield advanced.</p>
+<p>"I came to tell you that I got your telegram yesterday, and that
+in the evening, by an extraordinary and fortunate chance, I met
+Miss Le Breton in Paris--"</p>
+<p>"You met Julie in Paris?" echoed the Duchess, in
+astonishment.</p>
+<p>"She had come to spend a couple of days with some friends there
+before going on to Bruges. I gave her the news of Lord Lackington's
+illness, and she at once turned back. She was much fatigued and
+distressed, and the night was stormy. I put her into the
+sleeping-car, and came back myself to see if I could be any
+assistance to her. And at Calais I was of some use. The crossing
+was very rough."</p>
+<p>"Julie was in Paris?" repeated the Duchess, as though she had
+heard nothing else of what he had been saying.</p>
+<p>Her eyes, so blue and large in her small, irregular face, sought
+those of her cousin and endeavored to read them.</p>
+<p>"It seems to have been a rapid change of plan. And it was a
+great stroke of luck my meeting her."</p>
+<p>"But how--and where?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, there is no time for going into that," said Delafield,
+impatiently. "But I knew you would like to know that she was
+here--after your message yesterday. We arrived a little after six
+this morning. About nine I went for news to St. James's Square.
+There is a slight rally."</p>
+<p>"Did you see Lord Uredale? Did you say anything about Julie?"
+asked the Duchess, eagerly.</p>
+<p>"I merely asked at the door, and took the bulletin to Miss Le
+Breton. Will you see Uredale and arrange it? I gather you saw him
+yesterday."</p>
+<p>"By all means," said the Duchess, musing. "Oh, it was so curious
+yesterday. Lord Lackington had just told them. You should have seen
+those two men."</p>
+<p>"The sons?"</p>
+<p>The Duchess nodded.</p>
+<p>"They don't like it. They were as stiff as pokers. But they will
+do absolutely the right thing. They see at once that she must be
+provided for. And when he asked for her they told me to telegraph,
+if I could find out where she was. Well, of all the extraordinary
+chances."</p>
+<p>She looked at him again, oddly, a spot of red on either small
+cheek. Delafield took no notice. He was pacing up and down,
+apparently in thought.</p>
+<p>"Suppose you take her there?" he said, pausing abruptly before
+her.</p>
+<p>"To St. James's Square? What did you tell her?"</p>
+<p>"That he was a trifle better, and that you would come to
+her."</p>
+<p>"Yes, it would be hard for her to go alone," said the Duchess,
+reflectively. She looked at her watch. "Only a little after eleven.
+Ring, please, Jacob."</p>
+<p>The carriage was ordered. Meanwhile the little lady inquired
+eagerly after her Julie. Had she been exhausted by the double
+journey? Was she alone in Paris, or was Madame Bornier with
+her?</p>
+<p>Jacob had understood that Madame Bornier and the little girl had
+gone straight to Bruges.</p>
+<p>The Duchess looked down and then looked up.</p>
+<p>"Did--did you come across Major Warkworth?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, I saw him for a moment in the Rue de la Paix, He was
+starting for Rome."</p>
+<p>The Duchess turned away as though ashamed of her question, and
+gave her orders for the carriage. Then her attention was suddenly
+drawn to her cousin. "How pale you look, Jacob," she said,
+approaching him. "Won't you have something--some wine?"</p>
+<p>Delafield refused, declaring that all he wanted was an hour or
+two's sleep.</p>
+<p>"I go back to Paris to-morrow," he said, as he prepared to take
+his leave. "Will you be here to-night if I look in?"</p>
+<p>"Alack! we go to Scotland to-night! It was just a piece of luck
+that you found me this morning. Freddie is fuming to get away."</p>
+<p>Delafield paused a moment. Then he abruptly shook hands and
+went.</p>
+<p>"He wants news of what happens at St. James's Square," thought
+the Duchess, suddenly, and she ran after him to the top of the
+stairs. "Jacob! If you don't mind a horrid mess to-night, Freddie
+and I shall be dining alone--of course we must have something to
+eat. Somewhere about eight. Do look in. There'll be a cutlet--on a
+trunk--anyway."</p>
+<p>Delafield laughed, hesitated, and finally accepted.</p>
+<p>The Duchess went back to the drawing-room, not a little puzzled
+and excited.</p>
+<p>"It's very, <i>very</i> odd," she said to herself. "And what
+<i>is</i> the matter with Jacob?"</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Half an hour later she drove to the splendid house in St.
+James's Square where Lord Lackington lay dying.</p>
+<p>She asked for Lord Uredale, the eldest son, and waited in the
+library till he came.</p>
+<p>He was a tall, squarely built man, with fair hair already gray,
+and somewhat absent and impassive manners.</p>
+<p>At sight of him the Duchess's eyes filled with tears. She
+hurried to him, her soft nature dissolved in sympathy.</p>
+<p>"How is your father?"</p>
+<p>"A trifle easier, though the doctors say there is no real
+improvement. But he is quite conscious--knows us all. I have just
+been reading him the debate."</p>
+<p>"You told me yesterday he had asked for Miss Le Breton," said
+the Duchess, raising herself on tiptoe as though to bring her low
+tones closer to his ear. "She's here--in town, I mean. She came
+back from Paris last night."</p>
+<p>Lord Uredale showed no emotion of any kind. Emotion was not in
+his line.</p>
+<p>"Then my father would like to see her," he said, in a dry,
+ordinary voice, which jarred upon the sentimental Duchess.</p>
+<p>"When shall I bring her?"</p>
+<p>"He is now comfortable and resting. If you are free--"</p>
+<p>The Duchess replied that she would go to Heribert Street at
+once. As Lord Uredale took her to her carriage a young man ran down
+the steps hastily, raised his hat, and disappeared.</p>
+<p>Lord Uredale explained that he was the husband of the famous
+young beauty, Mrs. Delaray, whose portrait Lord Lackington had been
+engaged upon at the time of his seizure. Having been all his life a
+skilful artist, a man of fashion, and a harmless haunter of lovely
+women, Lord Lackington, as the Duchess knew, had all but completed
+a gallery of a hundred portraits, representing the beauty of the
+reign. Mrs. Delaray's would have been the hundredth in a series of
+which Mrs. Norton was the first.</p>
+<p>"He has been making arrangements with the husband to get it
+finished," said Lord Uredale; "it has been on his mind."</p>
+<p>The Duchess shivered a little.</p>
+<p>"He knows he won't finish it?"</p>
+<p>"Quite well."</p>
+<p>"And he still thinks of those things?"</p>
+<p>"Yes--or politics," said Lord Uredale, smiling faintly. "I have
+written to Mr. Montresor. There are two or three points my father
+wants to discuss with him."</p>
+<p>"And he is not depressed, or troubled about himself?"</p>
+<p>"Not in the least. He will be grateful if you will bring him
+Miss Le Breton."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"Julie, my darling, are you fit to come with me?"</p>
+<p>The Duchess held her friend in her arms, soothing and caressing
+her. How forlorn was the little house, under its dust-sheets, on
+this rainy, spring morning! And Julie, amid the dismantled
+drawing-room, stood spectrally white and still, listening, with
+scarcely a word in reply, to the affection, or the pity, or the
+news which the Duchess poured out upon her.</p>
+<p>"Shall we go now? I am quite ready."</p>
+<p>And she withdrew herself from the loving grasp which held her,
+and put on her hat and gloves.</p>
+<p>"You ought to be in bed," said the Duchess. "Those night
+journeys are too abominable. Even Jacob looks a wreck. But what an
+extraordinary chance, Julie, that Jacob should have found you! How
+did you come across each other?"</p>
+<p>"At the Nord Station," said Julie, as she pinned her veil before
+the glass over the mantel-piece.</p>
+<p>Some instinct silenced the Duchess. She asked no more questions,
+and they started for St. James's Square.</p>
+<p>"You won't mind if I don't talk?" said Julie, leaning back and
+closing her eyes. "I seem still to have the sea in my ears."</p>
+<p>The Duchess looked at her tenderly, clasping her hand close, and
+the carriage rolled along. But just before they reached St. James's
+Square, Julie hastily raised the fingers which held her own and
+kissed them.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Julie," said the Duchess, reproachfully, "I don't like you
+to do that!"</p>
+<p>She flushed and frowned. It was she who ought to pay such acts
+of homage, not Julie.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"Father, Miss Le Breton is here."</p>
+<p>"Let her come in, Jack--and the Duchess, too."</p>
+<p>Lord Uredale went back to the door. Two figures came noiselessly
+into the room, the Duchess in front, with Julie's hand in hers.</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington was propped up in bed, and breathing fast. But
+he smiled as they approached him.</p>
+<p>"This is good-bye, dear Duchess," he said, in a whisper, as she
+bent over him. Then, with a spark of his old gayety in the eyes, "I
+should be a cur to grumble. Life has been very agreeable. Ah,
+Julie!"</p>
+<p>Julie dropped gently on her knees beside him and laid her cheek
+against his arm. At the mention of her name the old man's face had
+clouded as though the thoughts she called up had suddenly rebuked
+his words to the Duchess. He feebly moved his hands towards hers,
+and there was silence in the room for a few moments.</p>
+<p>"Uredale!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, father."</p>
+<p>"This is Rose's daughter."</p>
+<p>His eyes lifted themselves to those of his son.</p>
+<p>"I know, father. If Miss Le Breton will allow us, we will do
+what we can to be of service to her."</p>
+<p>Bill Chantrey, the younger brother, gravely nodded assent. They
+were both men of middle age, the younger over forty. They did not
+resemble their father, nor was there any trace in either of them of
+his wayward fascination. They were a pair of well-set-up, well-bred
+Englishmen, surprised at nothing, and quite incapable of showing
+any emotion in public; yet just and kindly men. As Julie entered
+the house they had both solemnly shaken hands with her, in a manner
+which showed at once their determination, as far as they were
+concerned, to avoid anything sentimental or in the nature of a
+scene, and their readiness to do what could be rightly demanded of
+them.</p>
+<p>Julie hardly listened to Lord Uredale's little speech. She had
+eyes and ears only for her grandfather. As she knelt beside him,
+her face bowed upon his hand, the ice within her was breaking up,
+that dumb and straitening anguish in which she had lived since that
+moment at the Nord Station in which she had grasped the meaning and
+the implications of Delafield's hurried words. Was everything to be
+swept away from her at once--her lover, and now this dear old man,
+to whom her heart, crushed and bleeding as it was, yearned with all
+its strength?</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington supposed that she was weeping.</p>
+<p>"Don't grieve, my dear," he murmured. "It must come to an end
+some time--'<i>cette charmante promenade &agrave; travers la
+r&eacute;alit&eacute;</i>!'"</p>
+<p>And he smiled at her, agreeably vain to the last of that French
+accent and that French memory which--so his look implied--they two
+could appreciate, each in the other. Then he turned to the
+Duchess.</p>
+<p>"Duchess, you knew this secret before me. But I forgive
+<i>you</i>, and thank you. You have been very good to Rose's child.
+Julie has told me--and--I have observed--"</p>
+<p>"Oh, dear Lord Lackington!" Evelyn bent over him. "Trust her to
+me," she said, with a lovely yearning to comfort and cheer him
+breathing from her little face.</p>
+<p>He smiled.</p>
+<p>"To you--and--"</p>
+<p>He did not finish the sentence.</p>
+<p>After a pause he made a little gesture of farewell which the
+Duchess understood. She kissed his hand and turned away
+weeping.</p>
+<p>"Nurse--where is nurse?" said Lord Lackington.</p>
+<p>Both the nurse and the doctor, who had withdrawn a little
+distance from the family group, came forward.</p>
+<p>"Doctor, give me some strength," said the laboring voice, not
+without its old wilfulness of accent.</p>
+<p>He moved his arm towards the young homoeopath, who injected
+strychnine. Then he looked at the nurse.</p>
+<p>"Brandy--and--lift me."</p>
+<p>All was done as he desired.</p>
+<p>"Now go, please," he said to his sons. "I wish to be left with
+Julie."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>For some moments, that seemed interminable to Julie, Lord
+Lackington lay silent. A feverish flush, a revival of life in the
+black eyes had followed on the administration of the two
+stimulants. He seemed to be gathering all his forces.</p>
+<p>At last he laid his hand on her arm. "You shouldn't be alone,"
+he said, abruptly.</p>
+<p>His expression had grown anxious, even imperious. She felt a
+vague pang of dread as she tried to assure him that she had kind
+friends, and that her work would be her resource.</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington frowned.</p>
+<p>"That won't do," he said, almost vehemently. "You have great
+talents, but you are weak--you are a woman--you must marry."</p>
+<p>Julie stared at him, whiter even than when she had entered his
+room--helpless to avert what she began to foresee.</p>
+<p>"Jacob Delafield is devoted to you. You should marry him,
+dear--you should marry him."</p>
+<p>The room seemed to swim around her. But his face was still
+plain--the purpled lips and cheeks, the urgency in the eyes, as of
+one pursued by an overtaking force, the magnificent brow, the crown
+of white hair.</p>
+<p>She summoned all her powers and told him hurriedly that he was
+mistaken--entirely mistaken. Mr. Delafield had, indeed, proposed to
+her, but, apart from her own unwillingness, she had reason to know
+that his feelings towards her were now entirely changed. He neither
+loved her nor thought well of her.</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington lay there, obstinate, patient, incredulous. At
+last he interrupted her.</p>
+<p>"You make yourself believe these things. But they are not true.
+Delafield is attached to you. I know it."</p>
+<p>He nodded to her with his masterful, affectionate look. And
+before she could find words again he had resumed.</p>
+<p>"He could give you a great position. Don't despise it. We
+English big-wigs have a good time."</p>
+<p>A ghostly, humorous ray shot out upon her; then he felt for her
+hand.</p>
+<p>"Dear Julie, why won't you?"</p>
+<p>"If you were to ask him," she cried, in despair, "he would tell
+you as I do."</p>
+<p>And across her miserable thoughts there flashed two mingled
+images--Warkworth waiting, waiting for her at the Sceaux Station,
+and that look of agonized reproach in Delafield's haggard face as
+he had parted from her in the dawn of this strange, this incredible
+day.</p>
+<p>And here beside her, with the tyranny of the dying, this dear
+babbler wandered on in broken words, with painful breath, pleading,
+scolding, counselling. She felt that he was exhausting himself. She
+begged him to let her recall nurse and doctor. He shook his head,
+and when he could no longer speak, he clung to her hand, his gaze
+solemnly, insistently, fixed upon her.</p>
+<p>Her spirit writhed and rebelled. But she was helpless in the
+presence of this mortal weakness, this affection, half earthly,
+half beautiful, on its knees before her.</p>
+<p>A thought struck her. Why not content him? Whatever pledges she
+gave would die with him. What did it matter? It was cruelty to deny
+him the words--the mere empty words--he asked of her.</p>
+<p>"I--I would do anything to please you!" she said, with a sudden
+burst of uncontrollable tears, as she laid her head down beside him
+on the pillow. "If he <i>were</i> to ask me again, of course, for
+your sake, I would consider it once more. Dear, dear friend, won't
+that satisfy you?"</p>
+<p>Lord Lackington was silent a few moments, then he smiled.</p>
+<p>"That's a promise?"</p>
+<p>She raised herself and looked at him, conscious of a sick
+movement of terror. What was there in his mind, still so quick,
+fertile, ingenious, under the very shadow of death?</p>
+<p>He waited for her answer, feebly pressing her hand.</p>
+<p>"Yes," she said, faintly, and once more hid her face beside
+him.</p>
+<p>Then, for some little time, the dying man neither stirred nor
+spoke. At last Julie heard:</p>
+<p>"I used to be afraid of death--that was in middle life. Every
+night it was a torment. But now, for many years, I have not been
+afraid at all.... Byron--Lord Byron--said to me, once, he would not
+change anything in his life; but he would have preferred not to
+have lived at all. I could not say that. I have enjoyed it
+all--being an Englishman, and an English peer--pictures, politics,
+society--everything. Perhaps it wasn't fair. There are so many poor
+devils."</p>
+<p>Julie pressed his hand to her lips. But in her thoughts there
+rose the sudden, sharp memory of her mother's death--of that bitter
+stoicism and abandonment in which the younger life had closed, in
+comparison with this peace, this complacency.</p>
+<p>Yet it was a complacency rich in sweetness. His next words were
+to assure her tenderly that he had made provision for her. "Uredale
+and Bill--will see to it. They're good fellows. Often--they've
+thought me--a pretty fool. But they've been kind to
+me--always."</p>
+<p>Then, after another interval, he lifted himself in bed, with
+more strength than she had supposed he could exert, looked at her
+earnestly, and asked her, in the same painful whisper, whether she
+believed in another life.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Julie. But her shrinking, perfunctory manner
+evidently distressed him. He resumed, with a furrowed brow:</p>
+<p>"You ought. It is good for us to believe it."</p>
+<p>"I must hope, at any rate, that I shall see you again--and
+mamma," she said, smiling on him through her tears.</p>
+<p>"I wonder what it will be like," he replied, after a pause. His
+tone and look implied a freakish, a whimsical curiosity, yet full
+of charm. Then, motioning to her to come nearer, and speaking into
+her ear:</p>
+<p>"Your poor mother, Julie, was never happy--never! There must be
+laws, you see--and churches--and religious customs. It's
+because--we're made of such wretched stuff. My wife, when she
+died--made me promise to continue going to church--and praying.
+And--without it--I should have been a bad man. Though I've had
+plenty of sceptical thoughts--plenty. Your poor parents
+rebelled--against all that. They suffered--they suffered. But
+you'll make up--you're a noble woman--you'll make up."</p>
+<p>He laid his hand on her head. She offered no reply; but through
+the inner mind there rushed the incidents, passions, revolts of the
+preceding days.</p>
+<p>But for that strange chance of Delafield's appearance in her
+path--a chance no more intelligible to her now, after the pondering
+of several feverish hours, than it had been at the moment of her
+first suspicion--where and what would she be now? A dishonored
+woman, perhaps, with a life-secret to keep; cut off, as her mother
+had been, from the straight-living, law-abiding world.</p>
+<p>The touch of the old man's hand upon her hair roused in her a
+first recoil, a first shattering doubt of the impulse which had
+carried her to Paris. Since Delafield left her in the early dawn
+she had been pouring out a broken, passionate heart in a letter to
+Warkworth. No misgivings while she was writing it as to the
+all-sufficing legitimacy of love!</p>
+<p>But here, in this cold neighborhood of the grave--brought back
+to gaze in spirit; on her mother's tragedy--she shrank, she
+trembled. Her proud intelligence denied the stain, and bade her
+hate and despise her rescuer. And, meanwhile, things also inherited
+and inborn, the fruit of a remoter ancestry, rising from the
+dimmest and deepest caverns of personality, silenced the clamor of
+the naturalist mind. One moment she felt herself seized with terror
+lest anything should break down the veil between her real self and
+this unsuspecting tenderness of the dying man; the next she rose in
+revolt against her own fear. Was she to find herself, after all, a
+mere weak penitent--meanly grateful to Jacob Delafield? Her heart
+cried out to Warkworth in a protesting anguish.</p>
+<p>So absorbed in thought was she that she did not notice how long
+the silence had lasted.</p>
+<p>"He seems to be sleeping," said a low voice beside her.</p>
+<p>She looked up to see the doctor, with Lord Uredale. Gently
+releasing herself, she kissed Lord Lackington's forehead, and rose
+to her feet.</p>
+<p>Suddenly the patient opened his eyes, and as he seemed to become
+aware of the figures beside him, he again lifted himself in bed,
+and a gleam most animated, most vivacious, passed over his
+features.</p>
+<p>"Brougham's not asked," he said, with a little chuckle of
+amusement. "Isn't it a joke?"</p>
+<p>The two men beside him looked at each other. Lord Uredale
+approached the bed.</p>
+<p>"Not asked to what, father?" he said, gently.</p>
+<p>"Why, to the Queen's fancy ball, of course," said Lord
+Lackington, still smiling. "Such a to-do! All the elderly sticks
+practising minuets for their lives!"</p>
+<p>A voluble flow of talk followed--hardly intelligible. The words
+"Melbourne" and "Lady Holland" emerged--the fragment, apparently,
+of a dispute with the latter, in which "Allen" intervened--the
+names of "Palmerston" and "that dear chap, Villiers."</p>
+<p>Lord Uredale sighed. The young doctor looked at him
+interrogatively.</p>
+<p>"He is thinking of his old friends," said the son. "That was the
+Queen's ball, I imagine, of '42. I have often heard him describe my
+mother's dress."</p>
+<p>But while he was speaking the fitful energy died away. The old
+man ceased to talk; his eyelids fell. But the smile still lingered
+about his mouth, and as he settled himself on his pillows, like one
+who rests, the spectators were struck by the urbane and
+distinguished beauty of his aspect. The purple flush had died again
+into mortal pallor. Illness had masked or refined the weakness of
+mouth and chin; the beautiful head and countenance, with their
+characteristic notes of youth, impetuosity, a kind of gay
+detachment, had never been more beautiful.</p>
+<p>The young doctor looked stealthily from the recumbent figure to
+the tall and slender woman standing absorbed and grief-stricken
+beside the bed. The likeness was as evident to him as it had been,
+in the winter, to Sir Wilfrid Bury.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>As he was escorting her down-stairs, Lord Uredale said to his
+companion, "Foster thinks he may still live twenty-four hours."</p>
+<p>"If he asks for me again," said Julie, now shrouded once more
+behind a thick, black veil, "you will send?"</p>
+<p>He gravely assented.</p>
+<p>"It is a great pity," he said, with a certain stiffness--did it
+unconsciously mark the difference between her and his legitimate
+kindred?--"that my sister Lady Blanche and her daughter cannot be
+with us."</p>
+<p>"They are in Italy?"</p>
+<p>"At Florence. My niece has had an attack of diphtheria. She
+could neither travel nor could her mother leave her."</p>
+<p>Then pausing in the hall, he added in a low voice, and with some
+embarrassment:</p>
+<p>"My father has told you, I believe, of the addition he has made
+to his will?"</p>
+<p>Julie drew back.</p>
+<p>"I neither asked for it nor desired it," she said, in her
+coldest and clearest voice.</p>
+<p>"That I quite understand," said Lord Uredale. "But--you cannot
+hurt him by refusing."</p>
+<p>She hesitated.</p>
+<p>"No. But afterwards--I must be free to follow my own
+judgment."</p>
+<p>"We cannot take what does not belong to us," he said, with some
+sharpness. "My brother and I are named as your trustees. Believe
+me, we will do our best."</p>
+<p>Meanwhile the younger brother had come out of the library to bid
+her farewell. She felt that she was under critical observation,
+though both pairs of gray eyes refrained from any appearance of
+scrutiny. Her pride came to her aid, and she did not shrink from
+the short conversation which the two brothers evidently desired.
+When it was over, and the brothers returned to the hall after
+putting her into the Duchess's carriage, the younger said to the
+elder:</p>
+<p>"She can behave herself, Johnnie."</p>
+<p>They looked at each other, with their hands in their pockets. A
+little nod passed between them--an augur-like acceptance of this
+new and irregular member of the family.</p>
+<p>"Yes, she has excellent manners," said Uredale. "And really,
+after the tales Lady Henry has been spreading--that's
+something!"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I always thought Lady Henry an old cat," said Bill,
+tranquilly. "That don't matter."</p>
+<p>The Chantrey brothers had not been among Lady Henry's
+<i>habitu&eacute;s</i>. In her eyes, they were the dull sons of an
+agreeable father. They were humorously aware of it, and bore her
+little malice.</p>
+<p>"No," said Uredale, raising his eyebrows; "but the 'affaire
+Warkworth'? If there's any truth in what one hears, that's deuced
+unpleasant."</p>
+<p>Bill Chantrey whistled.</p>
+<p>"It's hard luck on that poor child Aileen that it should be her
+own cousin interfering with her preserves. By-the-way"--he stooped
+to look at the letters on the hall table--"do you see there's a
+letter for father from Blanche? And in a letter I got from her by
+the same post, she says that she has told him the whole story.
+According to her, Aileen's too ill to be thwarted, and she wants
+the governor to see the guardians. I say, Johnnie"--he looked at
+his brother--"we'll not trouble the father with it now?"</p>
+<p>"Certainly not," said Uredale, with a sigh. "I saw one of the
+trustees--Jack Underwood--yesterday. He told me Blanche and the
+child were more infatuated than ever. Very likely what one hears is
+a pack of lies. If not, I hope this woman will have the good taste
+to drop it. Father has charged me to write to Blanche and tell her
+the whole story of poor Rose, and of this girl's revealing herself.
+Blanche, it appears, is just as much in the dark as we were."</p>
+<p>"If this gossip has got round to her, her feelings will be
+mixed. Oh, well, I've great faith in the money," said Bill
+Chantrey, carelessly, as they began to mount the stairs again. "It
+sounds disgusting; but if the child wants him I suppose she must
+have him. And, anyway, the man's off to Africa for a twelvemonth at
+least. Miss Le Breton will have time to forget him. One can't say
+that either he or she has behaved with delicacy--unless, indeed,
+she knew nothing of Aileen, which is quite probable."</p>
+<p>"Well, don't ask me to tackle her," said Uredale. "She has the
+ways of an empress."</p>
+<p>Bill Chantrey shrugged his shoulders. "And, by George! she looks
+as if she could fall in love," he said, slowly. "Magnificent eyes,
+Johnnie. I propose to make a study of our new niece."</p>
+<p>"Lord Uredale!" said a voice on the stairs.</p>
+<p>The young doctor descended rapidly to meet them.</p>
+<p>"His lordship is asking for some one," he said. "He seems
+excited. But I cannot catch the name."</p>
+<p>Lord Uredale ran up-stairs.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Later in the day a man emerged from Lackington House and walked
+rapidly towards the Mall. It was Jacob Delafield.</p>
+<p>He passed across the Mall and into St. James's Park. There he
+threw himself on the first seat he saw, in an absorption so deep
+that it excited the wondering notice of more than one
+passer-by.</p>
+<p>After about half an hour he roused himself, and walked, still in
+the same brown study, to his lodgings in Jermyn Street. There he
+found a letter which he eagerly opened.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"DEAR JACOB,--Julie came back this morning about one o'clock. I
+waited for her--and at first she seemed quite calm and composed.
+But suddenly, as I was sitting beside her, talking, she fainted
+away in her chair, and I was terribly alarmed. We sent for a doctor
+at once. He shakes his head over her, and says there are all the
+signs of a severe strain of body and mind. No wonder, indeed--our
+poor Julie! Oh, how I <i>loathe</i> some people! Well, there she is
+in bed, Madame Bornier away, and everybody. I simply <i>can't</i>
+go to Scotland. But Freddie is just mad. Do, Jacob, there's a dear,
+go and dine with him to-night and cheer him up. He vows he won't go
+north without me. <i>Perhaps</i> I'll come to-morrow. I could no
+more leave Julie to-night than fly.</p>
+<p>"She'll be ill for weeks. What I ought to do is to take her
+abroad. She's <i>very</i> dear and good; but, oh, Jacob, as she
+lies there I <i>feel</i> her heart's broken. And it's not Lord
+Lackington. Oh no! though I'm sure she loved him. <i>Do</i> go to
+Freddie, there's a dear."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"No, that I won't!" said Delafield, with a laugh that choked
+him, as he threw the letter down.</p>
+<p>He tried to write an answer, but could not achieve even the
+simplest note. Then he began a pacing of his room, which lasted
+till he dropped into his chair, worn out with the sheer physical
+exhaustion of the night and day. When his servant came in he found
+his master in a heavy sleep. And, at Crowborough House, the Duke
+dined and fumed alone.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="XXI"></a>XXI</h2>
+<br>
+<p>"Why does any one stay in England who <i>can</i> make the trip
+to Paradise?" said the Duchess, as she leaned lazily back in the
+corner of the boat and trailed her fingers in the waters of
+Como.</p>
+<p>It was a balmy April afternoon, and she and Julie were floating
+through a scene enchanted, incomparable. When spring descends upon
+the shores of the Lago di Como, she brings with her all the graces,
+all the beauties, all the fine, delicate, and temperate delights of
+which earth and sky are capable, and she pours them forth upon a
+land of perfect loveliness. Around the shores of other
+lakes--Maggiore, Lugano, Garda--blue mountains rise, and the
+vineyards spread their green and dazzling terraces to the sun. Only
+Como can show in unmatched union a main composition, incomparably
+grand and harmonious, combined with every jewelled, or glowing, or
+exquisite detail. Nowhere do the mountains lean towards each other
+in such an ordered splendor as that which bends round the northern
+shores of Como. Nowhere do buttressed masses rise behind each
+other, to right and left of a blue water-way, in lines statelier or
+more noble than those kept by the mountains of the Lecco Lake, as
+they marshal themselves on either hand, along the approaches to
+Lombardy and Venetia; bearing aloft, as though on the purple
+pillars of some majestic gateway, the great curtain of dazzling
+cloud which, on a sunny day, hangs over the Brescian plain--a
+glorious drop-scene, interposed between the dwellers on the Como
+Mountains, and those marble towns, Brescia, Verona, Padua, which
+thread the way to Venice.</p>
+<p>And within this divine frame-work, between the glistening snows
+which still, in April, crown and glorify the heights, and those
+reflections of them which lie encalmed in the deep bosom of the
+lake, there's not a foot of pasture, not a shelf of vineyard, not a
+slope of forest where the spring is not at work, dyeing the turf
+with gentians, starring it with narcissuses, or drawing across it
+the first golden net-work of the chestnut leaves; where the mere
+emerald of the grass is not in itself a thing to refresh the very
+springs of being; where the peach-blossom and the wild-cherry and
+the olive are not perpetually weaving patterns on the blue, which
+ravish the very heart out of your breast. And already the roses are
+beginning to pour over the walls; the wistaria is climbing up the
+cypresses; a pomp of camellias and azaleas is in all the gardens;
+while in the grassy bays that run up into the hills the primrose
+banks still keep their sweet austerity, and the triumph of spring
+over the just banished winter is still sharp and new.</p>
+<p>And in the heart and sense of Julie Le Breton, as she sat beside
+the Duchess, listening absently to the talk of the old boatman,
+who, with his oars resting idly in his hands, was chattering to the
+ladies, a renewing force akin to that of the spring was also at its
+healing and life-giving work. She had still the delicate, tremulous
+look of one recovering from a sore wrestle with physical ill; but
+in her aspect there were suggestions more intimate, more moving
+than this. Those who have lain down and risen up with pain; those
+who have been face to face with passion and folly and
+self-judgment; those who have been forced to seek with eagerness
+for some answer to those questions which the majority of us never
+ask, "Whither is my life leading me--and what is it worth to me or
+to any other living soul?"--these are the men and women who now and
+then touch or startle us with the eyes and the voice of Julie, if,
+at least, we have the capacity that responds. Sir Wilfrid Bury, for
+instance, prince of self-governed and reasonable men, was not to be
+touched by Julie. For him, in spite of her keen intelligence, she
+was the <i>type passionn&eacute;</i>, from which he instinctively
+recoiled--the Duke of Crowborough the same. Such men feel towards
+such women as Julie Le Breton hostility or satire; for what they
+ask, above all, of the women of their world is a kind of
+simplicity, a kind of lightness which makes life easier for
+men.</p>
+<p>But for natures like Evelyn Crowborough--or Meredith--or Jacob
+Delafield--the Julie-type has perennial attractions. For these are
+all <i>children of feeling</i>, allied in this, however different
+in intelligence or philosophy. They are attracted by the
+storm-tossed temperament in itself; by mere sensibility; by that
+which, in the technical language of Catholicism, suggests or
+possesses "the gift of tears." At any rate, pity and love for her
+poor Julie--however foolish, however faulty--lay warm in Evelyn
+Crowborough's breast; they had brought her to Como; they kept her
+now battling on the one hand with her husband's angry letters and
+on the other with the melancholy of her most perplexing, most
+appealing friend.</p>
+<p>"I had often heard" [wrote the sore-tried Duke] "of the ravages
+wrought in family life by these absurd and unreasonable female
+friendships, but I never thought that it would be you, Evelyn, who
+would bring them home to me. I won't repeat the arguments I have
+used a hundred times in vain. But once again I implore and demand
+that you should find some kind, responsible person to look after
+Miss Le Breton--I don't care what you pay--and that you yourself
+should come home to me and the children and the thousand and one
+duties you are neglecting.</p>
+<p>"As for the spring month in Scotland, which I generally enjoy so
+much, that has been already entirely ruined. And now the season is
+apparently to be ruined also. On the Shropshire property there is
+an important election coming on, as I am sure you know; and the
+Premier said to me only yesterday that he hoped you were already up
+and doing. The Grand Duke of C---- will be in London within the
+next fortnight. I particularly want to show him some civility. But
+what can I do without you--and how on earth am I to explain your
+absence?</p>
+<p>"Once more, Evelyn, I beg and I demand that you should come
+home."</p>
+<p>To which the Duchess had rushed off a reply without a post's
+delay.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Freddie, you are such a wooden-headed darling! As if I
+hadn't explained till I'm black in the face. I'm glad, anyway, you
+didn't say command; that would really have made difficulties.</p>
+<p>"As for the election, I'm sure if I was at home I should think
+it very good fun. Out here I am extremely doubtful whether we ought
+to do such things as you and Lord M---- suggest. A duke shouldn't
+interfere in elections. Anyway, I'm sure it's good for my character
+to consider it a little--though I quite admit you may lose the
+election.</p>
+<p>"The Grand Duke is a horrid wretch, and if he wasn't a grand
+duke you'd be the first to cut him. I had to spend a whole
+dinner-time last year in teaching him his proper place. It was very
+humiliating, and not at all amusing. You can have a men's dinner
+for him. That's all he's fit for.</p>
+<p>"And as for the babies, Mrs. Robson sends me a telegram every
+morning. I can't make out that they have had a finger-ache since I
+went away, and I am sure mothers are entirely superfluous. All the
+same, I think about them a great deal, especially at night. Last
+night I tried to think about their education--if only I wasn't such
+a sleepy creature! But, at any rate, I never in my life tried to
+think about it at home. So that's so much to the good.</p>
+<p>"Indeed, I'll come back to you soon, you poor, forsaken, old
+thing! But Julie has no one in the world, and I feel like a
+Newfoundland dog who has pulled some one out of the water. The
+water was deep; and the life's only just coming back; and the dog's
+not much good. But he sits there, for company, till the doctor
+comes, and that's just what I'm doing.</p>
+<p>"I know you don't approve of the notions I have in my head now.
+But that's because you don't understand. Why don't you come out and
+join us? Then you'd like Julie as much as I do; everything would be
+quite simple; and I shouldn't be in the least jealous.</p>
+<p>"Dr. Meredith is coming here, probably to-night, and Jacob
+should arrive to-morrow on his way to Venice, where poor Chudleigh
+and his boy are."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The <i>breva</i>, or fair-weather wind, from the north was
+blowing freshly yet softly down the lake. The afternoon sun was
+burning on Bellaggio, on the long terrace of the Melzi villa, on
+the white mist of fruit-blossom that lay lightly on the green
+slopes above San Giovanni.</p>
+<p>Suddenly the Duchess and the boatman left the common topics of
+every day by which the Duchess was trying to improve her
+Italian--such as the proposed enlargement of the Bellevue Hotel,
+the new villas that were springing up, the gardens of the Villa
+Carlotta, and so forth. Evelyn had carelessly asked the old man
+whether he had been in any of the fighting of '59, and in an
+instant, under her eyes, he became another being. Out rolled a
+torrent of speech; the oars lay idly on the water; and through the
+man's gnarled and wrinkled face there blazed a high and illumining
+passion. Novara and its beaten king, in '49; the ten years of
+waiting, when a whole people bode its time, in a gay, grim silence;
+the grudging victory of Magenta; the fivefold struggle that
+wrenched the hills of San Martino from the Austrians; the
+humiliations and the rage of Villafranca--of all these had this
+wasted graybeard made a part. And he talked of them with the Latin
+eloquence and facility, as no veteran of the north could have
+talked; he was in a moment the equal of these great affairs in
+which he had mingled; so that one felt in him the son of a race
+which had been rolled and polished--a pebble, as it were, from
+rocks which had made the primeval frame-work of the world--in the
+main course and stream of history.</p>
+<p>Then from the campaign of '59 he fell back on the Five Days of
+Milan in '48--the immortal days, when a populace drove out an army,
+and what began almost in jest ended in a delirium, a stupefaction
+of victory. His language was hot, broken, confused, like the street
+fighting it chronicled. Afterwards--a further sharpening and
+blanching of the old face--and he had carried them deep into the
+black years of Italy's patience and Austria's revenge. Throwing out
+a thin arm, he pointed towards town after town on the lake shores,
+now in the brilliance of sunset, now in the shadow of the northern
+slope--Gravedona, Varenna, Argegno--towns which had each of them
+given their sons to the Austrian bullet and the Austrian lash for
+the ransom of Italy.</p>
+<p>He ran through the sacred names--Stazzonelli, Riccini,
+Crescieri, Ronchetti, Ceresa, Previtali--young men, almost all of
+them, shot for the possession of a gun or a knife, for helping
+their comrades in the Austrian army to desert, for "insulting
+conduct" towards an Austrian soldier or officer.</p>
+<p>Of one of these executions, which he had himself witnessed at
+Varese--the shooting of a young fellow of six-and-twenty, his own
+friend and kinsman--he gave an account which blanched the Duchess's
+cheeks and brought the big tears into her eyes. Then, when he saw
+the effect he had produced, the old man trembled.</p>
+<p>"Ah, eccellenza," he cried, "but it had to be! The Italians had
+to show they knew how to die; then God let them live. Ecco,
+eccellenza!"</p>
+<p>And he drew from his breast-pocket, with shaking hands, an old
+envelope tied round with string. When he had untied it, a piece of
+paper emerged, brown with age and worn with much reading. It was a
+rudely printed broadsheet containing an account of the last words
+and sufferings of the martyrs of Mantua--those conspirators of
+1852--from whose graves and dungeons sprang, tenfold renewed, the
+regenerating and liberating forces which, but a few years later,
+drove out the Austrian with the Bourbon, together.</p>
+<p>"See here, eccellenza," he said, as he tenderly spread out its
+tattered folds and gave it into the Duchess's hand. "Have the
+goodness to look where is that black mark. There you will find the
+last words of Don Enrico Tazzoli, the half-brother of my father. He
+was a priest, eccellenza. Ah, it was not then as it is now! The
+priests were then for Italy. They hanged three of them at Mantua
+alone. As for Don Enrico, first they stripped him of his
+priesthood, and then they hanged him. And those were his last
+words, and the last words of Scarsellini also, who suffered with
+him. <i>Veda eccellenza</i>! As for me, I know them from a
+boy."</p>
+<p>And while the Duchess read, the old man repeated tags and
+fragments under his breath, as he once more resumed the oars and
+drove the boat gently towards Menaggio.</p>
+<p>"<i>The multitude of victims has not robbed us of courage in the
+past, nor will it so rob us in the future--till victory dawns. The
+cause of the people is like the cause of religion--it triumphs only
+through its martyrs.... You--who survive--will conquer, and in your
+victory we, the dead, shall live</i>....</p>
+<p>"<i>Take no thought for us; the blood of the forerunners is like
+the seed which the wise husbandman scatters on the fertile
+ground</i>.... <i>Teach our young men how to adore and how to
+suffer for a great idea. Work incessantly at that; so shall our
+country come to birth; and grieve not for us!... Yes, Italy shall
+be one! To that all things point.</i> WORK! <i>There is no obstacle
+that cannot be overcome, no opposition that cannot be destroyed.
+The</i> HOW <i>and the</i> WHEN <i>only remain to be solved. You,
+more fortunate than we, will find the clew to the riddle, when all
+things are accomplished, and the times are ripe.... Hope!--my
+parents, and my brothers--hope always!--waste no time in
+weeping</i>."</p>
+<p>The Duchess read aloud the Italian, and Julie stooped over her
+shoulder to follow the words.</p>
+<p>"Marvellous!" said Julie, in a low voice, as she sank back into
+her place. "A youth of twenty-seven, with the rope round his neck,
+and he comforts himself with 'Italy.' What's 'Italy' to him, or he
+to 'Italy'?" Not even an immediate paradise. "Is there anybody
+capable of it now?"</p>
+<p>Her face and attitude had lost their languor. As the Duchess
+returned his treasure to the old man she looked at Julie with joy.
+Not since her illness had there been any such sign of warmth and
+energy.</p>
+<p>And, indeed, as they floated on, past the glow of Bellaggio,
+towards the broad gold and azure of the farther lake, the
+world-defying passion that breathed from these words of dead and
+murdered Italians played as a bracing and renewing power on Julie's
+still feeble being. It was akin to the high snows on those far Alps
+that closed in the lake--to the pure wind that blew from them--to
+the "gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme," amid which their
+little boat pressed on towards the shore.</p>
+<p>"What matter," cried the intelligence, but as though through
+sobs--"what matter the individual struggle and misery? These can be
+lived down. The heart can be silenced--nerves steadied--strength
+restored. Will and idea remain--the eternal spectacle of the world,
+and the eternal thirst of man to see, to know, to feel, to realize
+himself, if not in one passion, then in another. If not in love,
+then in patriotism--art--thought."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The Duchess and Julie landed presently beneath the villa of
+which they were the passing tenants. The Duchess mounted the double
+staircase where the banksia already hung in a golden curtain over
+the marble balustrade. Her face was thoughtful. She had to write
+her daily letter to the absent and reproachful Duke.</p>
+<p>Julie parted from her with a caress, and paused awhile to watch
+the small figure till it mounted out of sight. Her friend had
+become very dear to her. A new humility, a new gratitude filled her
+heart. Evelyn should not sacrifice herself much longer. When she
+had insisted on carrying her patient abroad, Julie had neither mind
+nor will wherewith to resist. But now--the Duke should soon come to
+his own again.</p>
+<p>She herself turned inland for that short walk by which each day
+she tested her returning strength. She climbed the winding road to
+Criante, the lovely village above Cadenabbia; then, turning to the
+left, she mounted a path that led to the woods which overhang the
+famous gardens of the Villa Carlotta.</p>
+<p>Such a path! To the left hand, and, as it seemed, steeply
+beneath her feet, all earth and heaven--the wide lake, the purple
+mountains, the glories of a flaming sky. On the calm spaces of
+water lay a shimmer of crimson and gold, repeating the noble
+splendor of the clouds; the midgelike boats crept from shore to
+shore; and, midway between Bellaggio and Cadenabbia, the
+steam-boat, a white speck, drew a silver furrow. To her right a
+green hill-side--each blade of grass, each flower, each tuft of
+heath, enskied, transfigured, by the broad light that poured across
+it from the hidden west. And on the very hill-top a few scattered
+olives, peaches, and wild cherries scrawled upon the blue, their
+bare, leaning stems, their pearly whites, their golden pinks and
+feathery grays all in a glory of sunset that made of them things
+enchanted, aerial, fantastical, like a dance of Botticelli angels
+on the height.</p>
+<p>And presently a sheltered bank in a green hollow, where Julie
+sat down to rest. But nature, in this tranquil spot, had still new
+pageants, new sorceries wherewith to play upon the nerves of
+wonder. Across the hollow a great crag clothed in still leafless
+chestnut-trees reared itself against the lake. The innumerable
+lines of stem and branch, warm brown or steely gray, were drawn
+sharp on silver air, while at the very summit of the rock one
+superb tree with branching limbs, touched with intense black,
+sprang high above the rest, the proud plume or ensign of the wood.
+Through the trunks the blaze of distant snow and the purples of
+craggy mountains; in front the glistening spray of peach or cherry
+blossom, breaking the still wintry beauty of that majestic grove.
+And in all the air, dropping from the heaven, spread on the hills,
+or shimmering on the lake, a diffusion of purest rose and deepest
+blue, lake and cloud and mountain each melting into the other, as
+though heaven and earth conspired merely to give value and relief
+to the year's new birth, to this near sparkle of young leaf and
+blossom which shone like points of fire on the deep breast of the
+distance.</p>
+<p>On the green ledge which ran round the hollow were children
+tugging at a goat. Opposite was a <i>contadino's</i> house of gray
+stone. A water-wheel turned beside it, and a stream, brought down
+from the hills, ran chattering past, a white and dancing thread of
+water. Everything was very still and soft. The children and the
+river made their voices heard; and there were nightingales singing
+in the woods below. Otherwise all was quiet. With a tranquil and
+stealthy joy the spring was taking possession. Nay--the Angelus! It
+swung over the lake and rolled from village to village....</p>
+<p>The tears were in Julie's eyes. Such beauty as this was apt now
+to crush and break her. All her being was still sore, and this
+appeal of nature was sometimes more than she could bear.</p>
+<p>Only a few short weeks since Warkworth had gone out of her
+life--since Delafield at a stroke had saved her from ruin--since
+Lord Lackington had passed away.</p>
+<p>One letter had reached her from Warkworth, a wild and incoherent
+letter, written at night in a little room of a squalid hotel near
+the Gare de Sceaux. Her telegram had reached him, and for him, as
+for her, all was over.</p>
+<p>But the letter was by no means a mere cry of baffled passion.
+There was in it a new note of moral anguish, as fresh and startling
+in her ear, coming from him, as the cry of passion itself. In the
+language of religion, it was the utterance of a man "convicted of
+sin."</p>
+<p>/# "How long is it since that man gave me your telegram? I was
+pacing up and down the departure platform, working myself into an
+agony of nervousness and anxiety as the time went by, wondering
+what on earth had happened to you, when the <i>chef de gare</i>
+came up: 'Monsieur attend une d&eacute;p&ecirc;che?' There were
+some stupid formalities--at last I got it. It seemed to me I had
+already guessed what it contained.</p>
+<p>"So it was <i>Delafield</i> who met you--Delafield who turned
+you back?</p>
+<p>"I saw him outside the hotel yesterday, and we exchanged a few
+words. I have always disliked his long, pale face and his high and
+mighty ways--at any rate, towards plain fellows, who don't belong
+to the classes, like me. Yesterday I was more than usually anxious
+to get rid of him.</p>
+<p>"So he guessed?</p>
+<p>"It can't have been chance. In some way he guessed. And you have
+been torn from me. My God! If I could only reach him--if I could
+fling his contempt in his face! And yet--</p>
+<p>"I have been walking up and down this room all night. The
+longing for you has been the sharpest suffering I suppose that I
+have ever known. For I am not one of the many people who enjoy
+pain. I have kept as free of it as I could. This time it caught and
+gripped me. Yet that isn't all. There has been something else.</p>
+<p>"What strange, patched creatures we are! Do you know, Julie,
+that by the time the dawn came I was on my knees--thanking God that
+we were parted--that you were on your way home--safe--out of my
+reach? Was I mad, or what? I can't explain it. I only know that one
+moment I hated Delafield as a mortal enemy--whether he was
+conscious of what he had done or no--and the next I found myself
+blessing him!</p>
+<p>"I understand now what people mean when they talk of conversion.
+It seems to me that in the hours I have just passed through things
+have come to light in me that I myself never suspected. I came of
+an Evangelical stock--I was brought up in a religious household. I
+suppose that one can't, after all, get away from the blood and the
+life that one inherits. My poor, old father--I was a bad son, and I
+know I hastened his death--was a sort of Puritan saint, with very
+stern ideas. I seem to have been talking with him this night, and
+shrinking under his condemnation. I could see his old face, as he
+put before me the thoughts I had dared to entertain, the risks I
+had been ready to take towards the woman I loved--the woman to whom
+I owed a deep debt of eternal gratitude.</p>
+<p>"Julie, it is strange how this appointment affects me. Last
+night I saw several people at the Embassy--good fellows--who seemed
+anxious to do all they could for me. Such men never took so much
+notice of me before. It is plain to me that this task will make or
+mar me. I may fail. I may die. But if I succeed England will owe me
+something, and these men at the top of the tree--</p>
+<p>"Good God! how can I go on writing this to you? It's because I
+came back to the hotel and tossed about half the night brooding
+over the difference between what these men--these honorable,
+distinguished fellows--were prepared to think of me, and the
+blackguard I knew myself to be. What, take everything from a
+woman's hand, and then turn and try and drag her in the
+mire--propose to her what one would shoot a man for proposing to
+one's sister! Thief and cur.</p>
+<p>"Julie--kind, beloved Julie--forget it all! For God's sake,
+let's cast it all behind us! As long as I live, your name, your
+memory will live in my heart. We shall not meet, probably, for many
+years. You'll marry and be happy yet. Just now I know you're
+suffering. I seem to see you in the train--on the steamer--your
+pale face that has lighted up life for me--your dear, slender hands
+that folded so easily into one of mine. You are in pain, my
+darling. Your nature is wrenched from its natural supports. And you
+gave me all your fine, clear mind, and all your heart. I ought to
+be damned to the deepest hell!</p>
+<p>"Then, again, I say to myself, if only she were here! If only I
+had her <i>here</i>, with her arms round my neck, surely I might
+have found the courage and the mere manliness to extricate both
+herself and me from these entanglements. Aileen might have released
+and forgiven one.</p>
+<p>"No, no! It's all over! I'll go and do my task. You set it me.
+You sha'n't be ashamed of me there.</p>
+<p>"Good-bye, Julie, my love--good-bye--forever!" #/</p>
+<p>These were portions of that strange document composed through
+the intervals of a long night, which showed in Warkworth's mind the
+survival of a moral code, inherited from generations of scrupulous
+and God-fearing ancestors, overlaid by selfish living, and now
+revived under the stress, the purification partly of deepening
+passion, partly of a high responsibility. The letter was
+incoherent, illogical; it showed now the meaner, now the nobler
+elements of character; but it was human; it came from the warm
+depths of life, and it had exerted in the end a composing and
+appeasing force upon the woman to whom it was addressed. He had
+loved her--if only at the moment of parting--he had loved her! At
+the last there had been feeling, sincerity, anguish, and to these
+all things may be forgiven.</p>
+<p>And, indeed, what in her eyes there was to forgive, Julie had
+long forgiven. Was it his fault if, when they met first, he was
+already pledged--for social and practical reasons which her mind
+perfectly recognized and understood--to Aileen Moffatt? Was it his
+fault if the relations between herself and him had ripened into a
+friendship which in its turn could only maintain itself by passing
+into love? No! It was she, whose hidden, insistent
+passion--nourished, indeed, upon a tragic ignorance--had
+transformed what originally he had a perfect right to offer and to
+feel.</p>
+<p>So she defended him; for in so doing she justified herself. And
+as to the Paris proposal, he had a right to treat her as a woman
+capable of deciding for herself how far love should carry her; he
+had a right to assume that her antecedents, her training, and her
+circumstances were not those of the ordinary sheltered girl, and
+that for her love might naturally wear a bolder and wilder aspect
+than for others. He blamed himself too severely, too passionately;
+but for this very blame her heart remembered him the more tenderly.
+For it meant that his mind was torn and in travail for her, that
+his thoughts clung to her in a passionate remorse; and again she
+felt herself loved, and forgave with all her heart.</p>
+<p>All the same, he was gone out of her life, and through the
+strain and the unconscious progress to other planes and phases of
+being, wrought by sickness and convalescence, her own passion for
+him even was now a changed and blunted thing.</p>
+<p>Was she ashamed of the wild impulse which had carried her to
+Paris? It is difficult to say. She was often seized with the
+shuddering consciousness of an abyss escaped, with wonder that she
+was still in the normal, accepted world, that Evelyn might still be
+her companion, that Th&eacute;r&egrave;se still adored her more
+fervently than any saint in the calendar. Perhaps, if the truth
+were known, she was more abased in her own eyes by the
+self-abandonment which had preceded the assignation with Warkworth.
+She had much intellectual arrogance, and before her acquaintance
+with Warkworth she had been accustomed to say and to feel that love
+was but one passion among many, and to despise those who gave it
+too great a place. And here she had flung herself into it, like any
+dull or foolish girl for whom a love affair represents the only
+stirring in the pool of life that she is ever likely to know.</p>
+<p>Well, she must recapture herself and remake her life. As she sat
+there in the still Italian evening she thought of the old boatman,
+and those social and intellectual passions to which his burst of
+patriotism had recalled her thoughts. Society, literature, friends,
+and the ambitions to which these lead--let her go back to them and
+build her days afresh. Dr. Meredith was coming. In his talk and
+companionship she would once more dip and temper the tools of mind
+and taste. No more vain self-arraignment, no more useless regrets.
+She looked back with bitterness upon a moment of weakness when, in
+the first stage of convalescence, in mortal weariness and
+loneliness, she had slipped one evening into the Farm Street church
+and unburdened her heart in confession. As she had told the
+Duchess, the Catholicism instilled into her youth by the Bruges
+nuns still laid upon her at times its ghostly and compelling hand.
+Now in her renewed strength she was inclined to look upon it as an
+element of weakness and disintegration in her nature. She resolved,
+in future, to free herself more entirely from a useless
+<i>Aberglaube</i>.</p>
+<p>But Meredith was not the only visitor expected at the villa in
+the next few days. She was already schooling herself to face the
+arrival of Jacob Delafield.</p>
+<p>It was curious how the mere thought of Delafield produced an
+agitation, a shock of feeling, which seemed to spread through all
+the activities of being. The faint, renascent glamour which had
+begun to attach to literature and social life disappeared. She fell
+into a kind of brooding, the sombre restlessness of one who feels
+in the dark the recurrent presence of an attacking and pursuing
+power, and is in a tremulous uncertainty where or how to meet
+it.</p>
+<p>The obscure tumult within her represented, in fact, a collision
+between the pagan and Christian conceptions of life. In
+self-dependence, in personal pride, in her desire to refer all
+things to the arbitrament of reason, Julie, whatever her practice,
+was theoretically a stoic and a pagan. But Delafield's personality
+embodied another "must," another "ought," of a totally different
+kind. And it was a "must" which, in a great crisis of her life, she
+also had been forced to obey. There was the thought which stung and
+humiliated. And the fact was irreparable; nor did she see how she
+was ever to escape from the strange, silent, penetrating relation
+it had established between her and the man who loved her and had
+saved her, against her will.</p>
+<p>During her convalescence at Crowborough House, Delafield had
+been often admitted. It would have been impossible to exclude him,
+unless she had confided the whole story of the Paris journey to the
+Duchess. And whatever Evelyn might tremblingly guess, from Julie's
+own mouth she knew nothing. So Delafield had come and gone,
+bringing Lord Lackington's last words, and the account of his
+funeral, or acting as intermediary in business matters between
+Julie and the Chantrey brothers. Julie could not remember that she
+had ever asked him for these services. They fell to him, as it
+were, by common consent, and she had been too weak to resist.</p>
+<p>At first, whenever he entered the room, whenever he approached
+her, her sense of anger and resentment had been almost unbearable.
+But little by little his courtesy, tact, and coolness had restored
+a relation between them which, if not the old one, had still many
+of the outward characters of intimacy. Not a word, not the remotest
+allusion reminded her of what had happened. The man who had stood
+before her transfigured on the deck of the steamer, stammering out,
+"I thank God I had the courage to do it!"--it was often hard for
+her to believe, as she stole a look at Delafield, chatting or
+writing in the Duchess's drawing-room, that such a scene had ever
+taken place.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The evening stole on. How was it that whenever she allowed the
+thought of Delafield to obtain a real lodgment in the mind, even
+the memory of Warkworth was for the time effaced? Silently,
+irresistibly, a wild heat of opposition would develop within her.
+These men round whom, as it were, there breathes an air of the
+heights; in whom one feels the secret guard that religion keeps
+over thoughts and words and acts--her passionate yet critical
+nature flung out against them. How are they better than others,
+after all? What right have they over the wills of others?</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, as the rose of evening burned on the craggy
+mountain face beyond Bellaggio, retreating upward, step by step,
+till the last glorious summit had died into the cool and already
+starlit blues of night, Julie, held, as it were, by a reluctant and
+half-jealous fascination, sat dreaming on the hill-side, not now of
+Warkworth, not of the ambitions of the mind, or society, but simply
+of the goings and comings, the aspects and sayings of a man in
+whose eyes she had once read the deepest and sternest things of the
+soul--a condemnation and an anguish above and beyond himself.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Dr. Meredith arrived in due time, a jaded Londoner athirst for
+idleness and fresh air. The Duchess and Julie carried him hither
+and thither about the lake in the four-oar boat which had been
+hired for the Duchess's pleasure. Here, enthroned between the two
+ladies, he passed luxurious hours, and his talk of politics,
+persons, and books brought just that stimulus to Julie's
+intelligence and spirits for which the Duchess had been secretly
+longing.</p>
+<p>A first faint color returned to Julie's cheeks. She began to
+talk again; to resume certain correspondences; to show herself once
+more--at any rate intermittently--the affectionate, sympathetic,
+and beguiling friend.</p>
+<p>As for Meredith, he knew little, but he suspected a good deal.
+There were certain features in her illness and convalescence which
+suggested to him a mental cause; and if there were such a cause, it
+must, of course, spring from her relations to Warkworth.</p>
+<p>The name of that young officer was never mentioned. Once or
+twice Meredith was tempted to introduce it. It rankled in his mind
+that Julie had never been frank with him, freely as he had poured
+his affection at her feet. But a moment of languor or of pallor
+disarmed him.</p>
+<p>"She is better," he said to the Duchess one day, abruptly. "Her
+mind is full of activity. But why, at times, does she still look so
+miserable--like a person without hope or future?"</p>
+<p>The Duchess looked pensive. They were sitting in the corner of
+one of the villa's terraced walks, amid a scented wilderness of
+flowers. Above them was a canopy of purple and yellow--rose and
+wistaria; while through the arches of the pergola which ran along
+the walk gleamed all those various blues which make the spell of
+Como--the blue and white of the clouds, the purple of the
+mountains, the azure of the lake.</p>
+<p>"Well, she was in love with him. I suppose it takes a little
+time," said the Duchess, sighing.</p>
+<p>"Why was she in love with him?" said Meredith, impatiently. "As
+to the Moffatt engagement, naturally, she was kept in the
+dark?"</p>
+<p>"At first," said the Duchess, hesitating. "And when she knew,
+poor dear, it was too late!"</p>
+<p>"Too late for what?"</p>
+<p>"Well, when one falls in love one doesn't all at once shake it
+off because the man deceives you."</p>
+<p>"One <i>should</i>," said Meredith, with energy. "Men are not
+worth all that women spend upon them."</p>
+<p>"Oh, that's true!" cried the Duchess--"so dreadfully true! But
+what's the good of preaching? We shall go on spending it to the end
+of time."</p>
+<p>"Well, at any rate, don't choose the dummies and the
+frauds."</p>
+<p>"Ah, there you talk sense," said the Duchess. "And if only we
+had the French system in England! If only one could say to Julie:
+'Now look here, <i>there's</i> your husband! It's all settled--down
+to plate and linen--and you've <i>got</i> to marry him!' how happy
+we should all be."</p>
+<p>Dr. Meredith stared.</p>
+<p>"You have the man in your eye," he said.</p>
+<p>The Duchess hesitated.</p>
+<p>"Suppose you come a little walk with me in the wood," she said,
+at last, gathering up her white skirts.</p>
+<p>Meredith obeyed her. They were away for half an hour, and when
+they returned the journalist's face, flushed and furrowed with
+thought, was not very easy to read.</p>
+<p>Nor was his temper in good condition. It required a climb to the
+very top of Monte Crocione to send him back, more or less appeased,
+a consenting player in the Duchess's game. For if there are men who
+are flirts and egotists--who ought to be, yet never are, divined by
+the sensible woman at a glance--so also there are men too well
+equipped for this wicked world, too good, too well born, too
+desirable.</p>
+<p>It was in this somewhat flinty and carping mood that Meredith
+prepared himself for the advent of Jacob Delafield.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>But when Delafield appeared, Meredith's secret antagonisms were
+soon dissipated. There was certainly no challenging air of
+prosperity about the young man.</p>
+<p>At first sight, indeed, he was his old cheerful self, always
+ready for a walk or a row, on easy terms at once with the Italian
+servants or boatmen. But soon other facts emerged--stealthily, as
+it were, from the concealment in which a strong man was trying to
+keep them.</p>
+<p>"That young man's youth is over," said Meredith, abruptly, to
+the Duchess one evening. He pointed to the figure of Delafield, who
+was pacing, alone with his pipe, up and down one of the lower
+terraces of the garden.</p>
+<p>The Duchess showed a teased expression.</p>
+<p>"It's like something wearing through," she said, slowly. "I
+suppose it was always there, but it didn't show."</p>
+<p>"Name your 'it.'"</p>
+<p>"I can't." But she gave a little shudder, which made Meredith
+look at her with curiosity.</p>
+<p>"You feel something ghostly--unearthly?"</p>
+<p>She nodded assent; crying out, however, immediately afterwards,
+as though in compunction, that he was one of the dearest and best
+of fellows.</p>
+<p>"Of course he is," said Meredith. "It is only the mystic in him
+coming out. He is one of the men who have the sixth sense."</p>
+<p>"Well, all I know is, he has the oddest power over people," said
+Evelyn, with another shiver. "If Freddie had it, my life wouldn't
+be worth living. Thank goodness, he hasn't a vestige!"</p>
+<p>"At bottom it's the power of the priest," said Meredith. "And
+you women are far too susceptible towards it. Nine times out of ten
+it plays the mischief."</p>
+<p>The Duchess was silent a moment. Then she bent towards her
+companion, finger on lip, her charming eyes glancing significantly
+towards the lower terrace. The figures on it were now two. Julie
+and Delafield paced together.</p>
+<p>"But this is the tenth!" she said, in an eager whisper.</p>
+<p>Meredith smiled at her, then flung her a dubious "Chi sa?" and
+changed the subject.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Delafield, who was a fine oar, had soon taken command of the
+lake expeditions; and by the help of two stalwart youths from
+Tremezzo, the four-oar was in use from morning till night. Through
+the broad lake which lies between Menaggio and Varenna it sped
+northward to Gravedona; or beneath the shadowy cliffs of the Villa
+Serbelloni it slipped over deep waters, haunted and dark, into the
+sunny spaces of Lecco; or it coasted along the steep sides of Monte
+Primo, so that the travellers in it might catch the blue stain of
+the gentians on the turf, where it sloped into the lucent wave
+below, or watch the fishermen on the rocks, spearing their prey in
+the green or golden shallows.</p>
+<p>The weather was glorious--a summer before its time. The wild
+cherries shook down their snow upon the grass; but the pears were
+now in bridal white, and a warmer glory of apple-blossom was just
+beginning to break upon the blue. The nights were calm and moonlit;
+the dawns were visions of mysterious and incredible beauty, wherein
+mountain and forest and lake were but the garments, diaphanous,
+impalpable, of some delicate, indwelling light and fire spirit,
+which breathed and pulsed through the solidity of rock, no less
+visibly than through the crystal leagues of air or the sunlit
+spaces of water.</p>
+<p>Yet presently, as it were, a hush of waiting, of tension, fell
+upon their little party. Nature offered her best; but there was
+only an apparent acceptance of her bounties. Through the outward
+flow of talk and amusement, of wanderings on lake or hill, ugly
+hidden forces of pain and strife, regret, misery, resistance, made
+themselves rarely yet piercingly felt.</p>
+<p>Julie drooped again. Her cheeks were paler even than when
+Meredith arrived. Delafield, too, began to be more silent, more
+absent. He was helpful and courteous as ever, but it began to be
+seen that his gayety was an effort, and now and then there were
+sharp or bitter notes in voice or manner, which jarred, and were
+not soon forgotten.</p>
+<p>Presently, Meredith and the Duchess found themselves looking on,
+breathless and astonished, at the struggle of two personalities,
+the wrestle between two wills. They little knew that it was a
+renewed struggle--second wrestle. But silently, by a kind of tacit
+agreement, they drew away from Delafield and Julie. They dimly
+understood that he pursued and she resisted; and that for him life
+was becoming gradually absorbed into the two facts of her presence
+and her resistance.</p>
+<p>"<i>On ne s'appuie que sur ce qui r&eacute;siste</i>." For both
+of them these words were true. Fundamentally, and beyond all
+passing causes of grief and anger, each was fascinated by the full
+strength of nature in the other. Neither could ever forget the
+other. The hours grew electric, and every tiny incident became
+charged with spiritual meaning.</p>
+<p>Often for hours together Julie would try to absorb herself in
+talk with Meredith. But the poor fellow got little joy from it.
+Presently, at a word or look of Delafield's she would let herself
+be recaptured, as though with a proud reluctance; they wandered
+away together; and once more Meredith and the Duchess became the
+merest by-standers.</p>
+<p>The Duchess shrugged her shoulders over it, and, though she
+laughed, sometimes the tears were in her eyes. She felt the
+hovering of passion, but it was no passion known to her own blithe
+nature.</p>
+<p>And if only this strange state of things might end, one way or
+other, and set her free to throw her arms round her Duke's neck,
+and beg his pardon for all these weeks of desertion! She said to
+herself, ruefully, that her babies would indeed have forgotten
+her.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Yet she stood stoutly to her post, and the weeks passed quickly
+by. It was the dramatic energy of the situation--so much more
+dramatic in truth than either she or Meredith suspected--that made
+it such a strain upon the onlookers.</p>
+<p>One evening they had left the boat at Tremezzo, that they might
+walk back along that most winning of paths that skirts the lake
+between the last houses of Tremezzo and the inn at Cadenabbia. The
+sunset was nearly over, but the air was still suffused with its
+rose and pearl, and fragrant with the scent of flowering laurels.
+Each mountain face, each white village, either couched on the
+water's edge or grouped about its slender campanile on some
+shoulder of the hills, each house and tree and figure seemed still
+penetrated with light, the glorified creatures of some just
+revealed and already fading world. The echoes of the evening bell
+were floating on the lake, and from a boat in front, full of
+peasant-folk, there rose a sound of singing, some litany of saint
+or virgin, which stole in harmonies, rudely true, across the
+water.</p>
+<p>"They have been to the pilgrimage church above Lenno," said
+Julie, pointing to the boat, and in order to listen to the singing,
+she found a seat on a low wall above the lake.</p>
+<p>There was no reply, and, looking round her, she saw with a start
+that only Delafield was beside her, that the Duchess and Meredith
+had already rounded the corner of the Villa Carlotta and were out
+of sight.</p>
+<p>Delafield's gaze was fixed upon her. He was very pale, and
+suddenly Julie's breath seemed to fail her.</p>
+<p>"I don't think I can bear it any longer," he said, as he came
+close to her.</p>
+<p>"Bear what?"</p>
+<p>"That you should look as you do now."</p>
+<p>Julie made no reply. Her eyes, very sad and bitter, searched the
+blue dimness of the lake in silence.</p>
+<p>Delafield sat down on the wall beside her. Not a soul was in
+sight. At the Cadenabbia Hotel, the <i>table d'h&ocirc;te</i> had
+gathered in the visitors; a few boats passed and repassed in the
+distance, but on land all was still.</p>
+<p>Suddenly he took her hand with a firm grasp.</p>
+<p>"Are you never going to forgive me?" he said, in a low
+voice.</p>
+<p>"I suppose I ought to bless you."</p>
+<p>Her face seemed to him to express the tremulous misery of a
+heart deeply, perhaps irrevocably, wounded. Emotion rose in a tide,
+but he crushed it down.</p>
+<p>He bent over her, speaking with deliberate tenderness.</p>
+<p>"Julie, do you remember what you promised Lord Lackington when
+he was dying?"</p>
+<p>"Oh!" cried Julie.</p>
+<p>She sprang to her feet, speechless and suffocated. Her eyes
+expressed a mingled pride and terror.</p>
+<p>He paused, confronting her with a pale resolution.</p>
+<p>"You didn't know that I had seen him?"</p>
+<p>"Know!"</p>
+<p>She turned away fiercely, choking with sobs she could hardly
+control, as the memory of that by-gone moment returned upon
+her.</p>
+<p>"I thought as much," said Delafield, in a low voice. "You hoped
+never to hear of your promise again."</p>
+<p>She made no answer; but she sank again upon the seat beside the
+lake, and supporting herself on one delicate hand, which clung to
+the coping of the wall, she turned her pale and tear-stained face
+to the lake and the evening sky. There was in her gesture an
+unconscious yearning, a mute and anguished appeal, as though from
+the oppressions of human character to the broad strength of nature,
+that was not lost on Delafield. His mind became the centre of a
+swift and fierce debate. One voice said: "Why are you persecuting
+her? Respect her weakness and her grief." And another replied: "It
+is because she is weak that she must yield--must allow herself to
+be guided and adored."</p>
+<p>He came close to her again. Any passer-by might have supposed
+that they were both looking at the distant boat and listening to
+the pilgrimage chant.</p>
+<p>"Do you think I don't understand why you made that promise?" he
+said, very gently, and the mere self-control of his voice and
+manner carried a spell with it for the woman beside him. "It was
+wrung out of you by kindness for a dying man. You thought I should
+never know, or I should never claim it. Well, I am selfish. I take
+advantage. I do claim it. I saw Lord Lackington only a few hours
+before his death. 'She mustn't be alone,' he said to me, several
+times. And then, almost at the last, 'Ask her again. She'll
+consider it--she promised.'"</p>
+<p>Julie turned impetuously.</p>
+<p>"Neither of us is bound by that--neither of us."</p>
+<p>Delafield smiled.</p>
+<p>"Does that mean that I am asking you now because he bade
+me?"</p>
+<p>A pause. Julie must needs raise her eyes to his. She flushed red
+and withdrew them.</p>
+<p>"No," he said, with a long breath, "you don't mean that, and you
+don't think it. As for you--yes, you are bound! Julie, once more I
+bring you my plea, and you must consider it."</p>
+<p>"How can I be your wife?" she said, her breast heaving. "You
+know all that has happened. It would be monstrous."</p>
+<p>"Not at all," was his quiet reply. "It would be natural and
+right. Julie, it is strange that I should be talking to you like
+this. You're so much cleverer than I--in some ways, so much
+stronger. And yet, in others--you'll let me say it, won't you?--I
+could help you. I could protect you. It's all I care for in the
+world."</p>
+<p>"How can I be your wife?" she repeated, passionately, wringing
+her hands.</p>
+<p>"Be what you will--at home. My friend, comrade, housemate. I ask
+nothing more--<i>nothing</i>." His voice dropped, and there was a
+pause. Then he resumed. "But, in the eyes of the world, make me
+your servant and your husband!"</p>
+<p>"I can't condemn you to such a fate," she cried. "You know where
+my heart is."</p>
+<p>Delafield did not waver.</p>
+<p>"I know where your heart was," he said, with firmness. "You will
+banish that man from your thoughts in time. He has no right to be
+there. I take all the risks--all."</p>
+<p>"Well, at least for you, I am no hypocrite," she said, with a
+quivering lip. "You know what I am."</p>
+<p>"Yes, I know, and I am at your feet."</p>
+<p>The tears dropped from Julie's eyes. She turned away and hid her
+face against one of the piers of the wall.</p>
+<p>Delafield attempted no caress. He quietly set himself to draw
+the life that he had to offer her, the comradeship that he proposed
+to her. Not a word of what the world called his "prospects" entered
+in. She knew very well that he could not bring himself to speak of
+them. Rather, a sort of ascetic and mystical note made itself heard
+in all he said of the future, a note that before now had fascinated
+and controlled a woman whose ambition was always strangely tempered
+with high, poetical imagination.</p>
+<p>Yet, ambitious she was, and her mind inevitably supplied what
+his voice left unsaid.</p>
+<p>"He will have to fill his place whether he wishes it or no," she
+said to herself. "And if, in truth, he desires my help--"</p>
+<p>Then she shrank from her own wavering. Look where she would into
+her life, it seemed to her that all was monstrous and out of
+joint.</p>
+<p>"You don't realize what you ask," she said, at last, in despair.
+"I am not what you call a good woman--you know it too well. I don't
+measure things by your standards. I am capable of such a journey as
+you found me on. I can't find in my own mind that I repent it at
+all. I can tell a lie--you can't. I can have the meanest and most
+sordid thoughts--you can't. Lady Henry thought me an intriguer--I
+am one. It is in my blood. And I don't know whether, in the end, I
+could understand your language and your life. And if I don't, I
+shall make you miserable."</p>
+<p>She looked up, her slender frame straightening under what was,
+in truth, a noble defiance.</p>
+<p>Delafield bent over her and took both her hands forcibly in his
+own.</p>
+<p>"If all that were true, I would rather risk it a thousand times
+over than go out of your life again--a stranger. Julie, you have
+done mad things for love--you should know what love is. Look in my
+face--there--your eyes in mine! Give way! The dead ask it of
+you--and it is God's will."</p>
+<p>And as, drawn by the last, low-spoken words, Julie looked up
+into his face, she felt herself enveloped by a mystical and
+passionate tenderness that paralyzed her resistance. A force,
+superhuman, laid its grasp upon her will. With a burst of tears,
+half in despair, half in revolt, she submitted.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="XXII"></a>XXII</h2>
+<br>
+<p>In the first week of May, Julie Le Breton married Jacob
+Delafield in the English Church at Florence. The Duchess was there.
+So was the Duke--a sulky and ill-resigned spectator of something
+which he believed to be the peculiar and mischievous achievement of
+his wife.</p>
+<p>At the church door Julie and Delafield left for Camaldoli.</p>
+<p>"Well, if you imagine that I intend to congratulate you or
+anybody else upon that performance you are very much mistaken,"
+said the Duke, as he and his wife drove back to the "Grand
+Bretagne" together.</p>
+<p>"I don't deny it's--risky," said the Duchess, her hands on her
+lap, her eyes dreamily following the streets.</p>
+<p>"Risky!" repeated the Duke, shrugging his shoulders. "Well, I
+don't want to speak harshly of your friends, Evelyn, but Miss Le
+Breton--"</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Delafield," said the Duchess.</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Delafield, then"--the name was evidently a difficult
+mouthful--"seems to me a most undisciplined and unmanageable woman.
+Why does she look like a tragedy queen at her marriage? Jacob is
+twice too good for her, and she'll lead him a life. And how you can
+reconcile it to your conscience to have misled me so completely as
+you have in this matter, I really can't imagine."</p>
+<p>"Misled you?" said Evelyn.</p>
+<p>Her innocence was really a little hard to bear, and not even the
+beauty of her blue eyes, now happily restored to him, could appease
+the mentor at her side.</p>
+<p>"You led me plainly to believe," he repeated, with emphasis,
+"that if I helped her through the crisis of leaving Lady Henry she
+would relinquish her designs on Delafield."</p>
+<p>"Did I?" said the Duchess. And putting her hands over her face
+she laughed rather hysterically. "But that wasn't why you lent her
+the house, Freddie."</p>
+<p>"You coaxed me into it, of course," said the Duke.</p>
+<p>"No, it was Julie herself got the better of you," said Evelyn,
+triumphantly. "You felt her spell, just as we all do, and wanted to
+do something for her."</p>
+<p>"Nothing of the sort," said the Duke, determined to admit no
+recollection to his disadvantage. "It was your doing entirely."</p>
+<p>The Duchess thought it discreet to let him at least have the
+triumph of her silence, smiling, and a little sarcastic though it
+were.</p>
+<p>"And of all the undeserved good fortune!" he resumed, feeling in
+his irritable disapproval that the moral order of the universe had
+been somehow trifled with. "In the first place, she is the daughter
+of people who flagrantly misconducted themselves--<i>that</i>
+apparently does her no harm. Then she enters the service of Lady
+Henry in a confidential position, and uses it to work havoc in Lady
+Henry's social relations. That, I am glad to say, <i>has</i> done
+her a little harm, although not nearly as much as she deserves. And
+finally she has a most discreditable flirtation with a man already
+engaged--to her own cousin, please observe!--and pulls wires for
+him all over the place in the most objectionable and unwomanly
+manner."</p>
+<p>"As if everybody didn't do that!" cried the Duchess. "You know,
+Freddie, that your own mother always used to boast that she had
+made six bishops and saved the Establishment."</p>
+<p>The Duke took no notice.</p>
+<p>"And yet there she is! Lord Lackington has left her a fortune--a
+competence, anyway. She marries Jacob Delafield--rather a fool, I
+consider, but all the same one of the best fellows in the world.
+And at any time, to judge from what one hears of the health both of
+Chudleigh and his boy, she may find herself Duchess of
+Chudleigh."</p>
+<p>The Duke threw himself back in the carriage with the air of one
+who waits for Providence to reply.</p>
+<p>"Oh, well, you see, you can't make the world into a moral tale
+to please you," said the Duchess, absently.</p>
+<p>Then, after a pause, she asked, "Are you still going to let them
+have the house, Freddie?"</p>
+<p>"I imagine that if Jacob Delafield applies to me to let it to
+<i>him</i>, that I shall not refuse him," said the Duke,
+stiffly.</p>
+<p>The Duchess smiled behind her fan. Yet her tender heart was not
+in reality very happy about her Julie. She knew well enough that it
+was a strange marriage of which they had just been witnesses--a
+marriage containing the seeds of many untoward things only too
+likely to develop unless fate were kinder than rash mortals have
+any right to expect.</p>
+<p>"I wish to goodness Delafield weren't so religious," murmured
+the Duchess, fervently, pursuing her own thoughts.</p>
+<p>"Evelyn!"</p>
+<p>"Well, you see, Julie isn't, at all," she added, hastily.</p>
+<p>"You need not have troubled yourself to tell me that," was the
+Duke's indignant reply.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>After a fortnight at Camaldoli and Vallombrosa the Delafields
+turned towards Switzerland. Julie, who was a lover of Rousseau and
+Obermann, had been also busy with the letters of Byron. She wished
+to see with her own eyes St. Gingolphe and Chillon, Bevay and
+Glion.</p>
+<p>So one day at the end of May they found themselves at Montreux.
+But Montreux was already hot and crowded, and Julie's eyes turned
+in longing to the heights. They found an old inn at Charnex,
+whereof the garden commanded the whole head of the lake, and there
+they settled themselves for a fortnight, till business, in fact,
+should recall Delafield to England. The Duke of Chudleigh had shown
+all possible kindness and cordiality with regard to the marriage,
+and the letter in which he welcomed his cousin's new wife had both
+touched Julie's feelings and satisfied her pride. "You are marrying
+one of the best of men," wrote this melancholy father of a dying
+son. "My boy and I owe him more than can be written. I can only
+tell you that for those he loves he grudges nothing--no labor, no
+sacrifice of himself. There are no half-measures in his affections.
+He has spent himself too long on sick and sorry creatures like
+ourselves. It is time he had a little happiness on his own account.
+You will give it him, and Mervyn and I will be most grateful to
+you. If joy and health can never be ours, I am not yet so vile as
+to grudge them to others. God bless you! Jacob will tell you that
+my house is not a gay one; but if you and he will sometimes visit
+it, you will do something to lighten its gloom."</p>
+<p>Julie wondered, as she wrote her very graceful reply, how much
+the Duke might know about herself. Jacob had told his cousin, as
+she knew, the story of her parentage and of Lord Lackington's
+recognition of his granddaughter. But as soon as the marriage was
+announced it was not likely that Lady Henry had been able to hold
+her tongue.</p>
+<p>A good many interesting tales of his cousin's bride had, indeed,
+reached the melancholy Duke. Lady Henry had done all that she
+conceived it her duty to do, filling many pages of note-paper with
+what the Duke regarded as most unnecessary information.</p>
+<p>At any rate, he had brushed it all aside with the impatience of
+one for whom nothing on earth had now any savor or value beyond one
+or two indispensable affections. "What's good enough for Jacob is
+good for me," he wrote to Lady Henry, "and if I may offer you some
+advice, it is that you should not quarrel with Jacob about a matter
+so vital as his marriage. Into the rights and wrongs of the story
+you tell me, I really cannot enter; but rather than break with
+Jacob I would welcome <i>anybody</i> he chose to present to me. And
+in this case I understand the lady is very clever, distinguished,
+and of good blood on both sides. Have you had no trouble in your
+life, my dear Flora, that you can make quarrels with a light heart?
+If so, I envy you; but I have neither the energy nor the good
+spirits wherewith to imitate you."</p>
+<p>Julie, of course, knew nothing of this correspondence, though
+from the Duke's letters to Jacob she divined that something of the
+kind had taken place. But it was made quite plain to her that she
+was to be spared all the friction and all the difficulty which may
+often attend the entrance of a person like herself within the
+circle of a rich and important family like the Delafields. With
+Lady Henry, indeed, the fight had still to be fought. But Jacob's
+mother, influenced on one side by her son and on the other by the
+head of the family, accepted her daughter-in-law with the facile
+kindliness and good temper that were natural to her; while his
+sister, the fair-haired and admirable Susan, owed her brother too
+much and loved him too well to be other than friendly to his
+wife.</p>
+<p>No; on the worldly side all was smooth. The marriage had been
+carried through with ease and quietness The Duke, in spite of
+Jacob's remonstrances, had largely increased his cousin's salary,
+and Julie was already enjoying the income left her by Lord
+Lackington. She had only to reappear in London as Jacob's wife to
+resume far more than her old social ascendency. The winning cards
+had all passed into her hands, and if now there was to be a
+struggle with Lady Henry, Lady Henry would be worsted.</p>
+<p>All this was or should have been agreeable to the sensitive
+nerves of a woman who knew the worth of social advantages. It had
+no effect, however, on the mortal depression which was constantly
+Julie's portion during the early weeks of her marriage.</p>
+<p>As for Delafield, he had entered upon this determining
+experiment of his life--a marriage, which was merely a legalized
+comradeship, with the woman he adored--in the mind of one resolved
+to pay the price of what he had done. This graceful and stately
+woman, with her high intelligence and her social gifts, was now his
+own property. She was to be the companion of his days and the
+mistress of his house. But although he knew well that he had a
+certain strong hold upon her, she did not love him, and none of the
+fusion of true marriage had taken place or could take place. So be
+it. He set himself to build up a relation between them which should
+justify the violence offered to natural and spiritual law. His own
+delicacy of feeling and perception combined with the strength of
+his passion to make every action of their common day a symbol and
+sacrament. That her heart regretted Warkworth, that bitterness and
+longing, an unspent and baffled love, must be constantly
+overshadowing her--these things he not only knew, he was forever
+reminding himself of them, driving them, as it were, into
+consciousness, as the ascetic drives the spikes into his flesh. His
+task was to comfort her, to make her forget, to bring her back to
+common peace and cheerfulness of mind.</p>
+<p>To this end he began with appealing as much as possible to her
+intelligence. He warmly encouraged her work for Meredith. From the
+first days of their marriage he became her listener, scholar, and
+critic. Himself interested mainly in social, economical, or
+religious discussion, he humbly put himself to school in matters of
+<i>belles-lettres</i>. His object was to enrich Julie's daily life
+with new ambitions and new pleasures, which might replace the
+broodings of her illness and convalescence, and then, to make her
+feel that she had at hand, in the companion of that life, one who
+felt a natural interest in all her efforts, a natural pride in all
+her successes.</p>
+<p>Alack! the calculation was too simple--and too visible. It took
+too little account of the complexities of Julie's nature, of the
+ravages and the shock of passion. Julie herself might be ready
+enough to return to the things of the mind, but they were no sooner
+offered to her, as it were, in exchange for the perilous delights
+of love, than she grew dumbly restive. She felt herself, also, too
+much observed, too much thought over, made too often, if the truth
+were known, the subject of religious or mystical emotion.</p>
+<p>More and more, also, was she conscious of strangeness and
+eccentricity in the man she had married. It often seemed to that
+keen and practical sense which in her mingled so oddly with the
+capacity for passion that, as they grew older, and her mind
+recovered tone and balance, she would probably love the world
+disastrously more and he disastrously less. And if so, the gulf
+between them, instead of closing, could but widen.</p>
+<p>One day--a showery day in early June--she was left alone for an
+hour, while Delafield went down to Montreux to change some circular
+notes. Julie took a book from the table and strolled out along the
+lovely road that slopes gently downward from Charnex to the old
+field-embowered village of Brent.</p>
+<p>The rain was just over. It had been a cold rain, and the snow
+had crept downward on the heights, and had even powdered the pines
+of the Cubly. The clouds were sweeping low in the west. Towards
+Geneva the lake was mere wide and featureless space--a cold and
+misty water, melting into the fringes of the rain-clouds. But to
+the east, above the Rh&ocirc;ne valley, the sky was lifting; and as
+Julie sat down upon a midway seat and turned herself eastward, she
+was met by the full and unveiled glory of the higher Alps--the
+Rochers de Naye, the Velan, the Dent du Midi. On the jagged peaks
+of the latter a bright shaft of sun was playing, and the great
+white or rock-ribbed mass raised itself above the mists of the
+lower world, once more unstained and triumphant.</p>
+<p>But the cold <i>bise</i> was still blowing, and Julie,
+shivering, drew her wrap closer round her. Her heart pined for Como
+and the south; perhaps for the little Duchess, who spoiled and
+petted her in the common, womanish ways.</p>
+<p>The spring--a second spring--was all about her; but in this
+chilly northern form it spoke to her with none of the ravishment of
+Italy. In the steep fields above her the narcissuses were bent and
+bowed with rain; the red-browns of the walnuts glistened in the wet
+gleams of sun; the fading apple-blossom beside her wore a
+melancholy beauty; only in the rich, pushing grass, with its wealth
+of flowers and its branching cow-parsley, was there the stubborn
+life and prophecy of summer.</p>
+<p>Suddenly Julie caught up the book that lay beside her and opened
+it with a hasty hand. It was one of that set of Saint-Simon which
+had belonged to her mother, and had already played a part in her
+own destiny.</p>
+<p>She turned to the famous "character" of the Dauphin, of that
+model prince, in whose death Saint-Simon, and F&eacute;nelon, and
+France herself, saw the eclipse of all great hopes.</p>
+<p>"A prince, affable, gentle, humane, patient, modest, full of
+compunctions, and, as much as his position allowed--sometimes
+beyond it--humble, and severe towards himself."</p>
+<p>Was it not to the life? "<i>Affable, doux, humain--patient,
+modeste--humble et aust&egrave;re pour soi</i>"--beyond what was
+expected, beyond, almost, what was becoming?</p>
+<p>She read on to the mention of the Dauphine, terrified, in her
+human weakness, of so perfect a husband, and trying to beguile or
+tempt him from the heights; to the picture of Louis Quatorze, the
+grandfather, shamed in his worldly old age by the presence beside
+him of this saintly and high-minded youth; of the Court, looking
+forward with dismay to the time when it should find itself under
+the rule of a man who despised and condemned both its follies and
+its passions, until she reached that final rapture, where, in a
+mingled anguish and adoration, Saint-Simon bids eternal farewell to
+a character and a heart of which France was not worthy.</p>
+<p>The lines passed before her, and she was conscious, guiltily
+conscious, of reading them with a double mind.</p>
+<p>Then she closed the book, held by the thought of her husband--in
+a somewhat melancholy reverie.</p>
+<p>There is a Catholic word with which in her convent youth she had
+been very familiar--the word <i>recueilli</i>--"recollected." At no
+time had it sounded kindly in her ears; for it implied fetters and
+self--suppressions--of the voluntary and spiritual sort--wholly
+unwelcome to and unvalued by her own temperament. But who that knew
+him well could avoid applying it to Delafield? A man of
+"recollection" living in the eye of the Eternal; keeping a guard
+over himself in the smallest matters of thought and action;
+mystically possessed by the passion of a spiritual ideal; in love
+with charity, purity, simplicity of life.</p>
+<p>She bowed her head upon her hands in dreariness of spirit.
+Ultimately, what could such a man want with her? What had she to
+give him? In what way could she ever be <i>necessary</i> to him?
+And a woman, even in friendship, must feel herself that to be
+happy.</p>
+<p>Already this daily state in which she found herself--of owing
+everything and giving nothing--produced in her a secret irritation
+and repulsion; how would it be in the years to come?</p>
+<p>"He never saw me as I am," she thought to herself, looking
+fretfully back to their past acquaintance. "I am neither as weak as
+he thinks me--nor as clever. And how strange it is--this
+<i>tension</i> in which he lives!"</p>
+<p>And as she sat there idly plucking at the wet grass, her mind
+was overrun with a motley host of memories--some absurd, some
+sweet, some of an austerity that chilled her to the core. She
+thought of the difficulty she had in persuading Delafield to allow
+himself even necessary comforts and conveniences; a laugh,
+involuntary, and not without tenderness, crossed her face as she
+recalled a tale he had told her at Camaldoli, of the contempt
+excited in a young footman of a smart house by the mediocrity and
+exiguity of his garments and personal appointments generally. "I
+felt I possessed nothing that he would have taken as a gift," said
+Delafield, with a grin. "It was chastening."</p>
+<p>Yet though he laughed, he held to it; and Julie was already so
+much of the wife as to be planning how to coax him presently out of
+a portmanteau and a top-hat that were in truth a disgrace to their
+species.</p>
+<p>And all the time <i>she</i> must have the best of everything--a
+maid, luxurious travelling, dainty food. They had had one or two
+wrestles on the subject already. "Why are you to have all the high
+thinking and plain living to yourself?" she had asked him, angrily,
+only to be met by the plea, "Dear, get strong first--then you shall
+do what you like."</p>
+<p>But it was at La Verna, the mountain height overshadowed by the
+memories of St. Francis, that she seemed to have come nearest to
+the ascetic and mystical tendency in Delafield. He went about the
+mountain-paths a transformed being, like one long spiritually
+athirst who has found the springs and sources of life. Julie felt a
+secret terror. Her impression was much the same as Meredith's--as
+of "something wearing through" to the light of day. Looking back
+she saw that this temperament, now so plain to view, had been
+always there; but in the young and capable agent of the Chudleigh
+property, in the Duchess's cousin, or Lady Henry's nephew, it had
+passed for the most part unsuspected. How remarkably it had
+developed!--whither would it carry them both in the future? When
+thinking about it, she was apt to find herself seized with a sudden
+craving for Mayfair, "little dinners," and good talk.</p>
+<p>"What a pity you weren't born a Catholic!--you might have been a
+religious," she said to him one night at La Verna, when he had been
+reading her some of the <i>Fioretti</i> with occasional comments of
+his own.</p>
+<p>But he had shaken his head with a smile.</p>
+<p>"You see, I have no creed--or next to none."</p>
+<p>The answer startled her. And in the depths of his blue eyes
+there seemed to her to be hovering a swarm of thoughts that would
+not let themselves loose in her presence, but were none the less
+the true companions of his mind. She saw herself a moment as Elsa,
+and her husband as a modern Lohengrin, coming spiritually she knew
+not whence, bound on some quest mysterious and unthinkable.</p>
+<p>"What will you do," she said, suddenly, "when the dukedom comes
+to you?"</p>
+<p>Delafield's aspect darkened in an instant. If he could have
+shown anger to her, anger there would have been.</p>
+<p>"That is a subject I never think of or discuss, if I can help
+it," he said, abruptly; and, rising to his feet, he pointed out
+that the sun was declining fast towards the plain of the Casentino,
+and they were far from their hotel.</p>
+<p>"Inhuman!--unreasonable!" was the cry of the critical sense in
+her as she followed him in silence.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Innumerable memories of this kind beat on Julie's mind as she
+sat dreamily on her bench among the Swiss meadows. How natural that
+in the end they should sweep her by reaction into imaginations
+wholly indifferent--of a drum-and-trumpet history, in the actual
+fighting world.</p>
+<p>... Far, far in the African desert she followed the march of
+Warkworth's little troop.</p>
+<p>Ah, the blinding light--the African scrub and sand--the long,
+single line--the native porters with their loads--the handful of
+English officers with that slender figure at their head--the
+endless, waterless path with its palms and mangoes and mimosas--the
+scene rushed upon the inward eye and held it. She felt the heat,
+the thirst, the weariness of bone and brain--all the spell and
+mystery of the unmapped, unconquered land.</p>
+<p>Did he think of her sometimes, at night, under the stars, or in
+the blaze and mirage of noon? Yes, yes; he thought of her. Each to
+the other their thoughts must travel while they lived.</p>
+<p>In Delafield's eyes, she knew, his love for her had been mere
+outrage and offence.</p>
+<p>Ah, well, <i>he</i>, at least, had needed her. He had desired
+only very simple, earthy things--money, position, success--things
+it was possible for a woman to give him, or get for him; and at the
+last, though it were only as a traitor to his word and his
+<i>fianc&eacute;e</i>, he had asked for love--asked commonly,
+hungrily, recklessly, because he could not help it--and then for
+pardon! And those are things the memory of which lies deep, deep in
+the pulsing, throbbing heart.</p>
+<p>At this point she hurriedly checked and scourged herself, as she
+did a hundred times a day.</p>
+<p>No, no, <i>no</i>! It was all over, and she and Jacob would
+still make a fine thing of their life together. Why not?</p>
+<p>And all the time there were burning hot tears in her eyes; and
+as the leaves of Saint-Simon passed idly through her fingers, the
+tears blotted out the meadows and the flowers, and blurred the
+figure of a young girl who was slowly mounting the long slope of
+road that led from the village of Brent towards the seat on which
+Julie was sitting.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Gradually the figure approached. The mist cleared from Julie's
+eyes. Suddenly she found herself giving a close and passionate
+attention to the girl upon the road.</p>
+<p>Her form was slight and small; under her shady hat there was a
+gleam of fair hair arranged in smooth, shining masses about her
+neck and temples. As she approached Julie she raised her eyes
+absently, and Julie saw a face of singular and delicate beauty,
+marred, however, by the suggestion of physical fragility, even
+sickliness, which is carried with it. One might have thought it a
+face blanched by a tropical climate, and for the moment touched
+into faint color by the keen Alpine air. The eyes, indeed, were
+full of life; they were no sooner seen but they defined and
+enforced a personality. Eager, intent, a little fretful, they
+expressed a nervous energy out of all proportion to their owner's
+slender physique. In this, other bodily signs concurred. As she
+perceived Julie on the bench, for instance, the girl's slight,
+habitual frown sharply deepened; she looked at the stranger with
+keen observation, both glance and gesture betraying a quick and
+restless sensibility.</p>
+<p>As for Julie, she half rose as the girl neared her. Her cheeks
+were flushed, her lips parted; she had the air of one about to
+speak. The girl looked at her in a little surprise and passed
+on.</p>
+<p>She carried a book under her arm, into which were thrust a few
+just-opened letters. She had scarcely passed the bench when an
+envelope fell out of the book and lay unnoticed on the road.</p>
+<p>Julie drew a long breath. She picked up the envelope. It lay in
+her hand, and the name she had expected to see was written upon
+it.</p>
+<p>For a moment she hesitated. Then she ran after the owner of the
+letter.</p>
+<p>"You dropped this on the road."</p>
+<p>The girl turned hastily.</p>
+<p>"Thank you very much. I am sorry to have given you the
+trouble--"</p>
+<p>Then she paused, arrested evidently by the manner in which Julie
+stood regarding her.</p>
+<p>"Did--did you wish to speak to me?" she said, uncertainly.</p>
+<p>"You are Miss Moffatt?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. That is my name. But, excuse me. I am afraid I don't
+remember you." The words were spoken with a charming sweetness and
+timidity.</p>
+<p>"I am Mrs. Delafield."</p>
+<p>The girl started violently.</p>
+<p>"Are you? I--I beg your pardon!"</p>
+<p>She stood in a flushed bewilderment, staring at the lady who had
+addressed her, a troubled consciousness possessing itself of her
+face and manner more and more plainly with every moment.</p>
+<p>Julie asked herself, hurriedly: "How much does she know? What
+has she heard?" But aloud she gently said: "I thought you must have
+heard of me. Lord Uredale told me he had written--his father wished
+it--to Lady Blanche. Your mother and mine were sisters."</p>
+<p>The girl shyly withdrew her eyes.</p>
+<p>"Yes, mother told me."</p>
+<p>There was a moment's silence. The mingled fear and recklessness
+which had accompanied Julie's action disappeared from her mind. In
+the girl's manner there was neither jealousy nor hatred, only a
+young shrinking and reserve.</p>
+<p>"May I walk with you a little?"</p>
+<p>"Please do. Are you staying at Montreux?"</p>
+<p>"No; we are at Charnex--and you?"</p>
+<p>"We came up two days ago to a little <i>pension</i> at Brent. I
+wanted to be among the fields, now the narcissuses are out. If it
+were warm weather we should stay, but mother is afraid of the cold
+for me. I have been ill."</p>
+<p>"I heard that," said Julie, in a voice gravely kind and winning.
+"That was why your mother could not come home."</p>
+<p>The girl's eyes suddenly filled with tears.</p>
+<p>"No; poor mother! I wanted her to go--we had a good nurse--but
+she would not leave me, though she was devoted to my grandfather.
+She--"</p>
+<p>"She is always anxious about you?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. My health has been a trouble lately, and since father
+died--"</p>
+<p>"She has only you."</p>
+<p>They walked on a few paces in silence. Then the girl looked up
+eagerly.</p>
+<p>"You saw grandfather at the last? Do tell me about it, please.
+My uncles write so little."</p>
+<p>Julie obeyed with difficulty. She had not realized how hard it
+would be for her to talk of Lord Lackington. But she described the
+old man's gallant dying as best she could; while Aileen Moffatt
+listened with that manner at once timid and rich in feeling which
+seemed to be her characteristic.</p>
+<p>As they neared the top of the hill where the road begins to
+incline towards Charnex, Julie noticed signs of fatigue in her
+companion.</p>
+<p>"You have been an invalid," she said. "You ought not to go
+farther. May I take you home? Would your mother dislike to see
+me?"</p>
+<p>The girl paused perceptibly. "Ah, there she is!"</p>
+<p>They had turned towards Brent, and Julie saw coming towards
+them, with somewhat rapid steps, a small, elderly lady,
+gray-haired, her features partly hidden by her country hat.</p>
+<p>A thrill passed through Julie. This was the sister whose name
+her mother had mentioned in her last hour. It was as though
+something of her mother, something that must throw light upon that
+mother's life and being, were approaching her along this Swiss
+road.</p>
+<p>But the lady in question, as she neared them, looked with
+surprise, not unmingled with hauteur, upon her daughter and the
+stranger beside her.</p>
+<p>"Aileen, why did you go so far? You promised me only to be a
+quarter of an hour."</p>
+<p>"I am not tired, mother. Mother, this is Mrs. Delafield. You
+remember, Uncle Uredale wrote--"</p>
+<p>Lady Blanche Moffatt stood still. Once more a fear swept through
+Julie's mind, and this time it stayed. After an evident hesitation,
+a hand was coldly extended.</p>
+<p>"How do you do? I heard from my brothers of your marriage, but
+they said you were in Italy."</p>
+<p>"We have just come from there."</p>
+<p>"And your husband?"</p>
+<p>"He has gone down to Montreux, but he should be home very soon
+now. We are only a few steps from our little inn. Would you not
+rest there? Miss Moffatt looks very tired."</p>
+<p>There was a pause. Lady Blanche was considering her daughter.
+Julie saw the trembling of her wide, irregular mouth, of which the
+lips were slightly turned outward. Finally she drew her daughter's
+hand into her arm, and bent anxiously towards her, scrutinizing her
+face.</p>
+<p>"Thank you. We will rest a quarter of an hour. Can we get a
+carriage at Charnex?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, I think so, if you will wait a little on our balcony."</p>
+<p>They walked on towards Charnex. Lady Blanche began to talk
+resolutely of the weather, which was, indeed, atrocious. She spoke
+as she would have done to the merest acquaintance. There was not a
+word of her father; not a word, either, of her brother's letter, or
+of Julie's relationship to herself. Julie accepted the situation
+with perfect composure, and the three kept up some sort of a
+conversation till they reached the paved street of Charnex and the
+old inn at its lower end.</p>
+<p>Julie guided her companions through its dark passages, till they
+reached an outer terrace where there were a few scattered seats,
+and among them a deck-chair with cushions.</p>
+<p>"Please," said Julie, as she kindly drew the girl towards it.
+Aileen smiled and yielded. Julie placed her among the cushions,
+then brought out a shawl, and covered her warmly from the sharp,
+damp air. Aileen thanked her, and lightly touched her hand. A
+secret sympathy seemed to have suddenly sprung up between them.</p>
+<p>Lady Blanche sat stiffly beside her daughter, watching her face.
+The warm touch of friendliness in Aileen's manner towards Mrs.
+Delafield seemed only to increase the distance and embarrassment of
+her own. Julie appeared to be quite unconscious. She ordered tea,
+and made no further allusion of any kind to the kindred they had in
+common. She and Lady Blanche talked as strangers.</p>
+<p>Julie said to herself that she understood. She remembered the
+evening at Crowborough House, the spinster lady who had been the
+Moffatts' friend, her own talk with Evelyn. In that way, or in some
+other, the current gossip about herself and Warkworth, gossip they
+had been too mad and miserable to take much account of, had reached
+Lady Blanche. Lady Blanche probably abhorred her; though, because
+of her marriage, there was to be an outer civility. Meanwhile no
+sign whatever of any angry or resentful knowledge betrayed itself
+in the girl's manner. Clearly the mother had shielded her.</p>
+<p>Julie felt the flutter of an exquisite relief. She stole many a
+look at Aileen, comparing the reality with that old, ugly notion
+her jealousy had found so welcome--of the silly or insolent little
+creature, possessing all that her betters desired, by the mere
+brute force of money or birth. And all the time the reality was
+<i>this</i>--so soft, suppliant, ethereal! Here, indeed, was the
+child of Warkworth's picture--the innocent, unknowing child, whom
+their passion had sacrificed and betrayed. She could see the face
+now, as it lay piteous, in Warkworth's hand. Then she raised her
+eyes to the original. And as it looked at her with timidity and
+nascent love her own heart beat wildly, now in remorse, now in a
+reviving jealousy.</p>
+<p>Secretly, behind this mask of convention, were they both
+thinking of him? A girl's thoughts are never far from her lover;
+and Julie was conscious, this afternoon, of a strange and
+mysterious preoccupation, whereof Warkworth was the centre.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Gradually the great mountains at the head of the lake freed
+themselves from the last wandering cloud-wreaths. On the rock faces
+of the Rochers de Naye the hanging pine-woods, brushed with snow,
+came into sight. The white walls of Glion shone faintly out, and a
+pearly gold, which was but a pallid reflection of the Italian
+glory, diffused itself over mountain and lake. The sun was
+grudging; there was no caress in the air. Aileen shivered a little
+in her shawls, and when Julie spoke of Italy the girl's enthusiasm
+and longing sprang, as it were, to meet her, and both were
+conscious of another slight link between them.</p>
+<p>Suddenly a sound of steps came to them from below.</p>
+<p>"My husband," said Julie, rising, and, going to the balustrade,
+she waved to Delafield, who had come up from Montreux by one of the
+steep vineyard paths. "I will tell him you are here," she added,
+with what might have been taken for the shyness of the young
+wife.</p>
+<p>She ran down the steps leading from the terrace to the lower
+garden. Aileen looked at her mother.</p>
+<p>"Isn't she wonderful?" she said, in an ardent whisper. "I could
+watch her forever. She is the most graceful person I ever saw.
+Mother, is she like Aunt Rose?"</p>
+<p>Lady Blanche shook her head.</p>
+<p>"Not in the least," she said, shortly. "She has too much manner
+for me."</p>
+<p>"Oh, mother!" And the girl caught her mother's hand in caressing
+remonstrance, as though to say: "Dear little mother, you must like
+her, because I do; and you mustn't think of Aunt Rose, and all
+those terrible things, except for pity."</p>
+<p>"Hush!" said Lady Blanche, smiling at her a little excitedly.
+"Hush; they're coming!"</p>
+<p>Delafield and Julie emerged from the iron staircase. Lady
+Blanche turned and looked at the tall, distinguished pair, her ugly
+lower lip hardening ungraciously. But she and Delafield had a
+slight previous acquaintance, and she noticed instantly the
+charming and solicitous kindness with which he greeted her
+daughter.</p>
+<p>"Julie tells me Miss Moffatt is still far from strong," he said,
+returning to the mother.</p>
+<p>Lady Blanche only sighed for answer. He drew a chair beside her,
+and they fell into the natural talk of people who belong to the
+same social world, and are travelling in the same scenes.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile Julie was sitting beside the heiress. Not much was
+said, but each was conscious of a lively interest in the other, and
+every now and then Julie would put out a careful hand and draw the
+shawls closer about the girl's frail form. The strain of guilty
+compunction that entered into Julie's feeling did but make it the
+more sensitive. She said to herself in a vague haste that now she
+would make amends. If only Lady Blanche were willing--</p>
+<p>But she should be willing! Julie felt the stirrings of the old
+self-confidence, the old trust in a social ingenuity which had, in
+truth, rarely failed her. Her intriguing, managing instinct made
+itself felt--the mood of Lady Henry's companion.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Presently, as they were talking, Aileen caught sight of an
+English newspaper which Delafield had brought up from Montreux. It
+lay still unopened on one of the tables of the terrace.</p>
+<p>"Please give it me," said the girl, stretching out an eager
+hand. "It will have Tiny's marriage, mamma! A cousin of mine," she
+explained to Julie, who rose to hand it to her. "A very favorite
+cousin. Oh, thank you."</p>
+<p>She opened the paper. Julie turned away, that she might relieve
+Lady Blanche of her teacup.</p>
+<p>Suddenly a cry rang out--a cry of mortal anguish. Two ladies who
+had just stepped out upon the terrace from the hotel drawing-room
+turned in terror; the gardener who was watering the flower-boxes at
+the farther end stood arrested.</p>
+<p>"Aileen!" shrieked Lady Blanche, running to her. "What--what is
+it?"</p>
+<p>The paper had dropped to the floor, but the child still pointed
+to it, gasping.</p>
+<p>"Mother--mother!"</p>
+<p>Some intuition woke in Julie. She stood dead-white and dumb,
+while Lady Blanche threw herself on her daughter.</p>
+<p>"Aileen, darling, what is it?"</p>
+<p>The girl, in her agony, threw her arms frantically round her
+mother, and dragged herself to her feet. She stood tottering, her
+hand over her eyes.</p>
+<p>"He's dead, mother! He's--dead!"</p>
+<p>The last word sank into a sound more horrible even than the
+first cry. Then she swayed out of her mother's arms. It was Julie
+who caught her, who laid her once more on the deck-chair--a broken,
+shrunken form, in whom all the threads and connections of life had
+suddenly, as it were, fallen to ruin. Lady Blanche hung over her,
+pushing Julie away, gathering the unconscious girl madly in her
+arms. Delafield rushed for water-and-brandy. Julie snatched the
+paper and looked at the telegrams.</p>
+<p>High up in the first column was the one she sought.</p>
+<p>/# "CAIRO, <i>June</i> 12.--Great regret is felt here at the
+sudden and tragic news of Major Warkworth's death from fever, which
+seems to have occurred at a spot some three weeks' distance from
+the coast, on or about May 25. Letters from the officer who has
+succeeded him in the command of the Mokembe expedition have now
+reached Denga. A fortnight after leaving the coast Major Warkworth
+was attacked with fever; he made a brave struggle against it, but
+it was of a deadly type, and in less than a week he succumbed. The
+messenger brought also his private papers and diaries, which have
+been forwarded to his representatives in England. Major Warkworth
+was a most promising and able officer, and his loss will be keenly
+felt." #/</p>
+<p>Julie fell on her knees beside her swooning cousin. Lady
+Blanche, meanwhile, was loosening her daughter's dress, chafing her
+icy hands, or moaning over her in a delirium of terror.</p>
+<p>"My darling--my darling! Oh, my God! Why did I allow it? Why did
+I ever let him come near her? It was my fault--my fault! And it's
+killed her!"</p>
+<p>And clinging to her child's irresponsive hands, she looked down
+upon her in a convulsion of grief, which included not a shadow of
+regret, not a gleam of pity for anything or any one else in the
+world but this bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh, which lay
+stricken there.</p>
+<p>But Julie's mind had ceased to be conscious of the tragedy
+beside her. It had passed for the second time into the grasp of an
+illusion which possessed itself of the whole being and all its
+perceptive powers. Before her wide, terror-stricken gaze there rose
+once more the same piteous vision which had tortured her in the
+crisis of her love for Warkworth. Against the eternal snows which
+close in the lake the phantom hovered in a ghastly
+relief--emaciated, with matted hair, and purpled cheeks, and
+eyes--not to be borne!--expressing the dumb anger of a man, still
+young, who parts unwillingly from life in a last lonely spasm of
+uncomforted pain.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h2>
+<br>
+<p>It was midnight in the little inn at Charnex. The rain which for
+so many nights in this miserable June had been beating down upon
+the village had at last passed away. The night was clear and
+still--a night when the voice of mountain torrents, far distant,
+might reach the ear suddenly--sharply pure--from the very depths of
+silence.</p>
+<p>Julie was in bed. She had been scarcely aware of her maid's help
+in undressing. The ordinary life was, as it were, suspended. Two
+scenes floated alternately before her--one the creation of memory,
+the other of imagination; and the second was, if possible, the more
+vivid, the more real of the two. Now she saw herself in Lady
+Henry's drawing-room; Sir Wilfrid Bury and a white-haired general
+were beside her. The door opened and Warkworth entered--young,
+handsome, soldierly, with that boyish, conquering air which some
+admired and others disliked. His eyes met hers, and a glow of
+happiness passed through her.</p>
+<p>Then, at a stroke, the London drawing-room melted away. She was
+in a low bell-tent. The sun burned through its sides; the air was
+stifling. She stood with two other men and the doctor beside the
+low camp-bed; her heart was wrung by every movement, every sound;
+she heard the clicking of the fan in the doctor's hands, she saw
+the flies on the poor, damp brow.</p>
+<p>And still she had no tears. Only, existence seemed to have ended
+in a gulf of horror, where youth and courage, repentance and high
+resolve, love and pleasure were all buried and annihilated
+together.</p>
+<p>That poor girl up-stairs! It had not been possible to take her
+home. She was there with nurse and doctor, her mother hanging upon
+every difficult breath. The attack of diphtheria had left a
+weakened heart and nervous system; the shock had been cruel, and
+the doctor could promise nothing for the future.</p>
+<p>"Mother--mother!... <i>Dead!</i>"</p>
+<p>The cry echoed in Julie's ears. It seemed to fill the old,
+low-ceiled room in which she lay. Her fancy, preternaturally alive,
+heard it thrown back from the mountains outside--returned to her in
+wailing from the infinite depths of the lake. She was conscious of
+the vast forms and abysses of nature, there in the darkness, beyond
+the walls of her room, as something hostile, implacable....</p>
+<p>And while he lay there dead, under the tropical sand, she was
+still living and breathing here, in this old Swiss inn--Jacob
+Delafield's wife, at least in name.</p>
+<p>There was a knock at her door. At first she did not answer it.
+It seemed to be only one of the many dream sounds which tormented
+her nerves. Then it was repeated. Mechanically she said "Come
+in."</p>
+<p>The door opened, and Delafield, carrying a light, which he
+shaded with his hand, stood on the threshold.</p>
+<p>"May I come and talk to you?" he said, in a low voice. "I know
+you are not sleeping."</p>
+<p>It was the first time he had entered his wife's room. Through
+all her misery, Julie felt a strange thrill as her husband's face
+was thus revealed to her, brightly illumined, in the loneliness of
+the night. Then the thrill passed into pain--the pain of a new and
+sharp perception.</p>
+<p>Delafield, in truth, was some two or three years younger than
+Warkworth. But the sudden impression on Julie's mind, as she saw
+him thus, was of a man worn and prematurely aged--markedly older
+and graver, even, since their marriage, since that memorable
+evening by the side of Como when, by that moral power of which he
+seemed often to be the mere channel and organ, he had overcome her
+own will and linked her life with his.</p>
+<p>She looked at him in a kind of terror. Why was he so pale--an
+embodied grief? Warkworth's death was not a mortal stroke for
+<i>him</i>.</p>
+<p>He came closer, and still Julie's eyes held him. Was it her
+fault, this--this shadowed countenance, these suggestions of a dumb
+strain and conflict, which not even his strong youth could bear
+without betrayal? Her heart cried out, first in a tragic
+impatience; then it melted within her strangely, she knew not
+how.</p>
+<p>She sat up in bed and held out her hands. He thought of that
+evening in Heribert Street, after Warkworth had left her, when she
+had been so sad and yet so docile. The same yearning, the same
+piteous agitation was in her attitude now.</p>
+<p>He knelt down beside the bed and put his arms round her. She
+clasped her hands about his neck and hid her face on his shoulder.
+There ran through her the first long shudder of weeping.</p>
+<p>"He was so young!" he heard her say through sobs. "So
+young!"</p>
+<p>He raised his hand and touched her hair tenderly.</p>
+<p>"He died serving his country," he said, commanding his voice
+with difficulty. "And you grieve for him like this! I can't pity
+him so much."</p>
+<p>"You thought ill of him--I know you did." She spoke between
+deep, sobbing breaths. "But he wasn't--he wasn't a bad man."</p>
+<p>She fell back on her pillow and the tears rained down her
+cheeks.</p>
+<p>Delafield kissed her hand in silence.</p>
+<p>"Some day--I'll tell you," she said, brokenly.</p>
+<p>"Yes, you shall tell me. It would help us both."</p>
+<p>"I'll prove to you he wasn't vile. When--when he proposed that
+to me he was distracted. So was I. How could he break off his
+engagement? Now you see how she loved him. But we couldn't part--we
+couldn't say good-bye. It had all come on us unawares. We wanted to
+belong to each other--just for two days--and then part forever. Oh,
+I'll tell you--"</p>
+<p>"You shall tell me all--here!" he said, firmly, crushing her
+delicate hands in his own against his breast, so that she felt the
+beating of his heart.</p>
+<p>"Give me my hand. I'll show you his letter--his last letter to
+me." And, trembling, she drew from under her pillow that last
+scrawled letter, written from the squalid hotel near the Gare de
+Sceaux.</p>
+<p>No sooner, however, had she placed it in Delafield's hands than
+she was conscious of new forces of feeling in herself which robbed
+the act of its simplicity. She had meant to plead her lover's cause
+and her own with the friend who was nominally her husband. Her
+action had been a cry for sympathy, as from one soul to
+another.</p>
+<p>But as Delafield took the letter and began to read, her pulses
+began to flutter strangely. She recalled the phrases of passion
+which the letter contained. She became conscious of new fears, new
+compunctions.</p>
+<p>For Delafield, too, the moment was one of almost intolerable
+complexity. This tender intimacy of night--the natural intimacy of
+husband and wife; this sense, which would not be denied, however
+sternly he might hold it in check, of her dear form beside him; the
+little refinements and self-revelations of a woman's room; his
+half-rights towards her, appealing at once to love, and to the
+memory of that solemn pledge by which he had won her--what man who
+deserved the name but must be conscious, tempestuously conscious,
+of such thoughts and facts?</p>
+<p>And then, wrestling with these smarts, these impulses, belonging
+to the natural, physical life, the powers of the moral
+being--compassion, self-mastery, generosity; while strengthening
+and directing all, the man of faith was poignantly aware of the
+austere and tender voices of religion.</p>
+<p>Amid this play of influences he read the letter, still kneeling
+beside her and holding her fingers clasped in his. She had closed
+her eyes and lay still, save for the occasional tremulous movement
+of her free hand, which dried the tears on her cheek.</p>
+<p>"Thank you," he said, at last, with a voice that wavered, as he
+put the letter down. "Thank you. It was good of you to let me see
+it. It changes all my thoughts of him henceforward. If he had
+lived--"</p>
+<p>"But he's dead! He's dead!" cried Julie, in a sudden agony,
+wrenching her hand from his and burying her face in the pillow.
+"Just when he wanted to live. Oh, my God--my God! No, there's no
+God--nothing that cares--that takes any notice!"</p>
+<p>She was shaken by deep, convulsive weeping. Delafield soothed
+her as best he could. And presently she stretched out her hand with
+a quick, piteous gesture, and touched his face.</p>
+<p>"You, too! What have I done to you? How you looked, just now! I
+bring a curse. Why did you want to marry me? I can't tear this out
+of my heart--I can't!"</p>
+<p>And again she hid herself from him. Delafield bent over her.</p>
+<p>"Do you imagine that I should be poor-souled enough to ask
+you?"</p>
+<p>Suddenly a wild feeling of revolt ran through Julie's mind. The
+loftiness of his mood chilled her. An attitude more weakly,
+passionately human, a more selfish pity for himself would, in
+truth, have served him better. Had the pain of the living man
+escaped his control, avenging itself on the supremacy that death
+had now given to the lover, Delafield might have found another
+Julie in his arms. As it was, her husband seemed to her perhaps
+less than man, in being more; she admired unwillingly, and her
+stormy heart withdrew itself.</p>
+<p>And when at last she controlled her weeping, and it became
+evident to him that she wished once more to be alone, his
+sensitiveness perfectly divined the secret reaction in her. He rose
+from his place beside her with a deep, involuntary sigh. She heard
+it, but only to shrink away.</p>
+<p>"You will sleep a little?" he said, looking down upon her.</p>
+<p>"I will try, <i>mon ami</i>."</p>
+<p>"If you don't sleep, and would like me to read to you, call me.
+I am in the next room."</p>
+<p>She thanked him faintly, and he went away. At the door he paused
+and came back again.</p>
+<p>"To-night"--he hesitated--"while the doctors were here, I ran
+down to Montreux by the short path and telegraphed. The consul at
+Zanzibar is an old friend of mine. I asked him for more particulars
+at once, by wire. But the letters can't be here for a
+fortnight."</p>
+<p>"I know. You're very, very good."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Hour after hour Delafield sat motionless in his room, till "high
+in the Valais depths profound" he "saw the morning break."</p>
+<p>There was a little balcony at his command, and as he noiselessly
+stepped out upon it, between three and four o'clock, he felt
+himself the solitary comrade of the mist-veiled lake, of those
+high, rosy mountains on the eastern verge, the first throne and
+harbor of the light--of the lower forest-covered hills that "took
+the morning," one by one, in a glorious and golden succession. All
+was fresh, austere, and vast--the spaces of the lake, the distant
+hollows of high glaciers filled with purple shadow, the precipices
+of the Rochers de Naye, where the new snow was sparkling in the
+sun, the cool wind that blew towards him from the gates of Italy,
+down the winding recesses of that superb valley which has been a
+thoroughfare of nations from the beginning of time.</p>
+<p>Not a boat on the wide reaches of the lake; not a voice or other
+sound of human toil, either from the vineyards below or the meadows
+above. Meanwhile some instinct, perhaps also some faint movements
+in her room, told him that Julie was no less wakeful than himself.
+And was not that a low voice in the room above him--the trained
+voice and footsteps of a nurse? Ah, poor little heiress, she, too,
+watched with sorrow!</p>
+<p>A curious feeling of shame, of self-depreciation crept into his
+heart. Surely he himself of late had been lying down with fear and
+rising up with bitterness? Never a day had passed since they had
+reached Switzerland but he, a man of strong natural passions, had
+bade himself face the probable truth that, by a kind of violence,
+he had married a woman who would never love him--had taken
+irrevocably a false step, only too likely to be fatal to himself,
+intolerable to her.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, steeped as he had been in sadness, in foreboding,
+and, during this by-gone night, in passionate envy of the dead yet
+beloved Warkworth, he had never been altogether unhappy. That
+mysterious <i>It</i>--that other divine self of the
+mystic--God--the enwrapping, sheltering force--had been with him
+always. It was with him now--it spoke from the mysterious color and
+light of the dawn.</p>
+<p>How, then, could he ever equal Julie in <i>experience</i>, in
+the true and poignant feeling of any grief whatever? His mind was
+in a strange, double state. It was like one who feels himself
+unfairly protected by a magic armor; he would almost throw it aside
+in a remorseful eagerness to be with his brethren, and as his
+brethren, in the sore weakness and darkness of the human combat;
+and then he thinks of the hand that gave the shield, and his heart
+melts in awe.</p>
+<p>"<i>Friend of my soul and of the world, make me thy tool--thy
+instrument! Thou art Love! Speak through me! Draw her heart to
+mine</i>."</p>
+<p>At last, knowing that there was no sleep in him, and realizing
+that he had brooded enough, he made his way out of the hotel and up
+through the fresh and dew-drenched meadows, where the haymakers
+were just appearing, to the Les Avants stream. A plunge into one of
+its cool basins retempered the whole man. He walked back through
+the scented field-paths, resolutely restraining his mind from the
+thoughts of the night, hammering out, indeed, in his head a scheme
+for the establishment of small holdings on certain derelict land in
+Wiltshire belonging to his cousin.</p>
+<p>As he was descending on Charnex, he met the postman and took his
+letters. One among them, from the Duke of Chudleigh, contained a
+most lamentable account of Lord Elmira. The father and son had
+returned to England, and an angry, inclement May had brought a
+touch of pneumonia to add to all the lad's other woes. In itself it
+was not much--was, indeed, passing away. "But it has used up most
+of his strength," said the Duke, "and you know whether he had any
+to waste. Don't forget him. He constantly thinks and talks of
+you."</p>
+<p>Delafield restlessly wondered when he could get home. But he
+realized that Julie would now feel herself tragically linked to the
+Moffatts, and how could he leave her? He piteously told himself
+that here, and now, was his chance with her. As he bore himself now
+towards her, in this hour of her grief for Warkworth, so, perhaps,
+would their future be.</p>
+<p>Yet the claims of kindred were strong. He suffered much inward
+distress as he thought of the father and son, and their old
+touching dependence upon him. Chudleigh, as Jacob knew well, was
+himself incurably ill. Could he long survive his poor boy?</p>
+<p>And so that other thought, which Jacob spent so much ingenuity
+in avoiding, rushed upon him unawares. The near, inevitable
+expectation of the famous dukedom, which, in the case of almost any
+other man in England, must at least have quickened the blood with a
+natural excitement, produced in Delafield's mind a mere dull sense
+of approaching torment. Perhaps there was something non-sane in his
+repulsion, something that linked itself with his father's
+"queerness," or the bigotry and fanaticism of his grandmother, the
+Evangelical Duchess, with her "swarm of parsons," as Sir Wilfrid
+remembered her. The oddity, which had been violent or brutal in
+earlier generations, showed itself in him, one might have said, in
+a radical transposition of values, a singularity of criterion,
+which the ordinary robust Englishman might very well dismiss with
+impatience as folly or cant.</p>
+<p>Yet it was neither; and the feeling had, in truth, its own logic
+and history. He had lived from his youth up among the pageants of
+rank and possession. They had no glamour for him; he realized their
+burdens, their ineffectiveness for all the more precious kinds of
+happiness--how could he not, with these two forlorn figures of
+Chudleigh and his boy always before him? As for imagination and
+poetry, Delafield, with a mind that was either positive or
+mystical--the mind, one might say, of the land-agent or the
+saint--failed to see where they came in. Family tradition, no
+doubt, carries a thrill. But what thrill is there in the mere
+possession of a vast number of acres of land, of more houses, new
+and old, than any human being can possibly live in, of more money
+than any reasonable man can ever spend, and more responsibilities
+than he can ever meet? Such things often seemed to Delafield pure
+calamity--mere burdens upon life and breath. That he could and must
+be forced, some time, by law and custom, to take them up, was
+nothing but a social barbarity.</p>
+<p>Mingled with all which, of course, was his passionate sense of
+spiritual democracy. To be throned apart, like a divine being,
+surrounded by the bought homage of one's fellows, and possessed of
+more power than a man can decently use, was a condition which
+excited in Delafield the same kind of contemptuous revolt that it
+would have excited in St. Francis. "Be not ye called master"--a
+Christian even of his transcendental and heterodox sort, if he
+<i>were</i> a Christian, must surely hold these words in awe, at
+least so far as concerned any mastery of the external or secular
+kind. To masteries of another order the saint has never been
+disinclined.</p>
+<p>As he once more struck the village street, this familiar whirl
+of thoughts was buzzing in Delafield's mind, pierced, however, by
+one sharper and newer. Julie! Did he know--had he ever dared to
+find out--how she regarded this future which was overtaking them?
+She had tried to sound <i>him</i>; she had never revealed
+herself.</p>
+<p>In Lady Henry's house he had often noticed in Julie that she had
+an imaginative tenderness for rank or great fortune. At first it
+had seemed to him a woman's natural romanticism; then he explained
+it to himself as closely connected with her efforts to serve
+Warkworth.</p>
+<p>But suppose he were made to feel that there, after all, lay her
+compensation? She had submitted to a loveless marriage and lost her
+lover; but the dukedom was to make amends. He knew well that it
+would be so with nine women out of ten. But the bare thought that
+it might be so with Julie maddened him. He then was to be for her,
+in the future, the mere symbol of the vulgarer pleasures and
+opportunities, while Warkworth held her heart?</p>
+<p>Nay!</p>
+<p>He stood still, strengthening in himself the glad and sufficient
+answer. She had refused him twice--knowing all his circumstances.
+At this moment he adored her doubly for those old rebuffs.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Within twenty-four hours Delafield had received a telegram from
+his friend at Zanzibar. For the most part it recapitulated the news
+already sent to Cairo, and thence transmitted to the English
+papers. But it added the information that Warkworth had been buried
+in the neighborhood of a certain village on the caravan route to
+Mokembe, and that special pains had been taken to mark the spot.
+And the message concluded: "Fine fellow. Hard luck. Everybody
+awfully sorry here."</p>
+<p>These words brought Delafield a sudden look of passionate
+gratitude from Julie's dark and sunken eyes. She rested her face
+against his sleeve and pressed his hand.</p>
+<p>Lady Blanche also wept over the telegram, exclaiming that she
+had always believed in Henry Warkworth, and now, perhaps, those
+busybodies who at Simla had been pleased to concern themselves with
+her affairs and Aileen's would see cause to be ashamed of
+themselves.</p>
+<p>To Delafield's discomfort, indeed, she poured out upon him a
+stream of confidences he would have gladly avoided. He had brought
+the telegram to her sitting-room. In the room adjoining it was
+Aileen, still, according to her mother's account, very ill, and
+almost speechless. Under the shadow of such a tragedy it seemed to
+him amazing that a mother could find words in which to tell her
+daughter's story to a comparative stranger. Lady Blanche appeared
+to him an ill-balanced and foolish woman; a prey, on the one hand,
+to various obscure jealousies and antagonisms, and on the other to
+a romantic and sentimental temper which, once roused, gloried in
+despising "the world," by which she generally meant a very ordinary
+degree of prudence.</p>
+<p>She was in chronic disagreement, it seemed, with her daughter's
+guardians, and had been so from the first moment of her widowhood,
+the truth being that she was jealous of their legal powers over
+Aileen's fortune and destiny, and determined, notwithstanding, to
+have her own way with her own child. The wilfulness and caprice of
+the father, which had taken such strange and desperate forms in
+Rose Delaney, appeared shorn of all its attraction and romance in
+the smaller, more conventional, and meaner egotisms of Lady
+Blanche.</p>
+<p>And yet, in her own way, she was full of heart. She lost her
+head over a love affair. She could deny Aileen nothing. That was
+what her casual Indian acquaintances meant by calling her "sweet."
+When Warkworth's attentions, pushed with an ardor which would have
+driven any prudent mother to an instant departure from India, had
+made a timid and charming child of eighteen the talk of Simla, Lady
+Blanche, excited and dishevelled--was it her personal untidiness
+which accounted for the other epithet of "quaint," which had
+floated to the Duchess's ear, and been by her reported to
+Julie?--refused to break her daughter's heart. Warkworth, indeed,
+had begun long before by flattering the mother's vanity and sense
+of possession, and she now threw herself hotly into his cause as
+against Aileen's odious trustees.</p>
+<p>They, of course, always believed the worst of everybody. As for
+her, all she wanted for the child was a good husband. Was it not
+better, in a world of fortune-hunters, that Aileen, with her
+half-million, should marry early? Of money, she had, one would
+think, enough. It was only the greed of certain persons which could
+possibly desire more. Birth? The young man was honorably born,
+good-looking, well mannered. What did you want more? <i>She</i>
+accepted a democratic age; and the obstacles thrown by Aileen's
+guardians in the way of an immediate engagement between the young
+people appeared to her, so she declared, either vulgar or
+ridiculous.</p>
+<p>Well, poor lady, she had suffered for her whims. First of all,
+her levity had perceived, with surprise and terror, the hold that
+passion was taking on the delicate and sensitive nature of Aileen.
+This young girl, so innocent and spotless in thought, so virginally
+sweet in manner, so guileless in action, developed a power of
+loving, an absorption of the whole being in the beloved, such as
+our modern world but rarely sees.</p>
+<p>She lived, she breathed for Warkworth. Her health, always frail,
+suffered from their separation. She became a thin and frail
+vision--a "gossamer girl" indeed. The ordinary life of travel and
+society lost all hold upon her; she passed through it in a mood of
+weariness and distaste that was in itself a danger to vital force.
+The mother became desperately alarmed, and made a number of
+flurried concessions. Letters, at any rate, should be allowed, in
+spite of the guardians, and without their knowledge. Yet each
+letter caused emotions which ran like a storm-wind through the
+child's fragile being, and seemed to exhaust the young life at its
+source. Then came the diphtheria, acting with poisonous effect on a
+nervous system already overstrained.</p>
+<p>And in the midst of the mother's anxieties there burst upon her
+the sudden, incredible tale that Warkworth--to whom she herself was
+writing regularly, and to whom Aileen, from her bed, was sending
+little pencilled notes, sweetly meant to comfort a sighing
+lover--had been entangling himself in London with another, a Miss
+Le Breton, positively a nobody, as far as birth and position were
+concerned, the paid companion of Lady Henry Delafield, and yet, as
+it appeared, a handsome, intriguing, unscrupulous hussy, just the
+kind of hawk to snatch a morsel from a dove's mouth--a woman, in
+fact, with whom a little bread-and-butter girl like Aileen might
+very well have no chance.</p>
+<p>Emily Lawrence's letter, in the tone of the candid friend,
+written after her evening at Crowborough House, had roused a
+mingled anguish and fury in the mother's breast. She lifted her
+eyes from it to look at Aileen, propped up in bed, her head thrown
+back against the pillow, and her little hands closed happily over
+Warkworth's letters; and she went straight from that vision to
+write to the traitor.</p>
+<p>The traitor defended and excused himself by return of post. He
+implored her to pay no attention to the calumnious distortion of a
+friendship which had already served Aileen's interests no less than
+his own. It was largely to Miss Le Breton's influence that he owed
+the appointment which was to advance him so materially in his
+career. At the same time he thought it would be wise if Lady
+Blanche kept not only the silly gossip that was going about, but
+even this true and innocent fact, from Aileen's knowledge. One
+never knew how a girl would take such things, and he would rather
+explain it himself at his own time.</p>
+<p>Lady Blanche had to be content. And meanwhile the glory of the
+Mokembe appointment was a strong factor in Aileen's recovery. She
+exulted over it by day and night, and she wrote the letters of an
+angel.</p>
+<p>The mother watched her writing them with mixed feelings. As to
+Warkworth's replies, which she was sometimes allowed to see, Lady
+Blanche, who had been a susceptible girl, and the heroine of
+several "affairs," was secretly and strongly of opinion that men's
+love-letters, at any rate, were poor things nowadays, compared with
+what they had been.</p>
+<p>But Aileen was more than satisfied with them. How busy he must
+be, and with such important business! Poor, harassed darling, how
+good of him to write her a word--to give her a thought!</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>And now Lady Blanche beheld her child crushed and broken, a
+nervous wreck, before her life had truly begun. The agonies which
+the mother endured were very real, and should have been touching.
+But she was not a touching person. All her personal traits--her
+red-rimmed eyes, her straggling hair, the slight, disagreeable
+twist in her nose and mouth--combined, with her signal lack of
+dignity and reticence, to stir the impatience rather than the
+sympathy of the by-stander.</p>
+<p>"And mamma was so fond of her," Julie would say to herself
+sometimes, in wonder, proudly contrasting the wild grace and
+originality of her disgraced mother with the awkward, slipshod ways
+of the sister who had remained a great lady.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Lady Blanche was, indeed, perpetually conscious of
+her strange niece, perpetually thinking of the story her brothers
+had told her, perpetually trying to recall the sister she had lost
+so young, and then turning from all such things to brood angrily
+over the Lawrence letter, and the various other rumors which had
+reached her of Warkworth's relations to Miss Le Breton.</p>
+<p>What was in the woman's mind now? She looked pale and tragic
+enough. But what right had she to grieve--or, if she did grieve, to
+be pitied?</p>
+<p>Jacob Delafield had been fool enough to marry her, and fate
+would make her a duchess. So true it is that they who have no
+business to flourish do flourish, like green bay-trees.</p>
+<p>As to poor Rose--sometimes there would rise on Lady Blanche's
+mind the sudden picture of herself and the lost, dark-eyed sister,
+scampering on their ponies through the country lanes of their
+childhood; of her lessons with Rose, her worship of Rose; and then
+of that black curtain of mystery and reprobation which for the
+younger child of sixteen had suddenly descended upon Rose and all
+that concerned her.</p>
+<p>But Rose's daughter! All one could say was that she had turned
+out as the child of such proceedings might be expected to turn
+out--a minx. The aunt's conviction as to that stood firm. And while
+Rose's face and fate had sunk into the shadows of the past, even
+for her sister, Aileen was <i>here</i>, struggling for her
+delicate, threatened life, her hand always in the hand of this
+woman who had tried to steal her lover from her, her soft, hopeless
+eyes, so tragically unconscious, bent upon the bold intriguer.</p>
+<p>What possessed the child? Warkworth's letters, Julie's
+company--those seemed to be all she desired.</p>
+<p>And at last, in the June beauty and brilliance, when a
+triumphant summer had banished the pitiful spring, when the meadows
+were all perfume and color, and the clear mountains, in a clear
+sky, upheld the ever-new and never-ending pomp of dawn and noon and
+night, the little, wasted creature looked up into Julie's face,
+and, without tears, gasped out her story.</p>
+<p>"These are his letters. Some day I'll--I'll read you some of
+them; and this--is his picture. I know you saw him at Lady Henry's.
+He mentioned your name. Will you please tell me everything--all the
+times you saw him, and what he talked of? You see I am much
+stronger. I can bear it all now."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Meanwhile, for Delafield, this fortnight of waiting--waiting for
+the African letters, waiting for the revival of life in Aileen--was
+a period of extraordinary tension, when all the powers of nerve and
+brain seemed to be tested and tried to the utmost. He himself was
+absorbed in watching Julie and in dealing with her.</p>
+<p>In the first place, as he saw, she could give no free course to
+grief. The tragic yearning, the agonized tenderness and pity which
+consumed her, must be crushed out of sight as far as possible. They
+would have been an offence to Lady Blanche, a bewilderment to
+Aileen. And it was on her relation to her new-found cousin that, as
+Delafield perceived, her moral life for the moment turned. This
+frail girl was on the brink of perishing because death had taken
+Warkworth from her. And Julie knew well that Warkworth had neither
+loved her nor deserved her--that he had gone to Africa and to death
+with another image in his heart.</p>
+<p>There was a perpetual and irreparable cruelty in the situation.
+And from the remorse of it Julie could not escape. Day by day she
+was more profoundly touched by the clinging, tender creature, more
+sharply scourged by the knowledge that the affection developing
+between them could never be without its barrier and its mystery,
+that something must always remain undisclosed, lest Aileen cast her
+off in horror.</p>
+<p>It was a new moral suffering, in one whose life had been based
+hitherto on intellect, or passion. In a sense it held at bay even
+her grief for Warkworth, her intolerable compassion for his fate.
+In sheer dread lest the girl should find her out and hate her, she
+lost insensibly the first poignancy of sorrow.</p>
+<p>These secrets of feeling left her constantly pale and silent.
+Yet her grace had never been more evident. All the inmates of the
+little <i>pension</i>, the landlord's family, the servants, the
+visitors, as the days passed, felt the romance and thrill of her
+presence. Lady Blanche evoked impatience of ennui. She was
+inconsiderate; she was meddlesome; she soon ceased even to be
+pathetic. But for Julie every foot ran, every eye smiled.</p>
+<p>Then, when the day was over, Delafield's opportunity began.
+Julie could not sleep. He gradually established the right to read
+with her and talk with her. It was a relation very singular, and
+very intimate. She would admit him at his knock, and he would find
+her on her sofa, very sad, often in tears, her black hair loose
+upon her shoulders. Outwardly there was often much ceremony, even
+distance between them; inwardly, each was exploring the other, and
+Julie's attitude towards Delafield was becoming more uncertain,
+more touched with emotion.</p>
+<p>What was, perhaps, most noticeable in it was a new timidity, a
+touch of anxious respect towards him. In the old days, what with
+her literary cultivation and her social success, she had always
+been the flattered and admired one of their little group. Delafield
+felt himself clumsy and tongue-tied beside her. It was a
+superiority on her part very natural and never ungraceful, and it
+was his chief delight to bring it forward, to insist upon it, to
+take it for granted.</p>
+<p>But the relation between them had silently shifted.</p>
+<p>"You <i>judge</i>--you are always judging," she had said once,
+impatiently, to Delafield. And now it was round these judgments,
+these inward verdicts of his, on life or character, that she was
+perpetually hovering. She was infinitely curious about them. She
+would wrench them from him, and then would often shiver away from
+him in resentment.</p>
+<p>He, meanwhile, as he advanced further in the knowledge of her
+strange nature, was more and more bewildered by her--her
+perversities and caprices, her brilliancies and powers, her utter
+lack of any standard or scheme of life. She had been for a long
+time, as it seemed to him, the creature of her exquisite social
+instincts--then the creature of passion. But what a woman through
+it all, and how adorable, with those poetic gestures and looks,
+those melancholy, gracious airs that ravished him perpetually! And
+now this new attitude, as of a child leaning, wistfully looking in
+your face, asking to be led, to be wrestled and reasoned with.</p>
+<p>The days, as they passed, produced in him a secret and mounting
+intoxication. Then, perhaps for a day or two, there would be a
+reaction, both foreseeing that a kind of spiritual tyranny might
+arise from their relation, and both recoiling from it....</p>
+<p>One night she was very restless and silent. There seemed to be
+no means of approach to her true mind. Suddenly he took her
+hand--it was some days since they had spoken of Warkworth--and
+almost roughly reminded her of her promise to tell him all.</p>
+<p>She rebelled. But his look and manner held her, and the inner
+misery sought an outlet. Submissively she began to speak, in her
+low, murmuring voice; she went back over the past--the winter in
+Bruton Street; the first news of the Moffatt engagement; her
+efforts for Warkworth's promotion; the history of the evening party
+which had led to her banishment; the struggle in her own mind and
+Warkworth's; the sudden mad schemes of their last interview; the
+rush of the Paris journey.</p>
+<p>The mingled exaltation and anguish, the comparative absence of
+regret with which she told the story, produced an astonishing
+effect on Delafield. And in both minds, as the story proceeded,
+there emerged ever more clearly the consciousness of that imperious
+act by which he had saved her.</p>
+<p>Suddenly she stopped.</p>
+<p>"I know you can find no excuse for it all," she said, in
+excitement.</p>
+<p>"Yes; for all--but for one thing," was his low reply.</p>
+<p>She shrank, her eyes on his face.</p>
+<p>"That poor child," he said, under his breath.</p>
+<p>She looked at him piteously.</p>
+<p>"Did you ever realize what you were doing?" he asked her,
+raising her hand to his lips.</p>
+<p>"No, no! How could I? I thought of some one so different--I had
+never seen her--"</p>
+<p>She paused, her wide--seeking gaze fixed upon him through tears,
+as though she pleaded with him to find
+explanations--palliatives.</p>
+<p>But he gently shook his head.</p>
+<p>Suddenly, shaken with weeping, she bowed her face upon the hands
+that held her own. It was like one who relinquishes all pleading,
+all defence, and throws herself on the mercy of the judge.</p>
+<p>He tenderly asked her pardon if he had wounded her. But he
+shrank from offering any caress. The outward signs of life's most
+poignant and most beautiful moments are generally very simple and
+austere.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h2>
+<br>
+<p>"You have had a disquieting letter?"</p>
+<p>The voice was Julie's. Delafield was standing, apparently in
+thought, at the farther corner of the little, raised terrace of the
+hotel. She approached him with an affectionate anxiety, of which he
+was instantly conscious.</p>
+<p>"I am afraid I may have to leave you to-night," he said, turning
+towards her, and holding out the letter in his hand.</p>
+<p>It contained a few agitated lines from the Duke of
+Chudleigh.</p>
+<p>"They tell me my lad can't get over this. He's made a gallant
+fight, but this beats us. A week or two--no more. Ask Mrs.
+Delafield to let you come. She will, I know. She wrote to me very
+kindly. Mervyn keeps talking of you. You'd come, if you heard him.
+It's ghastly--the cruelty of it all. Whether I can live without
+him, that's the point."</p>
+<p>"You'll go, of course?" said Julie, returning it.</p>
+<p>"To-night, if you allow it."</p>
+<p>"Of course. You ought."</p>
+<p>"I hate leaving you alone, with this trouble on your hands,"
+said Jacob, in some agitation. "What are your plans?"</p>
+<p>"I could follow you next week. Aileen comes down to-day. And I
+should like to wait here for the mail."</p>
+<p>"In five days, about, it should be here," said Delafield.</p>
+<p>There was a silence. She dropped into a chair beside the
+balustrade of the terrace, which was wreathed in wistaria, and
+looked out upon the vast landscape of the lake. His thought was,
+"How can the mail matter to her? She cannot suppose that he had
+written--"</p>
+<p>Aloud he said, in some embarrassment, "You expect letters
+yourself?"</p>
+<p>"I expect nothing," she said, after a pause. "But Aileen is
+living on the chance of letters."</p>
+<p>"There may be nothing for her--except, indeed, her letters to
+him--poor child!"</p>
+<p>"She knows that. But the hope keeps her alive."</p>
+<p>"And you?" thought Delafield, with an inward groan, as he looked
+down upon her pale profile. He had a moment's hateful vision of
+himself as the elder brother in the parable. Was Julie's mind to be
+the home of an eternal antithesis between the living husband and
+the dead lover--in which the latter had forever the <i>beau
+r&ocirc;le</i>?</p>
+<p>Then, impatiently, Jacob wrenched himself from mean thoughts. It
+was as though he bared his head remorse-fully before the dead
+man.</p>
+<p>"I will go to the Foreign Office," he said, in her ear, "as I
+pass through town. They will have letters. All the information I
+can get you shall have at once."</p>
+<p>"Thank you, <i>mon ami</i>", she said, almost inaudibly.</p>
+<p>Then she looked up, and he was startled by her eyes. Where he
+had expected grief, he saw a shrinking animation.</p>
+<p>"Write to me often," she said, imperiously.</p>
+<p>"Of course. But don't trouble to answer much. Your hands are so
+full here."</p>
+<p>She frowned.</p>
+<p>"Trouble! Why do you spoil me so? Demand--insist--that I should
+write!"</p>
+<p>"Very well," he said, smiling, "I demand--I insist!"</p>
+<p>She drew a long breath, and went slowly away from him into the
+house. Certainly the antagonism of her secret thoughts, though it
+persisted, was no longer merely cold or critical. For it concerned
+one who was not only the master of his own life, but threatened
+unexpectedly to become the master of hers.</p>
+<p>She had begun, indeed, to please her imagination with the idea
+of a relation between them, which, while it ignored the ordinary
+relations of marriage, should yet include many of the intimacies
+and refinements of love. More and more did the surprises of his
+character arrest and occupy her mind. She found, indeed, no
+"plaster saint." Her cool intelligence soon detected the traces of
+a peevish or stubborn temper, and of a natural inertia, perpetually
+combated, however, by the spiritual energy of a new and other self
+exfoliating from the old; a self whose acts and ways she watched,
+sometimes with the held breath of fascination, sometimes with a
+return of shrinking or fear. That a man should not only appear but
+be so good was still in her eyes a little absurd. Perhaps her
+feeling was at bottom the common feeling of the sceptical nature.
+"We should listen to the higher voices; but in such a way that if
+another hypothesis were true, we should not have been too
+completely duped."</p>
+<p>She was ready, also, to convict him of certain prejudices and
+superstitions which roused in her an intellectual impatience. But
+when all was said, Delafield, unconsciously, was drawing her
+towards him, as the fowler draws a fluttering bird. It was the
+exquisite refinement of those spiritual insights and powers he
+possessed which constantly appealed, not only to her heart, but--a
+very important matter in Julie's case--to her taste, to her own
+carefully tempered instinct for the rare and beautiful.</p>
+<p>He was the master, then, she admitted, of a certain vein of
+spiritual genius. Well, here should he lead--and even, if he
+pleased, command her. She would sit at his feet, and he should open
+to her ranges of feeling, delights, and subtleties of moral
+sensation hitherto unknown to her.</p>
+<p>Thus the feeling of ennui and reaction which had marked the
+first weeks of her married life had now wholly disappeared.
+Delafield was no longer dull or pedantic in her eyes. She passed
+alternately from moments of intolerable smart and pity for the dead
+to moments of agitation and expectancy connected with her husband.
+She thought over their meeting of the night before; she looked
+forward to similar hours to come.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile his relation towards her in many matters was still
+na&iuml;vely ignorant and humble--determined by the simplicity of a
+man of some real greatness, who never dreamed of claiming tastes or
+knowledge he did not possess, whether in small things or large.
+This phase, however, only gave the more value to one which
+frequently succeeded it. For suddenly the conversation would enter
+regions where he felt himself peculiarly at home, and, with the
+same unconsciousness on his part, she would be made to feel the
+dignity and authority which surrounded his ethical and spiritual
+life. And these contrasts--this weakness and this
+strength--combined with the man-and-woman element which is always
+present in any situation of the kind, gave rise to a very varied
+and gradually intensifying play of feeling between them. Feeling
+only possible, no doubt, for the <i>raffin&eacute;s</i> of this
+world; but for them full of strange charm, and even of
+excitement.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Delafield left the little inn for Montreux, Lausanne, and London
+that afternoon. He bent to kiss his wife at the moment of his
+departure, in the bare sitting-room that had been improvised for
+them on the ground floor of the hotel, and as she let her face
+linger ever so little against his she felt strong arms flung round
+her, and was crushed against his breast in a hungry embrace. When
+he released her with a flush and a murmured word of apology she
+shook her head, smiling sadly but saying nothing. The door closed
+on him, and at the sound she made a hasty step forward.</p>
+<p>"Jacob! Take me with you!"</p>
+<p>But her voice died in the rattle and bustle of the diligence
+outside, and she was left trembling from head to foot, under a
+conflict of emotions that seemed now to exalt, now to degrade
+her.</p>
+<p>Half an hour after Delafield's departure there appeared on the
+terrace of the hotel a tottering, emaciated form--Aileen Moffatt,
+in a black dress and hat, clinging to her mother's arm. But she
+refused the deck--chair, which they had spread with cushions and
+shawls.</p>
+<p>"No; let me sit up." And she took an ordinary chair, looking
+round upon the lake and the little flowery terrace with a slow,
+absorbed look, like one trying to remember. Suddenly she bowed her
+head on her hands.</p>
+<p>"Aileen!" cried Lady Blanche, in an agony.</p>
+<p>But the girl motioned her away. "Don't, mummy. I'm all
+right."</p>
+<p>And restraining any further emotion, she laid her arms on the
+balustrade and gazed long and calmly into the purple depths and
+gleaming snows of the Rh&ocirc;ne valley. Her hat oppressed her and
+she took it off, revealing the abundance of her delicately golden
+hair, which, in its lack of lustre and spring, seemed to share in
+the physical distress and loss of the whole personality.</p>
+<p>The face was that of a doomed creature, incapable now of making
+any successful struggle for the right to live. What had been
+sensibility had become melancholy; the slight, chronic frown was
+deeper, the pale lips more pinched. Yet intermittently there was
+still great sweetness, the last effort of a "beautiful soul" meant
+for happiness, and withered before its time.</p>
+<p>As Julie stood beside her, while Lady Blanche had gone to fetch
+a book from the salon, the poor child put out her hand and grasped
+that of Julie.</p>
+<p>"It is quite possible I may get the letter to-night," she said,
+in a hurried whisper. "My maid went down to Montreux--there is a
+clever man at the post-office who tried to make it out for us. He
+thinks it'll be to-night."</p>
+<p>"Don't be too disappointed if nothing comes," said Julie,
+caressing the hand. Its thinness, its icy and lifeless touch,
+dismayed her. Ah, how easily might this physical wreck have been
+her doing!</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The bells of Montreux struck half-past six. A restless and
+agonized expectation began to show itself in all the movements of
+the invalid. She left her chair and began to pace the little
+terrace on Julie's arm. Her dragging step, the mournful black of
+her dress, the struggle between youth and death in her sharpened
+face, made her a tragic presence. Julie could hardly bear it, while
+all the time she, too, was secretly and breathlessly waiting for
+Warkworth's last words.</p>
+<p>Lady Blanche returned, and Julie hurried away.</p>
+<p>She passed through the hotel and walked down the Montreux road.
+The post had already reached the first houses of the village, and
+the postman, who knew her, willingly gave her the letters.</p>
+<p>Yes, a packet for Aileen, addressed in an unknown hand to a
+London address, and forwarded thence. It bore the Denga
+postmark.</p>
+<p>And another for herself, readdressed from London by Madame
+Bornier. She tore off the outer envelope; beneath was a letter of
+which the address was feebly written in Warkworth's hand:
+"Mademoiselle Le Breton, 3 Heribert Street, London."</p>
+<p>She had the strength to carry her own letter to her room, to
+call Aileen's maid and send her with the other packet to Lady
+Blanche. Then she locked herself in....</p>
+<p>Oh, the poor, crumpled page, and the labored hand-writing!</p>
+<p>"Julie, I am dying. They are such good fellows, but they can't
+save me. It's horrible.</p>
+<p>"I saw the news of your engagement in a paper the day before I
+left Denga. You're right. He'll make you happy. Tell him I said so.
+Oh, my God, I shall never trouble you again! I bless you for the
+letter you wrote me. Here it is.... No, I can't--can't read it.
+Drowsy. No pain--"</p>
+<p>And here the pen had dropped from his hand. Searching for
+something more, she drew from the envelope the wild and passionate
+letter she had written him at Heribert Street, in the early morning
+after her return from Paris, while she was waiting for Delafield to
+bring her the news of Lord Lackington's state.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The small <i>table d'h&ocirc;te</i> of the Hotel Michel was
+still further diminished that night. Lady Blanche was with her
+daughter, and Mrs. Delafield did not appear.</p>
+<p>But the moon was hanging in glory over the lake when Julie,
+unable to bear her room and her thoughts any longer, threw a lace
+scarf about her head and neck, and went blindly climbing through
+the upward paths leading to Les Avants. The roads were silver in
+the moonlight; so was the lake, save where the great mountain
+shadows lay across the eastern end. And suddenly, white, through
+pine-trees, "Jaman, delicately tall!"</p>
+<p>The air cooled her brow, and from the deep, enveloping night her
+torn heart drew balm, and a first soothing of the pulse of pain.
+Every now and then, as she sat down to rest, a waking dream
+overshadowed her. She seemed to be supporting Warkworth in her
+arms; his dying head lay upon her breast, and she murmured courage
+and love into his ear. But not as Julie Le Breton. Through all the
+anguish of what was almost an illusion of the senses, she still
+felt herself Delafield's wife. And in that flood of silent speech
+she poured out on Warkworth, it was as though she offered him also
+Jacob's compassion, Jacob's homage, mingled with her own.</p>
+<p>Once she found herself sitting at the edge of a meadow,
+environed by the heavy scents of flowers. Some apple-trees with
+whitened trunks rose between her and the lake a thousand feet
+below. The walls of Chillon, the houses of Montreux, caught the
+light; opposite, the deep forests of Bouveret and St. Gingolphe lay
+black upon the lake; above them rode the moon. And to the east the
+high Alps, their pure lines a little effaced and withdrawn, as when
+a light veil hangs over a sanctuary.</p>
+<p>Julie looked out upon a vast freedom of space, and by a natural
+connection she seemed to be also surveying her own world of life
+and feeling, her past and her future. She thought of her childhood
+and her parents, of her harsh, combative youth, of the years with
+Lady Henry, of Warkworth, of her husband, and the life into which
+his strong hand had so suddenly and rashly drawn her. Her thoughts
+took none of the religious paths so familiar to his. And yet her
+reverie was so far religious that her mind seemed to herself to be
+quivering under the onset of affections, emotions, awes, till now
+unknown, and that, looking back, she was conscious of a groping
+sense of significance, of purpose, in all that had befallen her.
+Yet to this sense she could put no words. Only, in the end, through
+the constant action of her visualizing imagination, it connected
+itself with Delafield's face, and with the memory of many of his
+recent acts and sayings.</p>
+<p>It was one of those hours which determine the history of a man
+or woman. And the august Alpine beauty entered in, so that Julie,
+in this sad and thrilling act of self-probing, felt herself in the
+presence of powers and dominations divine.</p>
+<p>Her face, stained with tears, took gradually some of the calm,
+the loftiness of the night. Yet the close-shut, brooding mouth
+would slip sometimes into a smile exquisitely soft and gentle, as
+though the heart remembered something which seemed to the
+intelligence at once folly and sweetness.</p>
+<p>What was going on within her was, to her own consciousness, a
+strange thing. It appeared to her as a kind of simplification, a
+return to childhood; or, rather, was it the emergence in the grown
+mind, tired with the clamor of its own egotistical or passionate
+life, of some instincts, natural to the child, which she,
+nevertheless, as a child had never known; instincts of trust, of
+self-abandonment, steeped, perhaps, in those tears which are
+themselves only another happiness?...</p>
+<p>But hush! What are our poor words in the presence of these
+nobler secrets of the wrestling and mounting spirit!</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>On the way down she saw another figure emerge from the dark.</p>
+<p>"Lady Blanche!"</p>
+<p>Lady Blanche stood still.</p>
+<p>"The hotel was stifling," she said, in a voice that vainly tried
+for steadiness.</p>
+<p>Julie perceived that she had been weeping.</p>
+<p>"Aileen is asleep?"</p>
+<p>"Perhaps. They have given her something to make her sleep."</p>
+<p>They walked on towards the hotel.</p>
+<p>Julie hesitated.</p>
+<p>"She was not disappointed?" she said, at last, in a low
+voice.</p>
+<p>"No!" said the mother, sharply. "But one knew, of course, there
+must be letters for her. Thank God, she can feel that his very last
+thought was for her! The letters which have reached her are dated
+the day before the fatal attack began--giving a complete account of
+his march--most interesting--showing how he trusted her
+already--though she is such a child. It will tranquillize her to
+feel how completely she possessed his heart--poor fellow!"</p>
+<p>Julie said nothing, and Lady Blanche, with bitter satisfaction,
+felt rather than saw what seemed to her the just humiliation
+expressed in the drooping and black-veiled figure beside her.</p>
+<p>Next day there was once more a tinge of color on Aileen's
+cheeks. Her beautiful hair fell round her once more in a soft life
+and confusion, and the roses which her mother had placed beside her
+on the bed were not in too pitiful contrast with her frail
+loveliness.</p>
+<p>"Read it, please," she said, as soon as she found herself alone
+with Julie, pushing her letter tenderly towards her. "He tells me
+everything--everything! All he was doing and hoping--consults me in
+everything. Isn't it an honor--when I'm so ignorant and childish?
+I'll try to be brave--try to be worthy--"</p>
+<p>And while her whole frame was shaken with deep, silent sobs, she
+greedily watched Julie read the letter.</p>
+<p>"Oughtn't I to try and live," she said, dashing away her tears,
+as Julie returned it, "when he loved me so?"</p>
+<p>Julie kissed her with a passionate and guilty pity. The letter
+might have been written to any friend, to any charming child for
+whom a much older man had a kindness. It gave a business-like
+account of their march, dilated on one or two points of policy,
+drew some humorous sketches of his companions, and concluded with a
+few affectionate and playful sentences.</p>
+<p>But when the wrestle with death began, Warkworth wrote but one
+last letter, uttered but one cry of the heart, and it lay now in
+Julie's bosom.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>A few days passed. Delafield's letters were short and full of
+sadness. Elmira still lived; but any day or hour might see the end.
+As for the father--But the subject was too tragic to be written of,
+even to her. Not to feel, not to realize; there lay the only chance
+of keeping one's own courage, and so of being any help whatever to
+two of the most miserable of human beings.</p>
+<p>At last, rather more than a week after Delafield's departure,
+came two telegrams. One was from Delafield--"Mervyn died this
+morning. Duke's condition causes great anxiety." The other from
+Evelyn Crowborough--"Elmira died this morning. Going down to
+Shropshire to help Jacob."</p>
+<p>Julie threw down the telegrams. A rush of proud tears came to
+her eyes. She swept to the door of her room, opened it, and called
+her maid.</p>
+<p>The maid came, and when she saw the sparkling looks and strained
+bearing of her mistress, wondered what crime she was to be rebuked
+for. Julie merely bade her pack at once, as it was her intention to
+catch the eight o'clock through train at Lausanne that night for
+England.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Twenty hours later the train carrying Julie to London entered
+Victoria Station. On the platform stood the little Duchess,
+impatiently expectant. Julie was clasped in her arms, and had no
+time to wonder at the pallor and distraction of her friend before
+she was hurried into the brougham waiting beyond the train.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Julie!" cried the Duchess, catching the traveller's hands,
+as they drove away. "Julie, darling!"</p>
+<p>Julie turned to her in amazement. The blue eyes fixed upon her
+had no tears, but in them, and in the Duchess's whole aspect, was
+expressed a vivid horror and agitation which struck at Julie's
+heart.</p>
+<p>"What is it?" she said, catching her breath. "What is it?"</p>
+<p>"Julie, I was going to Faircourt this morning. First your
+telegram stopped me. I thought I'd wait and go with you. Then came
+another, from Delafield. The Duke! The poor Duke!"</p>
+<p>Julie's attitude changed unconsciously--instantly.</p>
+<p>"Yes; tell me!"</p>
+<p>"It's in all the papers to-night--on the placards--don't look
+out!" And the Duchess lifted her hand and drew down the blinds of
+the brougham. "He was in a most anxious state yesterday, but they
+thought him calmer at night, and he insisted on being left alone.
+The doctors still kept a watch, but he managed in some mysterious
+way to evade them all, and this morning he was missed. After two
+hours they found him--in the river that runs below the house!"</p>
+<p>There was a silence.</p>
+<p>"And Jacob?" said Julie, hoarsely.</p>
+<p>"That's what I'm so anxious about," exclaimed the Duchess. "Oh,
+I am thankful you've come! You know how Jacob's always felt about
+the Duke and Mervyn--how he's hated the notion of succeeding. And
+Susan, who went down yesterday, telegraphed to me last
+night--before this horror--that he was 'terribly strained and
+overwrought.'"</p>
+<p>"Succeeding?" said Julie, vaguely. Mechanically she had drawn up
+the blind again, and her eyes followed the dingy lines of the
+Vauxhall Bridge Road, till suddenly they turned away from the
+placards outside a small stationer's shop which announced: "Tragic
+death of the Duke of Chudleigh and his son."</p>
+<p>The Duchess looked at her curiously without replying. Julie
+seemed to be grappling with some idea which escaped her, or,
+rather, was presently expelled by one more urgent.</p>
+<p>"Is Jacob ill?" she said, abruptly, looking her companion full
+in the face.</p>
+<p>"I only know what I've told you. Susan says 'strained and
+overwrought.' Oh, it'll be all right when he gets you!"</p>
+<p>Julie made no reply. She sat motionless, and the Duchess,
+stealing another glance at her, must needs, even in this tragic
+turmoil, allow herself the reflection that she was a more delicate
+study in black-and-white, a more refined and accented personality
+than ever.</p>
+<p>"You won't mind," said Evelyn, timidly, after a pause; "but Lady
+Henry is staying with me, and also Sir Wilfrid Bury, who had such a
+bad cold in his lodgings that I went down there a week ago, got the
+doctor's leave, and carried him off there and then. And Mr.
+Montresor's coming in. He particularly wanted, he said, just to
+press your hand. But they sha'n't bother you if you're tired. Our
+train goes at 10.10, and Freddie has got the express stopped for us
+at Westonport--about three in the morning."</p>
+<p>The carriage rolled into Grosvenor Square, and presently stopped
+before Crowborough House. Julie alighted, looked round her at the
+July green of the square, at the brightness of the window-boxes,
+and then at the groom of the chambers who was taking her wraps from
+her--the same man who, in the old days, used to feed Lady Henry's
+dogs with sweet biscuit. It struck her that he was showing her a
+very particular and eager attention.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Meanwhile in the Duchess's drawing--room a little knot of people
+was gathered--Lady Henry, Sir Wilfrid Bury, and Dr. Meredith. Their
+demeanor illustrated both the subduing and the exciting influence
+of great events. Lady Henry was more talkative than usual. Sir
+Wilfrid more silent.</p>
+<p>Lady Henry seemed to have profited by her stay at Torquay. As
+she sat upright in a stiff chair, her hands resting on her stick,
+she presented her characteristic aspect of English solidity,
+crossed by a certain free and foreign animation. She had been
+already wrangling with Sir Wilfrid, and giving her opinion freely
+on the "socialistic" views on rank and property attributed to Jacob
+Delafield. "If <i>he</i> can't digest the cake, that doesn't mean
+it isn't good," had been her last impatient remark, when Sir
+Wilfrid interrupted her.</p>
+<p>"Only a few minutes more," he said, looking at his watch. "Now,
+then, what line do we take? How much is our friend likely to
+know?"</p>
+<p>"Unless she has lost her eyesight--which Evelyn has not
+reported--she will know most of what matters before she has gone a
+hundred yards from the station," said Lady Henry, dryly.</p>
+<p>"Oh, the streets! Yes; but persons are often curiously dazed by
+such a gallop of events."</p>
+<p>"Not Julie Le Breton!"</p>
+<p>"I should like to be informed as to the part you are about to
+play," said Sir Wilfrid, in a lower voice, "that I may play up to
+it. Where are you?"</p>
+<p>Both looked at Meredith, who had walked to a distant window and
+was standing there looking out upon the square. Lady Henry was well
+aware that <i>he</i> had not forgiven her, and, to tell the truth,
+was rather anxious that he should. So she, too, dropped her
+voice.</p>
+<p>"I bow to the institutions of my country," she said, a little
+sparkle in the strong, gray eye.</p>
+<p>"In other words, you forgive a duchess?"</p>
+<p>"I acknowledge the head of the family, and the greater carries
+the less."</p>
+<p>"Suppose Jacob should be unforgiving?"</p>
+<p>"He hasn't the spirit."</p>
+<p>"And she?"</p>
+<p>"Her conscience will be on my side."</p>
+<p>"I thought it was your theory that she had none?"</p>
+<p>"Jacob, let us hope, will have developed some. He has a good
+deal to spare."</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid laughed. "So it is you who will do the
+pardoning?"</p>
+<p>"I shall offer an armed and honorable peace. The Duchess of
+Chudleigh may intrigue and tell lies, if she pleases. I am not
+giving her a hundred a year."</p>
+<p>There was a pause.</p>
+<p>"Why, if I may ask," said Sir Wilfrid, at the end of it, "did
+you quarrel with Jacob? I understand there was a separate
+cause:"</p>
+<p>Lady Henry hesitated.</p>
+<p>"He paid me a debt," she said, at last, and a sudden flush rose
+in her old, blanched cheek.</p>
+<p>"And that annoyed you? You have the oddest code!"</p>
+<p>Lady Henry bit her lip.</p>
+<p>"One does not like one's money thrown in one's face."</p>
+<p>"Most unreasonable of women!"</p>
+<p>"Never mind, Wilfrid. We all have our feelings."</p>
+<p>"Precisely. Well, no doubt Jacob will make peace. As for--Ah,
+here comes Montresor!"</p>
+<p>A visible tremor passed through Lady Henry. The door was thrown
+open, and the footman announced the Minister for War.</p>
+<p>"Her grace, sir, is not yet returned."</p>
+<p>Montresor stumbled into the room, and even with his eye-glasses
+carefully adjusted, did not at once perceive who was in it.</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid went towards him.</p>
+<p>"Ah, Bury! Convalescent, I hope?"</p>
+<p>"Quite. The Duchess has gone to meet Mrs. Delafield."</p>
+<p>"Mrs.--?" Montresor's mouth opened. "But, of course, you
+know?"</p>
+<p>"Oh yes, I know. But one's tongue has to get oiled. You see Lady
+Henry?"</p>
+<p>Montresor started.</p>
+<p>"I am glad to see Lady Henry," he replied, stiffly.</p>
+<p>Lady Henry slowly rose and advanced two steps. She quietly held
+out her hand to him, and, smiling, looked him in the face.</p>
+<p>"Take it. There is no longer any cause of quarrel between us. I
+raise the embargo."</p>
+<p>The Minister took the hand, and shook his head.</p>
+<p>"Ah, but you had no right to impose it," he said, with
+energy.</p>
+<p>"Oh, for goodness sake, meet me half-way," cried Lady Henry, "or
+I shall never hold out!"</p>
+<p>Sir Wilfrid, whose half-embarrassed gaze was bent on the ground,
+looked up and was certain that he saw a gleam of moisture in those
+wrinkled eyes.</p>
+<p>"Why have you held out so long? What does it matter to me
+whether Miss Julie be a duchess or no? That doesn't make up to me
+for all the months you've shut your door on me. And I was always
+given to understand, by-the-way, that it wouldn't matter to
+you."</p>
+<p>"I've had three months at Torquay," said Lady Henry, raising her
+shoulders.</p>
+<p>"I hope it was dull to distraction."</p>
+<p>"It was. And my doctor tells me the more I fret the more gout I
+may expect."</p>
+<p>"So all this is not generosity, but health?"</p>
+<p>"Kiss my hand, sir, and have done with it! You are all avenged.
+At Torquay I had four companions in seven weeks."</p>
+<p>"More power to them!" said Montresor. "Meredith, come here.
+Shall we accept the pleas?"</p>
+<p>Meredith came slowly from the window, his hands behind his
+back.</p>
+<p>"Lady Henry commands and we obey," he said, slowly. "But to-day
+begins a new world--founded in ruin, like the rest of them."</p>
+<p>He raised his fine eyes, in which there was no laughter, rather
+a dreamy intensity. Lady Henry shrank.</p>
+<p>"If you're thinking of Chudleigh," she said, uncertainly, "be
+glad for him. It was release. As for Henry Warkworth--"</p>
+<p>"Ah, poor fellow!" said Montresor, perfunctorily. "Poor
+fellow!"</p>
+<p>He had dropped Lady Henry's hand, but he now recaptured it,
+enclosing the thin, jewelled fingers in his own.</p>
+<p>"Well, well, then it's peace, with all my heart." He stooped and
+lightly kissed the fingers. "And now, when do you expect our
+friend?"</p>
+<p>"At any moment," said Lady Henry.</p>
+<p>She seated herself, and Montresor beside her.</p>
+<p>"I am told," said Montresor, "that this horror will not only
+affect Delafield personally, but that he will regard the dukedom as
+a calamity."</p>
+<p>"Hm!--and you believe it?" said Lady Henry.</p>
+<p>"I try to," was the Minister's laughing reply. "Ah, surely, here
+they are!"</p>
+<p>Meredith turned from the window, to which he had gone back.</p>
+<p>"The carriage has just arrived," he announced, and he stood
+fidgeting, standing first on one foot, then on the other, and
+running his hand through his mane of gray hair. His large features
+were pale, and any close observer would have detected the quiver of
+emotion.</p>
+<p>A sound of voices from the anteroom, the Duchess's light tones
+floating to the top. At the same time a door on the other side of
+the drawing-room opened and the Duke of Crowborough appeared.</p>
+<p>"I think I hear my wife," he said, as he greeted Montresor and
+hurriedly crossed the room.</p>
+<p>There was a rustle of quick steps, and the little Duchess
+entered.</p>
+<p>"Freddie, here is Julie!"</p>
+<p>Behind appeared a tall figure in black. Everybody in the room
+advanced, including Lady Henry, who, however, after a few steps
+stood still behind the others, leaning on her stick.</p>
+<p>Julie looked round the little circle, then at the Duke of
+Crowborough, who had gravely given her his hand. The suppressed
+excitement already in the room clearly communicated itself to her.
+She did not lose her self-command for an instant, but her face
+pleaded.</p>
+<p>"Is it really true? Perhaps there is some mistake?"</p>
+<p>"I fear there can be none," said the Duke, sadly. "Poor
+Chudleigh had been long dead when they found him."</p>
+<p>"Freddie," said the Duchess, interrupting, "I have told Greswell
+we shall want the carriage at half-past nine for Euston. Will that
+do?"</p>
+<p>"Perfectly."</p>
+<p>Greswell, the handsome groom of the chambers, approached
+Julie.</p>
+<p>"Your grace's maid wishes to know whether it is your grace's
+wish that she should go round to Heribert Street before taking the
+luggage to Euston?"</p>
+<p>Julie looked at the man, bewildered. Then a stormy color rushed
+into her cheeks.</p>
+<p>"Does he mean my maid?" she said to the Duke, piteously.</p>
+<p>"Certainly. Will you give your orders?"</p>
+<p>She gave them, and then, turning again to the Duke, she covered
+her eyes with her hands a moment.</p>
+<p>"What does it all mean?" she said, faltering. "It seems as
+though we were all mad."</p>
+<p>"You understand, of course, that Jacob succeeds?" said the Duke,
+not without coldness; and he stood still an instant, gazing at this
+woman, who must now, he supposed, feel herself at the very summit
+of her ambitions.</p>
+<p>Julie drew a long breath. Then she perceived Lady Henry.
+Instantly, impetuously, she crossed the room. But as she reached
+that composed and formidable figure, the old timidity, the old
+fear, seized her. She paused abruptly, but she held out her
+hand.</p>
+<p>Lady Henry took it. The two women stood regarding each other,
+while the other persons in the room instinctively turned away from
+their meeting. Lady Henry's first look was one of curiosity. Then,
+before the indefinable, ennobling change in Julie's face, now full
+of the pale agitation of memory, the eyes of the older woman
+wavered and dropped. But she soon recovered herself.</p>
+<p>"We meet again under very strange circumstances," she said,
+quietly; "though I have long foreseen them. As for our former
+experience, we were in a false relation, and it made fools of us
+both. You and Jacob are now the heads of the family. And if you
+like to make friends with me on this new footing, I am ready. As to
+my behavior, I think it was natural; but if it rankles in your
+mind, I apologize."</p>
+<p>The personal pride of the owner, curbed in its turn by the pride
+of tradition and family, spoke strangely from these words. Julie
+stood trembling, her chest heaving.</p>
+<p>"I, too, regret--and apologize," she said, in a low voice.</p>
+<p>"Then we begin again. But now you must let Evelyn take you to
+rest for an hour or two. I am sorry you have this hurried journey
+to-night."</p>
+<p>Julie pressed her hands to her breast with one of those dramatic
+movements that were natural to her.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I must see Jacob!" she said, under her breath--"I must see
+Jacob!"</p>
+<p>And she turned away, looking vaguely round her. Meredith
+approached.</p>
+<p>"Comfort yourself," he said, very gently, pressing her hand in
+both of his. "It has been a great shock, but when you get there
+he'll be all right."</p>
+<p>"Jacob?"</p>
+<p>Her expression, the piteous note in her voice, awoke in him an
+answering sense of pain. He wondered how it might be between the
+husband and wife. Yet it was borne in upon him, as upon Lady Henry,
+that her marriage, however interpreted, had brought with it
+profound and intimate transformation. A different woman stood
+before him. And when, after a few more words, the Duchess swept
+down upon them, insisting that Julie must rest awhile, Meredith
+stood looking after the retreating figures, filled with the old,
+bitter sense of human separateness, and the fragmentariness of all
+human affections. Then he made his farewells to the Duke and Lady
+Henry, and slipped away. He had turned a page in the book of life;
+and as he walked through Grosvenor Square he applied his mind
+resolutely to one of the political "causes" with which, as a
+powerful and fighting journalist, he was at that moment
+occupied.</p>
+<p>Lady Henry, too, watched Julie's exit from the room.</p>
+<p>"So now she supposes herself in love with Jacob?" she thought,
+with amusement, as she resumed her seat.</p>
+<p>"What if Delafield refuses to be made a duke?" said Sir Wilfrid,
+in her ear.</p>
+<p>"It would be a situation new to the Constitution," said Lady
+Henry, composedly. "I advise you, however, to wait till it
+occurs."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The northern express rushed onward through the night. Rugby,
+Stafford, Crewe had been left behind. The Yorkshire valleys and
+moors began to show themselves in pale ridges and folds under the
+moon. Julie, wakeful in her corner opposite the little, sleeping
+Duchess, was conscious of an interminable rush of images through a
+brain that longed for a few unconscious and forgetful moments. She
+thought of the deferential station-master at Euston; of the fuss
+attending their arrival on the platform; of the arrangements made
+for stopping the express at the Yorkshire Station, where they were
+to alight.</p>
+<p>Faircourt? Was it the great Early-Georgian house of which she
+had heard Jacob speak--the vast pile, half barrack, half palace, in
+which, according to him, no human being could be either happy or at
+home?</p>
+<p>And this was now his--and hers? Again the whirl of thoughts
+swept and danced round her.</p>
+<p>A wild, hill country. In the valleys, the blackness of thick
+trees, the gleam of rivers, the huge, lifeless factories; and
+beyond, the high, silver edges, the sharp shadows of the moors....
+The train slackened, and the little Duchess woke at once.</p>
+<p>"Ten minutes to three. Oh, Julie, here we are!"</p>
+<p>The dawn was just coldly showing as they alighted. Carriages and
+servants were waiting, and various persons whose identity and
+function it was not easy to grasp. One of them, however, at once
+approached Julie with a privileged air, and she perceived that he
+was a doctor.</p>
+<p>"I am very glad that your grace has come," he said, as he raised
+his hat. "The trouble with the Duke is shock, and want of
+sleep."</p>
+<p>Julie looked at him, still bewildered.</p>
+<p>"How long has my husband been ill?"</p>
+<p>He walked on beside her, describing in as few words as possible
+the harrowing days preceding the death of the boy, Delafield's
+attempts to soothe and control the father, the stratagem by which
+the poor Duke had outwitted them all, and the weary hours of search
+through the night, under a drizzling rain, which had resulted,
+about dawn, in the discovery of the Duke's body in one of the
+deeper holes of the river.</p>
+<p>"When the procession returned to the house, your husband"--the
+speaker framed the words uncertainly--"had a long fainting-fit. It
+was probably caused by the exhaustion of the search--many hours
+without food--and many sleepless nights. We kept him in his room
+all day. But towards evening he insisted on getting up. The
+restlessness he shows is itself a sign of shock. I trust, now you
+are here, you may be able to persuade him to spare himself.
+Otherwise the consequences might be grave."</p>
+<p>The drive to the house lay mainly through a vast park, dotted
+with stiff and melancholy woods. The morning was cloudy; even the
+wild roses in the hedges and the daisies in the grass had neither
+gayety nor color. Soon the house appeared--an immense pile of
+stone, with a pillared centre, and wings to east and west, built in
+a hollow, gray and sunless. The mournful blinds drawn closely down
+made of it rather a mausoleum for the dead than a home for the
+living.</p>
+<p>At the approach of the carriage, however, doors were thrown
+open, servants appeared, and on the steps, trembling and
+heavy-eyed, stood Susan Delafield.</p>
+<p>She looked timidly at Julie, and then, as they passed into the
+great central hall, the two kissed each other with tears.</p>
+<p>"He is in his room, waiting for you. The doctors persuaded him
+not to come down. But he is dressed, and reading and writing. We
+don't believe he has slept at all for a week."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"Through there," said Susan Delafield, stepping back. "That is
+the door."</p>
+<br>
+<a name="illus-480.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/illus-480.jpg"><img src=
+"images/illus-480.jpg" width="60%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"SHE FOUND HERSELF KNEELING BESIDE HIM"</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>Julie softly opened it, and closed it behind her. Delafield had
+heard her approach, and was standing by the table, supporting
+himself upon it. His aspect filled Julie with horror. She ran to
+him and threw her arms round him. He sank back into his chair, and
+she found herself kneeling beside him, murmuring to him, while his
+head rested upon her shoulder.</p>
+<p>"Jacob, I am here! Oh, I ought to have been here all through!
+It's terrible--terrible! But, Jacob, you won't suffer so--now I'm
+here--now we're together--now I love you, Jacob?"</p>
+<p>Her voice broke in tears. She put back the hair from his brow,
+kissing him with a tenderness in which there was a yearning and
+lovely humility. Then she drew a little away, waiting for him to
+speak, in an agony.</p>
+<p>But for a time he seemed unable to speak. He feebly released
+himself, as though he could not bear the emotion she offered him,
+and his eyes closed.</p>
+<p>"Jacob, come and lie down!" she said, in terror. "Let me call
+the doctors."</p>
+<p>He shook his head, and a faint pressure from his hand bade her
+sit beside him.</p>
+<p>"I shall be better soon. Give me time. I'll tell you--"</p>
+<p>Then silence again. She sat holding his hand, her eyes fixed
+upon him. Time passed, she knew not how. Susan came into the
+room--a small sitting-room in the east wing--to tell her that the
+neighboring bedroom had been prepared for herself. Julie only
+looked up for an instant with a dumb sign of refusal. A doctor came
+in, and Delafield made a painful effort to take the few spoonfuls
+of food and stimulant pressed upon him. Then he buried his face in
+the side of the arm-chair.</p>
+<p>"Please let us be alone," he said, with a touch of his old
+peremptoriness, and both Susan and the doctor obeyed.</p>
+<p>But it was long before he could collect energy enough to talk.
+When he did, he made an effort to tell her the story of the boy's
+death, and the father's self-destruction. He told it leaning
+forward in his chair, his eyes on the ground, his hands loosely
+joined, his voice broken and labored. Julie listened, gathering
+from his report an impression of horror, tragic and irremediable,
+similar to that which had shaken the balance of his own mind. And
+when he suddenly looked up with the words, "And now <i>I</i> am
+expected to take their place--to profit by their deaths! What
+rightful law of God or man binds me to accept a life and a
+responsibility that I loathe?" Julie drew back as though he had
+struck her. His face, his tone were not his own--there was a
+violence, a threat in them, addressed, as it were, specially to
+<i>her</i>. "If it were not for you," his eyes seemed to say, "I
+could refuse this thing, which will destroy me, soul and body."</p>
+<p>She was silent, her pulses fluttering, and he resumed, speaking
+like one groping his way:</p>
+<p>"I could have done the work, of course--I have done it for five
+years. I could have looked after the estate and the people. But the
+money, the paraphernalia, the hordes of servants, the mummery of
+the life! Why, Julie, should we be forced into it? What
+happiness--I ask you--what happiness can it bring to either of
+us?"</p>
+<p>And again he looked up, and again it seemed to Julie that his
+expression was one of animated hostility and antagonism--antagonism
+to her, as embodying for the moment all the arguments--of
+advantage, custom, law--he was, in his own mind, fighting and
+denying. With a failing heart she felt herself very far from him.
+Was there not also something in his attitude, unconsciously, of
+that old primal antagonism of the man to the woman, of the stronger
+to the weaker, the more spiritual to the more earthy?</p>
+<p>"You think, no doubt," he said, after a pause, "that it is my
+duty to take this thing, even if I <i>could</i> lay it down?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know what I think," she said, hurriedly. "It is very
+strange, of course, what you say. We ought to discuss it
+thoroughly. Let me have a little time."</p>
+<p>He gave an impatient sigh, then suddenly rose.</p>
+<p>"Will you come and look at them?"</p>
+<p>She, too, rose and put her hand in his.</p>
+<p>"Take me where you will."</p>
+<p>"It is not horrible," he said, shading his eyes a moment. "They
+are at peace."</p>
+<p>With a feeble step, leaning on her arm, he guided her through
+the great, darkened house. Julie was dimly aware of wide
+staircases, of galleries and high halls, of the pictures of past
+Delafields looking down upon them. The morning was now far
+advanced. Many persons were at work in the house, but Julie was
+conscious of them only as distant figures that vanished at their
+approach. They walked alone, guarded from all intrusion by the awe
+and sympathy of the unseen human beings around them.</p>
+<p>Delafield opened the closed door.</p>
+<p>The father and son lay together, side by side, the boy's face in
+a very winning repose, which at first sight concealed the traces of
+his long suffering; the father's also--closed eyes and sternly shut
+mouth--suggesting, not the despair which had driven him to his
+death, but, rather, as in sombre triumph, the all-forgetting,
+all-effacing sleep which he had won from death.</p>
+<p>They stood a moment, till Delafield fell on his knees. Julie
+knelt beside him. She prayed for a while; then she wearied, being,
+indeed, worn out with her journey. But Delafield was motionless,
+and it seemed to Julie that he hardly breathed.</p>
+<p>She rose to her feet, and found her eyes for the first time
+flooded with tears. Never for many weeks had she felt so lonely, or
+so utterly unhappy. She would have given anything to forget herself
+in comforting Jacob. But he seemed to have no need of her, no
+thought of her.</p>
+<p>As she vaguely looked round her, she saw that beside the dead
+man was a table holding some violets--the only flowers in the
+room--some photographs, and a few well--worn books. Softly she took
+up one. It was a copy of the <i>Meditations of Marcus Aurelius</i>,
+much noted and underlined. It would have seemed to her sacrilege to
+look too close; but she presently perceived a letter between its
+pages, and in the morning light, which now came strongly into the
+room through a window looking on the garden, she saw plainly that
+it was written on thin, foreign paper, that it was closed, and
+addressed to her husband.</p>
+<p>"Jacob!"</p>
+<p>She touched him softly on the shoulder, alarmed by his long
+immobility.</p>
+<p>He looked up, and it appeared to Julie as though he were shaking
+off with difficulty some abnormal and trancelike state. But he
+rose, looking at her strangely.</p>
+<p>"Jacob, this is yours."</p>
+<p>He took the book abruptly, almost as if she had no right to be
+holding it. Then, as he saw the letter, the color rushed into his
+face. He took it, and after a moment's hesitation walked to the
+window and opened it.</p>
+<p>She saw him waver, and ran to his support. But he put out a hand
+which checked her.</p>
+<p>"It was the last thing he wrote," he said; and then,
+uncertainly, and without reading any but the first words of the
+letter, he put it into his pocket.</p>
+<p>Julie drew back, humiliated. His gesture said that to a secret
+so intimate and sacred he did not propose to admit his wife.</p>
+<p>They went back silently to the room from which they had come.
+Sentence after sentence came to Julie's lips, but it seemed useless
+to say them, and once more, but in a totally new way, she was
+"afraid" of the man beside her.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>She left him shortly after, by his own wish.</p>
+<p>"I will lie down, and you must rest," he said, with
+decision.</p>
+<p>So she bathed and dressed, and presently she allowed the kind,
+fair-haired Susan to give her food, and pour out her own history of
+the death-week which she and Jacob had passed through. But in all
+that was said, Julie noticed that Susan spoke of her brother very
+little, and of his inheritance and present position not at all. And
+once or twice she noticed a wondering or meditative expression in
+the girl's charming eyes as they rested on herself, and realized
+that the sense of mystery, of hushed expectancy, was not confined
+to her own mind.</p>
+<p>When Susan left her at nine o'clock, it was to give a number of
+necessary orders in the house. The inquest was to be held in the
+morning, and the whole day would be filled with arrangements for
+the double funeral. The house would be thronged with officials of
+all sorts. "Poor Jacob!" said the sister, sighing, as she went
+away.</p>
+<p>But the tragic tumult had not yet begun. The house was still
+quiet, and Julie was for the first time alone.</p>
+<p>She drew up the blinds, and stood gazing out upon the park, now
+flooded with light; at the famous Italian garden beneath the
+windows, with its fountains and statues; at the wide lake which
+filled the middle distance; and the hills beyond it, with the
+plantations and avenues which showed the extension of the park as
+far as the eye could see.</p>
+<p>Julie knew very well what it all implied. Her years with Lady
+Henry, in connection with her own hidden sense of birth and family,
+had shown her with sufficient plainness the conditions under which
+the English noble lives. She <i>was</i> actually, at that moment,
+Duchess of Chudleigh; her strong intelligence faced and appreciated
+the fact; the social scope and power implied in those three words
+were all the more vivid to her imagination because of her history
+and up-bringing. She had not grown to maturity <i>inside</i>, like
+Delafield, but as an exile from a life which was yet naturally
+hers--an exile, full, sometimes, of envy, and the passions of
+envy.</p>
+<p>It had no terrors for her--quite the contrary--this high social
+state. Rather, there were moments when her whole nature reached out
+to it, in a proud and confident ambition. Nor had she any mystical
+demurrer to make. The originality which in some ways she richly
+possessed was not concerned in the least with the upsetting of
+class distinctions, and as a Catholic she had been taught loyally
+to accept them.</p>
+<p>The minutes passed away. Julie sank deeper and deeper into
+reverie, her head leaning against the side of the window, her hands
+clasped before her on her black dress. Once or twice she found the
+tears dropping from her eyes, and once or twice she smiled.</p>
+<p>She was not thinking of the tragic circumstances amid which she
+stood. From that short trance of feeling even the piteous figures
+of the dead father and son faded away. Warkworth entered into it,
+but already invested with the passionless and sexless beauty of a
+world where--whether it be to us poetry or reality--"they neither
+marry nor are given in marriage." Her warm and living thoughts
+spent themselves on one theme only--the redressing of a spiritual
+balance. She was no longer a beggar to her husband; she had the
+wherewithal to give. She had been the mere recipient, burdened with
+debts beyond her paying; now--</p>
+<p>And then it was that her smiles came--tremluous, fugitive,
+exultant.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>A bell rang in the long corridor, and the slight sound recalled
+her to life and action. She walked towards the door which separated
+her from the sitting-room where she had left her husband, and
+opened it without knocking.</p>
+<p>Delafield was sitting at a writing-table in the window. He had
+apparently been writing; but she found him in a moment of pause,
+playing absently with the pen he still held.</p>
+<p>As she entered he looked up, and it seemed to her that his
+aspect and his mood had changed. Her sudden and indefinable sense
+of this made it easier for her to hasten to him, and to hold out
+her hands to him.</p>
+<p>"Jacob, you asked me a question just now, and I begged you to
+give me time. But I am here to answer it. If it would be to your
+happiness to refuse the dukedom, refuse it. I will not stand in
+your way, and I will never reproach you. I suppose"--she made
+herself smile upon him--"there are ways of doing such a strange
+thing. You will be much criticised, perhaps much blamed. But if it
+seems to you right, do it. I'll just stand by you and help you.
+Whatever makes you happy shall make me happy, if only--"</p>
+<p>Delafield had risen impetuously and held her by both hands. His
+breast heaved, and the hurrying of her own breath would now hardly
+let her speak.</p>
+<p>"If only what?" he said, hoarsely.</p>
+<p>She raised her eyes.</p>
+<p>"If only, <i>mon ami</i>"--she disengaged one hand and laid it
+gently on his shoulder--"you will give me your trust, and"--her
+voice dropped--"your love!"</p>
+<p>They gazed at each other. Between them, around them hovered
+thoughts of the past--of Warkworth, of the gray Channel waves, of
+the spiritual relation which had grown up between them in
+Switzerland, mingled with the consciousness of this new,
+incalculable present, and of the growth and change in
+themselves.</p>
+<p>"You'd give it all up?" said Delafield, gently, still holding
+her at arm's-length.</p>
+<p>"Yes," she nodded to him, with a smile.</p>
+<p>"For me? For my sake?"</p>
+<p>She smiled again. He drew a long breath, and turning to the
+table behind him, took up a letter which was lying there.</p>
+<p>"I want you to read that," he said, holding it out to her.</p>
+<p>She drew back, with a little, involuntary frown.</p>
+<p>He understood.</p>
+<p>"Dearest," he cried, pressing her hand passionately, "I have
+been in the grip of all the powers of death! Read it--be good to
+me!"</p>
+<p>Standing beside him, with his arm round her, she read the
+melancholy Duke's last words:</p>
+<p>/# "My Dear Jacob,--I leave you a heavy task, which I know well
+is, in your eyes, a mere burden. But, for my sake, accept it. The
+man who runs away has small right to counsel courage. But you know
+what my struggle has been. You'll judge me mercifully, if no one
+else does. There is in you, too, the little, bitter drop that
+spoils us all; but you won't be alone. You have your wife, and you
+love her. Take my place here, care for our people, speak of us
+sometimes to your children, and pray for us. I bless you, dear
+fellow. The only moments of comfort I have ever known this last
+year have come from you. I would live on if I could, but I
+must--<i>must</i> have sleep." #/</p>
+<p>Julie dropped the paper. She turned to look at her husband.</p>
+<p>"Since I read that," he said, in a low voice, "I have been
+sitting here alone--or, rather, it is my belief that I have not
+been alone. But"--he hesitated--"it is very difficult for me to
+speak of that--even to you. At any rate, I have felt the touch of
+discipline, of command. My poor cousin deserted. I, it seems"--he
+drew a long and painful breath--"must keep to the ranks."</p>
+<p>"Let us discuss it," said Julie; and sitting down, hand in hand,
+they talked quietly and gravely.</p>
+<p>Suddenly, Delafield turned to her with renewed emotion.</p>
+<p>"I feel already the energy, the honorable ambition you will
+bring to it. But still, you'd have given it up, Julie? You'd have
+given it up?"</p>
+<p>Julie chose her words.</p>
+<p>"Yes. But now that we are to keep it, will you hate me if, some
+day--when we are less sad--I get pleasure from it? I sha'n't be
+able to help it. When we were at La Verna, I felt that you ought to
+have been born in the thirteenth century, that you were really
+meant to wed poverty and follow St. Francis. But now you have got
+to be horribly, hopelessly rich. And I, all the time, am a
+worldling, and a modern. What you'll suffer from, I shall
+perhaps--enjoy."</p>
+<p>The word fell harshly on the darkened room. Delafield shivered,
+as though he felt the overshadowing dead. Julie impetuously took
+his hand.</p>
+<p>"It will be my part to be a worldling--for your sake," she said,
+her breath wavering. Their eyes met. From her face shone a
+revelation, a beauty that enwrapped them both. Delafield fell on
+his knees beside her, and laid his head upon her breast. The
+exquisite gesture with which she folded her arms about him told her
+inmost thought. At last he needed her, and the dear knowledge
+filled and tamed her heart.</p>
+<br>
+<p>THE END</p>
+<br>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Lady Rose's Daughter, by Mrs. Humphry Ward
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lady Rose's Daughter, by Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lady Rose's Daughter
+
+Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
+Release Date: October 18, 2004 [EBook #13782]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY ROSE'S DAUGHTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: See page 122
+"AS THOUGH SHE LISTENED STILL TO WORDS IN HER EARS"]
+
+Lady Rose's Daughter
+
+A Novel
+
+BY
+MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
+Author of "Eleanor" "Robert Elsmere" etc. etc.
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY
+
+1903
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATION
+"AS THOUGH SHE LISTENED STILL TO WORDS IN HER EARS" . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+"LADY HENRY LISTENED EAGERLY" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Facing p_. 30
+
+"'INDEED I WILL!' CRIED SIR WILFRID, AND THEY WALKED ON". . . . . . .   52
+
+"LADY HENRY GASPED. SHE FELL BACK INTO HER CHAIR" . . . . . . . . . .  100
+
+"HE ENTERED UPON A MERRY SCENE" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  242
+
+"'FOR MY ROSE'S CHILD,' HE SAID, GENTLY". . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  254
+
+"HER HANDS CLASPED IN FRONT OF HER" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  356
+
+"SHE FOUND HERSELF KNEELING BESIDE HIM" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  480
+
+
+
+
+LADY ROSE'S DAUGHTER
+
+I
+
+"Hullo! No!--Yes!--upon my soul, it _is_ Jacob! Why, Delafield, my dear
+fellow, how are you?"
+
+So saying--on a February evening a good many years ago--an elderly
+gentleman in evening dress flung himself out of his cab, which had just
+stopped before a house in Bruton Street, and hastily went to meet a
+young man who was at the same moment stepping out of another hansom a
+little farther down the pavement.
+
+The pleasure in the older man's voice rang clear, and the younger met
+him with an equal cordiality, expressed perhaps through a manner more
+leisurely and restrained.
+
+"So you _are_ home, Sir Wilfrid? You were announced, I saw. But I
+thought Paris would have detained you a bit."
+
+"Paris? Not I! Half the people I ever knew there are dead, and the rest
+are uncivil. Well, and how are you getting on? Making your fortune, eh?"
+
+And, slipping his arm inside the young man's, the speaker walked back
+with him, along a line of carriages, towards a house which showed a
+group of footmen at its open door. Jacob Delafield smiled.
+
+"The business of a land agent seems to be to spend some one else's--as
+far as I've yet gone."
+
+"Land agent! I thought you were at the bar?"
+
+"I was, but the briefs didn't come in. My cousin offered me the care of
+his Essex estates. I like the country--always have. So I thought I'd
+better accept."
+
+"What--the Duke? Lucky fellow! A regular income, and no anxieties. I
+expect you're pretty well paid?"
+
+"Oh, I'm not badly paid," replied the young man, tranquilly. "Of course
+you're going to Lady Henry's?"
+
+"Of course. Here we are."
+
+The older man paused outside the line of servants waiting at the door,
+and spoke in a lower tone. "How is she? Failing at all?"
+
+Jacob Delafield hesitated. "She's grown very blind--and perhaps rather
+more infirm, generally. But she is at home, as usual--every evening for
+a few people, and for a good many on Wednesdays."
+
+"Is she still alone--or is there any relation who looks after her?"
+
+"Relation? No. She detests them all."
+
+"Except you?"
+
+Delafield raised his shoulders, without an answering smile. "Yes, she is
+good enough to except me. You're one of her trustees, aren't you?"
+
+"At present, the only one. But while I have been in Persia the lawyers
+have done all that was necessary. Lady Henry herself never writes a
+letter she can help. I really have heard next to nothing about her for
+more than a year. This morning I arrived from Paris--sent round to ask
+if she would be at home--and here I am."
+
+"Ah!" said Delafield, looking down. "Well, there is a lady who has been
+with her, now, for more than two years--"
+
+"Ah, yes, yes, I remember. Old Lady Seathwaite told me--last year.
+Mademoiselle Le Breton--isn't that her name? What--she reads to her, and
+writes letters for her--that kind of thing?"
+
+"Yes--that kind of thing," said the other, after a moment's hesitation.
+"Wasn't that a spot of rain? Shall I charge these gentry?"
+
+And he led the way through the line of footmen, which, however, was not
+of the usual Mayfair density. For the party within was not a "crush."
+The hostess who had collected it was of opinion that the chief object of
+your house is not to entice the mob, but to keep it out. The two men
+mounted the stairs together.
+
+"What a charming house!" said the elder, looking round him. "I remember
+when your uncle rebuilt it. And before that, I remember his mother, the
+old Duchess here, with her swarm of parsons. Upon my word, London tastes
+good--after Teheran!"
+
+And the speaker threw back his fair, grizzled head, regarding the
+lights, the house, the guests, with the air of a sensitive dog on a
+familiar scent.
+
+"Ah, you're fresh home," said Delafield, laughing. "But let's just try
+to keep you here--"
+
+"My dear fellow, who is that at the top of the stairs?"
+
+The old diplomat paused. In front of the pair some half a dozen guests
+were ascending, and as many coming down. At the top stood a tall lady in
+black, receiving and dismissing.
+
+Delafield looked up.
+
+"That is Mademoiselle Le Breton," he said, quietly.
+
+"She receives?"
+
+"She distributes the guests. Lady Henry generally establishes herself in
+the back drawing-room. It doesn't do for her to see too many people at
+once. Mademoiselle arranges it."
+
+"Lady Henry must indeed be a good deal more helpless that I remember
+her," murmured Sir Wilfrid, in some astonishment.
+
+"She is, physically. Oh, no doubt of it! Otherwise you won't find much
+change. Shall I introduce you?"
+
+They were approaching a woman whose tall slenderness, combined with a
+remarkable physiognomy, arrested the old man's attention. She was not
+handsome--that, surely, was his first impression? The cheek-bones were
+too evident, the chin and mouth too strong. And yet the fine pallor of
+the skin, the subtle black-and-white, in which, so to speak, the head
+and face were drawn, the life, the animation of the whole--were these
+not beauty, or more than beauty? As for the eyes, the carriage of the
+head, the rich magnificence of hair, arranged with an artful
+eighteenth-century freedom, as Madame Vigee Le Brun might have worn
+it--with the second glance the effect of them was such that Sir Wilfrid
+could not cease from looking at the lady they adorned. It was an effect
+as of something over-living, over-brilliant--an animation, an intensity,
+so strong that, at first beholding, a by-stander could scarcely tell
+whether it pleased him or no.
+
+"Mademoiselle Le Breton--Sir Wilfrid Bury," said Jacob Delafield,
+introducing them.
+
+"_Is_ she French?" thought the old diplomat, puzzled. "And--have I ever
+seen her before?"
+
+"Lady Henry will be so glad!" said a low, agreeable voice. "You are one
+of the old friends, aren't you? I have often heard her talk of you."
+
+"You are very good. Certainly, I am an old friend--a connection also."
+There was the slightest touch of stiffness in Sir Wilfrid's tone, of
+which the next moment he was ashamed. "I am very sorry to hear that Lady
+Henry has grown so much more helpless since I left England."
+
+"She has to be careful of fatigue. Two or three people go in to see her
+at a time. She enjoys them more so."
+
+"In my opinion," said Delafield, "one more device of milady's for
+getting precisely what she wants."
+
+The young man's gay undertone, together with the look which passed
+between him and Mademoiselle Le Breton, added to Sir Wilfrid's stifled
+feeling of surprise.
+
+"You'll tell her, Jacob, that I'm here?" He turned abruptly to the young
+man.
+
+"Certainly--when mademoiselle allows me. Ah, here comes the Duchess!"
+said Delafield, in another voice.
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton, who had moved a few steps away from the
+stair-head with Sir Wilfrid Bury, turned hastily. A slight, small woman,
+delicately fair and sparkling with diamonds, was coming up the
+stairs alone.
+
+"My dear," said the new-comer, holding out her hands eagerly to
+Mademoiselle Le Breton, "I felt I must just run in and have a look at
+you. But Freddie says that I've got to meet him at that tiresome Foreign
+Office! So I can only stay ten minutes. How are you?"--then, in a lower
+voice, almost a whisper, which, however, reached Sir Wilfrid Bury's
+ears--"worried to death?"
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton raised eyes and shoulders for a moment, then,
+smiling, put her finger to her lip.
+
+"You're coming to me to-morrow afternoon?" said the Duchess, in the same
+half-whisper.
+
+"I don't think I can get away."
+
+"Nonsense! My dear, you must have some air and exercise! Jacob, will you
+see she comes?"
+
+"Oh, I'm no good," said that young man, turning away. "Duchess, you
+remember Sir Wilfrid Bury?"
+
+"She would be an unnatural goddaughter if she didn't," said that
+gentleman, smiling. "She may be your cousin, but I knew her before
+you did."
+
+The young Duchess turned with a start.
+
+"Sir Wilfrid! A sight for sair een. When did you get back?"
+
+She put her slim hands into both of his, and showered upon him all
+proper surprise and the greetings due to her father's oldest friend.
+Voice, gesture, words--all were equally amiable, well trained, and
+perfunctory--Sir Wilfrid was well aware of it. He was possessed of a
+fine, straw-colored mustache, and long eyelashes of the same color. Both
+eyelashes and mustache made a screen behind which, as was well known,
+their owner observed the world to remarkably good purpose. He perceived
+the difference at once when the Duchess, having done her social and
+family duty, left him to return to Mademoiselle Le Breton.
+
+"It _was_ such a bore you couldn't come this afternoon! I wanted you to
+see the babe dance--she's _too_ great a duck! And that Canadian girl
+came to sing. The voice is magnificent--but she has some tiresome
+tricks!--and _I_ didn't know what to say to her. As to the other music
+on the 16th--I say, can't we find a corner somewhere?" And the Duchess
+looked round the beautiful drawing-room, which she and her companions
+had just entered, with a dissatisfied air.
+
+"Lady Henry, you'll remember, doesn't like corners," said Mademoiselle
+Le Breton, smiling. Her tone, delicately free and allusive, once more
+drew Sir Wilfrid's curious eyes to her, and he caught also the impatient
+gesture with which the Duchess received the remark.
+
+"Ah, that's all right!" said Mademoiselle Le Breton, suddenly, turning
+round to himself. "Here is Mr. Montresor--going on, too, I suppose, to
+the Foreign Office. Now there'll be some chance of getting at
+Lady Henry."
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked down the drawing-room, to see the famous War Minister
+coming slowly through the well-filled but not crowded room, stopping now
+and then to exchange a greeting or a farewell, and much hampered, as it
+seemed, in so doing, by a pronounced and disfiguring short-sight. He was
+a strongly built man of more than middle height. His iron-gray hair,
+deeply carved features, and cavernous black eyes gave him the air of
+power that his reputation demanded. On the other hand, his difficulty of
+eyesight, combined with the marked stoop of overwork, produced a
+qualifying impression--as of power teased and fettered, a Samson among
+the Philistines.
+
+"My dear lady, good-night. I must go and fight with wild beasts in
+Whitehall--worse luck! Ah, Duchess! All very well--but you can't
+shirk either!"
+
+So saying, Mr. Montresor shook hands with Mademoiselle Le Breton and
+smiled upon the Duchess--both actions betraying precisely the same
+degree of playful intimacy.
+
+"How did you find Lady Henry?" said Mademoiselle Le Breton, in a lowered
+voice.
+
+"Very well, but very cross. She scolds me perpetually--I haven't got a
+skin left. Ah, Sir Wilfrid!--_very_ glad to see you! When did you
+arrive? I thought I might perhaps find you at the Foreign Office."
+
+"I'm going on there presently," said Sir Wilfrid.
+
+"Ah, but that's no good. Dine with me to-morrow night?--if you are free?
+Excellent!--that's arranged. Meanwhile--send him in, mademoiselle--send
+him in! He's fresh--let him take his turn." And the Minister, grinning,
+pointed backward over his shoulder towards an inner drawing-room, where
+the form of an old lady, seated in a wheeled invalid-chair between two
+other persons, could be just dimly seen.
+
+"When the Bishop goes," said Mademoiselle Le Breton, with a laughing
+shake of the head. "But I told him not to stay long."
+
+"He won't want to. Lady Henry pays no more attention to his cloth than
+to my gray hairs. The rating she has just given me for my speech of last
+night! Well, good-night, dear lady--good-night. You _are_ better,
+I think?"
+
+Mr. Montresor threw a look of scrutiny no less friendly than earnest at
+the lady to whom he was speaking; and immediately afterwards Sir
+Wilfrid, who was wedged in by an entering group of people, caught the
+murmured words:
+
+"Consult me when you want me--at any time."
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton raised her beautiful eyes to the speaker in a
+mute gratitude.
+
+"And five minutes ago I thought her plain!" said Sir Wilfrid to himself
+as he moved away. "Upon my word, for a _dame de compagnie_ that young
+woman is at her ease! But where the deuce have I seen her, or her
+double, before?"
+
+He paused to look round the room a moment, before yielding himself to
+one of the many possible conversations which, as he saw, it contained
+for him. It was a stately panelled room of the last century, furnished
+with that sure instinct both for comfort and beauty which a small
+minority of English rich people have always possessed. Two glorious
+Gainsboroughs, clad in the subtlest brilliance of pearly white and
+shimmering blue, hung on either side of the square opening leading to
+the inner room. The fair, clouded head of a girl, by Romney, looked down
+from the panelling above the hearth. A gowned abbe, by Vandyck, made the
+centre of another wall, facing the Gainsboroughs. The pictures were all
+famous, and had been associated for generations with the Delafield name.
+Beneath them the carpets were covered by fine eighteenth-century
+furniture, much of it of a florid Italian type subdued to a delicate and
+faded beauty by time and use. The room was cleverly broken into various
+circles and centres for conversation; the chairs were many and
+comfortable; flowers sheltered tete-a-tetes or made a setting for
+beautiful faces; the lamps were soft, the air warm and light. A cheerful
+hum of voices rose, as of talk enjoyed for talking's sake; and a general
+effect of intimacy, or gayety, of an unfeigned social pleasure, seemed
+to issue from the charming scene and communicate itself to the onlooker.
+
+And for a few moments, before he was discovered and tumultuously annexed
+by a neighboring group, Sir Wilfrid watched the progress of Mademoiselle
+Le Breton through the room, with the young Duchess in her wake. Wherever
+she moved she was met with smiles, deference, and eager attention. Here
+and there she made an introduction, she redistributed a group, she moved
+a chair. It was evident that her eye was everywhere, that she knew every
+one; her rule appeared to be at once absolute and welcome. Presently,
+when she herself accepted a seat, she became, as Sir Wilfrid perceived
+in the intervals of his own conversation, the leader of the most
+animated circle in the room. The Duchess, with one delicate arm
+stretched along the back of Mademoiselle Le Breton's chair, laughed and
+chattered; two young girls in virginal white placed themselves on big
+gilt footstools at her feet; man after man joined the group that stood
+or sat around her; and in the centre of it, the brilliance of her black
+head, sharply seen against a background of rose brocade, the grace of
+her tall form, which was thin almost to emaciation, the expressiveness
+of her strange features, the animation of her gestures, the sweetness of
+her voice, drew the eyes and ears of half the room to Lady Henry's
+"companion."
+
+Presently there was a movement in the distance. A man in knee-breeches
+and silver-buckled shoes emerged from the back drawing-room.
+Mademoiselle Le Breton rose at once and went to meet him.
+
+"The Bishop has had a long innings," said an old general to Sir Wilfrid
+Bury. "And here is Mademoiselle Julie coming for you."
+
+Sir Wilfrid rose, in obedience to a smiling sign from the lady thus
+described, and followed her floating black draperies towards the
+farther room.
+
+"Who are those two persons with Lady Henry?" he asked of his guide, as
+they approached the _penetralia_ where reigned the mistress of the
+house. "Ah, I see!--one is Dr. Meredith--but the other?"
+
+"The other is Captain Warkworth," said Mademoiselle Le Breton. "Do you
+know him?"
+
+"Warkworth--Warkworth? Ah--of course--the man who distinguished himself
+in the Mahsud expedition. But why is he home again so soon?"
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton smiled uncertainly.
+
+"I think he was invalided home," she said, with that manner, at once
+restrained and gracious, that Sir Wilfrid had already observed in her.
+It was the manner of some one who _counted_; and--through all outward
+modesty--knew it.
+
+"He wants something out of the ministry. I remember the man," was Sir
+Wilfrid's unspoken comment.
+
+But they had entered the inner room. Lady Henry looked round. Over her
+wrinkled face, now parchment-white, there shone a ray of
+pleasure--sudden, vehement, and unfeigned.
+
+"Sir Wilfrid!"
+
+She made a movement as though to rise from her chair, which was checked
+by his gesture and her helplessness.
+
+"Well, this is good fortune," she said, as she put both her hands into
+both of his. "This morning, as I was dressing, I had a feeling that
+something agreeable was going to happen at last--and then your note
+came. Sit down there. You know Dr. Meredith. He's as quarrelsome as
+ever. Captain Warkworth--Sir Wilfrid Bury."
+
+The square-headed, spectacled journalist addressed as Dr. Meredith
+greeted the new-comer with the quiet cordiality of one for whom the day
+holds normally so many events that it is impossible to make much of any
+one of them. And the man on the farther side of Lady Henry rose and
+bowed. He was handsome, and slenderly built. The touch of impetuosity in
+his movement, and the careless ease with which he carried his curly
+head, somehow surprised Sir Wilfrid. He had expected another sort
+of person.
+
+"I will give you my chair," said the Captain, pleasantly. "I have had
+more than my turn."
+
+"Shall I bring in the Duchess?" said Mademoiselle Le Breton, in a low
+tone, as she stooped over the back of Lady Henry's chair.
+
+That lady turned abruptly to the speaker.
+
+"Let her do precisely as she pleases," said a voice, sharp, lowered
+also, but imperious, like the drawing of a sword. "If she wants me, she
+knows where I am."
+
+"She would be so sorry--"
+
+"Ne jouez pas la comedie, ma chere! Where is Jacob?"
+
+"In the other room. Shall I tell him you want him?"
+
+"I will send for him when it suits me. Meanwhile, as I particularly
+desired you to let me know when he arrived--"
+
+"He has only been here twenty minutes," murmured Mademoiselle Le Breton.
+"I thought while the Bishop was here you would not like to be
+disturbed--"
+
+"You thought!" The speaker raised her shoulders fiercely. "Comme
+toujours, vous vous etes trop bien amusee pour vous souvenir de mes
+instructions--voila la verite! Dr. Meredith," the whole imperious form
+swung round again towards the journalist, "unless you forbid me, I shall
+tell Sir Wilfrid who it was reviewed his book for you."
+
+"Oh, good Heavens! I forbid you with all the energy of which I am
+capable," said the startled journalist, raising appealing hands, while
+Lady Henry, delighted with the effect produced by her sudden shaft, sank
+back in her chair and grimly smiled.
+
+Meanwhile Sir Wilfrid Bury's attention was still held by Mademoiselle Le
+Breton. In the conversation between her and Lady Henry he had noticed an
+extraordinary change of manner on the part of the younger lady. Her
+ease, her grace had disappeared. Her tone was humble, her manner
+quivering with nervous anxiety. And now, as she stood a moment behind
+Lady Henry's chair, one trembling hand steadying the other, Sir Wilfrid
+was suddenly aware of yet another impression. Lady Henry had treated her
+companion with a contemptuous and haughty ill-humor. Face to face with
+her mistress, Mademoiselle Le Breton had borne it with submission,
+almost with servility. But now, as she stood silent behind the blind old
+lady who had flouted her, her wonderfully expressive face, her delicate
+frame, spoke for her with an energy not to be mistaken. Her dark eyes
+blazed. She stood for anger; she breathed humiliation.
+
+"A dangerous woman, and an extraordinary situation," so ran his thought,
+while aloud he was talking Central Asian politics and the latest Simla
+gossip to his two companions.
+
+Meanwhile, Captain Warkworth and Mademoiselle Le Breton returned
+together to the larger drawing-room, and before long Dr. Meredith took
+his leave. Lady Henry and her old friend were left alone.
+
+"I am sorry to hear that your sight troubles you more than of old," said
+Sir Wilfrid, drawing his chair a little nearer to her.
+
+Lady Henry gave an impatient sigh. "Everything troubles me more than of
+old. There is one disease from which no one recovers, my dear Wilfrid,
+and it has long since fastened upon me."
+
+"You mean old age? Oh, you are not so much to be pitied for that," said
+Sir Wilfrid, smiling. "Many people would exchange their youth for
+your old age."
+
+"Then the world contains more fools than even I give it credit for!"
+said Lady Henry, with energy. "Why should any one exchange with me--a
+poor, blind, gouty old creature, with no chick or child to care whether
+she lives or dies?"
+
+"Ah, well, that's a misfortune--I won't deny that," said Sir Wilfrid,
+kindly. "But I come home after three years. I find your house as
+thronged as ever, in the old way. I see half the most distinguished
+people in London in your drawing-room. It is sad that you can no longer
+receive them as you used to do: but here you sit like a queen, and
+people fight for their turn with you."
+
+Lady Henry did not smile. She laid one of her wrinkled hands upon his
+arm.
+
+"Is there any one else within hearing?" she said, in a quick undertone.
+Sir Wilfrid was touched by the vague helplessness of her gesture, as she
+looked round her.
+
+"No one--we are quite alone."
+
+"They are not here for _me_--those people," she said, quivering, with a
+motion of her hand towards the large drawing-room.
+
+"My dear friend, what do you mean?"
+
+"They are here--come closer, I don't want to be overheard--for a
+_woman_--whom I took in, in a moment of lunacy--who is now robbing me of
+my best friends and supplanting me in my own house."
+
+The pallor of the old face had lost all its waxen dignity. The lowered
+voice hissed in his ear. Sir Wilfrid, startled and repelled, hesitated
+for his reply. Meanwhile, Lady Henry, who could not see it, seemed at
+once to divine the change in his expression.
+
+"Oh, I suppose you think I'm mad," she said, impatiently, "or
+ridiculous. Well, see for yourself, judge for yourself. In fact, I have
+been looking, hungering, for your return. You have helped me through
+emergencies before now. And I am in that state at present that I trust
+no one, talk to no one, except of _banalites_. But I should be greatly
+obliged if _you_ would come and listen to me, and, what is more, advise
+me some day."
+
+"Most gladly," said Sir Wilfrid, embarrassed; then, after a pause, "Who
+is this lady I find installed here?"
+
+Lady Henry hesitated, then shut her strong mouth on the temptation to
+speak.
+
+"It is not a story for to-night," she said; "and it would upset me. But,
+when you first saw her, how did she strike you?"
+
+"I saw at once," said her companion after a pause, "that you had caught
+a personality."
+
+"A personality!" Lady Henry gave an angry laugh. "That's one way of
+putting it. But physically--did she remind you of no one?"
+
+Sir Wilfrid pondered a moment.
+
+"Yes. Her face haunted me, when I first saw it. But--no; no, I can't put
+any names."
+
+Lady Henry gave a little snort of disappointment.
+
+"Well, think. You knew her mother quite well. You have known her
+grandfather all your life. If you're going on to the Foreign Office, as
+I suppose you are, you'll probably see him to-night. She is uncannily
+like him. As to her father, I don't know--but he was a rolling-stone of
+a creature; you very likely came across him."
+
+"I knew her mother and her father?" said Sir Wilfrid, astonished and
+pondering.
+
+"They had no right to be her mother and her father," said Lady Henry,
+with grimness.
+
+"Ah! So if one does guess--"
+
+"You'll please hold your tongue."
+
+"But at present I'm completely mystified," said Sir Wilfrid.
+
+"Perhaps it'll come to you later. You've a good memory generally for
+such things. Anyway, I can't tell you anything now. But when'll you come
+again? To-morrow--luncheon? I really want you."
+
+"Would you be alone?"
+
+"Certainly. _That_, at least, I can still do--lunch as I please, and
+with whom I please. Who is this coming in? Ah, you needn't tell me."
+
+The old lady turned herself towards the entrance, with a stiffening of
+the whole frame, an instinctive and passionate dignity in her whole
+aspect, which struck a thrill through her companion.
+
+The little Duchess approached, amid a flutter of satin and lace,
+heralded by the scent of the Parma violets she wore in profusion at her
+breast and waist. Her eye glanced uncertainly, and she approached with
+daintiness, like one stepping on mined ground.
+
+"Aunt Flora, I must have just a minute."
+
+"I know no reason against your having ten, if you want them," said Lady
+Henry, as she held-out three fingers to the new-comer. "You promised
+yesterday to come and give me a full account of the Devonshire House
+ball. But it doesn't matter--and you have forgotten."
+
+"No, indeed, I haven't," said the Duchess, embarrassed. "But you seemed
+so well employed to-night, with other people. And now--"
+
+"Now you are going on," said Lady Henry, with a most unfriendly suavity.
+
+"Freddie says I must," said the other, in the attitude of a protesting
+child.
+
+"_Alors_!" said Lady Henry, lifting her hand. "We all know how obedient
+you are. Good-night!"
+
+The Duchess flushed. She just touched her aunt's hand, and then, turning
+an indignant face on Sir Wilfrid, she bade him farewell with an air
+which seemed to him intended to avenge upon his neutral person the
+treatment which, from Lady Henry, even so spoiled a child of fortune as
+herself could not resent.
+
+Twenty minutes later, Sir Wilfrid entered the first big room of the
+Foreign Office party. He looked round him with a revival of the
+exhilaration he had felt on Lady Henry's staircase, enjoying, after his
+five years in Teheran, after his long homeward journey by desert and
+sea, even the common trivialities of the scene--the lights, the gilding,
+the sparkle of jewels, the scarlet of the uniforms, the noise and
+movement of the well-dressed crowd. Then, after this first physical
+thrill, began the second stage of pleasure--the recognitions and the
+greetings, after long absence, which show a man where he stands in the
+great world, which sum up his past and forecast his future. Sir Wilfrid
+had no reason to complain. Cabinet ministers and great ladies, members
+of Parliament and the permanent officials who govern but do not rule,
+soldiers, journalists, barristers--were all glad, it seemed, to grasp
+him by the hand. He had returned with a record of difficult service
+brilliantly done, and the English world rewarded him in its
+accustomed ways.
+
+It was towards one o'clock that he found himself in a crowd pressing
+towards the staircase in the wake of some departing royalties. A tall
+man in front turned round to look for some ladies behind him from whom
+he had been separated in the crush. Sir Wilfrid recognized old Lord
+Lackington, the veteran of marvellous youth, painter, poet, and sailor,
+who as a gay naval lieutenant had entertained Byron in the AEgean; whose
+fame as one of the raciest of naval reformers was in all the newspapers;
+whose personality was still, at seventy-five, charming to most women and
+challenging to most men.
+
+As the old man turned, he was still smiling, as though in unison with
+something which had just been said to him; and his black eyes under his
+singularly white hair searched the crowd with the animation of a lad of
+twenty. Through the energy of his aspect the flame of life still
+burned, as the evening sun through a fine sky. The face had a faulty yet
+most arresting brilliance. The mouth was disagreeable, the chin common.
+But the general effect was still magnificent.
+
+Sir Wilfrid started. He recalled the drawing-room in Bruton Street; the
+form and face of Mademoiselle Le Breton; the sentences by which Lady
+Henry had tried to put him on the track. His mind ran over past years,
+and pieced together the recollections of a long-past scandal. "Of
+course! _Of course!_" he said to himself, not without excitement. "She
+is not like her mother, but she has all the typical points of her
+mother's race."
+
+
+
+II
+
+It was a cold, clear morning in February, with a little pale sunshine
+playing on the bare trees of the Park. Sir Wilfrid, walking southward
+from the Marble Arch to his luncheon with Lady Henry, was gladly
+conscious of the warmth of his fur-collared coat, though none the less
+ready to envy careless youth as it crossed his path now and then,
+great-coatless and ruddy, courting the keen air.
+
+Just as he was about to make his exit towards Mount Street he became
+aware of two persons walking southward like himself, but on the other
+side of the roadway. He soon identified Captain Warkworth in the slim,
+soldierly figure of the man. And the lady? There also, with the help of
+his glasses, he was soon informed. Her trim, black hat and her black
+cloth costume seemed to him to have a becoming and fashionable
+simplicity; and she moved in morning dress, with the same ease and
+freedom that had distinguished her in Lady Henry's drawing-room the
+night before.
+
+He asked himself whether he should interrupt Mademoiselle Le Breton with
+a view to escorting her to Bruton Street. He understood, indeed, that he
+and Lady Henry were to be alone at luncheon; Mademoiselle Julie had, no
+doubt, her own quarters and attendants. But she seemed to be on her way
+home. An opportunity for some perhaps exploratory conversation with her
+before he found himself face to face with Lady Henry seemed to him not
+undesirable.
+
+But he quickly decided to walk on. Mademoiselle Le Breton and Captain
+Warkworth paused in their walk, about no doubt to say good-bye, but,
+very clearly, loath to say it. They were, indeed, in earnest
+conversation. The Captain spoke with eagerness; Mademoiselle Julie, with
+downcast eyes, smiled and listened.
+
+"Is the fellow making love to her?" thought the old man, in some
+astonishment, as he turned away. "Hardly the place for it either, one
+would suppose."
+
+He vaguely thought that he would both sound and warn Lady Henry. Warn
+her of what? He happened on the way home to have been thrown with a
+couple of Indian officers whose personal opinion of Harry Warkworth was
+not a very high one, in spite of the brilliant distinction which the
+young man had earned for himself in the Afridi campaign just closed. But
+how was he to hand that sort of thing on to Lady Henry?--and because he
+happened to have seen her lady companion and Harry Warkworth together?
+No doubt Mademoiselle Julie was on her employer's business.
+
+Yet the little encounter added somehow to his already lively curiosity
+on the subject of Lady Henry's companion. Thanks to a remarkable
+physical resemblance, he was practically certain that he had guessed the
+secret of Mademoiselle Le Breton's parentage. At any rate, on the
+supposition that he had, his thoughts began to occupy themselves with
+the story to which his guess pointed.
+
+Some thirty years before, he had known, both in London and in Italy, a
+certain Colonel Delaney and his wife, once Lady Rose Chantrey, the
+favorite daughter of Lord Lackington. They were not a happy couple. She
+was a woman of great intelligence, but endowed with one of those
+natures--sensitive, plastic, eager to search out and to challenge
+life--which bring their possessors some great joys, hardly to be
+balanced against a final sum of pain. Her husband, absorbed in his
+military life, silent, narrowly able, and governed by a strict
+Anglicanism that seemed to carry with it innumerable "shalts" and "shalt
+nots," disagreeable to the natural man or woman, soon found her a tiring
+and trying companion. She asked him for what he could not give; she
+coquetted with questions he thought it impious to raise; the persons she
+made friends with were distasteful to him; and, without complaining, he
+soon grew to think it intolerable that a woman married to a soldier
+should care so little for his professional interests and ambitions.
+Though when she pretended to care for them she annoyed him, if possible,
+still more.
+
+As for Lady Rose, she went through all the familiar emotions of the
+_femme incomprise_. And with the familiar result. There presently
+appeared in the house a man of good family, thirty-five or so,
+traveller, painter, and dreamer, with fine, long-drawn features bronzed
+by the sun of the East, and bringing with him the reputation of having
+plotted and fought for most of the "lost causes" of our generation,
+including several which had led him into conflict with British
+authorities and British officials. To Colonel Delaney he was an
+"agitator," if not a rebel; and the careless pungency of his talk soon
+classed him as an atheist besides. In the case of Lady Rose, this man's
+free and generous nature, his independence of money and convention, his
+passion for the things of the mind, his contempt for the mode, whether
+in dress or politics, his light evasions of the red tape of life as of
+something that no one could reasonably expect of a vagabond like
+himself--these things presently transformed a woman in despair to a
+woman in revolt. She fell in love with an intensity befitting her true
+temperament, and with a stubbornness that bore witness to the dreary
+failure of her marriage. Marriott Dalrymple returned her love, and
+nothing in his view of life predisposed him to put what probably
+appeared to him a mere legality before the happiness of two people meant
+for each other. There were no children of the Delaney marriage; and in
+his belief the husband had enjoyed too long a companionship he had never
+truly deserved.
+
+So Lady Rose faced her husband, told him the truth, and left him. She
+and Dalrymple went to live in Belgium, in a small country-house some
+twenty or thirty miles from Brussels. They severed themselves from
+England; they asked nothing more of English life. Lady Rose suffered
+from the breach with her father, for Lord Lackington never saw her
+again. And there was a young sister whom she had brought up, whose image
+could often rouse in her a sense of loss that showed itself in
+occasional spells of silence and tears. But substantially she never
+repented what she had done, although Colonel Delaney made the penalties
+of it as heavy as he could. Like Karennine in Tolstoy's great novel, he
+refused to sue for a divorce, and for something of the same reasons.
+Divorce was in itself impious, and sin should not be made easy. He was
+at any time ready to take back his wife, so far as the protection of
+his name and roof were concerned, should she penitently return to him.
+
+So the child that was presently born to Lady Rose could not be
+legitimized.
+
+Sir Wilfrid stopped short at the Park end of Bruton Street, with a start
+of memory.
+
+"I saw it once! I remember now--perfectly."
+
+And he went on to recall a bygone moment in the Brussels Gallery, when,
+as he was standing before the great Quintin Matsys, he was accosted with
+sudden careless familiarity by a thin, shabbily dressed man, in whose
+dark distinction, made still more fantastic and conspicuous by the fever
+and the emaciation of consumption, he recognized at once Marriott
+Dalrymple.
+
+He remembered certain fragments of their talk about the pictures--the
+easy mastery, now brusque, now poetic, with which Dalrymple had shown
+him the treasures of the gallery, in the manner of one whose learning
+was merely the food of fancy, the stuff on which imagination and reverie
+grew rich.
+
+Then, suddenly, his own question--"And Lady Rose?"
+
+And Dalrymple's quiet, "Very well. She'd see you, I think, if you want
+to come. She has scarcely seen an English person in the last
+three years."
+
+And as when a gleam searches out some blurred corner of a landscape,
+there returned upon him his visit to the pair in their country home. He
+recalled the small eighteenth-century house, the "chateau" of the
+village, built on the French model, with its high _mansarde_ roof; the
+shabby stateliness of its architecture matching plaintively with the
+field of beet-root that grew up to its very walls; around it the flat,
+rich fields, with their thin lines of poplars; the slow, canalized
+streams; the unlovely farms and cottages; the mire of the lanes; and,
+shrouding all, a hot autumn mist sweeping slowly through the damp
+meadows and blotting all cheerfulness from the sun. And in the midst of
+this pale landscape, so full of ragged edges to an English eye, the
+English couple, with their books, their child, and a pair of
+Flemish servants.
+
+It had been evident to him at once that their circumstances were those
+of poverty. Lady Rose's small fortune, indeed, had been already mostly
+spent on "causes" of many kinds, in many countries. She and Dalrymple
+were almost vegetarians, and wine never entered the house save for the
+servants, who seemed to regard their employers with a real but
+half-contemptuous affection. He remembered the scanty, ill-cooked
+luncheon; the difficulty in providing a few extra knives and forks; the
+wrangling with the old _bonne_-housekeeper, which was necessary before
+_serviettes_ could be produced.
+
+And afterwards the library, with its deal shelves from floor to ceiling
+put up by Dalrymple himself, its bare, polished floor, Dalrymple's table
+and chair on one side of the open hearth, Lady Rose's on the other; on
+his table the sheets of verse translation from AEschylus and Euripides,
+which represented his favorite hobby; on hers the socialist and
+economical books they both studied and the English or French poets they
+both loved. The walls, hung with the faded damask of a past generation,
+were decorated with a strange crop of pictures pinned carelessly into
+the silk--photographs or newspaper portraits of modern men and women
+representing all possible revolt against authority, political,
+religious, even scientific, the Everlasting No of an untiring and
+ubiquitous dissent.
+
+Finally, in the centre of the polished floor, the strange child, whom
+Lady Rose had gone to fetch after lunch, with its high crest of black
+hair, its large, jealous eyes, its elfin hands, and the sudden smile
+with which, after half an hour of silence and apparent scorn, it had
+rewarded Sir Wilfrid's advances. He saw himself sitting bewitched
+beside it.
+
+Poor Lady Rose! He remembered her as he and she parted at the gate of
+the neglected garden, the anguish in her eyes as they turned to look
+after the bent and shrunken figure of Dalrymple carrying the child back
+to the house.
+
+"If you meet any of his old friends, don't--don't say anything! We've
+just saved enough money to go to Sicily for the winter--that'll set
+him right."
+
+And then, barely a year later, the line in a London newspaper which had
+reached him at Madrid, chronicling the death of Marriott Dalrymple, as
+of a man once on the threshold of fame, but long since exiled from the
+thoughts of practical men. Lady Rose, too, was dead--many years since;
+so much he knew. But how, and where? And the child?
+
+She was now "Mademoiselle Le Breton "?--the centre and apparently the
+chief attraction of Lady Henry's once famous salon?
+
+"And, by Jove! several of her kinsfolk there, relations of the mother or
+the father, if what I suppose is true!" thought Sir Wilfrid, remembering
+one or two of the guests. "Were they--was she--aware of it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The old man strode on, full of a growing eagerness, and was soon on Lady
+Henry's doorstep.
+
+"Her ladyship is in the dining-room," said the butler, and Sir Wilfrid
+was ushered there straight.
+
+"Good-morning, Wilfrid," said the old lady, raising herself on her
+silver--headed sticks as he entered. "I prefer to come down-stairs by
+myself. The more infirm I am, the less I like it--and to be helped
+enrages me. Sit down. Lunch is ready, and I give you leave to eat some."
+
+"And you?" said Sir Wilfrid, as they seated themselves almost side by
+side at the large, round table in the large, dingy room.
+
+The old lady shook her head.
+
+"All the world eats too much. I was brought up with people who lunched
+on a biscuit and a glass of sherry."
+
+"Lord Russell?--Lord Palmerston?" suggested Sir Wilfrid, attacking his
+own lunch meanwhile with unabashed vigor.
+
+"That sort. I wish we had their like now."
+
+"Their successors don't please you?"
+
+Lady Henry shook her head.
+
+"The Tories have gone to the deuce, and there are no longer enough Whigs
+even to do that. I wouldn't read the newspapers at all if I could help
+it. But I do."
+
+"So I understand," said Sir Wilfrid; "you let Montresor know it last
+night."
+
+"Montresor!" said Lady Henry, with a contemptuous movement. "What a
+_poseur_! He lets the army go to ruin, I understand, while he joins
+Dante societies."
+
+Sir Wilfrid raised his eyebrows.
+
+"I think, if I were you, I should have some lunch," he said, gently
+pushing the admirable _salmi_ which the butler had left in front of him
+towards his old friend.
+
+Lady Henry laughed.
+
+"Oh, my temper will be better presently, when those men are gone"--she
+nodded towards the butler and footman in the distance--"and I can
+have my say."
+
+Sir Wilfrid hurried his meal as much as Lady Henry--who, as it turned
+out, was not at all minded to starve him--would allow. She meanwhile
+talked politics and gossip to him, with her old, caustic force, nibbling
+a dry biscuit at intervals and sipping a cup of coffee. She was a
+wilful, characteristic figure as she sat there, beneath her own portrait
+as a bride, which hung on the wall behind her. The portrait represented
+a very young woman, with plentiful brown hair gathered into a knot on
+the top of her head, a high waist, a blue waist-ribbon, and inflated
+sleeves. Handsome, imperious, the corners of the mouth well down, the
+look straight and daring--the Lady Henry of the picture, a bride of
+nineteen, was already formidable. And the old woman sitting beneath it,
+with the strong, white hair, which the ample cap found some difficulty
+even now in taming and confining, the droop of the mouth accentuated,
+the nose more masterful, the double chin grown evident, the light of the
+eyes gone out, breathed pride and will from every feature of her still
+handsome face, pride of race and pride of intellect, combined with a
+hundred other subtler and smaller prides that only an intimate knowledge
+of her could detect. The brow and eyes, so beautiful in the picture,
+were, however, still agreeable in the living woman; if generosity
+lingered anywhere, it was in them.
+
+The door was hardly closed upon the servants when she bent forward.
+
+"Well, have you guessed?"
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked at her thoughtfully as he stirred the sugar in his
+coffee.
+
+"I think so," he said. "She is Lady Rose Delaney's daughter."
+
+Lady Henry gave a sudden laugh.
+
+"I hardly expected you to guess! What helped you?"
+
+"First your own hints. Then the strange feeling I had that I had seen
+the face, or some face just like it, before. And, lastly, at the Foreign
+Office I caught sight, for a moment, of Lord Lackington. That
+finished it."
+
+"Ah!" said Lady Henry, with a nod. "Yes, that likeness is extraordinary.
+Isn't it amazing that that foolish old man has never perceived it?"
+
+"He knows nothing?"
+
+"Oh, nothing! Nobody does. However, that'll do presently. But Lord
+Lackington comes here, mumbles about his music and his water-colors, and
+his flirtations--seventy-four, if you please, last birthday!--talks
+about himself endlessly to Julie or to me--whoever comes handy--and
+never has an inkling, an idea."
+
+"And she?"
+
+"Oh, _she_ knows. I should rather think she does." And Lady Henry pushed
+away her coffee-cup with the ill-suppressed vehemence which any mention
+of her companion seemed to produce in her. "Well, now, I suppose you'd
+like to hear the story."
+
+"Wait a minute. It'll surprise you to hear that I not only knew this
+lady's mother and father, but that I've seen her, herself, before."
+
+"You?" Lady Henry looked incredulous.
+
+"I never told you of my visit to that _menage_, four-and-twenty years
+ago?"
+
+"Never, that I remember. But if you had I should have forgotten. What
+did they matter to me then? I myself only saw Lady Rose once, so far as
+I remember, before she misconducted herself. And afterwards--well, one
+doesn't trouble one's self about the women that have gone under."
+
+Something lightened behind Sir Wilfrid's straw-colored lashes. He bent
+over his coffee-cup and daintily knocked off the end of his cigarette
+with a beringed little finger.
+
+"The women who have--not been able to pull up?"
+
+Lady Henry paused.
+
+"If you like to put it so," she said, at last. Sir Wilfrid did not raise
+his eyes. Lady Henry took up her strongest glasses from the table and
+put them on. But it was pitifully evident that even so equipped she saw
+but little, and that her strong nature fretted perpetually against the
+physical infirmity that teased it. Nevertheless, some unspoken
+communication passed between them, and Sir Wilfrid knew that he had
+effectually held up a protecting hand for Lady Rose.
+
+"Well, let me tell you my tale first," he said; and gave the little
+reminiscence in full. When he described the child, Lady Henry
+listened eagerly.
+
+"Hm," she said, when he came to an end; "she was jealous, you say, of
+her mother's attentions to you? She watched you, and in the end she took
+possession of you? Much the same creature, apparently, then as now."
+
+"No moral, please, till the tale is done," said Sir Wilfrid, smiling.
+"It's your turn."
+
+Lady Henry's face grew sombre.
+
+[Illustration: "LADY HENRY LISTENED EAGERLY"]
+
+"All very well," she said. "What did your tale matter to you? As for
+mine--"
+
+The substance of hers was as follows, put into chronological order:
+
+Lady Rose had lived some ten years after Dalrymple's death. That time
+she passed in great poverty in some _chambres garnies_ at Bruges, with
+her little girl and an old Madame Le Breton, the maid, housekeeper, and
+general factotum who had served them in the country. This woman, though
+of a peevish, grumbling temper, was faithful, affectionate, and not
+without education. She was certainly attached to little Julie, whose
+nurse she had been during a short period of her infancy. It was natural
+that Lady Rose should leave the child to her care. Indeed, she had no
+choice. An old Ursuline nun, and a kind priest who at the nun's
+instigation occasionally came to see her, in the hopes of converting
+her, were her only other friends in the world. She wrote, however, to
+her father, shortly before her death, bidding him good-bye, and asking
+him to do something for the child. "She is wonderfully like you," so ran
+part of the letter. "You won't ever acknowledge her, I know. That is
+your strange code. But at least give her what will keep her from want,
+till she can earn her living. Her old nurse will take care of her, I
+have taught her, so far. She is already very clever. When I am gone she
+will attend one of the convent schools here. And I have found an honest
+lawyer who will receive and pay out money."
+
+To this letter Lord Lackington replied, promising to come over and see
+his daughter. But an attack of gout delayed him, and, before he was out
+of his room, Lady Rose was dead. Then he no longer talked of coming
+over, and his solicitors arranged matters. An allowance of a hundred
+pounds a year was made to Madame Le Breton, through the "honest lawyer"
+whom Lady Rose had found, for the benefit of "Julie Dalrymple," the
+capital value to be handed over to that young lady herself on the
+attainment of her eighteenth birthday--always provided that neither she
+nor anybody on her behalf made any further claim on the Lackington
+family, that her relationship to them was dropped, and her mother's
+history buried in oblivion.
+
+Accordingly the girl grew to maturity in Bruges. By the lawyer's advice,
+after her mother's death, she took the name of her old _gouvernante_,
+and was known thenceforward as Julie Le Breton. The Ursuline nuns, to
+whose school she was sent, took the precaution, after her mother's
+death, of having her baptized straightway into the Catholic faith, and
+she made her _premiere communion_ in their church. In the course of a
+few years she became a remarkable girl, the source of many anxieties to
+the nuns. For she was not only too clever for their teaching, and an
+inborn sceptic, but wherever she appeared she produced parties and the
+passions of parties. And though, as she grew older, she showed much
+adroitness in managing those who were hostile to her, she was never
+without enemies, and intrigues followed her.
+
+"I might have been warned in time," said Lady Henry, in whose wrinkled
+cheeks a sharp and feverish color had sprung up as her story approached
+the moment of her own personal acquaintance with Mademoiselle Le Breton.
+"For one or two of the nuns when I saw them in Bruges, before the
+bargain was finally struck, were candid enough. However, now I come to
+the moment when I first set eyes on her. You know my little place in
+Surrey? About a mile from me is a manor-house belonging to an old
+Catholic family, terribly devout and as poor as church-mice. They sent
+their daughters to school in Bruges. One summer holiday these girls
+brought home with them Julie Dalrymple as their quasi-holiday governess.
+It was three years ago. I had just seen Liebreich. He told me that I
+should soon be blind, and, naturally, it was a blow to me."
+
+Sir Wilfrid made a murmur of sympathy.
+
+"Oh, don't pity me! I don't pity other people. This odious body of ours
+has got to wear out sometime--it's in the bargain. Still, just then I
+was low. There are two things I care about--one is talk, with the people
+that amuse me, and the other is the reading of French books. I didn't
+see how I was going to keep my circle here together, and my own mind in
+decent repair, unless I could find somebody to be eyes for me, and to
+read to me. And as I'm a bundle of nerves, and I never was agreeable to
+illiterate people, nor they to me, I was rather put to it. Well, one day
+these girls and their mother came over to tea, and, as you guess, of
+course, they brought Mademoiselle Le Breton with them. I had asked them
+to come, but when they arrived I was bored and cross, and like a sick
+dog in a hole. And then, as you have seen her, I suppose you can guess
+what happened."
+
+"You discovered an exceptional person?"
+
+Lady Henry laughed.
+
+"I was limed, there and then, old bird as I am. I was first struck with
+the girl's appearance--_une belle laide_--with every movement just as it
+ought to be; infinitely more attractive to me than any pink-and-white
+beauty. It turned out that she had just been for a month in Paris
+with another school-fellow. Something she said about a new
+play--suddenly--made me look at her. 'Venez vous asseoir ici,
+mademoiselle, s'il vous plait--pres de moi,' I said to her--I can hear
+my own voice now, poor fool, and see her flush up. Ah!" Lady Henry's
+interjection dropped to a note of rage that almost upset Sir Wilfrid's
+gravity; but he restrained himself, and she resumed: "We talked for two
+hours; it seemed to me ten minutes. I sent the others out to the
+gardens. She stayed with me. The new French books, the theatre, poems,
+plays, novels, memoirs, even politics, she could talk of them all; or,
+rather--for, mark you, that's her gift--she made _me_ talk. It seemed to
+me I had not been so brilliant for months. I was as good, in fact, as I
+had ever been. The difficulty in England is to find any one to keep up
+the ball. She does it to perfection. She never throws to
+win--never!--but so as to leave you all the chances. You make a
+brilliant stroke; she applauds, and in a moment she has arranged you
+another. Oh, it is the most extraordinary gift of conversation--and she
+never says a thing that you want to remember."
+
+There was a silence. Lady Henry's old fingers drummed restlessly on the
+table. Her memory seemed to be wandering angrily among her first
+experiences of the lady they were discussing.
+
+"Well," said Sir Wilfrid, at last, "so you engaged her as _lectrice_,
+and thought yourself very lucky?"
+
+"Oh, don't suppose that I was quite an idiot. I made some inquiries--I
+bored myself to death with civilities to the stupid family she was
+staying with, and presently I made her stay with me. And of course I
+soon saw there was a history. She possessed jewels, laces, little
+personal belongings of various kinds, that wanted explaining. So I laid
+traps for her; I let her also perceive whither my own plans were
+drifting. She did not wait to let me force her hand. She made up her
+mind. One day I found, left carelessly on the drawing-room table, a
+volume of Saint-Simon, beautifully bound in old French morocco, with
+something thrust between the leaves. I opened it. On the fly-leaf was
+written the name Marriott Dalrymple, and the leaves opened, a little
+farther, on a miniature of Lady Rose Delaney. So--"
+
+"Apparently it was _her_ traps that worked," said Sir Wilfrid, smiling.
+Lady Henry returned the smile unwillingly, as one loath to acknowledge
+her own folly.
+
+"I don't know that I was trapped. We both desired to come to close
+quarters. Anyway, she soon showed me books, letters--from Lady Rose,
+from Dalrymple, Lord Lackington--the evidence was complete....
+
+"'Very well,' I said; 'it isn't your fault. All the better if you are
+well born--I am not a person of prejudices. But understand, if you come
+to me, there must be no question of worrying your relations. There are
+scores of them in London. I know them all, or nearly all, and of course
+you'll come across them. But unless you can hold your tongue, don't come
+to me. Julie Dalrymple has disappeared, and I'll be no party to her
+resurrection. If Julie Le Breton becomes an inmate of my house, there
+shall be no raking up of scandals much better left in their graves. If
+you haven't got a proper parentage, consistently thought out, we must
+invent one--'"
+
+"I hope I may some day be favored with it," said Sir Wilfrid.
+
+Lady Henry laughed uncomfortably.
+
+"Oh, I've had to tell lies," she said, "plenty of them."
+
+"What! It was _you_ that told the lies?"
+
+Lady Henry's look flashed.
+
+"The open and honest ones," she said, defiantly.
+
+"Well," said Sir Wilfrid, regretfully, "_some_ sort were indispensable.
+So she came. How long ago?"
+
+"Three years. For the first half of that time I did nothing but plume
+myself on my good fortune. I said to myself that if I had searched
+Europe through I could not have fared better. My household, my friends,
+my daily ways, she fitted into them all to perfection. I told people
+that I had discovered her through a Belgian acquaintance. Every one was
+amazed at her manners, her intelligence. She was perfectly modest,
+perfectly well behaved. The old Duke--he died six months after she came
+to me--was charmed with her. Montresor, Meredith, Lord Robert, all my
+_habitues_ congratulated me. 'Such cultivation, such charm, such
+_savoir-faire!_ Where on earth did you pick up such a treasure? What are
+her antecedents?' etc., etc. So then, of course--"
+
+"I hope no more than were absolutely necessary!" said Sir Wilfrid,
+hastily.
+
+"I had to do it well," said Lady Henry, with decision; "I can't say I
+didn't. That state of things lasted, more or less, about a year and a
+half. And by now, where do you think it has all worked out?"
+
+"You gave me a few hints last night," said Sir Wilfrid, hesitating.
+
+Lady Henry pushed her chair back from the table. Her hands trembled on
+her stick.
+
+"Hints!" she said, scornfully. "I'm long past hints. I told you last
+night--and I repeat--that woman has stripped me of all my friends! She
+has intrigued with them all in turn against me. She has done the same
+even with my servants. I can trust none of them where she is concerned.
+I am alone in my own house. My blindness makes me her tool, her
+plaything. As for my salon, as you call it, it has become hers. I am a
+mere courtesy-figurehead--her chaperon, in fact. I provide the house,
+the footmen, the champagne; the guests are hers. And she has done this
+by constant intrigue and deception--by flattery--by lying!"
+
+The old face had become purple. Lady Henry breathed hard.
+
+"My dear friend," said Sir Wilfrid, quickly, laying a calming hand on
+her arm, "don't let this trouble you so. Dismiss her."
+
+"And accept solitary confinement for the rest of my days? I haven't the
+courage--yet," said Lady Henry, bitterly. "You don't know how I have
+been isolated and betrayed! And I haven't told you the worst of all.
+Listen! Do you know whom she has got into her toils?"
+
+She paused, drawing herself rigidly erect. Sir Wilfrid, looking up
+sharply, remembered the little scene in the Park, and waited.
+
+"Did you have any opportunity last night," said Lady Henry, slowly, "of
+observing her and Jacob Delafield?"
+
+She spoke with passionate intensity, her frowning brows meeting above a
+pair of eyes that struggled to see and could not. But the effect she
+listened for was not produced. Sir Wilfrid drew back uncertainly.
+
+"Jacob Delafield?" he said. "Jacob Delafield? Are you sure?"
+
+"Sure?" cried Lady Henry, angrily. Then, disdaining to support her
+statement, she went on: "He hesitates. But she'll soon make an end of
+that. And do you realize what that means--what Jacob's possibilities
+are? Kindly recollect that Chudleigh has one boy--one sickly,
+tuberculous boy--who might die any day. And Chudleigh himself is a poor
+life. Jacob has more than a good chance--ninety chances out of a
+hundred"--she ground the words out with emphasis--"of inheriting
+the dukedom."
+
+"Good gracious!" said Sir Wilfrid, throwing away his cigarette.
+
+"There!" said Lady Henry, in sombre triumph. "Now you can understand
+what I have brought on poor Henry's family."
+
+A low knock was heard at the door.
+
+"Come in," said Lady Henry, impatiently.
+
+The door opened, and Mademoiselle Le Breton appeared on the threshold,
+carrying a small gray terrier under each arm.
+
+"I thought I had better tell you," she said, humbly, "that I am taking
+the dogs out. Shall I get some fresh wool for your knitting?"
+
+
+
+III
+
+It was nearly four o'clock. Sir Wilfrid had just closed Lady Henry's
+door behind him, and was again walking along Bruton Street.
+
+He was thinking of the little scene of Mademoiselle Le Breton's
+appearance on the threshold of Lady Henry's dining-room; of the insolent
+sharpness with which Lady Henry had given her order upon order--as to
+the dogs, the books for the circulating library, a message for her
+dressmaker, certain directions for the tradesmen, etc., etc.--as though
+for the mere purpose of putting the woman who had dared to be her rival
+in her right place before Sir Wilfrid Bury. And at the end, as she was
+departing, Mademoiselle Le Breton, trusting no doubt to Lady Henry's
+blindness, had turned towards himself, raising her downcast eyes upon
+him suddenly, with a proud, passionate look. Her lips had moved; Sir
+Wilfrid had half risen from his chair. Then, quickly, the door had
+closed upon her.
+
+Sir Wilfrid could not think of it without a touch of excitement.
+
+"Was she reminding me of Gherardtsloo?" he said to himself. "Upon my
+word, I must find some means of conversation with her, in spite of
+Lady Henry."
+
+He walked towards Bond Street, pondering the situation of the two
+women--the impotent jealousy and rancor with which Lady Henry was
+devoured, the domestic slavery contrasted with the social power of
+Mademoiselle Le Breton. Through the obscurity and difficulty of
+circumstance, how marked was the conscience of race in her, and, as he
+also thought, of high intelligence! The old man was deeply interested.
+He felt a certain indulgent pity for his lifelong friend Lady Henry; but
+he could not get Mademoiselle Julie out of his head.
+
+"Why on earth does she stay where she is?"
+
+He had asked the same question of Lady Henry, who had contemptuously
+replied:
+
+"Because she likes the flesh-pots, and won't give them up. No doubt she
+doesn't find my manners agreeable; but she knows very well that she
+wouldn't get the chances she gets in my house anywhere else. I give her
+a foothold. She'll not risk it for a few sour speeches on my part. I may
+say what I like to her--and I intend to say what I like! Besides, you
+watch her, and see whether she's made for poverty. She takes to luxury
+as a fish to water. What would she be if she left me? A little visiting
+teacher, perhaps, in a Bloomsbury lodging. That's not her line at all."
+
+"But somebody else might employ her as you do?" Sir Wilfrid had
+suggested.
+
+"You forget I should be asked for a character," said Lady Henry. "Oh, I
+admit there are possibilities--on her side. That silly goose, Evelyn
+Crowborough, would have taken her in, but I had a few words with
+Crowborough, and he put his foot down. He told his wife he didn't want
+an intriguing foreigner to live with them. No; for the present we are
+chained to each other. I can't get rid of her, and she doesn't want to
+get rid of me. Of course, things might become intolerable for either of
+us. But at present self-interest on both sides keeps us going. Oh, don't
+tell me the thing is odious! I know it. Every day she stays in the house
+I become a more abominable old woman."
+
+A more exacting one, certainly. Sir Wilfrid thought with pity and
+amusement of the commissions with which Mademoiselle Julie had been
+loaded. "She earns her money, any way," he thought. "Those things will
+take her a hard afternoon's work. But, bless my soul!"--he paused in his
+walk--"what about that engagement to Duchess Evelyn that I heard her
+make? Not a word, by-the-way, to Lady Henry about it! Oh, this
+is amusing!"
+
+He went meditatively on his way, and presently turned into his club to
+write some letters. But at five o'clock he emerged, and told a hansom to
+drive him to Grosvenor Square. He alighted at the great red-brick
+mansion of the Crowboroughs, and asked for the Duchess. The magnificent
+person presiding over the hall, an old family retainer, remembered him,
+and made no difficulty about admitting him.
+
+"Anybody with her grace?" he inquired, as the man handed him over to the
+footman who was to usher him up-stairs.
+
+"Only Miss Le Breton and Mr. Delafield, Sir Wilfrid. Her grace told me
+to say 'not at home' this afternoon, but I am sure, sir, she will
+see you."
+
+Sir Wilfrid smiled.
+
+As he entered the outer drawing-room, the Duchess and the group
+surrounding her did not immediately perceive the footman nor himself,
+and he had a few moments in which to take in a charming scene.
+
+A baby girl in a white satin gown down to her heels, and a white satin
+cap, lace-edged and tied under her chin, was holding out her tiny skirt
+with one hand and dancing before the Duchess and Miss Le Breton, who was
+at the piano. The child's other hand held up a morsel of biscuit
+wherewith she directed the movements of her partner, a small black
+spitz, of a slim and silky elegance, who, straining on his hind legs,
+his eager attention fixed upon the biscuit, followed every movement of
+his small mistress; while she, her large blue eyes now solemn, now
+triumphant, her fair hair escaping from her cap in fluttering curls, her
+dainty feet pointed, her dimpled arm upraised, repeated in living grace
+the picture of her great-great-grandmother which hung on the wall in
+front of her, a masterpiece from Reynolds's happiest hours.
+
+Behind Mademoiselle Le Breton stood Jacob Delafield; while the Duchess,
+in a low chair beside them, beat time gayly to the gavotte that
+Mademoiselle Julie was playing and laughed encouragement and applause to
+the child in front of her. She herself, with her cloud of fair hair, the
+delicate pink and white of her skin, the laughing lips and small white
+hands that rose and fell with the baby steps, seemed little more than a
+child. Her pale blue dress, for which she had just exchanged her winter
+walking-costume, fell round her in sweeping folds of lace and silk--a
+French fairy dressed by Woerth, she was possessed by a wild gayety, and
+her silvery laugh held the room.
+
+Beside her, Julie Le Breton, very thin, very tall, very dark, was
+laughing too. The eyes which Sir Wilfrid had lately seen so full of
+pride were now alive with pleasure. Jacob Delafield, also, from behind,
+grinned applause or shouted to the babe, "Brava, Tottie; well done!"
+Three people, a baby, and a dog more intimately pleased with one
+another's society it would have been difficult to discover.
+
+"Sir Wilfrid!"
+
+The Duchess sprang up astonished, and in a moment, to Sir Wilfrid's
+chagrin, the little scene fell to pieces. The child dropped on the
+floor, defending herself and the biscuit as best she could against the
+wild snatches of the dog. Delafield composed his face in a moment to its
+usual taciturnity. Mademoiselle Le Breton rose from the piano.
+
+"No, no!" said Sir Wilfrid, stopping short and holding up a deprecating
+hand. "Too bad! Go on."
+
+"Oh, we were only fooling with baby!" said the Duchess. "It is high time
+she went to her nurse. Sit here, Sir Wilfrid. Julie, will you take the
+babe, or shall I ring for Mrs. Robson?"
+
+"I'll take her," said Mademoiselle Le Breton.
+
+She knelt down by the child, who rose with alacrity. Catching her skirts
+round her, with one eye half laughing, half timorous, turned over her
+shoulder towards the dog, the baby made a wild spring into Mademoiselle
+Julie's arms, tucking up her feet instantly, with a shriek of delight,
+out of the dog's way. Then she nestled her fair head down upon her
+bearer's shoulder, and, throbbing with joy and mischief, was
+carried away.
+
+Sir Wilfrid, hat in hand, stood for a moment watching the pair. A bygone
+marriage uniting the Lackington family with that of the Duchess had just
+occurred to him in some bewilderment. He sat down beside his hostess,
+while she made him some tea. But no sooner had the door of the farther
+drawing-room closed behind Mademoiselle Le Breton, than with a dart of
+all her lively person she pounced upon him.
+
+"Well, so Aunt Flora has been complaining to you?"
+
+Sir Wilfrid's cup remained suspended in his hand. He glanced first at
+the speaker and then at Jacob Delafield.
+
+"Oh, Jacob knows all about it!" said the Duchess, eagerly. "This is
+Julie's headquarters; _we_ are on her staff. _You_ come from the enemy!"
+
+Sir Wilfrid took out his white silk handkerchief and waved it.
+
+"Here is my flag of truce," he said. "Treat me well."
+
+"We are only too anxious to parley with you," said the Duchess,
+laughing. "Aren't we, Jacob?"
+
+Then she drew closer.
+
+"What has Aunt Flora been saying to you?"
+
+Sir Wilfrid paused. As he sat there, apparently studying his boots, his
+blond hair, now nearly gray, carefully parted in the middle above his
+benevolent brow, he might have been reckoned a tame and manageable
+person. Jacob Delafield, however, knew him of old.
+
+"I don't think that's fair," said Sir Wilfrid, at last, looking up. "I'm
+the new-comer; I ought to be allowed the questions."
+
+"Go on," said the Duchess, her chin on her hand. "Jacob and I will
+answer all we know."
+
+Delafield nodded. Sir Wilfrid, looking from one to the other, quickly
+reminded himself that they had been playmates from the cradle--or might
+have been.
+
+"Well, in the first place," he said, slowly, "I am lost in admiration at
+the rapidity with which Mademoiselle Le Breton does business. An hour
+and a half ago"--he looked at his watch--"I stood by while Lady Henry
+enumerated commissions it would have taken any ordinary man-mortal half
+a day to execute."
+
+The Duchess clapped her hands.
+
+"My maid is now executing them," she said, with glee. "In an hour she
+will be back. Julie will go home with everything done, and I shall have
+had nearly two hours of her delightful society. What harm is there
+in that?"
+
+"Where are the dogs?" said Sir Wilfrid, looking round.
+
+"Aunt Flora's dogs? In the housekeeper's room, eating sweet biscuit.
+They adore the groom of the chambers."
+
+"Is Lady Henry aware of this--this division of labor?" said Sir Wilfrid,
+smiling.
+
+"Of course not," said the Duchess, flushing. "She makes Julie's life
+such a burden to her that something has to be done. Now what _has_ Aunt
+Flora been telling you? We were certain she would take you into
+council--she has dropped various hints of it. I suppose she has been
+telling you that Julie has been intriguing against her--taking
+liberties, separating her from her friends, and so on?"
+
+Sir Wilfrid smilingly presented his cup for some more tea.
+
+"I beg to point out," he said, "that I have only been allowed _two_
+questions so far. But if things are to be at all fair and equal, I am
+owed at least six."
+
+The Duchess drew back, checked, and rather annoyed. Jacob Delafield, on
+the other hand, bent forward.
+
+"We are _anxious_, Sir Wilfrid, to tell you all we know," he replied,
+with quiet emphasis.
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked at him. The flame in the young man's eyes burned
+clear and steady--but flame it was. Sir Wilfrid remembered him as a
+lazy, rather somnolent youth; the man's advance in expression, in
+significant power, of itself, told much.
+
+"In the first place, can you give me the history of this lady's
+antecedents?"
+
+He glanced from one to the other.
+
+The Duchess and Jacob Delafield exchanged glances. Then the Duchess
+spoke--uncertainly.
+
+"Yes, we know. She has confided in us. There is nothing whatever to her
+discredit."
+
+Sir Wilfrid's expression changed.
+
+"Ah!" cried the Duchess, bending forward. "You know, too?"
+
+"I knew her father and mother," said Sir Wilfrid, simply.
+
+The Duchess gave a little cry of relief. Jacob Delafield rose, took a
+turn across the room, and came back to Sir Wilfrid.
+
+"Now we can really speak frankly," he said. "The situation has grown
+very difficult, and we did not know--Evelyn and I--whether we had a
+right to explain it. But now that Lady Henry--"
+
+"Oh yes," said Sir Wilfrid, "that's all right. The fact of Mademoiselle
+Le Breton's parentage--"
+
+"Is really what makes Lady Henry so jealous!" cried the Duchess,
+indignantly. "Oh, she's a tyrant, is Aunt Flora! It is because Julie is
+of her own world--of _our_ world, by blood, whatever the law may
+say--that she can't help making a rival out of her, and tormenting her
+morning, noon, and night. I tell you, Sir Wilfrid, what that poor girl
+has gone through no one can imagine but we who have watched it. Lady
+Henry owes her _every_thing this last three years. Where would she have
+been without Julie? She talks of Julie's separating her from her
+friends, cutting her out, imposing upon her, and nonsense of that kind!
+How would she have kept up that salon alone, I should like to know--a
+blind old woman who can't write a note for herself or recognize a face?
+First of all she throws everything upon Julie, is proud of her
+cleverness, puts her forward in every way, tells most unnecessary
+falsehoods about her--Julie has felt _that_ very much--and then when
+Julie has a great success, when people begin to come to Bruton Street,
+for her sake as well as Lady Henry's, then Lady Henry turns against her,
+complains of her to everybody, talks about treachery and disloyalty and
+Heaven knows what, and begins to treat her like the dirt under her feet!
+How can Julie help being clever and agreeable--she _is_ clever and
+agreeable! As Mr. Montresor said to me yesterday, 'As soon as that woman
+comes into a room, my spirits go up!' And why? Because she never thinks
+of herself, she always makes other people show at their best. And then
+Lady Henry behaves like this!" The Duchess threw out her hands in
+scornful reprobation. "And the question is, of course, Can it go on?"
+
+"I don't gather," said Sir Wilfrid, hesitating, "that Lady Henry wants
+immediately to put an end to it."
+
+Delafield gave an angry laugh.
+
+"The point is whether Mademoiselle Julie and Mademoiselle Julie's
+friends can put up with it much longer."
+
+"You see," said the Duchess, eagerly, "Julie is such a loyal,
+affectionate creature. She knows Lady Henry was kind to her, to begin
+with, that she gave her great chances, and that she's getting old and
+infirm. Julie's awfully sorry for her. She doesn't want to leave her all
+alone--to the mercy of her servants--"
+
+"I understand the servants, too, are devoted to Mademoiselle Julie?"
+said Sir Wilfrid.
+
+"Yes, that's another grievance," said Delafield, contemptuously. "Why
+shouldn't they be? When the butler had a child very ill, it was
+Mademoiselle Julie who went to see it in the mews, who took it flowers
+and grapes--"
+
+"Lady Henry's grapes?" threw in Sir Wilfrid.
+
+"What does it matter!" said Delafield, impatiently. "Lady Henry has more
+of everything than she knows what to do with. But it wasn't grapes only!
+It was time and thought and consideration. Then when the younger footman
+wanted to emigrate to the States, it was Mademoiselle Julie who found a
+situation for him, who got Mr. Montresor to write to some American
+friends, and finally sent the lad off, devoted to her, of course, for
+life. I should like to know when Lady Henry would have done that kind of
+thing! Naturally the servants like her--she deserves it."
+
+"I see--I see," said Sir Wilfrid, nodding gently, his eyes on the
+carpet. "A very competent young lady."
+
+Delafield looked at the older man, half in annoyance, half in
+perplexity.
+
+"Is there anything to complain of in that?" he said, rather shortly.
+
+"Oh, nothing, nothing!" said Sir Wilfrid, hastily. "And this word
+intrigue that Lady Henry uses? Has mademoiselle always steered a
+straightforward course with her employer?"
+
+"Oh, well," said the Duchess, shrugging her shoulders, "how can you
+always be perfectly straightforward with such a tyrannical old person!
+She _has_ to be managed. Lately, in order to be sure of every minute of
+Julie's time, she has taken to heaping work upon her to such a
+ridiculous extent that unless I come to the rescue the poor thing gets
+no rest and no amusement. And last summer there was an explosion,
+because Julie, who was supposed to be in Paris for her holiday with a
+school-friend, really spent a week of it with the Buncombes, Lady
+Henry's married niece, who has a place in Kent. The Buncombes knew her
+at Lady Henry's parties, of course. Then they met her in the Louvre,
+took her about a little, were delighted with her, and begged her to come
+and stay with them--they have a place near Canterbury--on the way home.
+They and Julie agreed that it would be best to say nothing to Lady Henry
+about it--she is too absurdly jealous--but then it leaked out,
+unluckily, and Lady Henry was furious."
+
+"I must say," said Delafield, hurriedly, "I always thought frankness
+would have been best there."
+
+"Well, perhaps," said the Duchess, unwillingly, with another shrug. "But
+now what is to be done? Lady Henry really must behave better, or Julie
+can't and sha'n't stay with her. Julie has a great following--hasn't
+she, Jacob? They won't see her harassed to death."
+
+"Certainly not," said Delafield. "At the same time we all see"--he
+turned to Sir Wilfrid--"what the advantages of the present combination
+are. Where would Lady Henry find another lady of Mademoiselle Le
+Breton's sort to help her with her house and her salon? For the last two
+years the Wednesday evenings have been the most brilliant and successful
+things of their kind in London. And, of course, for Mademoiselle Le
+Breton it is a great thing to have the protection of Lady
+Henry's name--"
+
+"A great thing?" cried Sir Wilfrid. "Everything, my dear Jacob!"
+
+"I don't know," said Delafield, slowly. "It may be bought too dear."
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked at the speaker with curiosity. It had been at all
+times possible to rouse Jacob Delafield--as child, as school-boy, as
+undergraduate--from an habitual carelessness and idleness by an act or a
+tale of injustice or oppression. Had the Duchess pressed him into her
+service, and was he merely taking sides for the weaker out of a natural
+bent towards that way of looking at things? Or--
+
+"Well, certainly we must do our best to patch it up," said Sir Wilfrid,
+after a pause. "Perhaps Mademoiselle Le Breton will allow me a word with
+her by-and-by. I think I have still some influence with Lady Henry. But,
+dear goddaughter"--he bent forward and laid his hand on that of the
+Duchess--"don't let the maid do the commissions."
+
+"But I must!" cried the Duchess. "Just think, there is my big bazaar on
+the 16th. You don't know how clever Julie is at such things. I want to
+make her recite--her French is too beautiful! And then she has such
+inventiveness, such a head! Everything goes if she takes it in hand. But
+if I say anything to Aunt Flora, she'll put a spoke in all our wheels.
+She'll hate the thought of anything in which Julie is successful and
+conspicuous. Of course she will!"
+
+"All the same, Evelyn," said Delafield, uncomfortable apparently for the
+second time, "I really think it would be best to let Lady Henry know."
+
+"Well, then, we may as well give it up," said the Duchess, pettishly,
+turning aside.
+
+Delafield, who was still pacing the carpet, suddenly raised his hand in
+a gesture of warning. Mademoiselle Le Breton was crossing the outer
+drawing-room.
+
+"Julie, come here!" cried the Duchess, springing up and running towards
+her. "Jacob is making himself so disagreeable. He thinks we ought to
+tell Lady Henry about the 16th."
+
+The speaker put her arm through Julie Le Breton's, looking up at her
+with a frowning brow. The contrast between her restless prettiness, the
+profusion of her dress and hair, and Julie's dark, lissome strength,
+gowned and gloved in neat, close black, was marked enough.
+
+As the Duchess spoke, Julie looked smiling at Jacob Delafield.
+
+"I am in your hands," she said, gently. "Of course I don't want to keep
+anything from Lady Henry. Please decide for me."
+
+Sir Wilfrid's mouth showed a satirical line. He turned aside and began
+to play with a copy of the _Spectator_.
+
+"Julie," said the Duchess, hesitating, "I hope you won't mind, but we
+have been discussing things a little with Sir Wilfrid. I felt sure Aunt
+Flora had been talking to him."
+
+"Of course," said Julie, "I knew she would." She looked towards Sir
+Wilfrid, slightly drawing herself up. Her manner was quiet, but all her
+movements were somehow charged with a peculiar and interesting
+significance. The force of the character made itself felt through all
+disguises.
+
+In spite of himself, Sir Wilfrid began to murmur apologetic things.
+
+"It was natural, mademoiselle, that Lady Henry should confide in me. She
+has perhaps told you that for many years I have been one of the trustees
+of her property. That has led to her consulting me on a good many
+matters. And evidently, from what she says and what the Duchess says,
+nothing could be of more importance to her happiness, now, in her
+helpless state, than her relations to you."
+
+He spoke with a serious kindness in which the tinge of mocking habitual
+to his sleek and well-groomed visage was wholly lost. Julie Le Breton
+met him with dignity.
+
+"Yes, they are important. But, I fear they cannot go on as they are."
+
+There was a pause. Then Sir Wilfrid approached her:
+
+"I hear you are returning to Bruton Street immediately. Might I be your
+escort?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+The Duchess, a little sobered by the turn events had taken and the
+darkened prospects of her bazaar, protested in vain against this sudden
+departure. Julie resumed her furs, which, as Sir Wilfrid, who was
+curious in such things; happened to notice, were of great beauty, and
+made her farewells. Did her hand linger in Jacob Delafield's? Did the
+look with which that young man received it express more than the
+steadfast support which justice offers to the oppressed? Sir Wilfrid
+could not be sure.
+
+[Illustration: "'INDEED I WILL!' CRIED SIR WILFRID, AND THEY WALKED ON"]
+
+As they stepped out into the frosty, lamp-lit dark of Grosvenor Square,
+Julie Le Breton turned to her companion.
+
+"You knew my mother and father," she said, abruptly. "I remember your
+coming,"
+
+What was in her voice, her rich, beautiful voice? Sir Wilfrid only knew
+that while perfectly steady, it seemed to bring emotion near, to make
+all the aspects of things dramatic.
+
+"Yes, yes," he replied, in some confusion. "I knew her well, from the
+time when she was a girl in the school-room. Poor Lady Rose!"
+
+The figure beside him stood still.
+
+"Then if you were my mother's friend," she said, huskily, "you will hear
+patiently what I have to say, even though you are Lady Henry's trustee."
+
+"Indeed I will!" cried Sir Wilfrid, and they walked on.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"But, first of all," said Mademoiselle Le Breton, looking in some
+annoyance at the brace of terriers circling and barking round them, "we
+must take the dogs home, otherwise no talk will be possible."
+
+"You have no more business to do?"
+
+His companion smiled.
+
+"Everything Lady Henry wants is here," she said, pointing to the bag
+upon her arm which had been handed to her, as Sir Wilfrid remembered,
+after some whispered conversation, in the hall of Crowborough House by
+an elegantly dressed woman, who was no doubt the Duchess's maid.
+
+"Allow me to carry it for you."
+
+"Many thanks," said Mademoiselle Le Breton, firmly retaining it, "but
+those are not the things I mind."
+
+They walked on quickly to Bruton Street. The dogs made conversation
+impossible. If they were on the chain it was one long battle between
+them and their leader. If they were let loose, it seemed to Sir Wilfrid
+that they ranged every area on the march, and attacked all elderly
+gentlemen and most errand-boys.
+
+"Do you always take them out?" he asked, when both he and his companion
+were crimson and out of breath.
+
+"Always."
+
+"Do you like dogs?"
+
+"I used to. Perhaps some day I shall again."
+
+"As for me, I wish they had but one neck!" said Sir Wilfrid, who had but
+just succeeded in dragging Max, the bigger of the two, out of the
+interior of a pastry-cook's hand-cart which had been rashly left with
+doors open for a few minutes in the street, while its responsible
+guardian was gossiping in an adjacent kitchen. Mademoiselle Julie
+meanwhile was wrestling with Nero, the younger, who had dived to the
+very heart of a peculiarly unsavory dust-box, standing near the entrance
+of a mews.
+
+"So you commonly go through the streets of London in this whirlwind?"
+asked Sir Wilfrid, again, incredulous, when at last they had landed
+their charges safe at the Bruton Street door.
+
+"Morning and evening," said Mademoiselle Julie, smiling. Then she
+addressed the butler: "Tell Lady Henry, please, that I shall be at home
+in half an hour."
+
+As they turned westward, the winter streets were gay with lights and
+full of people. Sir Wilfrid was presently conscious that among all the
+handsome and well-dressed women who brushed past them, Mademoiselle Le
+Breton more than held her own. She reminded him now not so much of her
+mother as of Marriott Dalrymple. Sir Wilfrid had first seen this woman's
+father at Damascus, when Dalrymple, at twenty-six, was beginning the
+series of Eastern journeys which had made him famous. He remembered the
+brillance of the youth; the power, physical and mental, which radiated
+from him, making all things easy; the scorn of mediocrity, the
+incapacity for subordination.
+
+"I should like you to understand," said the lady beside him, "that I
+came to Lady Henry prepared to do my very best."
+
+"I am sure of that," said Sir Wilfrid, hastily recalling his thoughts
+from Damascus. "And you must have had a very difficult task."
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I knew, of course, it must be difficult. And as to the drudgery of
+it--the dogs, and that kind of thing--nothing of that sort matters to me
+in the least. But I cannot be humiliated before those who have become my
+friends, entirely because Lady Henry wished it to be so."
+
+"Lady Henry at first showed you every confidence?"
+
+"After the first month or two she put everything into my hands--her
+household, her receptions, her letters, you may almost say her whole
+social existence. She trusted me with all her secrets." ("No, no, my
+dear lady," thought Sir Wilfrid.) "She let me help her with all her
+affairs. And, honestly, I did all I could to make her life easy."
+
+"That I understand from herself."
+
+"Then why," cried Mademoiselle Le Breton, turning round to him with
+sudden passion--"why couldn't Lady Henry leave things alone? Are
+devotion, and--and the kind of qualities she wanted, so common? I said
+to myself that, blind and helpless as she was, she should lose nothing.
+Not only should her household be well kept, her affairs well managed,
+but her salon should be as attractive, her Wednesday evenings as
+brilliant, as ever. The world was deserting her; I helped her to bring
+it back. She cannot live without social success; yet now she hates me
+for what I have done. Is it sane--is it reasonable?"
+
+"She feels, I suppose," said Sir Wilfrid, gravely, "that the success is
+no longer hers."
+
+"So she says. But will you please examine that remark? When her guests
+assemble, can I go to bed and leave her to grapple with them? I have
+proposed it often, but of course it is impossible. And if I am to be
+there I must behave, I suppose, like a lady, not like the housemaid.
+Really, Lady Henry asks too much. In my mother's little flat in Bruges,
+with the two or three friends who frequented it, I was brought up in as
+good society and as good talk as Lady Henry has ever known."
+
+They were passing an electric lamp, and Sir Wilfrid, looking up, was
+half thrilled, half repelled by the flashing energy of the face beside
+him. Was ever such language on the lips of a paid companion before? His
+sympathy for Lady Henry revived.
+
+"Can you really give me no clew to the--to the sources of Lady Henry's
+dissatisfaction?" he said, at last, rather coldly.
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton hesitated.
+
+"I don't want to make myself out a saint," she said, at last, in another
+voice and with a humility which was, in truth, hardly less proud than
+her self-assertion. "I--I was brought up in poverty, and my mother died
+when I was fifteen. I had to defend myself as the poor defend
+themselves--by silence. I learned not to talk about my own affairs. I
+couldn't afford to be frank, like a rich English girl. I dare say,
+sometimes I have concealed things which had been better made plain. They
+were never of any real importance, and if Lady Henry had shown any
+consideration--"
+
+Her voice failed her a little, evidently to her annoyance. They walked
+on without speaking for a few paces. "Never of any real importance?" Sir
+Wilfrid wondered.
+
+Their minds apparently continued the conversation though their lips were
+silent, for presently Julie Le Breton said, abruptly:
+
+"Of course I am speaking of matters where Lady Henry might have some
+claim to information. With regard to many of my thoughts and feelings,
+Lady Henry has no right whatever to my confidence."
+
+"She gives us fair warning," thought Sir Wilfrid.
+
+Aloud he said:
+
+"It is not a question of thoughts and feelings, I understand, but of
+actions."
+
+"Like the visit to the Duncombes'?" said Mademoiselle Le Breton,
+impatiently. "Oh, I quite admit it--that's only one of several instances
+Lady Henry might have brought forward. You see, she led me to make these
+friendships; and now, because they annoy her, I am to break them. But
+she forgets. Friends are too--too new in my life, too precious--"
+
+Again the voice wavered. How it thrilled and penetrated! Sir Wilfrid
+found himself listening for every word.
+
+"No," she resumed. "If it is a question of renouncing the friends I have
+made in her house, or going--it will be going. That may as well be
+quite clear."
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked up.
+
+"Let me ask you one question, mademoiselle."
+
+"Certainly. Whatever you like."
+
+"Have you ever had, have you now, any affection for Lady Henry?"
+
+"Affection? I could have had plenty. Lady Henry is most interesting to
+watch. It is magnificent, the struggles she makes with her infirmities."
+
+Nothing could have been more agreeable than the modulation of these
+words, the passage of the tone from a first note of surprise to its
+grave and womanly close. Again, the same suggestions of veiled and
+vibrating feeling. Sir Wilfrid's nascent dislike softened a little.
+
+"After all," he said, with gentleness, "one must make allowance for old
+age and weakness, mustn't one?"
+
+"Oh, as to that, you can't say anything to me that I am not perpetually
+saying to myself," was her somewhat impetuous reply. "Only there is a
+point when ill-temper becomes not only tormenting to me but degrading to
+herself.... Oh, if you only knew!"--the speaker drew an indignant
+breath. "I can hardly bring myself to speak of such _miseres_. But
+everything excites her, everything makes her jealous. It is a grievance
+that I should have a new dress, that Mr. Montresor should send me an
+order for the House of Commons, that Evelyn Crowborough should give me a
+Christmas present. Last Christmas, Evelyn gave me these furs--she is the
+only creature in London from whom I would accept a farthing or the value
+of a farthing."
+
+She paused, then rapidly threw him a question:
+
+"Why, do you suppose, did I take it from her?"
+
+"She is your kinswoman," said Wilfrid, quietly.
+
+"Ah, you knew that! Well, then, mayn't Evelyn be kind to me, though I am
+what I am? I reminded Lady Henry, but she only thought me a mean
+parasite, sponging on a duchess for presents above my station. She said
+things hardly to be forgiven. I was silent. But I have never ceased to
+wear the furs."
+
+With what imperious will did the thin shoulders straighten themselves
+under the folds of chinchilla! The cloak became symbolic, a flag not to
+be struck.
+
+"I never answer back, please understand--never," she went on, hurriedly.
+"You saw to-day how Lady Henry gave me her orders. There is not a
+servant in the house with whom she would dare such a manner. Did I
+resent it?"
+
+"You behaved with great forbearance. I watched you with admiration."
+
+"Ah, _forbearance!_ I fear you don't understand one of the strangest
+elements in the whole case. I am _afraid_ of Lady Henry, mortally
+afraid! When she speaks to me I feel like a child who puts up its hands
+to ward off a blow. My instinct is not merely to submit, but to grovel.
+When you have had the youth that I had, when you have existed, learned,
+amused yourself on sufferance, when you have had somehow to maintain
+yourself among girls who had family, friends, money, name, while you--"
+
+Her voice stopped, resolutely silenced before it broke. Sir Wilfrid
+uncomfortably felt that he had no sympathy to produce worthy of the
+claim that her whole personality seemed to make upon it. But she
+recovered herself immediately.
+
+"Now I think I had better give you an outline of the last six months,"
+she said, turning to him. "Of course it is my side of the matter. But
+you have heard Lady Henry's."
+
+And with great composure she laid before him an outline of the chief
+quarrels and grievances which had embittered the life of the Bruton
+Street house during the period she had named. It was a wretched story,
+and she clearly told it with repugnance and disgust. There was in her
+tone a note of offended personal delicacy, as of one bemired against
+her will.
+
+Evidently, Lady Henry was hardly to be defended. The thing had been
+"odious," indeed. Two women of great ability and different ages, shut up
+together and jarring at every point, the elder furiously jealous and
+exasperated by what seemed to her the affront offered to her high rank
+and her past ascendency by the social success of her dependant, the
+other defending herself, first by the arts of flattery and submission,
+and then, when these proved hopeless, by a social skill that at least
+wore many of the aspects of intrigue--these were the essential elements
+of the situation; and, as her narrative proceeded, Sir Wilfrid admitted
+to himself that it was hard to see any way out of it. As to his own
+sympathies, he did not know what to make of them.
+
+"No. I have been only too yielding," said Mademoiselle Le Breton,
+sorely, when her tale was done. "I am ashamed when I look back on what I
+have borne. But now it has gone too far, and something must be done. If
+I go, frankly, Lady Henry will suffer."
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked at his companion.
+
+"Lady Henry is well aware of it."
+
+"Yes," was the calm reply, "she knows it, but she does not realize it.
+You see, if it comes to a rupture she will allow no half-measures. Those
+who stick to me will have to quarrel with her. And there will be a great
+many who will stick to me."
+
+Sir Wilfrid's little smile was not friendly.
+
+"It is indeed evident," he said, "that you have thought it all out."
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton did not reply. They walked on a few minutes in
+silence, till she said, with a suddenness and in a low tone that
+startled her companion:
+
+"If Lady Henry could ever have felt that she _humbled_ me, that I
+acknowledged myself at her mercy! But she never could. She knows that I
+feel myself as well born as she, that I am _not_ ashamed of my parents,
+that my principles give me a free mind about such things."
+
+"Your principles?" murmured Sir Wilfrid.
+
+"You were right," she turned upon him with a perfectly quiet but most
+concentrated passion. "I have _had_ to think things out. I know, of
+course, that the world goes with Lady Henry. Therefore I must be
+nameless and kinless and hold my tongue. If the world knew, it would
+expect me to hang my head. I _don't!_ I am as proud of my mother as of
+my father. I adore both their memories. Conventionalities of that kind
+mean nothing to me."
+
+"My dear lady--"
+
+"Oh, I don't expect you or any one else to feel with me," said the voice
+which for all its low pitch was beginning to make him feel as though he
+were in the centre of a hail-storm. "You are a man of the world, you
+knew my parents, and yet I understand perfectly that for you, too, I am
+disgraced. So be it! So be it! I don't quarrel with what any one may
+choose to think, but--"
+
+She recaptured herself with difficulty, and there was silence. They were
+walking through the purple February dusk towards the Marble Arch. It was
+too dark to see her face under its delicate veil, and Sir Wilfrid did
+not wish to see it. But before he had collected his thoughts
+sufficiently his companion was speaking again, in a wholly
+different manner.
+
+"I don't know what made me talk in this way. It was the contact with
+some one, I suppose, who had seen us at Gherardtsloo." She raised her
+veil, and he thought that she dashed away some tears. "That never
+happened to me before in London. Well, now, to return. If there is
+a breach--"
+
+"Why should there be a breach?" said Sir Wilfrid. "My dear Miss Le
+Breton, listen to me for a few minutes. I see perfectly that you have a
+great deal to complain of, but I also see that Lady Henry has something
+of a case."
+
+And with a courteous authority and tact worthy of his trade, the old
+diplomat began to discuss the situation.
+
+Presently he found himself talking with an animation, a friendliness, an
+intimacy that surprised himself. What was there in the personality
+beside him that seemed to win a way inside a man's defences in spite of
+him? Much of what she had said had seemed to him arrogant or morbid. And
+yet as she listened to him, with an evident dying down of passion, an
+evident forlornness, he felt in her that woman's weakness and timidity
+of which she had accused herself in relation to Lady Henry, and was
+somehow, manlike, softened and disarmed. She had been talking wildly,
+because no doubt she felt herself in great difficulties. But when it was
+his turn to talk she neither resented nor resisted what he had to say.
+The kinder he was, the more she yielded, almost eagerly at times, as
+though the thorniness of her own speech had hurt herself most, and there
+were behind it all a sad life, and a sad heart that only asked in truth
+for a little sympathy and understanding.
+
+"I shall soon be calling her 'my dear' and patting her hand," thought
+the old man, at last, astonished at himself. For the dejection in her
+attitude and gait began to weigh upon him; he felt a warm desire to
+sustain and comfort her. More and more thought, more and more
+contrivance did he throw into the straightening out of this tangle
+between two excitable women, not, it seemed, for Lady Henry's sake, not,
+surely, for Miss Le Breton's sake. But--ah! those two poor, dead folk,
+who had touched his heart long ago, did he feel the hovering of their
+ghosts beside him in the wintry wind?
+
+At any rate, he abounded in shrewd and fatherly advice, and Mademoiselle
+Le Breton listened with a most flattering meekness.
+
+"Well, now I think we have come to an understanding," he urged,
+hopefully, as they turned down Bruton Street again.
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton sighed.
+
+"It is very kind of you. Oh, I will do my best. But--"
+
+She shook her head uncertainly.
+
+"No--no 'buts,'" cried Sir Wilfrid, cheerfully. "Suppose, as a first
+step," he smiled at his companion, "you tell Lady Henry about
+the bazaar?"
+
+"By all means. She won't let me go. But Evelyn will find some one else."
+
+"Oh, we'll see about that," said the old man, almost crossly. "If you'll
+allow me I'll try my hand."
+
+Julie Le Breton did not reply, but her face glimmered upon him with a
+wistful friendliness that did not escape him, even in the darkness. In
+this yielding mood her voice and movements had so much subdued
+sweetness, so much distinction, that he felt himself more than melting
+towards her.
+
+Then, of a sudden, a thought--a couple of thoughts--sped across him. He
+drew himself rather sharply together.
+
+"Mr. Delafield, I gather, has been a good deal concerned in the whole
+matter?"
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton laughed and hesitated.
+
+"He has been very kind. He heard Lady Henry's language once when she was
+excited. It seemed to shock him. He has tried once or twice to smooth
+her down. Oh, he has been most kind!"
+
+"Has he any influence with her?"
+
+"Not much."
+
+"Do you think well of him?"
+
+He turned to her with a calculated abruptness. She showed a little
+surprise.
+
+"I? But everybody thinks well of him. They say the Duke trusts
+everything to him."
+
+"When I left England he was still a rather lazy and unsatisfactory
+undergraduate. I was curious to know how he had developed. Do you know
+what his chief interests are now?"
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton hesitated.
+
+"I'm really afraid I don't know," she said, at last, smiling, and, as it
+were, regretful. "But Evelyn Crowborough, of course, could tell you all
+about him. She and he are very old friends."
+
+"No birds out of that cover," was Sir Wilfrid's inward comment.
+
+The lamp over Lady Henry's door was already in sight when Sir Wilfrid,
+after some talk of the Montresors, with whom he was going to dine that
+night, carelessly said:
+
+"That's a very good-looking fellow, that Captain Warkworth, whom I saw
+with Lady Henry last night."
+
+"Ah, yes. Lady Henry has made great friends with him," said Mademoiselle
+Julie, readily. "She consults him about her memoir of her husband."
+
+"Memoir of her husband!" Sir Wilfrid stopped short. "Heavens above!
+Memoir of Lord Henry?"
+
+"She is half-way through it. I thought you knew."
+
+"Well, upon my word! Whom shall we have a memoir of next? Henry
+Delafield! Henry Delafield! Good gracious!"
+
+And Sir Wilfrid walked along, slashing at the railings with his stick,
+as though the action relieved him. Julie Le Breton quietly resumed:
+
+"I understand that Lord Henry and Captain Warkworth's father went
+through the Indian Mutiny together, and Captain Warkworth has some
+letters--"
+
+"Oh, I dare say--I dare say," muttered Sir Wilfrid. "What's this man
+home for just now?"
+
+"Well, I _think_ Lady Henry knows," said Mademoiselle Julie, turning to
+him an open look, like one who, once more, would gladly satisfy a
+questioner if they could. "He talks to her a great deal. But why
+shouldn't he come home?"
+
+"Because he ought to be doing disagreeable duty with his regiment
+instead of always racing about the world in search of something to get
+his name up," said Sir Wilfrid, rather sharply. "At least, that's the
+view his brother officers mostly take of him."
+
+"Oh," said Mademoiselle Julie, with amiable vagueness, "is there
+anything particular that you suppose he wants?"
+
+"I am not at all in the secret of his ambitions," said Sir Wilfrid,
+lifting his shoulders. "But you and Lady Henry seemed well acquainted
+with him."
+
+The straw-colored lashes veered her way.
+
+"I had some talk with him in the Park this morning," said Julie Le
+Breton, reflectively. "He wants me to copy his father's letters for Lady
+Henry, and to get her to return the originals as soon as possible. He
+feels nervous when they are out of his hands."
+
+"Hm!" said Sir Wilfrid.
+
+At that moment Lady Henry's door-bell presented itself. The vigor with
+which Sir Wilfrid rang it may, perhaps, have expressed the liveliness of
+his unspoken scepticism. He did not for one moment believe that General
+Warkworth's letters had been the subject of the conversation he had
+witnessed that morning in the Park, nor that filial veneration had had
+anything whatever to say to it.
+
+Julie Le Breton gave him her hand.
+
+"Thank you very much," she said, gravely and softly.
+
+Sir Wilfrid at the moment before had not meant to press it at all. But
+he did press it, aware the while of the most mingled feelings.
+
+"On the contrary, you were very good to allow me this conversation.
+Command me at any time if I can be useful to you and Lady Henry."
+
+Julie Le Breton smiled upon him and was gone.
+
+Sir Wilfrid ran down the steps, chafing at himself.
+
+"She somehow gets round one," he thought, with a touch of annoyance. "I
+wonder whether I made any real impression upon her. Hm! Let's see
+whether Montresor can throw any more light upon her. He seemed to be
+pretty intimate. Her 'principles,' eh? A dangerous view to take, for a
+woman of that _provenance._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour or two later Sir Wilfrid Bury presented himself in the
+Montresors' drawing-room in Eaton Place. He had come home feeling it
+essential to impress upon the cabinet a certain line of action with
+regard to the policy of Russia on the Persian Gulf. But the first person
+he perceived on the hearth-rug, basking before the Minister's ample
+fire, was Lord Lackington. The sight of that vivacious countenance, that
+shock of white hair, that tall form still boasting the spareness and
+almost the straightness of youth, that unsuspecting complacency,
+confused his ideas and made him somehow feel the whole world a little
+topsy-turvy.
+
+Nevertheless, after dinner he got his fifteen minutes of private talk
+with his host, and conscientiously made use of them. Then, after an
+appointment had been settled for a longer conversation on another day,
+both men felt that they had done their duty, and, as it appeared, the
+same subject stirred in both their minds.
+
+"Well, and what did you think of Lady Henry?" said Montresor, with a
+smile, as he lighted another cigarette.
+
+"She's very blind," said Sir Wilfrid, "and more rheumatic. But else
+there's not much change. On the whole she wears wonderfully well."
+
+"Except as to her temper, poor lady!" laughed the Minister. "She has
+really tried all our nerves of late. And the worst of it is that most
+of it falls upon that poor woman who lives with her"--the Minister
+lowered his voice--"one of the most interesting and agreeable creatures
+in the world."
+
+Sir Wilfrid glanced across the table. Lord Lackington was telling
+scandalous tales of his youth to a couple of Foreign Office clerks, who
+sat on either side of him, laughing and spurring him on. The old man's
+careless fluency and fun were evidently contagious; animation reigned
+around him; he was the spoiled child of the dinner, and knew it.
+
+"I gather that you have taken a friendly interest in Miss Le Breton,"
+said Bury, turning to his host.
+
+"Oh, the Duchess and Delafield and I have done our best to protect her,
+and to keep the peace. I am quite sure Lady Henry has poured out her
+grievances to you, hasn't she?"
+
+"Alack, she has!"
+
+"I knew she couldn't hold her tongue to you, even for a day. She has
+really been losing her head over it. And it is a thousand pities."
+
+"So you think all the fault's on Lady Henry's side?"
+
+The Minister gave a shrug.
+
+"At any rate, I have never myself seen anything to justify Lady Henry's
+state of feeling. On the famous Wednesdays, Mademoiselle Julie always
+appears to make Lady Henry her first thought. And in other ways she has
+really worn herself to death for the old lady. It makes one rather
+savage sometimes to see it."
+
+"So in your eyes she is a perfect companion?"
+
+Montresor laughed.
+
+"Oh, as to perfection--"
+
+"Lady Henry accuses her of intrigue. You have seen no traces of it?"
+
+The Minister smiled a little oddly.
+
+"Not as regards Lady Henry. Oh, Mademoiselle Julie is a very astute
+lady."
+
+A ripple from some source of secret amusement spread over the dark-lined
+face.
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"She knows how to help her friends better than most people. I have known
+three men, at least, _made_ by Mademoiselle Le Breton within the last
+two or three years. She has just got a fresh one in tow."
+
+Sir Wilfrid moved a little closer to his host. They turned slightly from
+the table and seemed to talk into their cigars.
+
+"Young Warkworth?" said Bury.
+
+The Minister smiled again and hesitated.
+
+"Oh, she doesn't bother me, she is much too clever. But she gets at me
+in the most amusing, indirect ways. I know perfectly well when she has
+been at work. There are two or three men--high up, you understand--who
+frequent Lady Henry's evenings, and who are her very good friends....
+Oh, I dare say she'll get what she wants," he added, with nonchalance.
+
+"Between you and me, do you suspect any direct interest in the young
+man?"
+
+Montresor shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I don't know. Not necessarily. She loves to feel herself a power--all
+the more, I think, because of her anomalous position. It is very
+curious--at bottom very feminine and amusing--and quite harmless."
+
+"You and others don't resent it?"
+
+"No, not from her," said the Minister, after a pause. "But she is rather
+going it, just now. Three or four batteries have opened upon me at once.
+She must be thinking of little else."
+
+Sir Wilfrid grew a trifle red. He remembered the comedy of the
+door-step. "Is there anything that he particularly wants?" His tone
+assumed a certain asperity.
+
+"Well, as for me, I cannot help feeling that Lady Henry has something to
+say for herself. It is very strange--mysterious even--the kind of
+ascendency this lady has obtained for herself in so short a time."
+
+"Oh, I dare say it's hard for Lady Henry to put up with," mused
+Montresor. "Without family, without connections--"
+
+He raised his head quietly and put on his eye-glasses. Then his look
+swept the face of his companion.
+
+Sir Wilfrid, with a scarcely perceptible yet significant gesture,
+motioned towards Lord Lackington. Mr. Montresor started. The eyes of
+both men travelled across the table, then met again.
+
+"You know?" said Montresor, under his breath.
+
+Sir Wilfrid nodded. Then some instinct told him that he had now
+exhausted the number of the initiated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the men reached the drawing-room, which was rather emptily waiting
+for the "reception" Mrs. Montresor was about to hold in it, Sir Wilfrid
+fell into conversation with Lord Lackington. The old man talked well,
+though flightily, with a constant reference of all topics to his own
+standards, recollections, and friendships, which was characteristic, but
+in him not unattractive. Sir Wilfrid noticed certain new and pitiful
+signs of age. The old man was still a rattle. But every now and then the
+rattle ceased abruptly and a breath of melancholy made itself felt--like
+a chill and sudden gust from some unknown sea.
+
+They were joined presently, as the room filled up, by a young
+journalist--an art critic, who seemed to know Lord Lackington and his
+ways. The two fell eagerly into talk about pictures, especially of an
+exhibition at Antwerp, from which the young man had just returned.
+
+"I looked in at Bruges on the way back for a few hours," said the
+new-comer, presently. "The pictures there are much better seen than they
+used to be. When were you there last?" He turned to Lord Lackington.
+
+"Bruges?" said Lord Lackington, with a start. "Oh, I haven't been there
+for twenty years."
+
+And he suddenly sat down, dangling a paper-knife between his hands, and
+staring at the carpet. His jaw dropped a little. A cloud seemed to
+interpose between him and his companions.
+
+Sir Wilfrid, with Lady Henry's story fresh in his memory, was somehow
+poignantly conscious of the old man. Did their two minds hold the same
+image--of Lady Rose drawing her last breath in some dingy room beside
+one of the canals that wind through Bruges, laying down there the last
+relics of that life, beauty, and intelligence that had once made her the
+darling of the father, who, for some reason still hard to understand,
+had let her suffer and die alone?
+
+
+
+V
+
+On leaving the Montresors, Sir Wilfrid, seeing that it was a fine night
+with mild breezes abroad, refused a hansom, and set out to walk home to
+his rooms in Duke Street, St. James's. He was so much in love with the
+mere streets, the mere clatter of the omnibuses and shimmer of the
+lamps, after his long absence, that every step was pleasure. At the top
+of Grosvenor Place he stood still awhile only to snuff up the soft,
+rainy air, or to delight his eye now with the shining pools which some
+showers of the afternoon had left behind them on the pavement, and now
+with the light veil of fog which closed in the distance of Piccadilly.
+
+"And there are silly persons who grumble about the fogs!" he thought,
+contemptuously, while he was thus yielding himself heart and sense to
+his beloved London.
+
+As for him, dried and wilted by long years of cloudless heat, he drank
+up the moisture and the mist with a kind of physical passion--the noises
+and the lights no less. And when he had resumed his walk along the
+crowded street, the question buzzed within him, whether he must indeed
+go back to his exile, either at Teheran, or nearer home, in some more
+exalted post? "I've got plenty of money; why the deuce don't I give it
+up, and come home and enjoy myself? Only a few more years, after all;
+why not spend them here, in one's own world, among one's own kind?"
+
+It was the weariness of the governing Englishman, and it was answered
+immediately by that other instinct, partly physical, partly moral, which
+keeps the elderly man of affairs to his task. Idleness? No! That way
+lies the end. To slacken the rush of life, for men of his sort, is to
+call on death--death, the secret pursuer, who is not far from each one
+of us. No, no! Fight on! It was only the long drudgery behind, under
+alien suns, together with the iron certainty of fresh drudgery ahead,
+that gave value, after all, to this rainy, this enchanting
+Piccadilly--that kept the string of feeling taut and all its
+notes clear.
+
+"Going to bed, Sir Wilfrid?" said a voice behind him, as he turned down
+St. James's Street.
+
+"Delafield!" The old man faced round with alacrity. "Where have you
+sprung from?"
+
+Delafield explained that he had been dining with the Crowboroughs, and
+was now going to his club to look for news of a friend's success or
+failure in a north-country election.
+
+"Oh, that'll keep!" said Sir Wilfrid. "Turn in with me for half an hour.
+I'm at my old rooms, you know, in Duke Street."
+
+"All right," said the young man, after what seemed to Sir Wilfrid a
+moment of hesitation.
+
+"Are you often up in town this way?" asked Bury, as they walked on.
+"Land agency seems to be a profession with mitigations."
+
+"There is some London business thrown in. We have some large milk depots
+in town that I look after."
+
+There was just a trace of hurry in the young man's voice, and Bury
+surveyed him with a smile.
+
+"No other attractions, eh?"
+
+"Not that I know of. By-the-way, Sir Wilfrid, I never asked you how Dick
+Mason was getting on?"
+
+"Dick Mason? Is he a friend of yours?"
+
+"Well, we were at Eton and Oxford together."
+
+"Were you? I never heard him mention your name."
+
+The young man laughed.
+
+"I don't mean to suggest he couldn't live without me. You've left him in
+charge, haven't you, at Teheran?"
+
+"Yes, I have--worse luck. So you're deeply interested in Dick Mason?"
+
+"Oh, come--I liked him pretty well."
+
+"Hm--I don't much care about him. And I don't somehow believe you do."
+
+And Bury, with a smile, slipped a friendly hand within the arm of his
+companion.
+
+Delafield reddened.
+
+"It's decent, I suppose, to inquire after an old school-fellow?"
+
+"Exemplary. But--there are things more amusing to talk about."
+
+Delafield was silent. Sir Wilfrid's fair mustaches approached his ear.
+
+"I had my interview with Mademoiselle Julie."
+
+"So I suppose. I hope you did some good."
+
+"I doubt it. Jacob, between ourselves, the little Duchess hasn't been a
+miracle of wisdom."
+
+"No--perhaps not," said the other, unwillingly.
+
+"She realizes, I suppose, that they are connected?"
+
+"Of course. It isn't very close. Lady Rose's brother married Evelyn's
+aunt, her mother's sister."
+
+"Yes, that's it. She and Mademoiselle Julie _ought_ to have called the
+same person uncle; but, for lack of certain ceremonies, they don't.
+By-the-way, what became of Lady Rose's younger sister?"
+
+"Lady Blanche? Oh, she married Sir John Moffatt, and has been a widow
+for years. He left her a place in Westmoreland, and she lives there
+generally with her girl."
+
+"Has Mademoiselle Julie ever come across them?"
+
+"No."
+
+"She speaks of them?"
+
+"Yes. We can't tell her much about them, except that the girl was
+presented last year, and went to a few balls in town. But neither she
+nor her mother cares for London."
+
+"Lady Blanche Moffatt--Lady Blanche Moffatt?" said Sir Wilfrid, pausing.
+"Wasn't she in India this winter?"
+
+"Yes. I believe they went out in November and are to be home by April."
+
+"Somebody told me they had met her and the girl at Peshawar and then at
+Simla," said Sir Wilfrid, ruminating. "Now I remember! She's a great
+heiress, isn't she, and pretty to boot? I know! Somebody told me that
+fellow Warkworth had been making up to her."
+
+"Warkworth?" Jacob Delafield stood still a moment, and Sir Wilfrid
+caught a sudden contraction of the brow. "That, of course, was just a
+bit of Indian gossip."
+
+"I don't think so," said Sir Wilfrid, dryly. "My informants were two
+frontier officers--I came from Egypt with them--who had recently been at
+Peshawar; good fellows both of them, not at all given to take young
+ladies' names in vain."
+
+Jacob made no reply. They had let themselves into the Duke Street house
+and were groping their way up the dim staircase to Sir Wilfrid's rooms.
+
+There all was light and comfort. Sir Wilfrid's valet, much the same age
+as himself, hovered round his master, brought him his smoking-coat,
+offered Delafield cigars, and provided Sir Wilfrid, strange to say, with
+a large cup of tea.
+
+"I follow Mr. Gladstone," said Sir Wilfrid, with a sigh of luxury, as he
+sank into an easy-chair and extended a very neatly made pair of legs and
+feet to the blaze. "He seems to have slept the sleep of the just--on a
+cup of tea at midnight--through the rise and fall of cabinets. So I'm
+trying the receipt."
+
+"Does that mean that you are hankering after politics?"
+
+"Heavens! When you come to doddering, Jacob, it's better to dodder in
+the paths you know. I salute Mr. G.'s physique, that's all. Well, now,
+Jacob, do you know anything about this Warkworth?"
+
+"Warkworth?" Delafield withdrew his cigar, and seemed to choose his
+words a little. "Well, I know what all the world knows."
+
+"Hm--you seemed very sure just now that he wasn't going to marry Miss
+Moffatt."
+
+"Sure? I'm not sure of anything," said the young man, slowly.
+
+"Well, what I should like to know," said Sir Wilfrid, cradling his
+teacup in both hands, "is, what particular interest has Mademoiselle
+Julie in that young soldier?"
+
+Delafield looked into the fire.
+
+"Has she any?"
+
+"She seems to be moving heaven and earth to get him what he wants.
+By-the-way, what does he want?"
+
+"He wants the special mission to Mokembe, as I understand," said
+Delafield, after a moment. "But several other people want it too."
+
+"Indeed!" Sir Wilfrid nodded reflectively. "So there is to be one! Well,
+it's about time. The travellers of the other European firms have been
+going it lately in that quarter. Jacob, your mademoiselle also is a bit
+of an intriguer!"
+
+Delafield made a restless movement. "Why do you say that?"
+
+"Well, to say the least of it, frankness is not one of her
+characteristics. I tried to question her about this man. I had seen them
+together in the Park, talking as intimates. So, when our conversation
+had reached a friendly stage, I threw out a feeler or two, just to
+satisfy myself about her. But--"
+
+He pulled his fair mustaches and smiled.
+
+"Well?" said the young man, with a kind of reluctant interrogation.
+
+"She played with me, Jacob. But really she overdid it. For such a clever
+woman, I assure you, she overdid it!"
+
+"I don't see why she shouldn't keep her friendships to herself," said
+Delafield, with sudden heat.
+
+"Oh, so you admit it is a friendship?"
+
+Delafield did not reply. He had laid down his cigar, and with his hands
+on his knees was looking steadily into the fire. His attitude, however,
+was not one of reverie, but rather of a strained listening.
+
+"What is the meaning, Jacob, of a young woman taking so keen an interest
+in the fortunes of a dashing soldier--for, between you and me, I hear
+she is moving heaven and earth to get him this post--and then
+concealing it?"
+
+"Why should she want her kindnesses talked of?" said the young man,
+impetuously. "She was perfectly right, I think, to fence with your
+questions, Sir Wilfrid. It's one of the secrets of her influence that
+she can render a service--and keep it dark."
+
+Sir Wilfrid shook his head.
+
+"She overdid it," he repeated. "However, what do you think of the man
+yourself, Jacob?"
+
+"Well, I don't take to him," said the other, unwillingly. "He isn't my
+sort of man."
+
+"And Mademoiselle Julie--you think nothing but well of her? I don't like
+discussing a lady; but, you see, with Lady Henry to manage, one must
+feel the ground as one can."
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked at his companion, and then stretched his legs a
+little farther towards the fire. The lamp-light shone full on his silky
+eyelashes and beard, on his neatly parted hair, and the diamond on his
+fine left hand. The young man beside him could not emulate his easy
+composure. He fidgeted nervously as he replied, with warmth:
+
+"I think she has had an uncommonly hard time, that she wants nothing but
+what is reasonable, and that if she threw you off the scent, Sir
+Wilfrid, with regard to Warkworth, she was quite within her rights. You
+probably deserved it."
+
+He threw up his head with a quick gesture of challenge. Sir Wilfrid
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I vow I didn't," he murmured. "However, that's all right. What do you
+do with yourself down in Essex, Jacob?"
+
+The lines of the young man's attitude showed a sudden unconscious relief
+from tension. He threw himself back in his chair.
+
+"Well, it's a big estate. There's plenty to do."
+
+"You live by yourself?"
+
+"Yes. There's an agent's house--a small one--in one of the villages."
+
+"How do you amuse yourself? Plenty of shooting, I suppose?"
+
+"Too much. I can't do with more than a certain amount."
+
+"Golfing?"
+
+"Oh yes," said the young man, indifferently. "There's a fair links."
+
+"Do you do any philanthropy, Jacob?"
+
+"I like 'bossing' the village," said Delafield, with a laugh. "It
+pleases one's vanity. That's about all there is to it."
+
+"What, clubs and temperance, that kind of thing? Can you take any real
+interest in the people?"
+
+Delafield hesitated.
+
+"Well, yes," he said, at last, as though he grudged the admission.
+"There's nothing else to take an interest in, is there? By-the-way"--he
+jumped up--"I think I'll bid you good-night, for I've got to go down
+to-morrow in a hurry. I must be off by the first train in the morning."
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Oh, it's only a wretched old man--that two beasts of women have put
+into the workhouse infirmary against his will. I only heard it to-night.
+I must go and get him out."
+
+He looked round for his gloves and stick.
+
+"Why shouldn't he be there?"
+
+"Because it's an infernal shame!" said the other, shortly. "He's an old
+laborer who'd saved quite a lot of money. He kept it in his cottage, and
+the other day it was all stolen by a tramp. He has lived with these two
+women--his sister-in-law and her daughter--for years and years. As long
+as he had money to leave, nothing was too good for him. The shock half
+killed him, and now that he's a pauper these two harpies will have
+nothing to say to nursing him and looking after him. He told me the
+other day he thought they'd force him into the infirmary. I didn't
+believe it. But while I've been away they've gone and done it."
+
+"Well, what'll you do now?"
+
+"Get him out."
+
+"And then?"
+
+Delafield hesitated. "Well, then, I suppose, he can come to my place
+till I can find some decent woman to put him with."
+
+Sir Wilfrid rose.
+
+"I think I'll run down and see you some day. Will there be paupers in
+all the bedrooms?"
+
+Delafield grinned.
+
+"You'll find a rattling good cook and a jolly snug little place, I can
+tell you. Do come. But I shall see you again soon. I must be up next
+week, and very likely I shall be at Lady Henry's on Wednesday."
+
+"All right. I shall see her on Sunday, so I can report."
+
+"Not before Sunday?" Delafield paused. His clear blue eyes looked down,
+dissatisfied, upon Sir Wilfrid.
+
+"Impossible before. I have all sorts of official people to see to-morrow
+and Saturday. And, Jacob, keep the Duchess quiet. She may have to give
+up Mademoiselle Julie for her bazaar."
+
+"I'll tell her."
+
+"By-the-way, is that little person happy?" said Sir Wilfrid, as he
+opened the door to his departing guest. "When I left England she was
+only just married."
+
+"Oh yes, she's happy enough, though Crowborough's rather an ass."
+
+"How--particularly?"
+
+Delafield smiled.
+
+"Well, he's rather a sticky sort of person. He thinks there's something
+particularly interesting in dukes, which makes him a bore."
+
+"Take care, Jacob! Who knows that you won't be a duke yourself some
+day?"
+
+"What _do_ you mean?" The young man glowered almost fiercely upon his
+old friend.
+
+"I hear Chudleigh's boy is but a poor creature," said Sir Wilfrid,
+gravely. "Lady Henry doesn't expect him to live."
+
+"Why, that's the kind that always does live!" cried Delafield, with
+angry emphasis. "And as for Lady Henry, her imagination is a perfect
+charnel-house. She likes to think that everybody's dead or dying but
+herself. The fact is that Mervyn is a good deal stronger this year than
+he was last. Really, Lady Henry--" The tone lost itself in a growl
+of wrath.
+
+"Well, well," said Sir Wilfrid, smiling, "'A man beduked against his
+will,' etcetera. Good-night, my dear Jacob, and good luck to your
+old pauper."
+
+But Delafield turned back a moment on the stairs.
+
+"I say"--he hesitated--"you won't shirk talking to Lady Henry?"
+
+"No, no. Sunday, certainly--honor bright. Oh, I think we shall
+straighten it out."
+
+Delafield ran down the stairs, and Sir Wilfrid returned to his warm room
+and the dregs of his tea.
+
+"Now--is he in love with her, and hesitating for social reasons? Or--is
+he jealous of this fellow Warkworth? Or--has she snubbed him, and both
+are keeping it dark? Not very likely, that, in view of his prospects.
+She must want to regularize her position. Or--is he not in love with
+her at all?"
+
+On which cogitations there fell presently the strokes of many bells
+tolling midnight, and left them still unresolved. Only one positive
+impression remained--that Jacob Delafield had somehow grown, vaguely but
+enormously, in mental and moral bulk during the years since he had left
+Oxford--the years of Bury's Persian exile. Sir Wilfrid had been an
+intimate friend of his dead father, Lord Hubert, and on very friendly
+terms with his lethargic, good-natured mother. She, by-the-way, was
+still alive, and living in London with a daughter. He must go and
+see them.
+
+As for Jacob, Sir Wilfrid had cherished a particular weakness for him
+in the Eton-jacket stage, and later on, indeed, when the lad enjoyed a
+brief moment of glory in the Eton eleven. But at Oxford, to Sir
+Wilfrid's thinking, he had suffered eclipse--had become a somewhat
+heavy, apathetic, pseudo-cynical youth, displaying his mother's inertia
+without her good temper, too slack to keep up his cricket, too slack to
+work for the honor schools, at no time without friends, but an enigma to
+most of them, and, apparently, something of a burden to himself.
+
+And now, out of that ugly slough, a man had somehow emerged, in whom Sir
+Wilfrid, who was well acquainted with the race, discerned the stirring
+of all sorts of strong inherited things, formless still, but struggling
+to expression.
+
+"He looked at me just now, when I talked of his being duke, as his
+father would sometimes look."
+
+His father? Hubert Delafield had been an obstinate, dare-devil, heroic
+sort of fellow, who had lost his life in the Chudleigh salmon river
+trying to save a gillie who had missed his footing. A man much
+hated--and much beloved; capable of the most contradictory actions. He
+had married his wife for money, would often boast of it, and would, none
+the less, give away his last farthing recklessly, passionately, if he
+were asked for it, in some way that touched his feelings. Able, too;
+though not so able as the great Duke, his father.
+
+"Hubert Delafield was never _happy_, that I can remember," thought
+Wilfrid Bury, as he sat over his fire, "and this chap has the same
+expression. That woman in Bruton Street would never do for him--apart
+from all the other unsuitability. He ought to find something sweet and
+restful. And yet I don't know. The Delafields are a discontented lot. If
+you plague them, they are inclined to love you. They want something hard
+to get their teeth in. How the old Duke adored his termagant of a wife!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was late on Sunday afternoon before Sir Wilfrid was able to present
+himself in Lady Henry's drawing-room; and when he arrived there, he
+found plenty of other people in possession, and had to wait for
+his chance.
+
+Lady Henry received him with a brusque "At last," which, however, he
+took with equanimity. He was in no sense behind his time. On Thursday,
+when parting with her, he had pleaded for deliberation. "Let me study
+the situation a little; and don't, for Heaven's sake, let's be too
+tragic about the whole thing."
+
+Whether Lady Henry was now in the tragic mood or no, he could not at
+first determine. She was no longer confined to the inner shrine of the
+back drawing-room. Her chair was placed in the large room, and she was
+the centre of a lively group of callers who were discussing the events
+of the week in Parliament, with the light and mordant zest of people
+well acquainted with the personalities they were talking of. She was
+apparently better in health, he noticed; at any rate, she was more at
+ease, and enjoying herself more than on the previous Wednesday. All her
+social characteristics were in full play; the blunt and careless freedom
+which made her the good comrade of the men she talked with--as good a
+brain and as hard a hitter as they--mingled with the occasional sally or
+caprice which showed her very much a woman.
+
+Very few other women were there. Lady Henry did not want women on
+Sundays, and was at no pains whatever to hide the fact. But Mademoiselle
+Julie was at the tea-table, supported by an old white-haired general, in
+whom Sir Wilfrid recognized a man recently promoted to one of the higher
+posts in the War Office. Tea, however, had been served, and Mademoiselle
+Le Breton was now showing her companion a portfolio of photographs, on
+which the old man was holding forth.
+
+"Am I too late for a cup?" said Sir Wilfrid, after she had greeted him
+with cordiality. "And what are those pictures?"
+
+"They are some photos of the Khaibar and Tirah," said Mademoiselle Le
+Breton. "Captain Warkworth brought them to show Lady Henry."
+
+"Ah, the scene of his exploits," said Sir Wilfrid, after a glance at
+them. "The young man distinguished himself, I understand?"
+
+"Oh, very much so," said General M'Gill, with emphasis. "He showed
+brains, and he had luck."
+
+"A great deal of luck, I hear," said Sir Wilfrid, accepting a piece of
+cake. "He'll get his step up, I suppose. Anything else?"
+
+"Difficult to say. But the good men are always in request," said General
+M'Gill, smiling.
+
+"By-the-way, I heard somebody mention his name last night for this
+Mokembe mission," said Sir Wilfrid, helping himself to tea-cake.
+
+"Oh, that's quite undecided," said the General, sharply. "There is no
+immediate hurry for a week or two, and the government must send the best
+man possible."
+
+"No doubt," said Sir Wilfrid.
+
+It interested him to observe that Mademoiselle Le Breton was no longer
+pale. As the General spoke, a bright color had rushed into her cheeks.
+It seemed to Sir Wilfrid that she turned away and busied herself with
+the photographs in order to hide it.
+
+The General rose, a thin, soldierly figure, with gray hair that drooped
+forward, and two bright spots of red on the cheek-bones. In contrast
+with the expansiveness of his previous manner to Mademoiselle Le Breton,
+he was now a trifle frowning and stiff--the high official once more, and
+great man.
+
+"Good-night, Sir Wilfrid. I must be off."
+
+"How are your sons?" said Sir Wilfrid, as he rose.
+
+"The eldest is in Canada with his regiment."
+
+"And the second?"
+
+"The second is in orders."
+
+"Overworking himself in the East End, as all the young parsons seem to
+be doing?"
+
+"That is precisely what he _has_ been doing. But now, I am thankful to
+say, a country living has been offered him, and his mother and I have
+persuaded him to take it."
+
+"A country living? Where?"
+
+"One of the Duke of Crowborough's Shropshire livings," said the General,
+after what seemed to be an instant's hesitation. Mademoiselle Le Breton
+had moved away, and was replacing the photographs in the drawer of a
+distant bureau.
+
+"Ah, one of Crowborough's? Well, I hope it is a living with something to
+live on."
+
+"Not so bad, as times go," said the General, smiling. "It has been a
+great relief to our minds. There were some chest symptoms; his mother
+was alarmed. The Duchess has been most kind; she took quite a fancy to
+the lad, and--"
+
+"What a woman wants she gets. Well, I hope he'll like it. Good-night,
+General. Shall I look you up at the War Office some morning?"
+
+"By all means."
+
+The old soldier, whose tanned face had shown a singular softness while
+he was speaking of his son, took his leave.
+
+Sir Wilfrid was left meditating, his eyes absently fixed on the graceful
+figure of Mademoiselle Le Breton, who shut the drawer she had been
+arranging and returned to him.
+
+"Do you know the General's sons?" he asked her, while she was preparing
+him a second cup of tea.
+
+"I have seen the younger."
+
+She turned her beautiful eyes upon him. It seemed to Sir Wilfrid that he
+perceived in them a passing tremor of nervous defiance, as though she
+were in some way bracing herself against him. But her self-possession
+was complete.
+
+"Lady Henry seems in better spirits," he said, bending towards her.
+
+She did not reply for a moment. Her eyes dropped. Then she raised them
+again, and gently shook her head without a word. The melancholy energy
+of her expression gave him a moment's thrill.
+
+"Is it as bad as ever?" he asked her, in a whisper.
+
+"It's pretty bad. I've tried to appease her. I told her about the
+bazaar. She said she couldn't spare me, and, of course, I acquiesced.
+Then, yesterday, the Duchess--hush!"
+
+"Mademoiselle!"
+
+Lady Henry's voice rang imperiously through the room.
+
+"Yes, Lady Henry."
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton stood up expectant.
+
+"Find me, please, that number of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ which came
+in yesterday. I can prove it to you in two minutes," she said, turning
+triumphantly to Montresor on her right.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Sir Wilfrid, joining Lady Henry's circle,
+while Mademoiselle Le Breton disappeared into the back drawing-room.
+
+"Oh, nothing," said Montresor, tranquilly. "Lady Henry thinks she has
+caught me out in a blunder--about Favre, and the negotiations at
+Versailles. I dare say she has. I am the most ignorant person alive."
+
+"Then are the rest of us spooks?" said Sir Wilfrid, smiling, as he
+seated himself beside his hostess. Montresor, whose information on most
+subjects was prodigious, laughed and adjusted his eye-glass. These
+battles royal on a date or a point of fact between him and Lady Henry
+were not uncommon. Lady Henry was rarely victorious. This time, however,
+she was confident, and she sat frowning and impatient for the book that
+didn't come.
+
+Mademoiselle Le Breton, indeed, returned from the back drawing-room
+empty-handed; left the room apparently to look elsewhere, and came back
+still without the book.
+
+"Everything in this house is always in confusion!" said Lady Henry,
+angrily. "No order, no method anywhere!"
+
+Mademoiselle Julie said nothing. She retreated behind the circle that
+surrounded Lady Henry. But Montresor jumped up and offered her
+his chair.
+
+"I wish I had you for a secretary, mademoiselle," he said, gallantly. "I
+never before heard Lady Henry ask you for anything you couldn't find."
+
+Lady Henry flushed, and, turning abruptly to Bury, began a new topic.
+Julie quietly refused the seat offered to her, and was retiring to an
+ottoman in the background when the door was thrown open and the footman
+announced:
+
+"Captain Warkworth."
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The new-comer drew all eyes as he approached the group surrounding Lady
+Henry. Montresor put up his glasses and bestowed on him a few moments of
+scrutiny, during which the Minister's heavily marked face took on the
+wary, fighting aspect which his department and the House of Commons
+knew. The statesman slipped in for an instant between the trifler coming
+and the trifler gone.
+
+As for Wilfrid Bury, he was dazzled by the young man's good looks.
+"'Young Harry with his beaver up!'" he thought, admiring against his
+will, as the tall, slim soldier paid his respects to Lady Henry, and,
+with a smiling word or two to the rest of those present, took his place
+beside her in the circle.
+
+"Well, have you come for your letters?" said Lady Henry, eying him with
+a grim favor.
+
+"I think I came--for conversation," was Warkworth's laughing reply, as
+he looked first at his hostess and then at the circle.
+
+"Then I fear you won't get it," said Lady Henry, throwing herself back
+in her chair. "Mr. Montresor can do nothing but quarrel and contradict."
+
+Montresor lifted his hands in wonder.
+
+"Had I been AEsop," he said, slyly, "I would have added another touch to
+a certain tale. Observe, please!--even after the Lamb has been devoured
+he is still the object of calumny on the part of the Wolf! Well, well!
+Mademoiselle, come and console me. Tell me what new follies the Duchess
+has on foot."
+
+And, pushing his chair back till he found himself on a level with Julie
+Le Breton, the great man plunged into a lively conversation with her.
+Sir Wilfrid, Warkworth, and a few other _habitues_ endeavored meanwhile
+to amuse Lady Henry. But it was not easy. Her brow was lowering, her
+talk forced. Throughout, Sir Wilfrid perceived in her a strained
+attention directed towards the conversation on the other side of the
+room. She could neither see it nor hear it, but she was jealously
+conscious of it. As for Montresor, there was no doubt an element of
+malice in the court he was now paying to Mademoiselle Julie. Lady Henry
+had been thorny over much during the afternoon; even for her oldest
+friend she had passed bounds; he desired perhaps to bring it home
+to her.
+
+Meanwhile, Julie Le Breton, after a first moment of reserve and
+depression, had been beguiled, carried away. She yielded to her own
+instincts, her own gifts, till Montresor, drawn on and drawn out, found
+himself floating on a stream of talk, which Julie led first into one
+channel and then into another, as she pleased; and all to the flattery
+and glorification of the talker. The famous Minister had come to visit
+Lady Henry, as he had done for many Sundays in many years; but it was
+not Lady Henry, but her companion, to whom his homage of the afternoon
+was paid, who gave him his moment of enjoyment--the moment that would
+bring him there again. Lady Henry's fault, no doubt; but Wilfrid Bury,
+uneasily aware every now and then of the dumb tumult that was raging in
+the breast of the haughty being beside him, felt the pathos of this slow
+discrowning, and was inclined, once more, rather to be sorry for the
+older woman than to admire the younger.
+
+At last Lady Henry could bear it no longer.
+
+"Mademoiselle, be so good as to return his father's letters to Captain
+Warkworth," she said, abruptly, in her coldest voice, just as Montresor,
+dropping his--head thrown back and knees crossed--was about to pour into
+the ears of his companion the whole confidential history of his
+appointment to office three years before.
+
+Julie Le Breton rose at once. She went towards a table at the farther
+end of the large room, and Captain Warkworth followed her. Montresor,
+perhaps repenting himself a little, returned to Lady Henry; and though
+she received him with great coolness, the circle round her, now
+augmented by Dr. Meredith, and another politician or two, was
+reconstituted; and presently, with a conscious effort, visible at least
+to Bury, she exerted herself to hold it, and succeeded.
+
+Suddenly--just as Bury had finished a very neat analysis of the Shah's
+public and private character, and while the applauding laughter of the
+group of intimates amid which he sat told him that his epigrams had been
+good--he happened to raise his eyes towards the distant settee where
+Julie Le Breton was sitting.
+
+His smile stiffened on his lips. Like an icy wave, a swift and tragic
+impression swept through him. He turned away, ashamed of having seen,
+and hid himself, as it were, with relief, in the clamor of amusement
+awakened by his own remarks.
+
+What had he seen? Merely, or mainly, a woman's face. Young Warkworth
+stood beside the sofa, on which sat Lady Henry's companion, his hands in
+his pockets, his handsome head bent towards her. They had been talking
+earnestly, wholly forgetting and apparently forgotten by the rest of the
+room. On his side there was an air of embarrassment. He seemed to be
+choosing his words with difficulty, his eyes on the floor. Julie Le
+Breton, on the contrary, was looking at him--looking with all her soul,
+her ardent, unhappy soul--unconscious of aught else in the wide world.
+
+"Good God! she is in love with him!" was the thought that rushed through
+Sir Wilfrid's mind. "Poor thing! Poor thing!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir Wilfrid outstayed his fellow-guests. By seven o'clock all were gone.
+Mademoiselle Le Breton had retired. He and Lady Henry were left alone.
+
+"Shut the doors!" she said, peremptorily, looking round her as the last
+guest disappeared. "I must have some private talk with you. Well, I
+understand you walked home from the Crowboroughs' the other night
+with--that woman."
+
+She turned sharply upon him. The accent was indescribable. And with a
+fierce hand she arranged the folds of her own thick silk dress, as
+though, for some relief to the stormy feeling within, she would rather
+have torn than smoothed it.
+
+Sir Wilfrid seated himself beside her, knees crossed, finger-tips
+lightly touching, the fair eyelashes somewhat lowered--Calm
+beside Tempest.
+
+"I am sorry to hear you speak so," he said, gravely, after a pause.
+"Yes, I talked with her. She met me very fairly, on the whole. It seemed
+to me she was quite conscious that her behavior had not been always what
+it should be, and that she was sincerely anxious to change it. I did my
+best as a peacemaker. Has she made no signs since--no advances?"
+
+Lady Henry threw out her hand in disdain.
+
+"She confessed to me that she had pledged a great deal of the time for
+which I pay her to Evelyn Crowborough's bazaar, and asked what she was
+to do. I told her, of course, that I would put up with nothing of
+the kind."
+
+"And were more annoyed, alack! than propitiated by her confession?" said
+Sir Wilfrid, with a shrug.
+
+"I dare say," said Lady Henry. "You see, I guessed that it was not
+spontaneous; that you had wrung it out of her."
+
+"What else did you expect me to do?" cried Sir Wilfrid. "I seem, indeed,
+to have jolly well wasted my time."
+
+"Oh no. You were very kind. And I dare say you might have done some
+good. I was beginning to--to have some returns on myself, when the
+Duchess appeared on the scene."
+
+"Oh, the little fool!" ejaculated Sir Wilfrid, under his breath.
+
+"She came, of course, to beg and protest. She offered me her valuable
+services for all sorts of superfluous things that I didn't want--if only
+I would spare her Julie for this ridiculous bazaar. So then my back was
+put up again, and I told her a few home truths about the way in which
+she had made mischief and forced Julie into a totally false position.
+On which she flew into a passion, and said a lot of silly nonsense about
+Julie, that showed me, among other things, that Mademoiselle Le Breton
+had broken her solemn compact with me, and had told her family history
+both to Evelyn and to Jacob Delafield. That alone would be sufficient to
+justify me in dismissing her. _N'est-ce pas?_"
+
+"Oh yes," murmured Sir Wilfrid, "if you want to dismiss her."
+
+"We shall come to that presently," said Lady Henry, shortly. "Imagine,
+please, the kind of difficulties in which these confidences, if they
+have gone any further--and who knows?--may land me. I shall have old
+Lord Lackington--who behaved like a brute to his daughter while she was
+alive, and is, all the same, a _poseur_ from top to toe--walking in here
+one night and demanding his granddaughter--spreading lies, perhaps, that
+I have been ill-treating her. Who can say what absurdities may happen if
+it once gets out that she is Lady Rose's child? I could name half a
+dozen people, who come here habitually, who would consider themselves
+insulted if they knew--what you and I know."
+
+"Insulted? Because her mother--"
+
+"Because her mother broke the seventh commandment? Oh, dear, no! That,
+in my opinion, doesn't touch people much nowadays. Insulted because they
+had been kept in the dark--that's all. Vanity, not morals."
+
+"As far as I can ascertain," said Sir Wilfrid, meditatively, "only the
+Duchess, Delafield, Montresor, and myself are in the secret."
+
+"Montresor!" cried Lady Henry, beside herself. "_Montresor!_ That's new
+to me. Oh, she shall go at once--at once!" She breathed hard.
+
+"Wait a little. Have you had any talk with Jacob?"
+
+"I should think not! Evelyn, of course, brings him in perpetually--Jacob
+this and Jacob that. He seems to have been living in her pocket, and the
+three have been intriguing against me, morning, noon, and night. Where
+Julie has found the time I can't imagine; I thought I had kept her
+pretty well occupied."
+
+Sir Wilfrid surveyed his angry companion and held his peace.
+
+"So you don't know what Jacob thinks?"
+
+"Why should I want to know?" said Lady Henry, disdainfully. "A lad whom
+I sent to Eton and Oxford, when his father couldn't pay his bills--what
+does it matter to me what he thinks?"
+
+"Women are strange folk," thought Sir Wilfrid. "A man wouldn't have said
+that."
+
+Then, aloud:
+
+"I thought you were afraid lest he should want to marry her?"
+
+"Oh, let him cut his throat if he likes!" said Lady Henry, with the
+inconsistency of fury. "What does it matter to me?"
+
+"By-the-way, as to that"--he spoke as though feeling his way--"have you
+never had suspicions in quite another direction?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, I hear a good deal in various quarters of the trouble
+Mademoiselle Le Breton is taking--on behalf of that young soldier who
+was here just now--Harry Warkworth."
+
+Lady Henry laughed impatiently.
+
+"I dare say. She is always wanting to patronize or influence somebody.
+It's in her nature. She's a born _intrigante_. If you knew her as well
+as I do, you wouldn't think much of that. Oh no--make your mind easy.
+It's Jacob she wants--it's Jacob she'll get, very likely. What can an
+old, blind creature like me do to stop it?"
+
+"And as Jacob's wife--the wife perhaps of the head of the family--you
+still mean to quarrel with her?"
+
+"Yes, I _do_ mean to quarrel with her!" and Lady Henry lifted herself in
+her chair, a pale and quivering image of war--"Duchess or no Duchess!
+Did you see the audacious way in which she behaved this
+afternoon?--_how_ she absorbs my guests?--how she allows and encourages
+a man like Montresor to forget himself?--eggs him on to put slights on
+me in my own drawing-room!"
+
+"No, no! You are really unjust," said Sir Wilfrid, laying a kind hand
+upon her arm. "That was not her fault."
+
+"It _is_ her fault that she is what she is!--that her character is such
+that she _forces_ comparisons between us--between _her_ and _me!_--that
+she pushes herself into a prominence that is intolerable, considering
+who and what she is--that she makes me appear in an odious light to my
+old friends. No, no, Wilfrid, your first instinct was the true one. I
+shall have to bring myself to it, whatever it costs. She must take her
+departure, or I shall go to pieces, morally and physically. To be in a
+temper like this, at my age, shortens one's life--you know that."
+
+"And you can't subdue the temper?" he asked, with a queer smile.
+
+"No, I can't! That's flat. She gets on my nerves, and I'm not
+responsible. _C'est fini_."
+
+"Well," he said, slowly, "I hope you understand what it means?"
+
+"Oh, I know she has plenty of friends!" she said, defiantly. But her old
+hands trembled on her knee.
+
+"Unfortunately they were and are yours. At least," he entreated, "don't
+quarrel with everybody who may sympathize with her. Let them take what
+view they please. Ignore it--be as magnanimous as you can."
+
+"On the contrary!" She was now white to the lips. "Whoever goes with her
+gives me up. They must choose--once for all."
+
+"My dear friend, listen to reason."
+
+And, drawing his chair close to her, he argued with her for half an
+hour. At the end of that time her gust of passion had more or less
+passed away; she was, to some extent, ashamed of herself, and, as he
+believed, not far from tears.
+
+"When I am gone she will think of what I have been saying," he assured
+himself, and he rose to take his leave. Her look of exhaustion
+distressed him, and, for all her unreason, he felt himself astonishingly
+in sympathy with her. The age in him held out secret hands to the age in
+her--as against encroaching and rebellious youth.
+
+Perhaps it was the consciousness of this mood in him which at last
+partly appeased her.
+
+"Well, I'll try again. I'll _try_ to hold my tongue," she granted him,
+sullenly. "But, understand, she, sha'n't go to that bazaar!"
+
+"That's a great pity," was his naive reply. "Nothing would put you in a
+better position than to give her leave."
+
+"I shall do nothing of the kind," she vowed. "And now good-night,
+Wilfrid--good-night. You're a very good fellow, and if I _can_ take your
+advice, I will."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lady Henry sat alone in her brightly lighted drawing-room for some time.
+She could neither read nor write nor sew, owing to her blindness, and in
+the reaction from her passion of the afternoon she felt herself very old
+and weary.
+
+But at last the door opened and Julie Le Breton's light step approached.
+
+"May I read to you?" she said, gently.
+
+Lady Henry coldly commanded the _Observer_ and her knitting.
+
+She had no sooner, however, begun to knit than her very acute sense of
+touch noticed something wrong with the wool she was using.
+
+"This is not the wool I ordered," she said, fingering it carefully. "You
+remember, I gave you a message about it on Thursday? What did they say
+about it at Winton's?"
+
+Julie laid down the newspaper and looked in perplexity at the ball of
+wool.
+
+"I remember you gave me a message," she faltered.
+
+"Well, what did they say?"
+
+"I suppose that was all they had."
+
+Something in the tone struck Lady Henry's quick ears. She raised a
+suspicious face.
+
+"Did you ever go to Winton's at all?" she said, quickly.
+
+[Illustration: "LADY HENRY GASPED. SHE FELL BACK INTO HER CHAIR"]
+
+"I am so sorry. The Duchess's maid was going there," said Julie,
+hurriedly, "and she went for me. I thought I had given her your message
+most carefully."
+
+"Hm," said Lady Henry, slowly. "So you didn't go to Winton's. May I ask
+whether you went to Shaw's, or to Beatson's, or the Stores, or any of
+the other places for which I gave you commissions?" Her voice cut like
+a knife.
+
+Julie hesitated. She had grown very white. Suddenly her face settled and
+steadied.
+
+"No," she said, calmly. "I meant to have done all your commissions. But
+I was persuaded by Evelyn to spend a couple of hours with her, and her
+maid undertook them."
+
+Lady Henry flushed deeply.
+
+"So, mademoiselle, unknown to me, you spent two hours of my time amusing
+yourself at Crowborough House. May I ask what you were doing there?"
+
+"I was trying to help the Duchess in her plans for the bazaar."
+
+"Indeed? Was any one else there? Answer me, mademoiselle."
+
+Julie hesitated again, and again spoke with a kind of passionate
+composure.
+
+"Yes. Mr. Delafield was there."
+
+"So I supposed. Allow me to assure you, mademoiselle"--Lady Henry rose
+from her seat, leaning on her stick; surely no old face was ever more
+formidable, more withering--"that whatever ambitions you may cherish,
+Jacob Delafield is not altogether the simpleton you imagine. I know him
+better than you. He will take some time before he really makes up his
+mind to marry a woman of your disposition--and your history."
+
+Julie Le Breton also rose.
+
+"I am afraid, Lady Henry, that here, too, you are in the dark," she
+said, quietly, though her thin arm shook against her dress. "I shall not
+marry Mr. Delafield. But it is because--I have refused him twice."
+
+Lady Henry gasped. She fell back into her chair, staring at her
+companion.
+
+"You have--refused him?"
+
+"A month ago, and last year. It is horrid of me to say a word. But you
+forced me."
+
+Julie was now leaning, to support herself, on the back of an old French
+chair. Feeling and excitement had blanched her no less than Lady Henry,
+but her fine head and delicate form breathed a will so proud, a dignity
+so passionate, that Lady Henry shrank before her.
+
+"Why did you refuse him?"
+
+Julie shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"That, I think, is my affair. But if--I had loved him--I should not have
+consulted your scruples, Lady Henry."
+
+"That's frank," said Lady Henry. "I like that better than anything
+you've said yet. You are aware that he _may_ inherit the dukedom of
+Chudleigh?"
+
+"I have several times heard you say so," said the other, coldly.
+
+Lady Henry looked at her long and keenly. Various things that Wilfrid
+Bury had said recurred to her. She thought of Captain Warkworth.
+She wondered.
+
+Suddenly she held out her hand.
+
+"I dare say you won't take it, mademoiselle. I suppose I've been
+insulting you. But--you have been playing tricks with me. In a good many
+ways, we're quits. Still, I confess, I admire you a good deal. Anyway, I
+offer you my hand. I apologize for my recent remarks. Shall we bury the
+hatchet, and try and go on as before?"
+
+Julie Le Breton turned slowly and took the hand--without unction.
+
+"I make you angry," she said, and her voice trembled, "without knowing
+how or why."
+
+Lady Henry gulped.
+
+"Oh, it mayn't answer," she said, as their hands dropped. "But we may as
+well have one more trial. And, mademoiselle, I shall be delighted that
+you should assist the Duchess with her _bazaar_."
+
+Julie shook her head.
+
+"I don't think I have any heart for it," she said, sadly; and then, as
+Lady Henry sat silent, she approached.
+
+"You look very tired. Shall I send your maid?"
+
+That melancholy and beautiful voice laid a strange spell on Lady Henry.
+Her companion appeared to her, for a moment, in a new light--as a
+personage of drama or romance. But she shook off the spell.
+
+"At once, please. Another day like this would put an end to me."
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Julie le Breton was sitting alone in her own small sitting-room. It was
+the morning of the Tuesday following her Sunday scene with Lady Henry,
+and she was busy with various household affairs. A small hamper of
+flowers, newly arrived from Lady Henry's Surrey garden, and not yet
+unpacked, was standing open on the table, with various empty
+flower-glasses beside it. Julie was, at the moment, occupied with the
+"Stores order" for the month, and Lady Henry's cook-housekeeper had but
+just left the room after delivering an urgent statement on the need for
+"relining" a large number of Lady Henry's copper saucepans.
+
+The room was plain and threadbare. It had been the school-room of
+various generations of Delafields in the past. But for an observant eye
+it contained a good many objects which threw light upon its present
+occupant's character and history. In a small bookcase beside the fire
+were a number of volumes in French bindings. They represented either the
+French classics--Racine, Bossuet, Chateaubriand, Lamartine--which had
+formed the study of Julie's convent days, or those other books--George
+Sand, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, Mazzini, Leopardi, together with
+the poets and novelists of revolutionary Russia or Polish nationalism or
+Irish rebellion--which had been the favorite reading of both Lady Rose
+and her lover. They were but a hundred in all; but for Julie Le Breton
+they stood for the bridge by which, at will, memory and dreamful pity
+might carry her back into that vanished life she had once shared with
+her parents--those strange beings, so calm and yet so passionate in
+their beliefs, so wilful and yet so patient in their deeds, by whose
+acts her own experience was still wholly conditioned. In her little room
+there were no portraits of them visible. But on a side-table stood a
+small carved triptych. The oblong wings, which were open, contained
+photographs of figures from one of the great Bruges Memlings. The centre
+was covered by two wooden leaves delicately carved, and the leaves were
+locked. The inquisitive housemaid who dusted the room had once tried to
+open them.--in vain.
+
+On a stand near the fire lay two or three yellow volumes--some recent
+French essays, a volume of memoirs, a tale of Bourget's, and so forth.
+These were flanked by Sir Henry Maine's _Popular Government_, and a
+recent brilliant study of English policy in Egypt--both of them with the
+name "Richard J. Montresor" on the title-page. The last number of Dr.
+Meredith's paper, _The New Rambler_, was there also; and, with the
+paper-knife still in its leaves, the journal of the latest French
+traveller in Mokembe, a small "H.W." inscribed in the top right-hand
+corner of its gray cover.
+
+Julie finished her Stores order with a sigh of relief. Then she wrote
+half a dozen business notes, and prepared a few checks for Lady Henry's
+signature. When this was done the two dachshunds, who had been lying on
+the rug spying out her every movement, began to jump upon her.
+
+But Julie laughed in their faces. "It's raining," she said, pointing to
+the window--"_raining!_ So there! Either you won't go out at all, or
+you'll go with John."
+
+John was the second footman, whom the dogs hated. They returned
+crestfallen to the rug and to a hungry waiting on Providence. Julie took
+up a letter on foreign paper which had reached her that morning, glanced
+at the door, and began to reread its closely written sheets. It was from
+an English diplomat on a visit to Egypt, a man on whom the eyes of
+Europe were at that moment fixed. That he should write to a woman at
+all, on the subjects of the letter, involved a compliment _hors ligne_;
+that he should write with this ease, this abandonment, was indeed
+remarkable. Julie flushed a little as she read. But when she came to the
+end she put it aside with a look of worry. "I _wish_ he'd write to Lady
+Henry," was her thought. "She hasn't had a line from him for weeks. I
+shouldn't wonder if she suspects already. When any one talks of Egypt, I
+daren't open my lips."
+
+For fear of betraying the very minute and first-hand information that
+was possessed by Lady Henry's companion? With a smile and a shrug she
+locked the letter away in one of the drawers of her writing-table, and
+took up an envelope which had lain beneath it. From this--again with a
+look round her--she half drew out a photograph. The grizzled head and
+spectacled eyes of Dr. Meredith emerged. Julie's expression softened;
+her eyebrows went up a little; then she slightly shook her head, like
+one who protests that if something has gone wrong, it
+isn't--isn't--their fault. Unwillingly she looked at the last words of
+the letter:
+
+     "So, remember, I can give you work if you want it, and paying
+     work. I would rather give you my life and my all. But these,
+     it seems, are commodities for which you have no use. So be
+     it. But if you refuse to let me serve you, when the time
+     comes, in such ways as I have suggested in this letter, then,
+     indeed, you would be unkind--I would almost dare to say
+     ungrateful! Yours always
+
+     "F.M."
+
+This letter also she locked away. But her hand lingered on the last of
+all. She had read it three times already, and knew it practically by
+heart. So she left the sheets undisturbed in their envelope. But she
+raised the whole to her lips, and pressed it there, while her eyes, as
+they slowly filled with tears, travelled--unseeing--to the wintry street
+beyond the window. Eyes and face wore the same expression as Wilfrid
+Bury had surprised there--the dumb utterance of a woman hard pressed,
+not so much by the world without as by some wild force within.
+
+In that still moment the postman's knock was heard in the street
+outside. Julie Le Breton started, for no one whose life is dependent on
+a daily letter can hear that common sound without a thrill. Then she
+smiled sadly at herself. "_My_ joy is over for to-day!" And she turned
+away with the letter in her hand.
+
+But she did not place it in the same drawer with the others. She moved
+across to the little carved triptych, and, after listening a moment to
+the sounds in the house, she opened its closed doors with a gold key
+that hung on her watch-chain and had been hidden in the bosom of
+her dress.
+
+The doors fell open. Inside, on a background of dark velvet, hung two
+miniatures, lightly framed in gold and linked together by a graceful
+scroll-work in gold. They were of fine French work, and they represented
+a man and woman, both handsome, young, and of a remarkable distinction
+of aspect. The faces, nevertheless, hardly gave pleasure. There was in
+each of them a look at once absent and eager--the look of those who have
+cared much and ardently for "man," and very little, comparatively,
+for men.
+
+The miniatures had not been meant for the triptych, nor the triptych for
+them. It had been adapted to them by loving hands; but there was room
+for other things in the velvet-lined hollow, and a packet of letters was
+already reposing there. Julie slipped the letter of the morning inside
+the elastic band which held the packet; then she closed and locked the
+doors, returning the key to its place in her dress. Both the lock and
+hinges of this little hiding-place were well and strongly made, and when
+the wings also were shut and locked one saw nothing but a massively
+framed photograph of the Bruges belfry resting on a wooden support.
+
+She had hardly completed her little task when there was a sudden noise
+of footsteps in the passage outside.
+
+"Julie!" said a light voice, subdued to a laughing whisper. "May I come
+in?"
+
+The Duchess stood on the threshold, her small, shell-pink face emerging
+from a masterly study in gray, presented by a most engaging costume.
+
+Julie, in surprise, advanced to meet her visitor, and the old butler,
+who was Miss Le Breton's very good friend, quickly and discreetly shut
+the door upon the two ladies.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" said the Duchess, throwing herself into Julie's arms. "I
+came up so quietly! I told Hutton not to disturb Lady Henry, and I just
+crept up-stairs, holding my skirts. Wasn't it heroic of me to put my
+poor little head into the lion's den like this? But when I got your
+letter this morning saying you couldn't come to me, I vowed I would just
+see for myself how you were, and whether there was anything left of you.
+Oh, you poor, pale thing!"
+
+And drawing Julie to a chair, the little Duchess sat down beside her,
+holding her friend's hands and studying her face.
+
+"Tell me what's been happening--I believe you've been crying! Oh, the
+old wretch!"
+
+"You're quite mistaken," said Julie, smiling. "Lady Henry says I may
+help you with the bazaar."
+
+"No!" The Duchess threw up her hands in amazement. "How have you managed
+that?"
+
+"By giving in. But, Evelyn, I'm not coming."
+
+"Oh, Julie!" The Duchess threw herself back in her chair and fixed a
+pair of very blue and very reproachful eyes on Miss Le Breton.
+
+"No, I'm not coming. If I'm to stay here, even for a time, I mustn't
+provoke her any more. She says I may come, but she doesn't mean it."
+
+"She couldn't mean anything civil or agreeable. How has she been
+behaving--since Sunday?"
+
+Julie looked uncertain.
+
+"Oh, there is an armed truce. I was made to have a fire in my bedroom
+last night. And Hutton took the dogs out yesterday."
+
+The Duchess laughed.
+
+"And there was quite a scene on Sunday? You don't tell me much about it
+in your letter. But, Julie"--her voice dropped to a whisper--"was
+anything said about Jacob?"
+
+Julie looked down. A bitterness crept into her face.
+
+"Yes. I can't forgive myself. I was provoked into telling the truth."
+
+"You did! Well? I suppose Aunt Flora thought it was all your fault that
+he proposed, and an impertinence that you refused?"
+
+"She was complimentary at the time," said Julie, half smiling. "But
+since--No, I don't feel that she is appeased."
+
+"Of course not. Affronted, more likely."
+
+There was a silence. The Duchess was looking at Julie, but her thoughts
+were far away. And presently she broke out, with the _etourderie_ that
+became her:
+
+"I wish I understood it myself, Julie. I know you like him."
+
+"Immensely. But--we should fight!"
+
+Miss Le Breton looked up with animation.
+
+"Oh, that's not a reason," said the Duchess, rather annoyed.
+
+"It's _the_ reason. I don't know--there is something of _iron_ in Mr.
+Delafield;" and Julie emphasized the words with a shrug which was almost
+a shiver. "And as I'm not in love with him, I'm afraid of him."
+
+"That's the best way of being in love," cried the Duchess. "And then,
+Julie"--she paused, and at last added, naively, as she laid her little
+hands on her friend's knee--"haven't you got _any_ ambitions?"
+
+"Plenty. Oh, I should like very well to play the duchess, with you to
+instruct me," said Julie, caressing the hands. "But I must choose my
+duke. And till the right one appears, I prefer my own wild ways."
+
+"Afraid of Jacob Delafield? How odd!" said the Duchess, with her chin on
+her hands.
+
+"It may be odd to you," said Julie, with vivacity. "In reality, it's not
+in the least odd. There's the same quality in him that there is in Lady
+Henry--something that beats you down," she added, under her breath.
+"There, that's enough about Mr. Delafield--quite enough."
+
+And, rising, Julie threw up her arms and clasped her hands above her
+head. The gesture was all strength and will, like the stretching of a
+sea-bird's wings.
+
+The Duchess looked at her with eyes that had begun to waver.
+
+"Julie, I heard such an odd piece of news last night."
+
+Julie turned.
+
+"You remember the questions you asked me about Aileen Moffatt?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Well, I saw a man last night who had just come home from Simla. He saw
+a great deal of her, and he says that she and her mother were adored in
+India. They were thought so quaint and sweet--unlike other people--and
+the girl so lovely, in a sort of gossamer way. And who do you think was
+always about with them--at Peshawar first, and then at Simla--so that
+everybody talked? Captain Warkworth! My man believed there was an
+understanding between them."
+
+Julie had begun to fill the flower-glasses with water and unpack the
+flower-basket. Her back was towards the Duchess. After a moment she
+replied, her hands full of forced narcissuses:
+
+"Well, that would be a _coup_ for him."
+
+"I should think so. She is supposed to have half a million in coal-mines
+alone, besides land. Has Captain Warkworth ever said anything to you
+about them?"
+
+"No. He has never mentioned them."
+
+The Duchess reflected, her eyes still on Julie's back.
+
+"Everybody wants money nowadays. And the soldiers are just as bad as
+anybody else. They don't _look_ money, as the City men do--that's why we
+women fall in love with them--but they _think_ it, all the same."
+
+Julie made no reply. The Duchess could see nothing of her. But the
+little lady's face showed the flutter of one determined to venture yet a
+little farther on thin ice.
+
+"Julie, I've done everything you've asked me. I sent a card for the 20th
+to that _rather_ dreadful woman, Lady Froswick. I was very clever with
+Freddie about that living; and I've talked to Mr. Montresor. But, Julie,
+if you don't mind, I really should like to know why you're so keen
+about it?"
+
+The Duchess's cheeks were by now one flush. She had a romantic affection
+for Julie, and would not have offended her for the world.
+
+Julie turned round. She was always pale, and the Duchess saw nothing
+unusual.
+
+"Am I so keen?"
+
+"Julie, you have done everything in the world for this man since he came
+home."
+
+"Well, he interested me," said Julie, stepping back to look at the
+effect of one of the vases. "The first evening he was here, he saved me
+from Lady Henry--twice. He's alone in the world, too, which attracts
+me. You see, I happen to know what it's like. An only son, and an
+orphan, and no family interest to push him--"
+
+"So you thought you'd push him? Oh, Julie, you're a darling--but you're
+rather a wire-puller, aren't you?"
+
+Julie smiled faintly.
+
+"Well, perhaps I like to feel, sometimes, that I have a little power. I
+haven't much else."
+
+The Duchess seized one of her hands and pressed it to her cheek.
+
+"You have power, because every one loves and admires you. As for me, I
+would cut myself in little bits to please you.... Well, I only hope,
+when he's married his heiress, if he does marry her, they'll remember
+what they owe to you."
+
+Did she feel the hand lying in her own shake? At any rate, it was
+brusquely withdrawn, and Julie walked to the end of the table to fetch
+some more flowers.
+
+"I don't want any gratitude," she said, abruptly, "from any one. Well,
+now, Evelyn, you understand about the bazaar? I wish I could, but
+I can't."
+
+"Yes, I understand. Julie!" The Duchess rose impulsively, and threw
+herself into a chair beside the table where she could watch the face and
+movements of Mademoiselle Le Breton. "Julie, I want so much to talk to
+you--about _business_. You're not to be offended. Julie, _if_ you leave
+Lady Henry, how will you manage?"
+
+"How shall I live, you mean?" said Julie, smiling at the euphemism in
+which this little person, for whom existence had rained gold
+and flowers since her cradle, had enwrapped the hard facts of
+bread-and-butter--facts with which she was so little acquainted that
+she approached them with a certain delicate mystery.
+
+"You must have some money, you know, Julie," said the Duchess, timidly,
+her upraised face and Paris hat well matched by the gay poinsettias, the
+delicate eucharis and arums with which the table was now covered.
+
+"I shall earn some," said Julie, quietly.
+
+"Oh, but, Julie, you can't be bothered with any other tiresome old
+lady!"
+
+"No. I should keep my freedom. But Dr. Meredith has offered me work, and
+got me a promise of more."
+
+The Duchess opened her eyes.
+
+"Writing! Well, of course, we all know you can do anything you want to
+do. And you won't let anybody help you at all?"
+
+"I won't let anybody give me money, if that's what you mean," said
+Julie, smiling. But it was a smile without accent, without gayety.
+
+The Duchess, watching her, said to herself, "Since I came in she is
+changed--quite changed."
+
+"Julie, you're horribly proud!"
+
+Julie's face contracted a little.
+
+"How much 'power' should I have left, do you think--how much
+self-respect--if I took money from my friends?"
+
+"Well, not money, perhaps. But, Julie, you know all about Freddie's
+London property. It's abominable how much he has. There are always a few
+houses he keeps in his own hands. If Lady Henry _does_ quarrel with you,
+and we could lend you a little house--for a time--_wouldn't_ you take
+it, Julie?"
+
+Her voice had the coaxing inflections of a child. Julie hesitated.
+
+"Only if the Duke himself offered it," she said, finally, with a brusque
+stiffening of her whole attitude.
+
+The Duchess flushed and stood up.
+
+"Oh, well, that's all right," she said, but no longer in the same voice.
+"Remember, I have your promise. Good-bye, Julie, you darling!... Oh,
+by-the-way, what an idiot I am! Here am I forgetting the chief thing I
+came about. Will you come with me to Lady Hubert to-night? Do! Freddie's
+away, and I hate going by myself."
+
+"To Lady Hubert's?" said Julie, starting a little. "I wonder what Lady
+Henry would say?"
+
+"Tell her Jacob won't be there," said the Duchess, laughing. "Then she
+won't make any difficulties."
+
+"Shall I go and ask her?"
+
+"Gracious! let me get out of the house first. Give her a message from me
+that I will come and see her to-morrow morning. We've got to make it up,
+Freddie says; so the sooner it's over, the better. Say all the civil
+things you can to her about to-night, and wire me this afternoon. If
+all's well, I come for you at eleven."
+
+The Duchess rustled away. Julie was left standing by the table, alone.
+Her face was very still, but her eyes shone, her teeth pressed her lip.
+Unconsciously her hand closed upon a delicate blossom of eucharis and
+crushed it.
+
+"I'll go," she said, to herself. "Yes, I'll go."
+
+Her letter of the morning, as it happened, had included the following
+sentences:
+
+"I think to-night I must put in an appearance at the Hubert Delafields',
+though I own that neither the house nor the son of the house is very
+much to my liking. But I hear that he has gone back to the country. And
+there are a few people who frequent Lady Hubert, who might just now
+be of use."
+
+Lady Henry gave her consent that Mademoiselle Le Breton should accompany
+the Duchess to Lady Hubert's party almost with effusion. "It will be
+very dull," she said. "My sister-in-law makes a desert and calls it
+society. But if you want to go, go. As to Evelyn Crowborough, I am
+engaged to my dentist to-morrow morning."
+
+When at night this message was reported to the Duchess, as she and Julie
+were on their way to Rutland Gate, she laughed.
+
+"How much leek shall I have to swallow? What's to-morrow? Wednesday.
+Hm--cards in the afternoon; in the evening I appear, sit on a stool at
+Lady Henry's feet, and look at you through my glasses as though I had
+never seen you before. On Thursday I leave a French book; on Friday I
+send the baby to see her. Goodness, what a time it takes!" said the
+Duchess, raising her very white and very small shoulders. "Well, for my
+life, I mustn't fail to-morrow night."
+
+At Lady Hubert's they found a very tolerable, not to say lively,
+gathering, which quite belied Lady Henry's slanders. There was not the
+same conscious brilliance, the same thrill in the air, as pertained to
+the gatherings in Bruton Street. But there was a more solid social
+comfort, such as befits people untroubled by the certainty that the
+world is looking on. The guests of Bruton Street laughed, as well-bred
+people should, at the estimation in which Lady Henry's salon was held,
+by those especially who did not belong to it. Still, the mere knowledge
+of this outside estimate kept up a certain tension. At Lady Hubert's
+there was no tension, and the agreeable nobodies who found their way in
+were not made to blush for the agreeable nothings of their conversation.
+
+Lady Hubert herself made for ease--partly, no doubt, for stupidity. She
+was fair, sleepy, and substantial. Her husband had spent her fortune,
+and ruffled all the temper she had. The Hubert Delafields were now,
+however, better off than they had been--investments had recovered--and
+Lady Hubert's temper was once more placid, as Providence had meant it to
+be. During the coming season it was her firm intention to marry her
+daughter, who now stood beside her as she received her guests--a blonde,
+sweet-featured girl, given, however, so it was said, to good works, and
+not at all inclined to trouble herself overmuch about a husband.
+
+The rooms were fairly full; and the entry of the Duchess and
+Mademoiselle Le Breton was one of the incidents of the evening, and
+visibly quickened the pulses of the assembly. The little Dresden-china
+Duchess, with her clothes, her jewels, and her smiles, had been, since
+her marriage, one of the chief favorites of fashion. She had been
+brought up in the depths of the country, and married at eighteen. After
+six years she was not in the least tired of her popularity or its
+penalties. All the life in her dainty person, her glancing eyes, and
+small, smiling lips rose, as it were, to meet the stir that she evoked.
+She vaguely saw herself as Titania, and played the part with childish
+glee. And like Titania, as she had more than once ruefully reflected,
+she was liable to be chidden by her lord.
+
+But the Duke was on this particular evening debating high subjects in
+the House of Lords, and the Duchess was amusing herself. Sir Wilfrid
+Bury, who arrived not long after his goddaughter, found her the centre
+first of a body-guard of cousins, including among them apparently a
+great many handsome young men, and then of a small crowd, whose vaguely
+smiling faces reflected the pleasure that was to be got, even at a
+distance, out of her young and merry beauty.
+
+Julie Le Breton was not with her. But in the next room Sir Wilfrid soon
+perceived the form and face which, in their own way, exacted quite as
+much attention from the world as those of the Duchess. She was talking
+with many people, and, as usual, he could not help watching her. Never
+yet had he seen her wide, black eyes more vivid than they were to-night.
+Now, as on his first sight of her, he could not bring himself to call
+them beautiful. Yet beautiful they were, by every canon of form and
+color. No doubt it was something in their expression that offended his
+own well-drilled instincts.
+
+He found himself thinking suspicious thoughts about most of the
+conversations in which he saw her engaged. Why was she bestowing those
+careful smiles on that intolerable woman, Lady Froswick? And what an
+acquaintance she seemed to have among these elderly soldiers, who might
+at all times be reckoned on at Lady Hubert's parties! One gray-haired
+veteran after another recalled himself to her attention, got his few
+minutes with her, and passed on smiling. Certain high officials, too,
+were no less friendly. Her court, it seemed to him, was mainly composed
+of the middle-aged; to-night, at any rate, she left the young to the
+Duchess. And it was on the whole a court of men. The women, as he now
+perceived, were a trifle more reserved. There was not, indeed, a trace
+of exclusion. They were glad to see her; glad, he thought, to be noticed
+by her. But they did not yield themselves--or so he fancied--with the
+same wholeness as their husbands.
+
+"How old is she?" he asked himself. "About nine-and-twenty?... Jacob's
+age--or a trifle older."
+
+After a time he lost sight of her, and in the amusement of his own
+evening forgot her. But as the rooms were beginning to thin he walked
+through them, looking for a famous collection of miniatures that
+belonged to Lady Hubert. English family history was one of his hobbies,
+and he was far better acquainted with the Delafield statesmen, and the
+Delafield beauties of the past, than were any of their modern
+descendants. Lady Hubert's Cosways and Plimers had made a lively
+impression upon him in days gone by, and he meant to renew acquaintance
+with them.
+
+But they had been moved from the room in which he remembered them, and
+he was led on through a series of drawing-rooms, now nearly empty, till
+on the threshold of the last he paused suddenly.
+
+A lady and gentleman rose from a sofa on which they had been sitting.
+Captain Warkworth stood still. Mademoiselle Le Breton advanced to the
+new-comer.
+
+"Is it very late?" she said, gathering up her fan and gloves. "We have
+been looking at Lady Hubert's miniatures. That lady with the muff"--she
+pointed to the case which occupied a conspicuous position in the
+room--"is really wonderful. Can you tell me, Sir Wilfrid, where the
+Duchess is?"
+
+"No, but I can help you find her," said that gentleman, forgetting the
+miniatures and endeavoring to look at neither of his companions.
+
+"And I must rush," said Captain Warkworth, looking at his watch. "I told
+a man to come to my rooms at twelve. Heavens!"
+
+He shook hands with Miss Le Breton and hurried away.
+
+Sir Wilfrid and Julie moved on together. That he had disturbed a most
+intimate and critical conversation was somehow borne in upon Sir
+Wilfrid. But kind and even romantic as was the old man's inmost nature,
+his feelings were not friendly.
+
+"How does the biography get on?" he asked his companion, with a smile.
+
+A bright flush appeared in Mademoiselle Le Breton's cheek.
+
+"I think Lady Henry has dropped it."
+
+"Ah, well, I don't imagine she will regret it;" he said, dryly.
+
+She made no reply. He mentally accused himself for a brute, and then
+shook off the charge. Surely a few pin-pricks were her desert! That she
+should defend her own secrets was, as Delafield had said, legitimate
+enough. But when a man offers you his services, you should not befool
+him beyond a certain point.
+
+She must be aware of what he was thinking. He glanced at her curiously;
+at the stately dress gleaming with jet, which no longer affected
+anything of the girl; at the fine but old-fashioned necklace of pearls
+and diamonds--no doubt her mother's--which clasped her singularly
+slender throat. At any rate, she showed nothing. She began to talk again
+of the Delafield miniatures, using her fan the while with graceful
+deliberation; and presently they found the Duchess.
+
+"Is she an adventuress, or is she not?" thought Bury, as his hansom
+carried him away from Rutland Gate. "If she marries Jacob, it will be a
+queer business."
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Meanwhile the Duchess had dropped Julie Le Breton at Lady Henry's door.
+Julie groped her way up-stairs through the sleeping house. She found her
+room in darkness, and she turned on no light. There was still a last
+glimmer of fire, and she sank down by it, her long arms clasped round
+her knees, her head thrown back as though she listened still to words
+in her ears.
+
+"Oh, such a child! Such a dear, simple-minded child! Report engaged her
+to at least ten different people at Simla. She had a crowd of cavaliers
+there--I was one of them. The whole place adored her. She is a very rare
+little creature, but well looked after, I can tell you--a long array of
+guardians in the background."
+
+How was it possible not to trust that aspect and that smile? Her mind
+travelled back to the autumn days when she had seen them first; reviewed
+the steps, so little noticed at first, so rapid lately and full of fate,
+by which she had come into this bondage wherein she stood. She saw the
+first appearance of the young soldier in Lady Henry's drawing-room; her
+first conversation with him; and all the subtle development of that
+singular relation between them, into which so many elements had entered.
+The flattering sense of social power implied both in the homage of this
+young and successful man, and in the very services that she, on her
+side, was able to render him; impulsive gratitude for that homage, at a
+time when her very soul was smarting under Lady Henry's contemptuous
+hostility; and then the sweet advances of a "friendship" that was to
+unite them in a bond, secret and unique, a bond that took no account of
+the commonplaces of love and marriage, the link of equal and kindred
+souls in a common struggle with hard and sordid circumstance.
+
+"I have neither family nor powerful friends," he had written to her a
+few weeks after their first meeting; "all that I have won, I have won
+for myself. Nobody ever made 'interest' for me but you. You, too, are
+alone in the world. You, too, have to struggle for yourself. Let us
+unite our forces--cheer each other, care for each other--and keep our
+friendship a sacred secret from the world that would misunderstand it. I
+will not fail you, I will give you all my confidence; and I will try and
+understand that noble, wounded heart of yours, with its memories, and
+all those singular prides and isolations that have been imposed on it by
+circumstance. I will not say, let me be your brother; there is something
+_banal_ in that; 'friend' is good enough for us both; and there is
+between us a community of intellectual and spiritual interest which will
+enable us to add new meaning even to that sacred word. I will write to
+you every day; you shall know all that happens to me; and whatever
+grateful devotion can do to make your life smoother shall be done."
+
+Five months ago was it, that that letter was written?
+
+Its remembered phrases already rang bitterly in an aching heart. Since
+it reached her, she had put out all her powers as a woman, all her
+influence as an intelligence, in the service of the writer.
+
+And now, here she sat in the dark, tortured by a passion of which she
+was ashamed, before which she was beginning to stand helpless in a kind
+of terror. The situation was developing, and she found herself wondering
+how much longer she would be able to control herself or it. Very
+miserably conscious, too, was she all the time that she was now playing
+for a reward that was secretly, tacitly, humiliatingly denied her. How
+could a poor man, with Harry Warkworth's ambitions, think for a moment
+of marriage with a woman in her ambiguous and dependent position? Her
+common-sense told her that the very notion was absurd. And yet, since
+the Duchess's gossip had given point and body to a hundred vague
+suspicions, she was no longer able to calm, to master herself.
+
+Suddenly a thought of another kind occurred to her. It added to her
+smart that Sir Wilfrid, in their meeting at Lady Hubert's, had spoken to
+her and looked at her with that slight touch of laughing contempt. There
+had been no insincerity in that emotion with which she had first
+appealed to him as her mother's friend; she did truly value the old
+man's good opinion. And yet she had told him lies.
+
+"I can't help it," she said to herself, with a little shiver. The story
+about the biography had been the invention of a moment. It had made
+things easy, and it had a small foundation in the fact that Lady Henry
+had talked vaguely of using the letters lent her by Captain Warkworth
+for the elucidation--perhaps in a _Nineteenth Century_ article--of
+certain passages in her husband's Indian career.
+
+Jacob Delafield, too. There also it was no less clear to her than to Sir
+Wilfrid that she had "overdone it." It was true, then, what Lady Henry
+said of her--that she had an overmastering tendency to intrigue--to a
+perpetual tampering with the plain fact?
+
+"Well, it is the way in which such people as I defend themselves," she
+said, obstinately, repeating to herself what she had said to Sir
+Wilfrid Bury.
+
+And then she set against it, proudly, that disinterestedness of which,
+as she vowed to herself, no one but she knew the facts. It was true,
+what she had said to the Duchess and to Sir Wilfrid. Plenty of people
+would give her money, would make her life comfortable, without the need
+for any daily slavery. She would not take it. Jacob Delafield would
+marry her, if she lifted her finger; and she would not lift it. Dr.
+Meredith would marry her, and she had said him nay. She hugged the
+thought of her own unknown and unapplauded integrity. It comforted her
+pride. It drew a veil over that wounding laughter which had gleamed for
+a moment through those long lashes of Sir Wilfrid Bury.
+
+Last of all, as she sank into her restless sleep, came the remembrance
+that she was still under Lady Henry's roof. In the silence of the night
+the difficulties of her situation pressed upon and tormented her. What
+was she to do? Whom was she to trust?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dixon, how is Lady Henry?"
+
+"Much too ill to come down-stairs, miss. She's very much put out; in
+fact, miss (the maid lowered her voice), you hardly dare go near her.
+But she says herself it would be absurd to attempt it."
+
+"Has Hatton had any orders?"
+
+"Yes, miss. I've just told him what her ladyship wishes. He's to tell
+everybody that Lady Henry's very sorry, and hoped up to the last moment
+to be able to come down as usual."
+
+"Has Lady Henry all she wants, Dixon? Have you taken her the evening
+papers?"
+
+"Oh yes, miss. But if you go in to her much her ladyship says you're
+disturbing her; and if you don't go, why, of course, everybody's
+neglecting her."
+
+"Do you think I may go and say good-night to her, Dixon?"
+
+The maid hesitated.
+
+"I'll ask her, miss--I'll certainly ask her."
+
+The door closed, and Julie was left alone in the great drawing-room of
+the Bruton Street house. It had been prepared as usual for the
+Wednesday--evening party. The flowers were fresh; the chairs had been
+arranged as Lady Henry liked to have them; the parquet floors shone
+under the electric light; the Gainsboroughs seemed to look down from the
+walls with a gay and friendly expectancy.
+
+For herself, Julie had just finished her solitary dinner, still buoyed
+up while she was eating it by the hope that Lady Henry would be able to
+come down. The bitter winds of the two previous days, however, had much
+aggravated her chronic rheumatism. She was certainly ill and suffering;
+but Julie had known her make such heroic efforts before this to keep her
+Wednesdays going that not till Dixon appeared with her verdict did she
+give up hope.
+
+So everybody would be turned away. Julie paced the drawing-room a
+solitary figure amid its lights and flowers--solitary and dejected. In a
+couple of hours' time all her particular friends would come to the door,
+and it would be shut against them. "Of course, expect me to-night," had
+been the concluding words of her letter of the morning. Several people
+also had announced themselves for this evening whom it was extremely
+desirable she should see. A certain eminent colonel, professor at the
+Staff College, was being freely named in the papers for the Mokembe
+mission. Never was it more necessary for her to keep all the threads of
+her influence in good working order. And these Wednesday evenings
+offered her the occasions when she was most successful, most at her
+ease--especially whenever Lady Henry was not well enough to leave the
+comparatively limited sphere of the back drawing-room.
+
+Moreover, the gatherings themselves ministered to a veritable craving in
+Julie Le Breton--the craving for society and conversation. She shared it
+with Lady Henry, but in her it was even more deeply rooted. Lady Henry
+had ten talents in the Scriptural sense--money, rank, all sorts of
+inherited bonds and associations. Julie Le Breton had but this one.
+Society was with her both an instinct and an art. With the subtlest and
+most intelligent ambition she had trained and improved her natural gift
+for it during the last few years. And now, to the excitement of society
+was added the excitement of a new and tyrannous feeling, for which
+society was henceforth a mere weapon to be used.
+
+She fumed and fretted for a while in silence. Every now and then she
+would pause in front of one of the great mirrors of the room, and look
+at the reflection of her tall thinness and the trailing satin of
+her gown.
+
+"The girl--so pretty, in a gossamer sort of way," The words echoed in
+her mind, and vaguely, beside her own image in the glass, there rose a
+vision of girlhood--pale, gold hair, pink cheeks, white frock--and she
+turned away, miserable, from that conscious, that intellectual
+distinction with which, in general, she could persuade herself to be
+very fairly satisfied.
+
+Hutton, the butler, came in to look at the fire.
+
+"Will you be sitting here to-night, miss?"
+
+"Oh no, Hutton. I shall go back to the library. I think the fire in my
+own room is out."
+
+"I had better put out these lights, anyway," said the man, looking round
+the brilliant room.
+
+"Oh, certainly," said Julie, and she began to assist him to do so.
+
+Suddenly a thought occurred to her.
+
+"Hutton!" She went up to him and spoke in a lower tone. "If the Duchess
+of Crowborough comes to-night, I should very much like to see her, and I
+know she wants to see me. Do you think it could possibly disturb Lady
+Henry if you were to show her into the library for twenty minutes?"
+
+The man considered.
+
+"I don't think there could be anything heard up-stairs, miss. I should,
+of course, warn her grace that her ladyship was ill."
+
+"Well, then, Hutton, please ask her to come in," said Miss Le Breton,
+hurriedly. "And, Hutton, Dr. Meredith and Mr. Montresor, you know how
+disappointed they'll be not to find Lady Henry at home?"
+
+"Yes, miss. They'll want to know how her ladyship is, no doubt. I'll
+tell them you're in the library. And Captain Warkworth, miss?--he's
+never missed a Wednesday evening for weeks."
+
+"Oh, well, if he comes--you must judge for yourself, Hutton," said Miss
+Le Breton, occupying herself with the electric switches. "I should like
+to tell them all--the old friends--how Lady Henry is."
+
+The butler's face was respectful discretion itself.
+
+"Of course, miss. And shall I bring tea and coffee?"
+
+"Oh no," said Miss Le Breton, hastily; and then, after reflection,
+"Well, have it ready; but I don't suppose anybody will ask for it. Is
+there a good fire in the library?"
+
+"Oh yes, miss. I thought you would be coming down there again. Shall I
+take some of these flowers down? The room looks rather bare, if
+anybody's coming in."
+
+Julie colored a little.
+
+"Well, you might--not many. And, Hutton, you're sure we can't disturb
+Lady Henry?"
+
+Hutton's expression was not wholly confident.
+
+"Her ladyship's very quick of hearing, miss. But I'll shut those doors
+at the foot of the back stairs, and I'll ask every one to come
+in quietly."
+
+"Thank you, Hutton--thank you. That'll be very good of you. And,
+Hutton--"
+
+"Yes, miss." The man paused with a large vase of white arums in his
+hand.
+
+"You'll say a word to Dixon, won't you? If anybody comes in, there'll be
+no need to trouble Lady Henry about it. I can tell her to-morrow."
+
+"Very good, miss. Dixon will be down to her supper presently."
+
+The butler departed. Julie was left alone in the now darkened room,
+lighted only by one lamp and the bright glow of the fire. She caught her
+breath--suddenly struck with the audacity of what she had been doing.
+Eight or ten of these people certainly would come in--eight or ten of
+Lady Henry's "intimates." If Lady Henry discovered it--after this
+precarious truce between them had just been patched up!
+
+Julie made a step towards the door as though to recall the butler, then
+stopped herself. The thought that in an hour's time Harry Warkworth
+might be within a few yards of her, and she not permitted to see him,
+worked intolerably in heart and brain, dulling the shrewd intelligence
+by which she was ordinarily governed. She was conscious, indeed, of some
+profound inner change. Life had been difficult enough before the Duchess
+had said those few words to her. But since!
+
+Suppose he had deceived her at Lady Hubert's party! Through all her
+mounting passion her acute sense of character did not fail her. She
+secretly knew that it was quite possible he had deceived her. But the
+knowledge merely added to the sense of danger which, in this case, was
+one of the elements of passion itself.
+
+"He must have money--of course he must have money," she was saying,
+feverishly, to herself. "But I'll find ways. Why should he marry
+yet--for years? It would be only hampering him."
+
+Again she paused before the mirrored wall; and again imagination evoked
+upon the glass the same white and threatening image--her own near
+kinswoman--the child of her mother's sister! How strange! Where was the
+little gossamer creature now--in what safe haven of money and family
+affection, and all the spoiling that money brings? From the climbing
+paths of her own difficult and personal struggle Julie Le Breton looked
+down with sore contempt on such a degenerate ease of circumstance. She
+had heard it said that the mother and daughter were lingering abroad for
+a time on their way home from India. Yet was the girl all the while
+pining for England, thinking not of her garden, her horse, her pets, but
+only of this slim young soldier who in a few minutes, perhaps, would
+knock at Lady Henry's door, in quest of Aileen Moffatt's unknown,
+unguessed-of cousin? These thoughts sent wild combative thrills through
+Julie's pulses. She turned to one of the old French clocks. How much
+longer now--till he came?
+
+"Her ladyship would like to see you, miss."
+
+The voice was Dixon's, and Julie turned hurriedly, recalling all her
+self-possession. She climbed some steep stairs, still unmodernized, to
+Lady Henry's floor. That lady slept at the back of the house, so as to
+be out of noise. Her room was an old-fashioned apartment, furnished
+about the year Queen Victoria came to the throne, with furniture,
+chintzes, and carpet of the most approved early Victorian pattern. What
+had been ugly then was dingy now; and its strong mistress, who had known
+so well how to assimilate and guard the fine decorations and noble
+pictures of the drawing-rooms, would not have a thing in it touched. "It
+suits me," she would say, impatiently, when her stout sister-in-law
+pleaded placidly for white paint and bright colors. "If it's ugly, so
+am I."
+
+Fierce, certainly, and forbidding she was on this February evening. She
+lay high on her pillow, tormented by her chronic bronchitis and by
+rheumatic pain, her brows drawn together, her vigorous hands clasped
+before her in an evident tension, as though she only restrained herself
+with difficulty from defying maid, doctor, and her own sense
+of prudence.
+
+"Well, you have dressed?" she said, sharply, as Julie Le Breton entered
+her room.
+
+"I did not get your message till I had finished dinner. And I dressed
+before dinner."
+
+Lady Henry looked her up and down, like a cat ready to pounce.
+
+"You didn't bring me those letters to sign?"
+
+"No, I thought you were not fit for it."
+
+"I said they were to go to-night. Kindly bring them at once."
+
+Julie brought them. With groans and flinchings that she could not
+repress, Lady Henry read and signed them. Then she demanded to be read
+to. Julie sat down, trembling. How fast the hands of Lady Henry's clock
+were moving on!
+
+Mercifully, Lady Henry was already somewhat sleepy, partly from
+weakness, partly from a dose of bromide.
+
+"I hear nothing," she said, putting out an impatient hand. "You should
+raise your voice. I didn't mean you to shout, of course. Thank
+you--that'll do. Good-night. Tell Hutton to keep the house as quiet as
+he can. People must knock and ring, I suppose; but if all the doors are
+properly shut it oughtn't to bother me. Are you going to bed?"
+
+"I shall sit up a little to write some letters. But--I sha'n't be
+late."
+
+"Why should you be late?" said Lady Henry, tartly, as she turned away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Julie made her way down-stairs with a beating heart. All the doors were
+carefully shut behind her. When she reached the hall it was already
+half-past ten o'clock. She hurried to the library, the large panelled
+room behind the dining-room. How bright Hutton had made it look! Up shot
+her spirits. With a gay and dancing step she went from chair to chair,
+arranging everything instinctively as she was accustomed to do in the
+drawing-room. She made the flowers less stiff; she put on another light;
+she drew one table forward and pushed its fellow back against the wall.
+What a charming old room, after all! What a pity Lady Henry so seldom
+used it! It was panelled in dark oak, while the drawing-room was white.
+But the pictures, of which there were two or three, looked even better
+here than up-stairs. That beautiful Lawrence--a "red boy" in gleaming
+satin--that pair of Hoppners, fine studies in blue, why, who had ever
+seen them before? And another light or two would show them still better.
+
+A loud knock and ring. Julie held her breath. Ah! A distant voice in the
+hall. She moved to the fire, and stood quietly reading an evening paper.
+
+"Captain Warkworth would be glad if you would see him for a few minutes,
+miss. He would like to ask you himself about her ladyship."
+
+"Please ask him to come in, Hutton."
+
+Hutton effaced himself, and the young man entered, Then Julie raised her
+voice.
+
+"Remember, please, Hutton, that I _particularly_ want to see the
+Duchess."
+
+Hutton bowed and retired. Warkworth came forward.
+
+"What luck to find you like this!"
+
+He threw her one look--Julie knew it to be a look of scrutiny--and then,
+as she held out her hand, he stooped and kissed it.
+
+"He wants to know that my suspicions are gone," she thought. "At any
+rate, he should believe it."
+
+"The great thing," she said, with her finger to her lip, "is that Lady
+Henry should hear nothing."
+
+She motioned her somewhat puzzled guest to a seat on one side of the
+fire, and, herself, fell into another opposite. A wild vivacity was in
+her face and manner.
+
+"Isn't this amusing? Isn't the room charming? I think I should receive
+very well"--she looked round her--"in my own house."
+
+"You would receive well in a garret--a stable," he said. "But what is
+the meaning of this? Explain."
+
+"Lady Henry is ill and is gone to bed. That made her very cross--poor
+Lady Henry! She thinks I, too, am in bed. But you see--you forced your
+way in--didn't you?--to inquire with greater minuteness after Lady
+Henry's health."
+
+She bent towards him, her eyes dancing.
+
+"Of course I did. Will there presently be a swarm on my heels, all
+possessed with a similar eagerness, or--?"
+
+He drew his chair, smiling, a little closer to her. She, on the
+contrary, withdrew hers.
+
+"There will, no doubt, be six or seven," she said, demurely, "who will
+want personal news. But now, before they come"--her tone changed--"is
+there anything to tell me?"
+
+"Plenty," he said, drawing a letter out of his pocket. "Your writ, my
+dear lady, runs as easily in the City as elsewhere." And he held up
+an envelope.
+
+She flushed.
+
+"You have got your allotment? But I knew you would. Lady Froswick
+promised."
+
+"And a large allotment, too," he said, joyously. "I am the envy of all
+my friends. Some of them have got a few shares, and have already sold
+them--grumbling. I keep mine three days more on the best advice--the
+price may go higher yet. But, anyway, there"--he shook the
+envelope--"there it is--deliverance from debt--peace of mind for the
+first time since I was a lad at school--the power of going, properly
+fitted out and equipped, to Africa--_if_ I go--and not like a
+beggar--all in that bit of paper, and all the work of--some one you and
+I know. Fairy godmother! tell me, please, how to say a proper
+thank you."
+
+The young soldier dropped his voice. Those blue eyes which had done him
+excellent service in many different parts of the globe were fixed with
+brilliance on his companion; the lines of a full-lipped mouth quivered
+with what seemed a boyish pleasure. The comfort of money relief was
+never acknowledged more frankly or more handsomely.
+
+Julie hurriedly repressed him. Did she feel instinctively that there are
+thanks which it sometimes humiliates a man to remember, lavishly as he
+may have poured them out at the moment--thanks which may easily count in
+the long run, not for, but against, the donor? She rather haughtily
+asked what she had done but say a chance word to Lady Froswick? The
+shares had to be allotted to somebody. She was glad, of course, very
+glad, if he were relieved from anxiety....
+
+So did she free herself and him from a burdensome gratitude; and they
+passed to discussing the latest chances of the Mokembe appointment. The
+Staff-College Colonel was no doubt formidable; the Commander-in-Chief,
+who had hitherto allowed himself to be much talked to on the subject of
+young Warkworth's claims by several men in high place--General M'Gill
+among them--well known in Lady Henry's drawing-room, was perhaps
+inclining to the new suggestion, which was strongly supported by
+important people in Egypt; he had one or two recent appointments on his
+conscience not quite of the highest order, and the Staff-College man, in
+addition to a fine military record, was virtue, poverty, and industry
+embodied; was nobody's cousin, and would, altogether, produce a
+good effect.
+
+Could anything more be done, and fresh threads set in motion?
+
+They bandied names a little, Julie quite as subtly and minutely informed
+as the man with regard to all the sources of patronage. New devices,
+fresh modes of approach revealed themselves to the woman's quick brain.
+Yet she did not chatter about them; still less parade her own resources.
+Only, in talking with her, dead walls seemed to give way; vistas of hope
+and possibility opened in the very heart of discouragement. She found
+the right word, the right jest, the right spur to invention or effort;
+while all the time she was caressing and appeasing her companion's
+self-love--placing it like a hot-house plant in an atmosphere of
+expansion and content--with that art of hers, which, for the ambitious
+and irritable man, more conscious of the kicks than of the kisses of
+fortune, made conversation with her an active and delightful pleasure.
+
+"I don't know how it is," Warkworth presently declared; "but after I
+have been talking to you for ten minutes the whole world seems changed.
+The sky was ink, and you have turned it rosy. But suppose it is all
+mirage, and you the enchanter?"
+
+He smiled at her--consciously, superabundantly. It was not easy to keep
+quite cool with Julie Le Breton; the self-satisfaction she could excite
+in the man she wished to please recoiled upon the woman offering the
+incense. The flattered one was apt to be foolishly responsive.
+
+"That is my risk," she said, with a little shrug. "If I make you
+confident, and nothing comes of it--"
+
+"I hope I shall know how to behave myself," cried Warkworth. "You see,
+you hardly understand--forgive me!--your own personal effect. When
+people are face to face with you, they want to please you, to say what
+will please you, and then they go away, and--"
+
+"Resolve not to be made fools of?" she said, smiling. "But isn't that
+the whole art--when you're guessing what will happen--to be able to
+strike the balance of half a dozen different attractions?"
+
+"Montresor as the ocean," said Warkworth, musing, "with half a dozen
+different forces tugging at him? Well, dear lady, be the moon to these
+tides, while this humble mortal looks on--and hopes."
+
+He bent forward, and across the glowing fire their eyes met. She looked
+so cool, so handsome, so little yielding at that moment, that, in
+addition to gratitude and nattered vanity, Warkworth was suddenly
+conscious of a new stir in the blood. It begat, however, instant recoil.
+Wariness!--let that be the word, both for her sake and his own. What had
+he to reproach himself with so far? Nothing. He had never offered
+himself as the lover, as the possible husband. They were both _esprits
+faits_--they understood each other. As for little Aileen, well, whatever
+had happened, or might happen, that was not his secret to give away. And
+a woman in Julie Le Breton's position, and with her intelligence, knows
+very well what the difficulties of her case are. Poor Julie! If she had
+been Lady Henry, what a career she would have made for herself! He was
+very curious as to her birth and antecedents, of which he knew little or
+nothing; with him she had always avoided the subject. She was the child,
+he understood, of English parents who had lived abroad; Lady Henry had
+come across her by chance. But there must be something in her past to
+account for this distinction, this ease with which she held her own in
+what passes as the best of English society.
+
+Julie soon found herself unwilling to meet the gaze fixed upon her. She
+flushed a little and began to talk of other things.
+
+"Everybody, surely, is unusually late. It will be annoying, indeed, if
+the Duchess doesn't come."
+
+"The Duchess is a delicious creature, but not for me," said Warkworth,
+with a laugh. "She dislikes me. Ah, now then for the fray!"
+
+For the outer bell rang loudly, and there were steps in the hall.
+
+"Oh, Julie"--in swept a white whirlwind with the smallest white satin
+shoes twinkling in front of it--"how clever of you--you naughty angel!
+Aunt Flora in bed--and you down here! And I who came prepared for such a
+dose of humble-pie! What a relief! Oh, how do you do?"
+
+The last words were spoken in quite another tone, as the Duchess, for
+the first time perceiving the young officer on the more shaded side of
+the fireplace, extended to him a very high wrist and a very stiff hand.
+Then she turned again to Julie.
+
+"My dear, there's a small mob in the hall. Mr. Montresor--and General
+Somebody--and Jacob--and Dr. Meredith with a Frenchman. Oh, and old Lord
+Lackington, and Heaven knows who! Hutton told me I might come in, so I
+promised to come first and reconnoitre. But what's Hutton to do? You
+really must take a line. The carriages are driving up at a fine rate."
+
+"I'll go and speak to Hutton," said Julie.
+
+And she hurried into the hall.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+When Miss Le Breton reached the hall, a footman was at the outer door
+reciting Lady Henry's excuses as each fresh carriage drove up; while in
+the inner vestibule, which was well screened from the view of the
+street, was a group of men, still in their hats and over-coats, talking
+and laughing in subdued voices.
+
+Julie Le Breton came forward. The hats were removed, and the tall,
+stooping form of Montresor advanced.
+
+"Lady Henry is _so_ sorry," said Julie, in a soft, lowered voice. "But I
+am sure she would like me to give you her message and to tell you how
+she is. She would not like her old friends to be alarmed. Would you come
+in for a moment? There is a fire in the library. Mr. Delafield, don't
+you think that would be best?... Will you tell Hutton not to let in
+_anybody_ else?"
+
+She looked at him uncertainly, as though appealing to him, as a relation
+of Lady Henry's, to take the lead.
+
+"By all means," said that young man, after perhaps a moment's
+hesitation, and throwing off his coat.
+
+"Only _please_ make no noise!" said Miss Le Breton, turning to the
+group. "Lady Henry might be disturbed."
+
+Every one came in, as it were, on tiptoe. In each face a sense of the
+humor of the situation fought with the consciousness of its dangers. As
+soon as Montresor saw the little Duchess by the fire, he threw up his
+hands in relief.
+
+"I breathe again," he said, greeting her with effusion. "Duchess, where
+thou goest, I may go. But I feel like a boy robbing a hen-roost. Let me
+introduce my friend, General Fergus. Take us both, pray, under your
+protection!"
+
+"On the contrary," said the Duchess, as she returned General Fergus's
+bow, "you are both so magnificent that no one would dare to
+protect you."
+
+For they were both in uniform, and the General was resplendent with
+stars and medals.
+
+"We have been dining with royalty." said Montresor. "We want some
+relaxation."
+
+He put on his eye-glasses, looked round the room, and gently rubbed his
+hands.
+
+"How very agreeable this is! What a charming room! I never saw it
+before. What are we doing here? Is it a party? Why shouldn't it be?
+Meredith, have you introduced M. du Bartas to the Duchess? Ah, I see--"
+
+For Julie Le Breton was already conversing with the distinguished
+Frenchman wearing the rosette of the Legion of Honor in his button-hole,
+who had followed Dr. Meredith into the room. As Montresor spoke,
+however, she came forward, and in a French which was a joy to the ear,
+she presented M. du Bartas, a tall, well-built Norman with a fair
+mustache, first to the Duchess and then to Lord Lackington and Jacob.
+
+"The director of the French Foreign Office," said Montresor, in an aside
+to the Duchess. "He hates us like poison. But if you haven't already
+asked him to dinner--I warned you last week he was coming--pray do
+it at once!"
+
+Meanwhile the Frenchman, his introductions over, looked curiously round
+the room, studied its stately emptiness, the books on the walls under a
+trellis-work, faintly gilt, the three fine pictures; then his eyes
+passed to the tall and slender lady who had addressed him in such
+perfect French, and to the little Duchess in her flutter of lace and
+satin, the turn of her small neck, and the blaze of her jewels. "These
+Englishwomen overdo their jewels," he thought, with distaste. "But they
+overdo everything. That is a handsome fellow, by-the-way, who was with
+_la petite fee_ when we arrived."
+
+And his shrewd, small eyes travelled from Warkworth to the Duchess, his
+mind the while instinctively assuming some hidden relation between them.
+
+Meanwhile, Montresor was elaborately informing himself as to Lady Henry.
+
+"This is the first time for twenty years that I have not found her on a
+Wednesday evening," he said, with a sudden touch of feeling which became
+him. "At our age, the smallest break in the old habit--"
+
+He sighed, and then quickly threw off his depression.
+
+"Nonsense! Next week she will be scolding us all with double energy.
+Meanwhile, may we sit down, mademoiselle? Ten minutes? And, upon my
+word, the very thing my soul was longing for--a cup of coffee!"
+
+For at the moment Hutton and two footmen entered with trays containing
+tea and coffee, lemonade and cakes.
+
+"Shut the door, Hutton, _please_," Mademoiselle Le Breton implored, and
+the door was shut at once.
+
+"We mustn't, _mustn't_ make any noise!" she said, her finger on her
+lip, looking first at Montresor and then at Delafield. The group
+laughed, moved their spoons softly, and once more lowered their voices.
+
+But the coffee brought a spirit of festivity. Chairs were drawn up. The
+blazing fire shone out upon a semicircle of people representing just
+those elements of mingled intimacy and novelty which go to make
+conversation. And in five minutes Mademoiselle Le Breton was leading it
+as usual. A brilliant French book had recently appeared dealing with
+certain points of the Egyptian question in a manner so interesting,
+supple, and apparently impartial that the attention of Europe had been
+won. Its author had been formerly a prominent official of the French
+Foreign Office, and was now somewhat out of favor with his countrymen.
+Julie put some questions about him to M. du Bartas.
+
+The Frenchman feeling himself among comrades worthy of his steel, and
+secretly pricked by the presence of an English cabinet minister,
+relinquished the half-disdainful reserve with which he had entered, and
+took pains. He drew the man in question, _en silhouette_, with a hostile
+touch so sure, an irony so light, that his success was instant
+and great.
+
+Lord Lackington woke up. Handsome, white-haired dreamer that he was, he
+had been looking into the fire, half--smiling, more occupied, in truth,
+with his own thoughts than with his companions. Delafield had brought
+him in; he did not exactly know why he was there, except that he liked
+Mademoiselle Le Breton, and often wondered how the deuce Lady Henry had
+ever discovered such an interesting and delightful person to fill such
+an uncomfortable position. But this Frenchman challenged and excited
+him. He, too, began to talk French, and soon the whole room was talking
+it, with an advantage to Julie Le Breton which quickly made itself
+apparent. In English she was a link, a social conjunction; she eased all
+difficulties, she pieced all threads. But in French her tongue was
+loosened, though never beyond the point of grace, the point of delicate
+adjustment to the talkers round her.
+
+So that presently, and by insensible gradations, she was the queen of
+the room. The Duchess in ecstasy pinched Jacob Delafield's wrist, and
+forgetting all that she ought to have remembered, whispered,
+rapturously, in his ear, "Isn't she enchanting--Julie--to-night?" That
+gentleman made no answer. The Duchess, remembering, shrank back, and
+spoke no more, till Jacob looked round upon her with a friendly smile
+which set her tongue free again.
+
+M. du Bartas, meanwhile, began to consider this lady in black with more
+and more attention. The talk glided into a general discussion of the
+Egyptian position. Those were the days before Arabi, when elements of
+danger and of doubt abounded, and none knew what a month might bring
+forth. With perfect tact Julie guided the conversation, so that all
+difficulties, whether for the French official or the English statesman,
+were avoided with a skill that no one realized till each separate rock
+was safely passed. Presently Montresor looked from her to Du Bartas with
+a grin. The Frenchman's eyes were round with astonishment. Julie had
+been saying the lightest but the wisest things; she had been touching
+incidents and personalities known only to the initiated with a
+restrained gayety which often broke down into a charming shyness, which
+was ready to be scared away in a moment by a tone--too serious or too
+polemical--which jarred with the general key of the conversation, which
+never imposed itself, and was like the ripple on a summer sea. But the
+summer sea has its depths, and this modest gayety was the mark of an
+intimate and first-hand knowledge.
+
+"Ah, I see," thought Montresor, amused. "P---- has been writing to her,
+the little minx. He seems to have been telling her all the secrets. I
+think I'll stop it. Even she mayn't quite understand what should and
+shouldn't be said before this gentleman."
+
+So he gave the conversation a turn, and Mademoiselle Le Breton took the
+hint at once. She called others to the front--it was like a change of
+dancers in the ballet--while she rested, no less charming as a listener
+than as a talker, her black eyes turning from one to another and radiant
+with the animation of success.
+
+But one thing--at last--she had forgotten. She had forgotten to impose
+any curb upon the voices round her. The Duchess and Lord Lackington were
+sparring like a couple of children, and Montresor broke in from time to
+time with his loud laugh and gruff throat voice. Meredith, the
+Frenchman, Warkworth, and General Fergus were discussing a grand review
+which had been held the day before. Delafield had moved round to the
+back of Julie's chair, and she was talking to him, while all the time
+her eyes were on General Fergus and her brain was puzzling as to how she
+was to secure the five minutes' talk with him she wanted. He was one of
+the intimates of the Commander-in-Chief. She herself had suggested to
+Montresor, of course in Lady Henry's name, that he should be brought to
+Bruton Street some Wednesday evening.
+
+Presently there was a little shifting of groups. Julie saw that
+Montresor and Captain Warkworth were together by the fireplace, that the
+young man with his hands held out to the blaze and his back to her was
+talking eagerly, while Montresor, looking outward into the room, his
+great black head bent a little towards his companion, was putting sharp
+little questions from time to time, with as few words as might be. Julie
+understood that an important conversation was going on--that Montresor,
+whose mind various friends of hers had been endeavoring to make up for
+him, was now perhaps engaged in making it up for himself.
+
+With a quickened pulse she turned to find General Fergus beside her.
+What a frank and soldierly countenance!--a little roughly cut, with a
+strong mouth slightly underhung, and a dogged chin, the whole lit by
+eyes that were the chosen homes of truth, humanity, and will. Presently
+she discovered, as they drew their chairs a little back from the circle,
+that she, too, was to be encouraged to talk about Warkworth. The General
+was, of course, intimately 'acquainted with his professional record; but
+there were certain additional Indian opinions--a few incidents in the
+young man's earlier career, including, especially, a shooting expedition
+of much daring in the very district to which the important Mokembe
+mission was now to be addressed, together with some quotations from
+private letters of her own, or Lady Henry's, which Julie, with her usual
+skill, was able to slip into his ear, all on the assumption, delicately
+maintained, that she was merely talking of a friend of Lady Henry's, as
+Lady Henry herself would have talked, to much better effect, had she
+been present.
+
+The General gave her a grave and friendly attention. Few men had done
+sterner or more daring feats in the field. Yet here he sat, relaxed,
+courteous, kind, trusting his companions simply, as it was his instinct
+to trust all women. Julie's heart beat fast. What an exciting, what an
+important evening!...
+
+Suddenly there was a voice in her ear.
+
+"Do you know, I think we ought to clear out. It must be close on
+midnight."
+
+She looked up, startled, to see Jacob Delafield. His expression--of
+doubt or discomfort--recalled her at once to the realities of her own
+situation.
+
+But before she could reply, a sound struck on her ear. She sprang to her
+feet.
+
+"What was that?" she said.
+
+A voice was heard in the hall.
+
+Julie Le Breton caught the chair behind her, and Delafield saw her turn
+pale. But before she or he could speak again, the door of the library
+was thrown open.
+
+"Good Heavens!" said Montresor, springing to his feet. "Lady Henry!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+M. du Bartas lifted astonished eyes. On the threshold of the room stood
+an old lady, leaning heavily on two sticks. She was deathly pale, and
+her fierce eyes blazed upon the scene before her. Within the bright,
+fire-lit room the social comedy was being played at its best; but here
+surely was Tragedy--or Fate. Who was she? What did it mean?
+
+The Duchess rushed to her, and fell, of course, upon the one thing she
+should not have said.
+
+"Oh, Aunt Flora, dear Aunt Flora! But we thought you were too ill to
+come down!"
+
+"So I perceive," said Lady Henry, putting her aside. "So you, and this
+lady"--she pointed a shaking finger at Julie--"have held my reception
+for me. I am enormously obliged. You have also"--she looked at the
+coffee-cups--"provided my guests with refreshment. I thank you. I trust
+my servants have given you satisfaction.
+
+"Gentlemen"--she turned to the rest of the company, who stood
+stupefied--"I fear I cannot ask you to remain with me longer. The hour
+is late, and I am--as you see--indisposed. But I trust, on some future
+occasion, I may have the honor--"
+
+She looked round upon them, challenging and defying them all.
+
+Montresor went up to her.
+
+"My dear old friend, let me introduce to you M. du Bartas, of the French
+Foreign Office."
+
+At this appeal to her English hospitality and her social chivalry, Lady
+Henry looked grimly at the Frenchman.
+
+"M. du Bartas, I am charmed to make your acquaintance. With your leave,
+I will pursue it when I am better able to profit by it. To-morrow I will
+write to you to propose another meeting--should my health allow."
+
+"Enchante, madame," murmured the Frenchman, more embarrassed than he had
+ever been in his life. "Permettez--moi de vous faire mes plus sinceres
+excuses."
+
+"Not at all, monsieur, you owe me none."
+
+Montresor again approached her.
+
+"Let me tell you," he said, imploringly, "how this has happened--how
+innocent we all are--"
+
+"Another time, if you please," she said, with a most cutting calm. "As I
+said before, it is late. If I had been equal to entertaining you"--she
+looked round upon them all--"I should not have told my butler to make my
+excuses. As it is, I must beg you to allow me to bid you good-night.
+Jacob, will you kindly get the Duchess her cloak? Good-night.
+Good-night. As you see"--she pointed to the sticks which supported
+her--"I have no hands to-night. My infirmities have need of them."
+
+Montresor approached her again, in real and deep distress.
+
+"Dear Lady Henry--"
+
+"Go!" she said, under her breath, looking him in the eyes, and he turned
+and went without a word. So did the Duchess, whimpering, her hand in
+Delafield's arm. As she passed Julie, who stood as though turned to
+stone, she made a little swaying movement towards her.
+
+"Dear Julie!" she cried, imploringly.
+
+But Lady Henry turned.
+
+"You will have every opportunity to-morrow," she said. "As far as I am
+concerned, Miss Le Breton will have no engagements."
+
+Lord Lackington quietly said, "Good-night, Lady Henry," and, without
+offering to shake hands, walked past her. As he came to the spot where
+Julie Le Breton stood, that lady made a sudden, impetuous movement
+towards him. Strange words were on her lips, a strange expression
+in her eyes.
+
+"_You_ must help me," she said, brokenly. "It is my right!"
+
+Was that what she said? Lord Lackington looked at her in astonishment.
+He did not see that Lady Henry was watching them with eagerness, leaning
+heavily on her sticks, her lips parted in a keen expectancy.
+
+Then Julie withdrew.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she said, hurriedly. "I beg your pardon.
+Good-night."
+
+Lord Lackington hesitated. His face took a puzzled expression. Then he
+held out his hand, and she placed hers in it mechanically.
+
+"It will be all right," he whispered, kindly. "Lady Henry will soon be
+herself again. Shall I tell the butler to call for some one--her maid?"
+
+Julie shook her head, and in another moment he, too, was gone. Dr.
+Meredith and General Fergus stood beside her. The General had a keen
+sense of humor, and as he said good-night to this unlawful hostess,
+whose plight he understood no more than his own, his mouth twitched with
+repressed laughter. But Dr. Meredith did not laugh. He pressed Julie's
+hand in both of his. Looking behind him, he saw that Jacob Delafield,
+who had just returned from the hall, was endeavoring to appease Lady
+Henry. He bent towards Julie.
+
+"Don't deceive yourself," he said, quickly, in a low voice; "this is the
+end. Remember my letter. Let me hear to-morrow."
+
+As Dr. Meredith left the room, Julie lifted her eyes. Only Jacob
+Delafield and Lady Henry were left.
+
+Harry Warkworth, too, was gone--without a word? She looked round her
+piteously. She could not remember that he had spoken--that he had bade
+her farewell. A strange pang convulsed her. She scarcely heard what Lady
+Henry was saying to Jacob Delafield. Yet the words were emphatic enough.
+
+"Much obliged to you, Jacob. But when I want your advice in my household
+affairs, I will ask it. You and Evelyn Crowborough have meddled a good
+deal too much in them already. Good-night. Hutton will get you a cab."
+
+And with a slight but imperious gesture, Lady Henry motioned towards the
+door. Jacob hesitated, then quietly took his departure. He threw Julie a
+look of anxious appeal as he went out. But she did not see it; her
+troubled gaze was fixed on Lady Henry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That lady eyed her companion with composure, though by now even the old
+lips were wholly blanched.
+
+"There is really no need for any conversation between us, Miss Le
+Breton," said the familiar voice. "But if there were, I am not to-night,
+as you see, in a condition to say it. So--when you came up to say
+good-night to me--you had determined on this adventure? You had been
+good enough, I see, to rearrange my room--to give my servants
+your orders."
+
+Julie stood stonily erect. She made her dry lips answer as best they
+could.
+
+"We meant no harm," she said, coldly. "It all came about very simply. A
+few people came in to inquire after you. I regret they should have
+stayed talking so long."
+
+Lady Henry smiled in contempt.
+
+"You hardly show your usual ability by these remarks. The room you stand
+in"--she glanced significantly at the lights and the chairs--"gives you
+the lie. You had planned it all with Hutton, who has become your tool,
+before you came to me. Don't contradict. It distresses me to hear you.
+Well, now we part."
+
+"Of course. Perhaps to-morrow you will allow me a few last words?"
+
+"I think not. This will cost me dear," said Lady Henry, her white lips
+twitching. "Say them now, mademoiselle."
+
+"You are suffering." Julie made an uncertain step forward. "You ought to
+be in bed."
+
+"That has nothing to do with it. What was your object to-night?"
+
+"I wished to see the Duchess--"
+
+"It is not worth while to prevaricate. The Duchess was not your first
+visitor."
+
+Julie flushed.
+
+"Captain Warkworth arrived first; that was a mere chance."
+
+"It was to see him that you risked the whole affair. You have used my
+house for your own intrigues."
+
+Julie felt herself physically wavering under the lash of these
+sentences. But with a great effort she walked towards the fireplace,
+recovered her gloves and handkerchief, which were on the mantel-piece,
+and then turned slowly to Lady Henry.
+
+"I have done nothing in your service that I am ashamed of. On the
+contrary, I have borne what no one else would have borne. I have devoted
+myself to you and your interests, and you have trampled upon and
+tortured me. For you I have been merely a servant, and an inferior--"
+
+Lady Henry nodded grimly.
+
+"It is true," she said, interrupting, "I was not able to take your
+romantic view of the office of companion."
+
+"You need only have taken a human view," said Julie, in a voice that
+pierced; "I was alone, poor--worse than motherless. You might have done
+what you would with me. A little indulgence, and I should have been your
+devoted slave. But you chose to humiliate and crush me; and in return,
+to protect myself, I, in defending myself, have been led, I admit it,
+into taking liberties. There is no way out of it. I shall, of course,
+leave you to-morrow morning."
+
+"Then at last we understand each other," said Lady Henry, with a laugh.
+"Good-night, Miss Le Breton."
+
+She moved heavily on her sticks. Julie stood aside to let her pass. One
+of the sticks slipped a little on the polished floor. Julie, with a cry,
+ran forward, but Lady Henry fiercely motioned her aside.
+
+"Don't touch me! Don't come near me!"
+
+She paused a moment to recover breath and balance. Then she resumed her
+difficult walk. Julie followed her.
+
+"Kindly put out the electric lights," said Lady Henry, and Julie obeyed.
+
+They entered the hall in which one little light was burning. Lady Henry,
+with great difficulty, and panting, began to pull herself up the stairs.
+
+"Oh, _do_ let me help you!" said Julie, in an agony. "You will kill
+yourself. Let me at least call Dixon."
+
+"You will do nothing of the kind," said Lady Henry, indomitable, though
+tortured by weakness and rheumatism. "Dixon is in my room, where I bade
+her remain. You should have thought of the consequences of this before
+you embarked upon it. If I were to die in mounting these stairs, I would
+not let you help me."
+
+"Oh!" cried Julie, as though she had been struck, and hid her eyes with
+her hand.
+
+Slowly, laboriously, Lady Henry dragged herself from step to step. As
+she turned the corner of the staircase, and could therefore be no longer
+seen from below, some one softly opened the door of the dining-room and
+entered the hall.
+
+Julie looked round her, startled. She saw Jacob Delafield, who put his
+finger to his lip.
+
+Moved by a sudden impulse, she bowed her head on the banister of the
+stairs against which she was leaning and broke into stifled sobs.
+
+Jacob Delafield came up to her and took her hand. She felt his own
+tremble, and yet its grasp was firm and supporting.
+
+"Courage!" he said, bending over her. "Try not to give way. You will
+want all your fortitude."
+
+"Listen!" She gasped, trying vainly to control herself, and they both
+listened to the sounds above them in the dark house--the labored breath,
+the slow, painful step.
+
+"Oh, she wouldn't let me help her. She said she would rather die.
+Perhaps I have killed her. And I could--I could--yes, I _could_ have
+loved her."
+
+She was in an anguish of feeling--of sharp and penetrating remorse.
+
+Jacob Delafield held her hand close in his, and when at last the sounds
+had died in the distance he lifted it to his lips.
+
+"You know that I am your friend and servant," he said, in a queer,
+muffled voice. "You promised I should be."
+
+She tried to withdraw her hand, but only feebly. Neither physically nor
+mentally had she the strength to repulse him. If he had taken her in his
+arms, she could hardly have resisted. But he did not attempt to conquer
+more than her hand. He stood beside her, letting her feel the whole
+mute, impetuous offer of his manhood--thrown at her feet to do what she
+would with.
+
+Presently, when once more she moved away, he said to her, in a whisper:
+
+"Go to the Duchess to-morrow morning, as soon as you can get away. She
+told me to say that--Hutton gave me a little note from her. Your home
+must be with her till we can all settle what is best. You know very well
+you have devoted friends. But now good-night. Try to sleep. Evelyn and I
+will do all we can with Lady Henry."
+
+Julie drew herself out of his hold. "Tell Evelyn I will come to see her,
+at any rate, as soon as I can put my things together. Good-night."
+
+And she, too, dragged herself up-stairs sobbing, starting at every
+shadow. All her nerve and daring were gone. The thought that she must
+spend yet another night under the roof of this old woman who hated her
+filled her with terror. When she reached her room she locked her door
+and wept for hours in a forlorn and aching misery.
+
+
+
+X
+
+The Duchess was in her morning-room. On the rug, in marked and, as it
+seemed to her plaintive eyes, brutal contrast with the endless
+photographs of her babies and women friends which crowded her
+mantel-piece, stood the Duke, much out of temper. He was a powerfully
+built man, some twenty years older than his wife, with a dark
+complexion, enlivened by ruddy cheeks and prominent, red lips. His eyes
+were of a cold, clear gray; his hair very black, thick, and wiry. An
+extremely vigorous person, more than adequately aware of his own
+importance, tanned and seasoned by the life of his class, by the
+yachting, hunting, and shooting in which his own existence was largely
+spent, slow in perception, and of a sulky temper--so one might have read
+him at first sight. But these impressions only took you a certain way in
+judging the character of the Duchess's husband.
+
+As to the sulkiness, there could be no question on this particular
+morning--though, indeed, his ill-humor deserved a more positive and
+energetic name.
+
+"You have got yourself and me," he was declaring, "into a most
+disagreeable and unnecessary scrape. This letter of Lady Henry's"--he
+held it up--"is one of the most annoying that I have received for many a
+day. Lady Henry seems to me perfectly justified. You _have_ been
+behaving in a quite unwarrantable way. And now you tell me that this
+woman, who is the cause of it all, of whose conduct I thoroughly and
+entirely disapprove, is coming to stay here, in my house, whether I like
+it or not, and you expect me to be civil to her. If you persist, I shall
+go down to Brackmoor till she is pleased to depart. I won't countenance
+the thing at all, and, whatever you may do, _I_ shall apologize to
+Lady Henry."
+
+"There's nothing to apologize for," cried the drooping Duchess, plucking
+up a little spirit. "Nobody meant any harm. Why shouldn't the old
+friends go in to ask after her? Hutton--that old butler that has been
+with Aunt Flora for twenty years--_asked_ us to come in."
+
+"Then he did what he had no business to do, and he deserves to be
+dismissed at a day's notice. Why, Lady Henry tells me that it was a
+regular party--that the room was all arranged for it by that most
+audacious young woman--that the servants were ordered about--that it
+lasted till nearly midnight, and that the noise you all made positively
+woke Lady Henry out of her sleep. Really, Evelyn, that you should have
+been mixed up in such an affair is more unpalatable to me than I can
+find words to describe." And he paced, fuming, up and down before her.
+
+"Anybody else than Aunt Flora would have laughed," said the Duchess,
+defiantly. "And I declare, Freddie, I won't be scolded in such a tone.
+Besides, if you only knew--"
+
+She threw back her head and looked at him, her cheeks flushed, her lips
+quivering with a secret that, once out, would perhaps silence him at
+once--would, at any rate, as children do when they give a shake to their
+spillikins, open up a number of new chances in the game.
+
+"If I only knew what?"
+
+The Duchess pulled at the hair of the little spitz on her lap without
+replying.
+
+"What is there to know that I don't know?" insisted the Duke. "Something
+that makes the matter still worse, I suppose?"
+
+"Well, that depends," said the Duchess, reflectively. A gleam of
+mischief had slipped into her face, though for a moment the tears had
+not been far off.
+
+The Duke looked at his watch.
+
+"Don't keep me here guessing riddles longer than you can help," he said,
+impatiently. "I have an appointment in the City at twelve, and I want to
+discuss with you the letter that must be written to Lady Henry."
+
+"That's your affair," said the Duchess. "I haven't made up my mind yet
+whether I mean to write at all. And as for the riddle, Freddie, you've
+seen Miss Le Breton?"
+
+"Once. I thought her a very pretentious person," said the Duke, stiffly.
+
+"I know--you didn't get on. But, Freddie, didn't she remind you of
+somebody?"
+
+The Duchess was growing excited. Suddenly she jumped up; the little
+spitz rolled off her lap; she ran to her husband and took him by the
+fronts of his coat.
+
+"Freddie, you'll be very much astonished." And suddenly releasing him,
+she began to search among the photographs on the mantel-piece. "Freddie,
+you know who that is?" She held up a picture.
+
+"Of course I know. What on earth has that got to do with the subject we
+have been discussing?"
+
+"Well, it has a good deal to do with it," said the Duchess, slowly.
+"That's my uncle, George Chantrey, isn't it, Lord Lackington's second
+son, who married mamma's sister? Well--oh, you won't like it, Freddie,
+but you've got to know--that's--Julie's uncle, too!"
+
+"What in the name of fortune do you mean?" said the Duke, staring at
+her.
+
+His wife again caught him by the coat, and, so imprisoning him, she
+poured out her story very fast, very incoherently, and with a very
+evident uncertainty as to what its effect might be.
+
+And indeed the effect was by no means easy to determine. The Duke was
+first incredulous, then bewildered by the very mixed facts which she
+poured out upon him. He tried to cross-examine her _en route_, but he
+gained little by that; she only shook him a little, insisting the more
+vehemently on telling the story her own way. At last their two
+impatiences had nearly come to a dead-lock. But the Duke managed to free
+himself physically, and so regained a little freedom of mind.
+
+"Well, upon my word," he said, as he resumed his march up and
+down--"upon my word!" Then, as he stood still before her, "You say she
+is Marriott Dalrymple's daughter?"
+
+"And Lord Lackington's granddaughter." said the Duchess, panting a
+little from her exertions. "And, oh, what a blind bat you were not to
+see it at once--from the likeness!"
+
+"As if one had any right to infer such a thing from a likeness!" said
+the Duke, angrily. "Really, Evelyn, your talk is most--most unbecoming.
+It seems to me that Mademoiselle Le Breton has already done you harm.
+All that you have told me, supposing it to be true--oh, of course, I
+know you believe it to be true--only makes me"--he stiffened his
+back--"the more determined to break off the connection between her and
+you. A woman of such antecedents is not a fit companion for my wife,
+independently of the fact that she seems to be, in herself, an
+intriguing and dangerous character."
+
+"How could she help her antecedents?" cried the Duchess.
+
+"I didn't say she could help them. But if they are what you say, she
+ought--well, she ought to be all the more careful to live in a modest
+and retired way, instead of, as I understand, making herself the rival
+of Lady Henry. I never heard anything so preposterous--so--so indecent!
+She shows no proper sense, and, as for you, I deeply regret you should
+have been brought into any contact with such a disgraceful story."
+
+"Freddie!" The Duchess went into a helpless, half-hysterical fit of
+laughter.
+
+But the Duke merely expanded, as it seemed, still further--to his utmost
+height and bulk. "Oh, dear," thought the Duchess, in despair, "now he is
+going to be like his mother!" Her strictly Evangelical mother-in-law,
+with whom the Duke had made his bachelor home for many years, had been
+the scourge of her early married life; and though for Freddie's sake she
+had shed a few tears over her death, eighteen months before this date,
+the tears--as indeed the Duke had thought at the time--had been only too
+quickly dried.
+
+There could be no question about it, the Duke was painfully like his
+mother as he replied:
+
+"I fear that your education, Evelyn, has led you to take such things far
+more lightly than you ought. I am old-fashioned. Illegitimacy with me
+_does_ carry a stigma, and the sins of the fathers _are_ visited upon
+the children. At any rate, we who occupy a prominent social place have
+no right to do anything which may lead others to think lightly of God's
+law. I am sorry to speak plainly, Evelyn. I dare say you don't like
+these sentiments, but you know, at least, that I am quite honest in
+expressing them."
+
+The Duke turned to her, not without dignity. He was and had been from
+his boyhood a person of irreproachable morals--earnest and religious
+according to his lights, a good son, husband, and father. His wife
+looked at him with mingled feelings.
+
+"Well, all I know is," she said, passionately beating her little foot on
+the carpet before her, "that, by all accounts, the only thing to do with
+Colonel Delaney was to run away from him."
+
+The Duke shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You don't expect me to be much moved by a remark of that kind? As to
+this lady, your story does not affect me in her favor in the smallest
+degree. She has had her education; Lord Lackington gives her one hundred
+pounds a year; if she is a self-respecting woman she will look after
+herself. I _don't_ want to have her here, and I beg you won't invite
+her. A couple of nights, perhaps--I don't mind that--but not
+for longer."
+
+"Oh, as to that, you may be very sure she won't stay here unless you're
+very particularly nice to her. There'll be plenty of people
+glad--enchanted--to have her! I don't care about that, but what I _do_
+want is"--the Duchess looked up with calm audacity--"that you should
+find her a house."
+
+The Duke paused in his walk and surveyed his wife with amazement.
+
+"Evelyn, are you _quite_ mad?"
+
+"Not in the least. You have more houses than you know what to do with,
+and a _great_ deal more money than anybody in the world ought to have.
+If they ever do set up the guillotine at Hyde Park Corner, we shall be
+among the first--we ought to be!"
+
+"What is the good of talking nonsense like this, Evelyn?" said the Duke,
+once more consulting his watch. "Let's go back to the subject of my
+letter to Lady Henry."
+
+"It's most excellent sense!" cried the Duchess, springing up. "You
+_have_ more houses than you know what to do with; and you have one house
+in particular--that little place at the back of Cureton Street where
+Cousin Mary Leicester lived so long--which is in your hands still, I
+know, for you told me so last week--which is vacant and
+furnished--Cousin Mary left you the furniture, as if we hadn't got
+enough!--and it would be the _very_ thing for Julie, if only you'd lend
+it to her till she can turn round."
+
+The Duchess was now standing up, confronting her lord, her hands
+grasping the chair behind her, her small form alive with eagerness and
+the feminine determination to get her own way, by fair means or foul.
+
+"Cureton Street!" said the Duke, almost at the end of his tether. "And
+how do you propose that this young woman is to live--in Cureton Street,
+or anywhere else?"
+
+"She means to write," said the Duchess, shortly. "Dr. Meredith has
+promised her work."
+
+"Sheer lunacy! In six months time you'd have to step in and pay all her
+bills."
+
+"I should like to see anybody dare to propose to Julie to pay her
+bills!" cried the Duchess, with scorn. "You see, the great pity is,
+Freddie, that you don't know anything at all about her. But that
+house--wasn't it made out of a stable? It has got six rooms, I
+know--three bedrooms up-stairs, and two sitting-rooms and a kitchen
+below. With one good maid and a boy Julie could be perfectly
+comfortable. She would earn four hundred pounds--Dr. Meredith has
+promised her--she has one hundred pounds a year of her own. She would
+pay no rent, of course. She would have just enough to live on, poor,
+dear thing! And she would be able to gather her old friends
+round her when she wanted them. A cup of tea and her delightful
+conversation--that's all they'd ever want."
+
+"Oh, go on--go on!" said the Duke, throwing himself exasperated into an
+arm-chair; "the ease with which you dispose of my property on behalf of
+a young woman who has caused me most acute annoyance, who has embroiled
+us with a near relation for whom I have a very particular respect! _Her
+friends_, indeed! Lady Henry's friends, you mean. Poor Lady Henry tells
+me in this letter that her circle will be completely scattered. This
+mischievous woman in three years has destroyed what it has taken Lady
+Henry nearly thirty to build up. Now look here, Evelyn"--the Duke sat up
+and slapped his knee--"as to this Cureton Street plan, I will do nothing
+of the kind. You may have Miss Le Breton here for two or three nights if
+you like--I shall probably go down to the country--and, of course, I
+have no objection to make if you wish to help her find another
+situation--"
+
+"Another situation!" cried the Duchess, beside herself. "Freddie, you
+really are impossible! Do you understand that I regard Julie Le Breton
+as _my relation_, whatever you may say--that I love her dearly--that
+there are fifty people with money and influence ready to help her if you
+won't, because she is one of the most charming and distinguished women
+in London--that you ought to be _proud_ to do her a service--that I want
+you to have the _honor_ of it--there! And if you won't do this little
+favor for me--when I ask and beg it of you--I'll make you remember it
+for a very long time to come--you may be sure of that!"
+
+And his wife turned upon him as an image of war, her fair hair ruffling
+about her ears, her cheeks and eyes brilliant with anger--and
+something more.
+
+The Duke rose in silent ferocity and sought for some letters which he
+had left on the mantel-piece.
+
+"I had better leave you to come to your senses by yourself, and as
+quickly as possible," he said, as he put them into his pockets. "No good
+can come of any more discussion of this sort."
+
+The Duchess said nothing. She looked out of the window busily, and bit
+her lip. Her silence served her better than her speech, for suddenly the
+Duke looked round, hesitated, threw down a book he carried, walked up to
+her, and took her in his arms.
+
+"You are a very foolish child," he declared, as he held her by main
+force and kissed away her tears. "You make me lose my temper--and waste
+my time--for nothing."
+
+"Not at all," said the sobbing Duchess, trying to push herself away, and
+denying him, as best she could, her soft, flushed face. "You don't, or
+you won't, understand! I was--I was very fond of Uncle George Chantrey.
+_He_ would have helped Julie if he were alive. And as for you, you're
+Lord Lackington's godson, and you're always preaching what he's done for
+the army, and what the nation owes him--and--and--"
+
+"Does he know?" said the Duke, abruptly, marvelling at the irrelevance
+of these remarks.
+
+"No, not a word. Only six people in London know--Aunt Flora, Sir Wilfrid
+Bury"--the Duke made an exclamation--"Mr. Montresor, Jacob, you, and I."
+
+"Jacob!" said the Duke. "What's he got to do with it?"
+
+The Duchess suddenly saw her opportunity, and rushed upon it.
+
+"Only that he's madly in love with her, that's all. And, to my
+knowledge, she has refused him both last year and this. Of course,
+naturally, if you won't do anything to help her, she'll probably marry
+him--simply as a way out."
+
+"Well, of all the extraordinary affairs!"
+
+The Duke released her, and stood bewildered. The Duchess watched him in
+some excitement. He was about to speak, when there was a sound in the
+anteroom. They moved hastily apart. The door was thrown open, and the
+footman announced, "Miss Le Breton."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Julie Le Breton entered, and stood a moment on the threshold, looking,
+not in embarrassment, but with a certain hesitation, at the two persons
+whose conversation she had disturbed. She was pale with sleeplessness;
+her look was sad and weary. But never had she been more composed, more
+elegant. Her closely fitting black cloth dress; her strangely expressive
+face, framed by a large hat, very simple, but worn as only the woman of
+fashion knows how; her miraculous yet most graceful slenderness; the
+delicacy of her hands; the natural dignity of her movements--these
+things produced an immediate, though, no doubt, conflicting impression
+upon the gentleman who had just been denouncing her. He bowed, with an
+involuntary deference which he had not at all meant to show to Lady
+Henry's insubordinate companion, and then stood frowning.
+
+But the Duchess ran forward, and, quite heedless of her husband, threw
+herself into her friend's arms.
+
+"Oh, Julie, is there anything left of you? I hardly slept a wink for
+thinking of you. What did that old--oh, I forgot--do you know my
+husband? Freddie, this is my _great_ friend, Miss Le Breton."
+
+The Duke bowed again, silently. Julie looked at him, and then, still
+holding the Duchess by the hand, she approached him, a pair of very fine
+and pleading eyes fixed upon his face.
+
+"You have probably heard from Lady Henry, have you not?" she said,
+addressing him. "In a note I had from her this morning she told me she
+had written to you. I could not help coming to-day, because Evelyn has
+been so kind. But--is it your wish that I should come here?"
+
+The Christian name slipped out unawares, and the Duke winced at it. The
+likeness to Lord Lackington--it was certainly astonishing. There ran
+through his mind the memory of a visit paid long ago to his early home
+by Lord Lackington and two daughters, Rose and Blanche. He, the Duke,
+had then been a boy home from school. The two girls, one five or six
+years older than the other, had been the life and charm of the party. He
+remembered hunting with Lady Rose.
+
+But the confusion in his mind had somehow to be mastered, and he made an
+effort.
+
+"I shall be glad if my wife is able to be of any assistance to you, Miss
+Le Breton," he said, coldly; "but it would not be honest if I were to
+conceal my opinion--so far as I have been able to form it--that Lady
+Henry has great and just cause of complaint."
+
+"You are quite right--quite right," said Julie, almost with eagerness.
+"She has, indeed."
+
+The Duke was taken by surprise. Imperious as he was, and stiffened by a
+good many of those petty prides which the spoiled children of the world
+escape so hardly, he found himself hesitating--groping for his words.
+
+The Duchess meanwhile drew Julie impulsively towards a chair.
+
+"Do sit down. You look so tired."
+
+But Julie's gaze was still bent upon the Duke. She restrained her
+friend's eager hand, and the Duke collected himself. _He_ brought a
+chair, and Julie seated herself.
+
+"I am deeply, deeply distressed about Lady Henry," she said, in a low
+voice, by which the Duke felt himself most unwillingly penetrated. "I
+don't--oh no, indeed, I don't defend last night. Only--my position has
+been very difficult lately. I wanted very much to see the
+Duchess--and--it was natural--wasn't it?--that the old friends should
+like to be personally informed about Lady Henry's illness? But, of
+course, they stayed too long; it was my fault--I ought to have
+prevented it."
+
+She paused. This stern-looking man, who stood with his back to the
+mantel-piece regarding her, Philistine though he was, had yet a
+straight, disinterested air, from which she shrank a little. Honestly,
+she would have liked to tell him the truth. But how could she? She did
+her best, and her account certainly was no more untrue than scores of
+narratives of social incident which issue every day from lips the most
+respected and the most veracious. As for the Duchess, she thought it the
+height of candor and generosity. The only thing she could have wished,
+perhaps, in her inmost heart, was that she had _not_ found Julie alone
+with Harry Warkworth. But her loyal lips would have suffered torments
+rather than accuse or betray her friend.
+
+The Duke meanwhile went through various phases of opinion as Julie laid
+her story before him. Perhaps he was chiefly affected by the tone of
+quiet independence--as from equal to equal--in which she addressed him.
+His wife's cousin by marriage; the granddaughter of an old and intimate
+friend of his own family; the daughter of a man known at one time
+throughout Europe, and himself amply well born--all these facts, warm,
+living, and still efficacious, stood, as it were, behind this manner of
+hers, prompting and endorsing it. But, good Heavens! was illegitimacy to
+be as legitimacy?--to carry with it no stains and penalties? Was vice to
+be virtue, or as good? The Duke rebelled.
+
+"It is a most unfortunate affair, of that there can be no doubt," he
+said, after a moment's silence, when Julie had brought her story to an
+end; and then, more sternly, "I shall certainly apologize for my wife's
+share in it."
+
+"Lady Henry won't be angry with the Duchess long," said Julie Le Breton.
+"As for me"--her voice sank--"my letter this morning was returned to me
+unopened."
+
+There was an uncomfortable pause; then Julie resumed, in another tone:
+
+"But what I am now chiefly anxious to discuss is, how can we save Lady
+Henry from any further pain or annoyance? She once said to me in a fit
+of anger that if I left her in consequence of a quarrel, and any of her
+old friends sided with me, she would never see them again."
+
+"I know," said the Duke, sharply. "Her salon will break up. She already
+foresees it."
+
+"But why?--why?" cried Julie, in a most becoming distress. "Somehow, we
+must prevent it. Unfortunately I must live in London. I have the offer
+of work here--journalist's work which cannot be done in the country or
+abroad. But I would do all I could to shield Lady Henry."
+
+"What about Mr. Montresor?" said the Duke, abruptly. Montresor had been
+the well-known Chateaubriand to Lady Henry's Madame Recamier for more
+than a generation.
+
+Julie turned to him with eagerness.
+
+"Mr. Montresor wrote to me early this morning. The letter reached me at
+breakfast. In Mrs. Montresor's name and his own, he asked me to stay
+with them till my plans developed. He--he was kind enough to say he felt
+himself partly responsible for last night."
+
+"And you replied?" The Duke eyed her keenly.
+
+Julie sighed and looked down.
+
+"I begged him not to think any more of me in the matter, but to write at
+once to Lady Henry. I hope he has done so."
+
+"And so you refused--excuse these questions--Mrs. Montresor's
+invitation?"
+
+The working of the Duke's mind was revealed in his drawn and puzzled
+brows.
+
+"Certainly." The speaker looked at him with surprise. "Lady Henry would
+never have forgiven that. It could not be thought of. Lord Lackington
+also"--but her voice wavered.
+
+"Yes?" said the Duchess, eagerly, throwing herself on a stool at Julie's
+feet and looking up into her face.
+
+"He, too, has written to me. He wants to help me. But--I can't let him."
+
+The words ended in a whisper. She leaned back in her chair, and put her
+handkerchief to her eyes. It was very quietly done, and very touching.
+The Duchess threw a lightning glance at her husband; and then,
+possessing herself of one of Julie's hands, she kissed it and
+murmured over it.
+
+"Was there ever such a situation?" thought the Duke, much shaken. "And
+she has already, if Evelyn is to be believed, refused the chance--the
+practical certainty--of being Duchess of Chudleigh!"
+
+He was a man with whom a _gran rifiuto_ of this kind weighed heavily.
+His moral sense exacted such things rather of other people than himself.
+But, when made, he could appreciate them.
+
+After a few turns up and down the room, he walked up to the two women.
+
+"Miss Le Breton," he said, in a far more hurried tone than was usual to
+him, "I cannot approve--and Evelyn ought not to approve--of much that
+has taken place during your residence with Lady Henry. But I understand
+that your post was not an easy one, and I recognize the forbearance of
+your present attitude. Evelyn is much distressed about it all. On the
+understanding that you will do what you can to soften this breach for
+Lady Henry, I shall be, glad if you will allow me to come partially to
+your assistance."
+
+Julie looked up gravely, her eyebrows lifting. The Duke found himself
+reddening as he went on.
+
+"I have a little house near here--a little furnished house--Evelyn will
+explain to you. It happens to be vacant. If you will accept a loan of
+it, say for six months"--the Duchess frowned--"you will give me
+pleasure. I will explain my action to Lady Henry, and endeavor to soften
+her feelings."
+
+He paused. Miss Le Breton's face was grateful, touched with emotion, but
+more than hesitating.
+
+"You are very good. But I have no claim upon you at all. And I can
+support myself."
+
+A touch of haughtiness slipped into her manner as she gently rose to her
+feet. "Thank God, I did not offer her money!" thought the Duke,
+strangely perturbed.
+
+"Julie, dear Julie," implored the Duchess. "It's such a tiny little
+place, and it is quite musty for want of living in. Nobody has set foot
+in it but the caretaker for two years, and it would be really a kindness
+to us to go and live there--wouldn't it, Freddie? And there's all the
+furniture just as it was, down to the bellows and the snuffers. If you'd
+only use it and take care of it; Freddie hasn't liked to sell it,
+because it's all old family stuff, and he was very fond of Cousin Mary
+Leicester. Oh, do say yes, Julie! They shall light the fires, and I'll
+send in a few sheets and things, and you'll feel as though you'd been
+there for years. Do, Julie!"
+
+Julie shook her head.
+
+"I came here," she said, in a voice that was still unsteady, "to ask for
+advice, not favors. But it's very good of you."
+
+And with trembling fingers she began to refasten her veil.
+
+"Julie!--where are you going?" cried the Duchess "You're staying here."
+
+"Staying here?" said Julie, turning round upon her. "Do you think I
+should be a burden upon you, or any one?"
+
+"But, Julie, you told Jacob you would come."
+
+"I have come. I wanted your sympathy, and your counsel. I wished also to
+confess myself to the Duke, and to point out to him how matters could be
+made easier for Lady Henry."
+
+The penitent, yet dignified, sadness of her manner and voice completed
+the discomfiture--the temporary discomfiture--of the Duke.
+
+"Miss Le Breton," he said, abruptly, coming to stand beside her, "I
+remember your mother."
+
+Julie's eyes filled. Her hand still held her veil, but it paused in its
+task.
+
+"I was a small school-boy when she stayed with us," resumed the Duke.
+"She was a beautiful girl. She let me go out hunting with her. She was
+very kind to me, and I thought her a kind of goddess. When I first heard
+her story, years afterwards, it shocked me awfully. For her sake,
+accept my offer. I don't think lightly of such actions as your
+mother's--not at all. But I can't bear to think of her daughter alone
+and friendless in London."
+
+Yet even as he spoke he seemed to be listening to another person. He did
+not himself understand the feelings which animated him, nor the strength
+with which his recollections of Lady Rose had suddenly invaded him.
+
+Julie leaned her arms on the mantel-piece, and hid her face. She had
+turned her back to them, and they saw that she was crying softly.
+
+The Duchess crept up to her and wound her arms round her.
+
+"You will, Julie!--you will! Lady Henry has turned you out-of-doors at a
+moment's notice. And it was a great deal my fault. You _must_ let us
+help you!"
+
+Julie did not answer, but, partially disengaging herself, and without
+looking at him, she held out her hand to the Duke.
+
+He pressed it with a cordiality that amazed him.
+
+"That's right--that's right. Now, Evelyn, I leave you to make the
+arrangements. The keys shall be here this afternoon. Miss Le Breton, of
+course, stays here till things are settled. As for me, I must really be
+off to my meeting. One thing, Miss Le Breton--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I think," he said, gravely, "you ought to reveal yourself to Lord
+Lackington."
+
+She shrank.
+
+"You'll let me take my own time for that?" was her appealing reply.
+
+"Very well--very well. We'll speak of it again."
+
+And he hurried away. As he descended his own stairs astonishment at what
+he had done rushed upon him and overwhelmed him.
+
+"How on earth am I ever to explain the thing to Lady Henry?"
+
+And as he went citywards in his cab, he felt much more guilty than his
+wife had ever done. What _could_ have made him behave in this
+extraordinary, this preposterous way? A touch of foolish
+romance--immoral romance--of which he was already ashamed? Or the one
+bare fact that this woman had refused Jacob Delafield?
+
+
+
+XI
+
+"Here it is," said the Duchess, as the carriage stopped. "Isn't it an
+odd little place?"
+
+And as she and Julie paused on the pavement, Julie looked listlessly at
+her new home. It was a two-storied brick house, built about 1780. The
+front door boasted a pair of Ionian columns and a classical canopy or
+pediment. The windows had still the original small panes; the _mansarde_
+roof, with its one dormer, was untouched. The little house had rather
+deep eaves; three windows above; two, and the front door, below. It wore
+a prim, old-fashioned air, a good deal softened and battered, however,
+by age, and it stood at the corner of two streets, both dingily quiet,
+and destined, no doubt, to be rebuilt before long in the general
+rejuvenation of Mayfair.
+
+As the Duchess had said, it occupied the site of what had once--about
+1740--been the westerly end of a mews belonging to houses in Cureton
+Street, long since pulled down. The space filled by these houses was now
+occupied by one great mansion and its gardens. The rest of the mews had
+been converted into three-story houses of a fair size, looking south,
+with a back road between them and the gardens of Cureton House. But at
+the southwesterly corner of what was now Heribert Street, fronting west
+and quite out of line and keeping with the rest, was this curious little
+place, built probably at a different date and for some special family
+reason. The big planes in the Cureton House gardens came close to it and
+overshadowed it; one side wall of the house, in fact, formed part of the
+wall of the garden.
+
+The Duchess, full of nervousness, ran up the steps, put in the key
+herself, and threw open the door. An elderly Scotchwoman, the caretaker,
+appeared from the back and stood waiting to show them over.
+
+"Oh, Julie, perhaps it's _too_ queer and musty!" cried the Duchess,
+looking round her in some dismay. "I thought, you know, it would be a
+little out-of-the-way and quaint--unlike other people--just what you
+ought to have. But--"
+
+"I think it's delightful," said Julie, standing absently before a case
+of stuffed birds, somewhat moth-eaten, which took up a good deal of
+space in the little hall. "I love stuffed birds."
+
+The Duchess glanced at her uneasily. "What is she thinking about?" she
+wondered. But Julie roused herself.
+
+"Why, it looks as though everything here had gone to sleep for a hundred
+years," she said, gazing in astonishment at the little hall, with its
+old clock, its two or three stiff hunting-pictures, its drab-painted
+walls, its poker-work chest.
+
+And the drawing-room! The caretaker had opened the windows. It was a
+mild March day, and there were misty sun-gleams stealing along the lawns
+of Cureton House. None entered the room itself, for its two
+semi-circular windows looked north over the gardens. Yet it was not
+uncheerful. Its faded curtains of blue rep, its buff walls, on which the
+pictures and miniatures in their tarnished gilt frames were arranged at
+intervals in stiff patterns and groups; the Italian glass, painted with
+dilapidated Cupids, over the mantel-piece; the two or three Sheraton
+arm-chairs and settees, covered with threadbare needle-work from the
+days of "Evelina"; a carpet of old and well-preserved Brussels--blue
+arabesques on a white ground; one or two pieces of old satin-wood
+furniture, very fine and perfect; a heavy centre-table, its cloth
+garnished with some early Victorian wool-work, and a pair of pink glass
+vases; on another small table close by, of a most dainty and
+spindle-legged correctness, a set of Indian chessmen under a glass
+shade; and on another a collection of tiny animals, stags and dogs for
+the most part, deftly "pinched" out of soft paper, also under glass, and
+as perfect as when their slender limbs were first fashioned by Cousin
+Mary Leicester's mother, somewhere about the year that Marie Antoinette
+mounted the scaffold. These various elements, ugly and beautiful,
+combined to make a general effect--clean, fastidious, frugal, and
+refined--that was, in truth, full of a sort of acid charm.
+
+"Oh, I like it! I like it so much!" cried Julie, throwing herself down
+into one of the straight-backed arm-chairs and looking first round the
+walls and then through the windows to the gardens outside.
+
+"My dear," said the Duchess, flitting from one thing to another,
+frowning and a little fussed, "those curtains won't do at all. I must
+send some from home."
+
+"No, no, Evelyn. Not a thing shall be changed. You shall lend it me just
+as it is or not at all. What a character it has! I _taste_ the person
+who lived here."
+
+"Cousin Mary Leicester?" said the Duchess. "Well, she was rather an
+oddity. She was Low Church, like my mother-in-law; but, oh, so much
+nicer! Once I let her come to Grosvenor Square and speak to the servants
+about going to church. The groom of the chambers said she was 'a dear
+old lady, and if she were _his_ cousin he wouldn't mind her being a bit
+touched,' My maid said she had no idea poke-bonnets could be so _sweet_.
+It made her understand what the Queen looked like when she was young.
+And none of them have ever been to church since that I can make out.
+There was one very curious thing about Cousin Mary Leicester," added the
+Duchess, slowly--"she had second sight. She _saw_ her old mother, in
+this room, once or twice, after she had been dead for years. And she saw
+Freddie once, when he was away on a long voyage--"
+
+"Ghosts, too!" said Julie, crossing her hands before her with a little
+shiver--"that completes it."
+
+"Sixty years," said the Duchess, musing. "It was a long time--wasn't
+it?--to live in this little house, and scarcely ever leave it. Oh, she
+had quite a circle of her own. For many years her funny little sister
+lived here, too. And there was a time, Freddie says, when there was
+almost a rivalry between them and two other famous old ladies who lived
+in Bruton Street--what _was_ their name? Oh, the Miss Berrys! Horace
+Walpole's Miss Berrys. All sorts of famous people, I believe, have sat
+in these chairs. But the Miss Berrys won."
+
+"Not in years? Cousin Mary outlived them."
+
+"Ah, but she was dead long before she died," said the Duchess as she
+came to perch on the arm of Julie's chair, and threw her arm round her
+friend's neck. "After her little sister departed this life she became a
+very silent, shrivelled thing--except for her religion--and very few
+people saw her. She took a fancy to me--which was odd, wasn't it, when
+I'm such a worldling?--and she let me come in and out. Every morning she
+read the Psalms and Lessons, with her old maid, who was just her own
+age--in this very chair. And two or three times a month Freddie would
+slip round and read them with her--you know Freddie's very religious.
+And then she'd work at flannel petticoats for the poor, or something of
+that kind, till lunch. Afterwards she'd go and read the Bible to people
+in the workhouse or in hospital. When she came home, the butler brought
+her the _Times_; and sometimes you'd find her by the fire, straining her
+old eyes over 'a little Dante.' And she always dressed for
+dinner--everything was quite smart--and her old butler served her.
+Afterwards her maid played dominoes or spillikins with her--all her life
+she never touched a card--and they read a chapter, and Cousin Mary
+played a hymn on that funny little old piano there in the corner, and at
+ten they all went to bed. Then, one morning, the maid went in to wake
+her, and she saw her dear sharp nose and chin against the light, and her
+hands like that, in front of her--and--well, I suppose, she'd gone to
+play hymns in heaven--dear Cousin Mary! Julie, isn't it strange the kind
+of lives so many of us have to lead? Julie"--the little Duchess laid her
+cheek against her friend's--"do you believe in another life?"
+
+"You forget I'm a Catholic," said Julie, smiling rather doubtfully.
+
+"_Are_ you, Julie? I'd forgotten."
+
+"The good nuns at Bruges took care of that."
+
+"Do you ever go to mass?"
+
+"Sometimes."
+
+"Then you're not a good Catholic, Julie?"
+
+"No," said Julie, after a pause, "not at all. But it sometimes catches
+hold of me."
+
+The old clock in the hall struck. The Duchess sprang up.
+
+"Oh, Julie, I have got to be at Clarisse's by four. I _promised_ her I'd
+go and settle about my Drawing-room dress to-day. Let's see the rest of
+the house."
+
+And they went rapidly through it. All of it was stamped with the same
+character, representing, as it were, the meeting-point between an
+inherited luxury and a personal asceticism. Beautiful chairs, or
+cabinets transported sixty years before from one of the old Crowborough
+houses in the country to this little abode, side by side with things the
+cheapest and the commonest--all that Cousin Mary Leicester could ever
+persuade herself to buy with her own money. For all the latter part of
+her life she had been half a mystic and half a great lady, secretly
+hating the luxury from which she had not the strength to free herself,
+dressing ceremoniously, as the Duchess had said, for a solitary dinner,
+and all the while going in sore remembrance of a Master who "had not
+where to lay his head."
+
+At any rate, there was an ample supply of household stuff for a single
+woman and her maids. In the china cupboard there were still the
+old-fashioned Crown Derby services, the costly cut glass, the Leeds and
+Wedgewood dessert dishes that Cousin Mary Leicester had used for half a
+century. The caretaker produced the keys of the iron-lined plate
+cupboard, and showed its old-world contents, clean and in order.
+
+"Why, Julie! If we'd only ordered the dinner I might have come to dine
+with you to-night!" cried the Duchess, enjoying and peering into
+everything like a child with its doll's house. "And the
+linen--gracious!" as the doors of another cupboard were opened to her.
+"But now I remember, Freddie said nothing was to be touched till he made
+up his mind what to do with the little place. Why, there's everything!"
+
+And they both looked in astonishment at the white, fragrant rows, at the
+worn monogram in the corners of the sheets, at the little bags of
+lavender and pot-pourri ranged along the shelves.
+
+Suddenly Julie turned away and sat down by an open window, carrying her
+eyes far from the house and its stores.
+
+"It is too much, Evelyn," she said, sombrely. "It oppresses me. I don't
+think I can live up to it."
+
+"Julie!" and again the little Duchess came to stand caressingly beside
+her. "Why, you must have sheets--and knives and forks! Why should you
+get ugly new ones, when you can use Cousin Mary's? She would have loved
+you to have them."
+
+"She would have hated me with all her strength," said Miss Le Breton,
+probably with much truth.
+
+The two were silent a little. Through Julie's stormy heart there swept
+longings and bitternesses inexpressible. What did she care for the
+little house and all its luxuries! She was sorry that she had fettered
+herself with it.... Nearly four o'clock in the afternoon, and no
+letter--not a word!
+
+"Julie," said the Duchess, softly, in her ear, "you know you can't live
+here alone. I'm afraid Freddie would make a fuss."
+
+"I've thought of that," said Julie, wearily. "But, shall we really go on
+with it, Evelyn?"
+
+The Duchess looked entreaty. Julie repented, and, drawing her friend
+towards her, rested her head against the chinchilla cloak.
+
+"I'm tired, I suppose," she said, in a low voice. "Don't think me an
+ungrateful wretch. Well, there's my foster-sister and her child."
+
+"Madame Bornier and the little cripple girl?" cried the Duchess.
+"Excellent! Where are they?"
+
+"Leonie is in the French Governesses' Home, as it happens, looking out
+for a situation, and the child is in the Orthopaedic Hospital. They've
+been straightening her foot. It's wonderfully better, and she's nearly
+ready to come out."
+
+"Are they nice, Julie?"
+
+"Therese is an angel--you must be the one thing or the other,
+apparently, if you're a cripple. And as for Leonie--well, if she comes
+here, nobody need be anxious about my finances. She'd count every crust
+and cinder. We couldn't keep any English servant; but we could get a
+Belgian one."
+
+"But is she nice?" repeated the Duchess.
+
+"I'm used to her," said Julie, in the same inanimate voice.
+
+Suddenly the clock in the hall below struck four.
+
+"Heavens!" cried the Duchess. "You don't know how Clarisse keeps you to
+your time. Shall I go on, and send the carriage back for you?"
+
+"Don't trouble about me. I should like to look round me here a little
+longer."
+
+"You'll remember that some of our fellow-criminals may look in after
+five? Dr. Meredith and Lord Lackington said, as we were getting away
+last night--oh, how that doorstep of Aunt Flora's burned my shoes!--that
+they should come round. And Jacob is coming; he'll stay and dine. And,
+Julie, I've asked Captain Warkworth to dine to-morrow night."
+
+"Have you? That's noble of you--for you don't like him."
+
+"I don't know him!" cried the Duchess, protesting. "If you like him--of
+course it's all right. Was he--was he very agreeable last night?" she
+added, slyly.
+
+"What a word to apply to anybody or anything connected with last night!"
+
+"Are you very sore, Julie?"
+
+"Well, on this very day of being turned out it hurts. I wonder who is
+writing Lady Henry's letters for her this afternoon?"
+
+"I hope they are not getting written," said the Duchess, savagely; "and
+that she's missing you abominably. Good-bye--_au revoir!_ If I am twenty
+minutes late with Clarisse, I sha'n't get any fitting, duchess or
+no duchess."
+
+And the little creature hurried off; not so fast, however, but that she
+found time to leave a number of parting instructions as to the house
+with the Scotch caretaker, on her way to her carriage.
+
+Julie rose and made her way down to the drawing-room again. The
+Scotchwoman saw that she wanted to be alone and left her.
+
+The windows were still open to the garden outside. Julie examined the
+paths, the shrubberies, the great plane-trees; she strained her eyes
+towards the mansion itself. But not much of it could be seen. The little
+house at the corner had been carefully planted out.
+
+What wealth it implied--that space and size, in London! Evidently the
+house was still shut up. The people who owned it were now living the
+same cumbrous, magnificent life in the country which they would soon
+come up to live in the capital. Honors, parks, money, birth--all were
+theirs, as naturally as the sun rose. Julie envied and hated the big
+house and all it stood for; she flung a secret defiance at this coveted
+and elegant Mayfair that lay around her, this heart of all that is
+recognized, accepted, carelessly sovereign in our "materialized"
+upper class.
+
+And yet all the while she knew that it was an unreal and passing
+defiance. She would not be able in truth to free herself from the
+ambition to live and shine in this world of the English rich and well
+born. For, after all, as she told herself with rebellious passion, it
+was or ought to be her world. And yet her whole being was sore from the
+experiences of these three years with Lady Henry--from those, above all,
+of the preceding twenty-four hours. She wove no romance about herself.
+"I should have dismissed myself long ago," she would have said,
+contemptuously, to any one who could have compelled the disclosure of
+her thoughts. But the long and miserable struggle of her self-love with
+Lady Henry's arrogance, of her gifts with her circumstances; the
+presence in this very world, where she had gained so marked a personal
+success, of two clashing estimates of herself, both of which she
+perfectly understood--the one exalting her, the other merely implying
+the cool and secret judgment of persons who see the world as it
+is--these things made a heat and poison in her blood.
+
+She was not good enough, not desirable enough, to be the wife of the man
+she loved. Here was the plain fact that stung and stung.
+
+Jacob Delafield had thought her good enough! She still felt the pressure
+of his warm, strong fingers, the touch of his kiss upon her hand. What a
+paradox was she living in! The Duchess might well ask: why, indeed, had
+she refused Jacob Delafield--that first time? As to the second refusal,
+that needed no explanation, at least for herself. When, upon that winter
+day, now some six weeks past, which had beheld Lady Henry more than
+commonly tyrannical, and her companion more than commonly weary and
+rebellious, Delafield's stammered words--as he and she were crossing
+Grosvenor Square in the January dusk--had struck for the second time
+upon her ear, she was already under Warkworth's charm. But before--the
+first time? She had come to Lady Henry firmly determined to marry as
+soon and as well as she could--to throw off the slur on her life--to
+regularize her name and place in the world. And then the possible heir
+of the Chudleighs proposes to her--and she rejects him!
+
+It was sometimes difficult for her now to remember all the whys and
+wherefores of this strange action of which she was secretly so proud.
+But the explanation was in truth not far from that she had given to the
+Duchess. The wild strength in her own nature had divined and shrunk from
+a similar strength in Delafield's. Here, indeed, one came upon the fact
+which forever differentiated her from the adventuress, had Sir Wilfrid
+known. She wanted money and name; there were days when she hungered for
+them. But she would not give too reckless a price for them. She was a
+personality, a soul--not a vulgar woman--not merely callous or greedy.
+She dreaded to be miserable; she had a thirst for happiness, and the
+heart was, after all, stronger than the head.
+
+Jacob Delafield? No! Her being contracted and shivered at the thought of
+him. A will tardily developed, if all accounts of his school and college
+days were true, but now, as she believed, invincible; a mystic; an
+ascetic; a man under whose modest or careless or self-mocking ways she,
+with her eye for character, divined the most critical instincts, and a
+veracity, iron, scarcely human--a man before whom one must be always
+posing at one's best--that was a personal risk too great to take for a
+Julie Le Breton.
+
+Unless, indeed, if it came to this--that one must think no more of
+love--but only of power--why, then--
+
+A ring at the door, resounding through the quiet side street. After a
+minute the Scotchwoman opened the drawing-room door.
+
+"Please, miss, is this meant for you?"
+
+Julie took the letter in astonishment. Then through the door she saw a
+man standing in the hall and recognized Captain Warkworth's
+Indian servant.
+
+"I don't understand him," said the Scotchwoman, shaking her head.
+
+Julie went out to speak with him. The man had been sent to Crowborough
+House with instructions to inquire for Miss Le Breton and deliver his
+note. The groom of the chambers, misinterpreting the man's queer
+English, and thinking the matter urgent--the note was marked
+"immediate"--had sent him after the ladies to Heribert Street.
+
+The man was soon feed and dismissed, and Miss Le Breton took the letter
+back to the drawing-room.
+
+So, after all, he had not failed; there on her lap was her daily letter.
+Outside the scanty March sun, now just setting, was touching the garden
+with gold. Had it also found its way into Julie's eyes?
+
+Now for his explanation:
+
+     "First, how and where are you? I called in Bruton Street at
+     noon. Hutton told me you had just gone to Crowborough House.
+     Kind--no, wise little Duchess! She honors herself in
+     sheltering you.
+
+     "I could not write last night--I was too uncertain, too
+     anxious. All I said might have jarred. This morning came your
+     note, about eleven. It was angelic to think so kindly and
+     thoughtfully of a friend--angelic to write such a letter at
+     such a time. You announced your flight to Crowborough House,
+     but did not say when, so I crept to Bruton Street, seeing
+     Lady Henry in every lamp-post, got a few clandestine words
+     with Hutton, and knew, at least, what had happened to
+     you--outwardly and visibly.
+
+     "Last night did you think me a poltroon to vanish as I did?
+     It was the impulse of a moment. Mr. Montresor had pulled me
+     into a corner of the room, away from the rest of the party,
+     nominally to look at a picture, really that I might answer a
+     confidential question he had just put to me with regard to a
+     disputed incident in the Afridi campaign. We were in the dark
+     and partly behind a screen. Then the door opened. I confess
+     the sight of Lady Henry paralyzed me. A great, murderous,
+     six-foot Afridi--that would have been simple enough. But a
+     woman--old and ill and furious--with that Medusa's face--no!
+     My nerves suddenly failed me. What right had I in her house,
+     after all? As she advanced into the room, I slipped out
+     behind her. General Fergus and M. du Bartas joined me in the
+     hall. We walked to Bond Street together. They were divided
+     between laughter and vexation. I should have laughed--if I
+     could have forgotten you.
+
+     "But what could I have done for you, dear lady, if I had
+     stayed out the storm? I left you with three or four devoted
+     adherents, who had, moreover, the advantage over me of either
+     relationship or old acquaintance with Lady Henry. Compared to
+     them, I could have done nothing to shield you. Was it not
+     best to withdraw? Yet all the way home I accused myself
+     bitterly. Nor did I feel, when I reached home, that one who
+     had not grasped your hand under fire had any right to rest or
+     sleep. But anxiety for you, regrets for myself, took care of
+     that; I got my deserts.
+
+     "After all, when the pricks and pains of this great wrench
+     are over, shall we not all acknowledge that it is best the
+     crash should have come? You have suffered and borne too much.
+     Now we shall see you expand in a freer and happier life. The
+     Duchess has asked me to dinner to-morrow--the note has just
+     arrived--so that I shall soon have the chance of hearing from
+     you some of those details I so much want to know. But before
+     then you will write?
+
+     "As for me, I am full of alternate hopes and fears. General
+     Fergus, as we walked home, was rather silent and bearish--I
+     could not flatter myself that he had any friendly intentions
+     towards me in his mind. But Montresor was more than kind, and
+     gave me some fresh opportunities of which I was very glad to
+     avail myself. Well, we shall know soon.
+
+     "You told me once that if, or when, this happened, you would
+     turn to your pen, and that Dr. Meredith would find you
+     openings. That is not to be regretted, I think. You have
+     great gifts, which will bring you pleasure in the using. I
+     have got a good deal of pleasure out of my small ones. Did
+     you know that once, long ago, when I was stationed at
+     Gibraltar, I wrote a military novel?
+
+     "No, I don't pity you because you will need to turn your
+     intellect to account. You will be free, and mistress of your
+     fate. That, for those who, like you and me, are the 'children
+     of their works,' as the Spaniards say, is much.
+
+     "Dear friend--kind, persecuted friend!--I thought of you in
+     the watches of the night--I think of you this morning. Let me
+     soon have news of you."
+
+Julie put the letter down upon her knee. Her face stiffened. Nothing
+that she had ever received from him yet had rung so false.
+
+Grief? Complaint? No! Just a calm grasp of the game--a quick playing of
+the pieces--so long as the game was there to play. If he was appointed
+to this mission, in two or three weeks he would be gone--to the heart of
+Africa. If not--
+
+Anyway, two or three weeks were hers. Her mind seemed to settle and
+steady itself.
+
+She got up and went once more carefully through the house, giving her
+attention to it. Yes, the whole had character and a kind of charm. The
+little place would make, no doubt, an interesting and distinguished
+background for the life she meant to put into it. She would move in at
+once--in three days at most. Ways and means were for the moment not
+difficult. During her life with Lady Henry she had saved the whole of
+her own small _rentes_. Three hundred pounds lay ready to her hand in
+an investment easily realized. And she would begin to earn at once.
+
+Therese--that should be her room--the cheerful, blue-papered room with
+the south window. Julie felt a strange rush of feeling as she thought of
+it. How curious that these two--Leonie and little Therese--should be
+thus brought back into her life! For she had no doubt whatever that they
+would accept with eagerness what she had to offer. Her foster-sister had
+married a school-master in one of the Communal schools of Bruges while
+Julie was still a girl at the convent. Leonie's lame child had been much
+with her grandmother, old Madame Le Breton. To Julie she had been at
+first unwelcome and repugnant. Then some quality in the frail creature
+had unlocked the girl's sealed and often sullen heart.
+
+While she had been living with Lady Henry, these two, the mother and
+child, had been also in London; the mother, now a widow, earning her
+bread as an inferior kind of French governess, the child boarded out
+with various persons, and generally for long periods of the year in
+hospital or convalescent home. To visit her in her white hospital
+bed--to bring her toys and flowers, or merely kisses and chat--had been,
+during these years, the only work of charity on Julie's part which had
+been wholly secret, disinterested, and constant.
+
+
+
+XII
+
+It was a somewhat depressed company that found its straggling way into
+the Duchess's drawing-room that evening between tea and dinner.
+
+Miss Le Breton did not appear at tea. The Duchess believed that, after
+her inspection of the house in Heribert Street, Julie had gone on to
+Bloomsbury to find Madame Bornier. Jacob Delafield was there, not much
+inclined to talk, even as Julie's champion. And, one by one, Lady
+Henry's oldest _habitues_, the "criminals" of the night before,
+dropped in.
+
+Dr. Meredith arrived with a portfolio containing what seemed to be
+proof-sheets.
+
+"Miss Le Breton not here?" he said, as he looked round him.
+
+The Duchess explained that she might be in presently. The great man sat
+down, his portfolio carefully placed beside him, and drank his tea under
+what seemed a cloud of preoccupation.
+
+Then appeared Lord Lackington and Sir Wilfrid Bury. Montresor had sent a
+note from the House to say that if the debate would let him he would
+dash up to Grosvenor Square for some dinner, but could only stay
+an hour.
+
+"Well, here we are again--the worst of us!" said the Duchess, presently,
+with a sigh of bravado, as she handed Lord Lackington his cup of tea
+and sank back in her chair to enjoy her own.
+
+"Speak for yourselves, please," said Sir Wilfrid's soft, smiling voice,
+as he daintily relieved his mustache of some of the Duchess's cream.
+
+"Oh, that's all very well," said the Duchess, throwing up a hand in mock
+annoyance; "but why weren't you there?"
+
+"I knew better."
+
+"The people who keep out of scrapes are not the people one loves," was
+the Duchess's peevish reply.
+
+"Let him alone," said Lord Lackington, coming for some more tea-cake.
+"He will get his deserts. Next Wednesday he will be _tete-a-tete_ with
+Lady Henry."
+
+"Lady Henry is going to Torquay to-morrow," said Sir Wilfrid, quietly.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+There was a general chorus of interrogation, amid which the Duchess made
+herself heard.
+
+"Then you've seen her?"
+
+"To-day, for twenty minutes--all she was able to bear. She was ill
+yesterday. She is naturally worse to-day. As to her state of mind--"
+
+The circle of faces drew eagerly nearer.
+
+"Oh, it's war," said Sir Wilfrid, nodding--"undoubtedly war--upon the
+Cave--if there is a Cave."
+
+"Well, poor things, we must have something to shelter us!" cried the
+Duchess. "The Cave is being aired to-day."
+
+The interrogating faces turned her way. The Duchess explained the
+situation, and drew the house in Heribert Street--with its Cyclops-eye
+of a dormer window, and its Ionian columns--on the tea-cloth with
+her nail.
+
+"Ah," said Sir Wilfrid, crossing his knees reflectively. "Ah, that makes
+it serious."
+
+"Julie must have a place to live in," said the Duchess, stiffly.
+
+"I suppose Lady Henry would reply that there are still a few houses in
+London which do not belong to her kinsman, the Duke of Crowborough."
+
+"Not perhaps to be had for the lending, and ready to step into at a
+day's notice," said Lord Lackington, with his queer smile, like the play
+of sharp sunbeams through a mist. "That's the worst of our class. The
+margin between us and calamity is too wide. We risk too little. Nobody
+goes to the workhouse."
+
+Sir Wilfrid looked at him curiously. "Do I catch your meaning?" he said,
+dropping his voice; "is it that if there had been no Duchess, and no
+Heribert Street, Miss Le Breton would have managed to put up with
+Lady Henry?"
+
+Lord Lackington smiled again. "I think it probable.... As it is,
+however, we are all the gainers. We shall now see Miss Julie at her ease
+and ours."
+
+"You have been for some time acquainted with Miss Le Breton?"
+
+"Oh, some time. I don't exactly remember. Lady Henry, of course, is an
+old friend of mine, as she is of yours. Sometimes she is rude to me.
+Then I stay away. But I always go back. She and I can discuss things and
+people that nobody else recollects--no, as far as that's concerned,
+you're not in it, Bury. Only this winter, somehow, I have often gone
+round to see Lady Henry, and have found Miss Le Breton instead so
+attractive--"
+
+"Precisely," said Sir Wilfrid, laughing; "the whole case in a nutshell."
+
+"What puzzles me," continued his companion, in a musing voice, "is how
+she can be so English as she is--with her foreign bringing up. She has a
+most extraordinary instinct for people--people in London--and their
+relations. I have never known her make a mistake. Yet it is only five
+years since she began to come to England at all; and she has lived but
+three with Lady Henry. It was clear, I thought, that neither she nor
+Lady Henry wished to be questioned. But, do you, for instance--I have no
+doubt Lady Henry tells you more than she tells me--do you know anything
+of Mademoiselle Julie's antecedents?"
+
+Sir Wilfrid started. Through his mind ran the same reflection as that to
+which the Duke had given expression in the morning--"_she ought to
+reveal herself!_" Julie Le Breton had no right to leave this old man in
+his ignorance, while those surrounding him were in the secret. Thereby
+she made a spectacle of her mother's father--made herself and him the
+sport of curious eyes. For who could help watching them--every movement,
+every word? There was a kind of indelicacy in it.
+
+His reply was rather hesitating. "Yes, I happen to know something. But I
+feel sure Miss Le Breton would prefer to tell you herself. Ask her.
+While she was with Lady Henry there were reasons for silence--"
+
+"But, of course, I'll ask her," said his companion, eagerly, "if you
+suppose that I may. A more hungry curiosity was never raised in a human
+breast than in mine with regard to this dear lady. So charming,
+handsome, and well bred--and so forlorn! That's the paradox of it. The
+personality presupposes a _milieu_--else how produce it? And there is no
+_milieu_, save this little circle she has made for herself through Lady
+Henry.... Ah, and you think I may ask her? I will--that's flat--I will!"
+
+And the old man gleefully rubbed his hands, face and form full of the
+vivacity of his imperishable youth.
+
+"Choose your time and place," said Sir Wilfrid, hastily. "There are very
+sad and tragic circumstances--"
+
+Lord Lackington looked at him and nodded gayly, as much as to say, "You
+distrust me with the sex? Me, who have had the whip-hand of them since
+my cradle!"
+
+Suddenly the Duchess interrupted. "Sir Wilfrid, you have seen Lady
+Henry; which did she mind most--the coming-in or the coffee?"
+
+Bury returned, smiling, to the tea-table.
+
+"The coming-in would have been nothing if it had led quickly to the
+going-out. It was the coffee that ruined you."
+
+"I see," said the Duchess, pouting--"it meant that it was possible for
+us to enjoy ourselves without Lady Henry. That was the offence."
+
+"Precisely. It showed that you _were_ enjoying yourselves. Otherwise
+there would have been no lingering, and no coffee."
+
+"I never knew coffee so fatal before," sighed the Duchess. "And now"--it
+was evident that she shrank from the answer to her own question--"she is
+really irreconcilable?"
+
+"Absolutely. Let me beg you to take it for granted."
+
+"She won't see any of us--not me?"
+
+Sir Wilfrid hesitated.
+
+"Make the Duke your ambassador."
+
+The Duchess laughed, and flushed a little.
+
+"And Mr. Montresor?"
+
+"Ah," said Sir Wilfrid in another tone, "that's not to be lightly spoken
+of."
+
+"You don't mean--"
+
+"How many years has that lasted?" said Sir Wilfrid, meditatively.
+
+"Thirty, I think--if not more. It was Lady Henry who told him of his
+son's death, when his wife daren't do it."
+
+There was a silence. Montresor had lost his only son, a subaltern in the
+Lancers, in the action of Alumbagh, on the way to the relief of Lucknow.
+
+Then the Duchess broke out:
+
+"I know that you think in your heart of hearts that Julie has been in
+fault, and that we have all behaved abominably!"
+
+"My dear lady," said Sir Wilfrid, after a moment, "in Persia we believe
+in fate; I have brought the trick home."
+
+"Yes, yes, that's it!" exclaimed Lord Lackington--it! When Lady Henry
+wanted a companion--and fate brought her Miss Le Breton--"
+
+"Last night's coffee was already drunk," put in Sir Wilfrid.
+
+Meredith's voice, raised and a trifle harsh, made itself heard.
+
+"Why you should dignify an ugly jealousy by fine words I don't know. For
+some women--women like our old friend--gratitude is hard. That is the
+moral of this tale."
+
+"The only one?" said Sir Wilfrid, not without a mocking twist of the
+lip.
+
+"The only one that matters. Lady Henry had found, or might have found, a
+daughter--"
+
+"I understand she bargained for a companion."
+
+"Very well. Then she stands upon her foolish rights, and loses both
+daughter and companion. At seventy, life doesn't forgive you a blunder
+of that kind."
+
+Sir Wilfrid silently shook his head. Meredith threw back his blanched
+mane of hair, his deep eyes kindling under the implied contradiction.
+
+"I am an old comrade of Lady Henry's," he said, quickly. "My record,
+you'll find, comes next to yours, Bury. But if Lady Henry is determined
+to make a quarrel of this, she must make it. I regret nothing."
+
+"What madness has seized upon all these people?" thought Bury, as he
+withdrew from the discussion. The fire, the unwonted fire, in Meredith's
+speech and aspect, amazed him. From the corner to which he had retreated
+he studied the face of the journalist. It was a face subtly and strongly
+lined by much living--of the intellectual, however, rather than the
+physical sort; breathing now a studious dignity, the effect of the broad
+sweep of brow under the high-peaked lines of grizzled hair, and now
+broken, tempestuous, scornful, changing with the pliancy of an actor.
+The head was sunk a little in the shoulders, as though dragged back by
+its own weight. The form which it commanded had the movements of a man
+no less accustomed to rule in his own sphere than Montresor himself.
+
+To Sir Wilfrid the famous editor was still personally mysterious, after
+many years of intermittent acquaintance. He was apparently unmarried; or
+was there perhaps a wife, picked up in a previous state of existence,
+and hidden away with her offspring at Clapham or Hornsey or Peckham?
+Bury could remember, years before, a dowdy old sister, to whom Lady
+Henry had been on occasion formally polite. Otherwise, nothing. What
+were the great man's origins and antecedents--his family, school,
+university? Sir Wilfrid did not know; he did not believe that any one
+knew. An amazing mastery of the German, and, it was said, the Russian
+tongues, suggested a foreign education; but neither on this ground nor
+any other connected with his personal history did Meredith encourage the
+inquirer. It was often reported that he was of Jewish descent, and there
+were certain traits, both of feature and character, that lent support to
+the notion. If so, the strain was that of Heine or Disraeli, not the
+strain of Commerce.
+
+At any rate, he was one of the most powerful men of his day--the owner,
+through _The New Rambler_, of an influence which now for some fifteen
+years had ranked among the forces to be reckoned with. A man in whom
+politics assumed a tinge of sombre poetry; a man of hatreds, ideals,
+indignations, yet of habitually sober speech. As to passions, Sir
+Wilfrid could have sworn that, wife or no wife, the man who could show
+that significance of mouth and eye had not gone through life without
+knowing the stress and shock of them.
+
+Was he, too, beguiled by this woman?--_he, too?_ For a little behind
+him, beside the Duchess, sat Jacob Delafield; and, during his painful
+interview that day with Lady Henry, Sir Wilfrid had been informed of
+several things with regard to Jacob Delafield he had not known before.
+So she had refused him--this lady who was now the heart of this
+whirlwind? Permanently? Lady Henry had poured scorn on the notion. She
+was merely sure of him; could keep him in a string to play with as she
+chose. Meanwhile the handsome soldier was metal more attractive. Sir
+Wilfrid reflected, with an inward shrug, that, once let a woman give
+herself to such a fury as possessed Lady Henry, and there did not seem
+to be much to choose between her imaginings and those of the most vulgar
+of her sex.
+
+So Jacob could be played with--whistled on and whistled off as Miss Le
+Breton chose? Yet his was not a face that suggested it, any more than
+the face of Dr. Meredith. The young man's countenance was gradually
+changing its aspect for Sir Wilfrid, in a somewhat singular way, as old
+impressions of his character died away and new ones emerged. The face,
+now, often recalled to Bury a portrait by some Holbeinesque master,
+which he had seen once in the Basle Museum and never forgotten. A large,
+thin-lipped mouth that, without weakness, suggested patience; the long
+chin of a man of will; nose, bluntly cut at the tip, yet in the nostril
+and bridge most delicate; grayish eyes, with a veil of reverie drawn, as
+it were, momentarily across them, and showing behind the veil a kind of
+stern sweetness; fair hair low on the brow, which was heavy, and made a
+massive shelter for the eyes. So looked the young German who had perhaps
+heard Melanchthon; so, in this middle nineteenth century, looked Jacob
+Delafield. No, anger makes obtuse; that, no doubt, was Lady Henry's
+case. At any rate, in Delafield's presence her theory did not
+commend itself.
+
+But if Delafield had not echoed them, the little Duchess had received
+Meredith's remarks with enthusiasm.
+
+"Regret! No, indeed! Why should we regret anything, except that Julie
+has been miserable so long? She _has_ had a bad time. Every day and all
+day. Ah, you don't know--none of you. You haven't seen all the little
+things as I have."
+
+"The errands, and the dogs," said Sir William, slyly.
+
+The Duchess threw him a glance half conscious, half resentful, and went
+on:
+
+"It has been one small torture after another. Even when a person's old
+you can't bear more than a certain amount, can you? You oughtn't to. No,
+let's be thankful it's all over, and Julie--our dear, delightful
+Julie--who has done everybody in this room all sorts of kindnesses,
+hasn't she?"
+
+An assenting murmur ran round the circle.
+
+"Julie's _free_! Only she's _very_ lonely. We must see to that, mustn't
+we? Lady Henry can buy another companion to-morrow--she will. She has
+heaps of money and heaps of friends, and she'll tell her own story to
+them all. But Julie has only us. If we desert her--"
+
+"Desert her!" said a voice in the distance, half amused, half
+electrical. Bury thought it was Jacob's.
+
+"Of course we sha'n't desert her!" cried the Duchess. "We shall rally
+round her and carry her through. If Lady Henry makes herself
+disagreeable, then we'll fight. If not, we'll let her cool down. Oh,
+Julie, darling--here you are!"
+
+The Duchess sprang up and caught her entering friend by the hand.
+
+"And here are we," with a wave round the circle. "This is your
+court--your St. Germain."
+
+"So you mean me to die in exile," said Julie, with a quavering smile, as
+she drew off her gloves. Then she looked at her friends. "Oh, how good
+of you all to come! Lord Lackington!" She went up to him impetuously,
+and he, taken by surprise, yielded his hands, which she took in both
+hers. "It was foolish, I know, but you don't think it was so _bad_,
+do you?"
+
+She gazed up at him wistfully. Her lithe form seemed almost to cling to
+the old man. Instinctively, Jacob, Meredith, Sir Wilfrid Bury withdrew
+their eyes. The room held its breath. As for Lord Lackington, he colored
+like a girl.
+
+"No, no; a mistake, perhaps, for all of us; but more ours than yours,
+mademoiselle--much more! Don't fret. Indeed, you look as if you hadn't
+slept, and that mustn't be. You must think that, sooner or later, it was
+bound to come. Lady Henry will soften in time, and you will know so well
+how to meet her. But now we have your future to think of. Only sit down.
+You mustn't look so tired. Where have you been wandering?"
+
+And with a stately courtesy, her hand still in his, he took her to a
+chair and helped her to remove her heavy cloak.
+
+"My future!" She shivered as she dropped into her seat.
+
+How weary and beaten-down she looked--the heroine of such a turmoil! Her
+eyes travelled from face to face, shrinking--unconsciously appealing. In
+the dim, soft color of the room, her white face and hands, striking
+against her black dress, were strangely living and significant. They
+spoke command--through weakness, through sex. For that, in spite of
+intellectual distinction, was, after all, her secret. She breathed
+femininity--the old common spell upon the blood.
+
+"I don't know why you're all so kind to me," she murmured. "Let me
+disappear. I can go into the country and earn my living there. Then I
+shall be no more trouble."
+
+Unseen himself, Sir Wilfrid surveyed her. He thought her a consummate
+actress, and revelled in each new phase.
+
+The Duchess, half laughing, half crying, began to scold her friend.
+Delafield bent over Julie Le Breton's chair.
+
+"Have you had some tea?"
+
+The smile in his eyes provoked a faint answer in hers. While she was
+declaring that she was in no need whatever of physical sustenance,
+Meredith advanced with his portfolio. He looked the editor merely, and
+spoke with a business-like brevity.
+
+"I have brought the sheets of the new Shelley book, Miss Le Breton. It
+is due for publication on the 22d. Kindly let me have your review within
+a week. It may run to two columns--possibly even two and a half. You
+will find here also the particulars of one or two other things--let me
+know, please, what you will undertake."
+
+Julie put out a languid hand for the portfolio.
+
+"I don't think you ought to trust me."
+
+"What do you want of her?" said Lord Lackington, briskly. "'Chatter
+about Harriet?' I could write you reams of that myself. I once saw
+Harriet."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Meredith, with whom the Shelley cult was a deep-rooted passion, started
+and looked round; then sharply repressed the eagerness on his tongue and
+sat down by Miss Le Breton, with whom, in a lowered voice, he began to
+discuss the points to be noticed in the sheets handed over to her. No
+stronger proof could he have given of his devotion to her. Julie knew
+it, and, rousing herself, she met him with a soft attention and
+docility; thus tacitly relinquishing, as Bury noticed with amusement,
+all talk of "disappearance."
+
+Only with himself, he suspected, was the fair lady ill at ease. And,
+indeed, it was so. Julie, by her pallor, her humility, had thrown
+herself, as it were, into the arms of her friends, and each was now
+vying with the other as to how best to cheer and console her. Meanwhile
+her attention was really bent upon her critic--her only critic in this
+assembly; and he discovered various attempts to draw him into
+conversation. And when Lord Lackington, discomfited by Meredith, had
+finished discharging his literary recollections upon him, Sir Wilfrid
+became complaisant; Julie slipped in and held him.
+
+Leaning her chin on both hands, she bent towards him, fixing him with
+her eyes. And in spite of his antagonism he no longer felt himself
+strong enough to deny that the eyes were beautiful, especially with this
+tragic note in them of fatigue and pain.
+
+"Sir Wilfrid"--she spoke in low entreaty--"you _must_ help me to prevent
+any breach between Lady Henry and Mr. Montresor."
+
+He looked at her gayly.
+
+"I fear," he said, "you are too late. That point is settled, as I
+understand from herself."
+
+"Surely not--so soon!"
+
+"There was an exchange of letters this morning."
+
+"Oh, but you can prevent it--you must!" She clasped her hands.
+
+"No," he said, slowly, "I fear you must accept it. Their relation was a
+matter of old habit. Like other things old and frail, it bears shock and
+disturbance badly."
+
+She sank back in her chair, raising her hands and letting them fall with
+a gesture of despair.
+
+One little stroke of punishment--just one! Surely there was no cruelty
+in that. Sir Wilfrid caught the Horatian lines dancing through his head:
+
+     "Just oblige me and touch
+       With your wand that minx Chloe--
+     But don't hurt her much!"
+
+Yet here was Jacob interposing!--Jacob, who had evidently been watching
+his mild attempt at castigation, no doubt with disapproval. Lover or no
+lover--what did the man expect? Under his placid exterior, Sir Wilfrid's
+mind was, in truth, hot with sympathy for the old and helpless.
+
+Delafield bent over Miss Le Breton.
+
+"You will go and rest? Evelyn advises it."
+
+She rose to her feet, and most of the party rose, too.
+
+"Good-bye--good-bye," said Lord Lackington, offering her a cordial hand.
+"Rest and forget. Everything blows over. And at Easter you must come to
+me in the country. Blanche will be with me, and my granddaughter
+Aileen, if I can tempt them away from Italy. Aileen's a little fairy;
+you'd be charmed with her. Now mind, that's a promise. You must
+certainly come."
+
+The Duchess had paused in her farewell nothings with Sir Wilfrid to
+observe her friend. Julie, with her eyes on the ground, murmured thanks;
+and Lord Lackington, straight as a dart to-night, carrying his
+seventy-five years as though they were the merest trifle, made a stately
+and smiling exit. Julie looked round upon the faces left. In her own
+heart she read the same judgment as in their eyes: "_The old man
+must know!_"
+
+The Duke came into the drawing-room half an hour later in quest of his
+wife. He was about to leave town by a night train for the north, and his
+temper was, apparently, far from good.
+
+The Duchess was stretched on the sofa in the firelight, her hands behind
+her head, dreaming. Whether it was the sight of so much ease that jarred
+on the Duke's ruffled nerves or no, certain it is that he inflicted a
+thorny good-bye. He had seen Lady Henry, he said, and the reality was
+even worse than he had supposed. There was absolutely nothing to be said
+for Miss Le Breton, and he was ashamed of himself to have been so weakly
+talked over in the matter of the house. His word once given, of course,
+there was an end of it--for six months. After that, Miss Le Breton must
+provide for herself. Meanwhile, Lady Henry refused to receive the
+Duchess, and would be some time before she forgave himself. It was all
+most annoying, and he was thankful to be going away, for, Lady Rose or
+no Lady Rose, he really could not have entertained the lady with
+civility.
+
+"Oh, well, never mind, Freddie," said the Duchess, springing up. "She'll
+be gone before you come back, and I'll look after her."
+
+The Duke offered a rather sulky embrace, walked to the door, and came
+back.
+
+"I really very much dislike this kind of gossip," he said, stiffly, "but
+perhaps I had better say that Lady Henry believes that the affair with
+Delafield was only one of several. She talks of a certain Captain
+Warkworth--"
+
+"Yes," said the Duchess, nodding. "I know; but he sha'n't have Julie."
+
+Her smile completed the Duke's annoyance.
+
+"What have you to do with it? I beg, Evelyn--I insist--that you leave
+Miss Le Breton's love affairs alone."
+
+"You forget, Freddie, that she is my _friend_."
+
+The little creature fronted him, all wilfulness and breathing hard, her
+small hands clasped on her breast.
+
+With an angry exclamation the Duke departed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At half-past eight a hansom dashed up to Crowborough House. Montresor
+emerged.
+
+He found the two ladies and Jacob Delafield just beginning dinner, and
+stayed with them an hour; but it was not an hour of pleasure. The great
+man was tired with work and debate, depressed also by the quarrel with
+his old friend. Julie did not dare to put questions, and guiltily shrank
+into herself. She divined that a great price was being paid on her
+behalf, and must needs bitterly ask whether anything that she could
+offer or plead was worth it--bitterly suspect, also, that the query had
+passed through other minds than her own.
+
+After dinner, as Montresor rose with the Duchess to take his leave,
+Julie got a word with him in the corridor.
+
+"You will give me ten minutes' talk?" she said, lifting her pale face to
+him. "You mustn't, mustn't quarrel with Lady Henry because of me."
+
+He drew himself up, perhaps with a touch of haughtiness.
+
+"Lady Henry could end it in a moment. Don't, I beg of you, trouble your
+head about the matter. Even as an old friend, one must be allowed one's
+self-respect."
+
+"But mayn't I--"
+
+"Nearly ten o'clock!" he cried, looking at his watch. "I must be off
+this moment. So you are going to the house in Heribert Street? I
+remember Lady Mary Leicester perfectly. As soon as you are settled, tell
+me, and I will present myself. Meanwhile "--he smiled and bent his black
+head towards her--"look in to-morrow's papers for some interesting
+news."
+
+He sprang into his hansom and was gone.
+
+Julie went slowly up-stairs. Of course she understood. The long intrigue
+had reached its goal, and within twelve hours the _Times_ would announce
+the appointment of Captain Warkworth, D.S.O., to the command of the
+Mokembe military mission. He would have obtained his heart's
+desire--through her.
+
+How true were those last words, perhaps only Julie knew. She looked back
+upon all the manoeuvres and influences she had brought to bear--flattery
+here, interest or reciprocity there, the lures of Crowborough House, the
+prestige of Lady Henry's drawing-room. Wheel by wheel she had built up
+her cunning machine, and the machine had worked. No doubt the last
+completing touch had been given the night before. Her culminating
+offence against Lady Henry--the occasion of her disgrace and
+banishment--had been to Warkworth the stepping-stone of fortune.
+
+What "gossamer girl" could have done so much? She threw back her head
+proudly and heard the beating of her heart.
+
+Lady Henry was fiercely forgotten. She opened the drawing-room door,
+absorbed in a counting of the hours till she and Warkworth should meet.
+
+Then, amid the lights and shadows of the Duchess's drawing-room, Jacob
+Delafield rose and came towards her. Her exaltation dropped in a moment.
+Some testing, penetrating influence seemed to breathe from this man,
+which filled her with a moral discomfort, a curious restlessness. Did he
+guess the nature of her feeling for Warkworth? Was he acquainted with
+the efforts she had been making for the young soldier? She could not be
+sure; he had never given her the smallest sign. Yet she divined that few
+things escaped him where the persons who touched his feelings were
+concerned. And Evelyn--the dear chatterbox--certainly suspected.
+
+"How tired you are!" he said to her, gently. "What a day it has been for
+you! Evelyn is writing letters. Let me bring you the papers--and please
+don't talk."
+
+She submitted to a sofa, to an adjusted light, to the papers on her
+knee. Then Delafield withdrew and took up a book.
+
+She could not rest, however; visions of the morrow and of Warkworth's
+triumphant looks kept flashing through her. Yet all the while
+Delafield's presence haunted her--she could not forget him, and
+presently she addressed him.
+
+"Mr. Delafield!"
+
+He heard the low voice and came.
+
+"I have never thanked you for your goodness last night. I do thank you
+now--most earnestly."
+
+"You needn't. You know very well what I would do to serve you if I
+could."
+
+"Even when you think me in the wrong?" said Julie, with a little,
+hysterical laugh.
+
+Her conscience smote her. Why provoke this intimate talk--wantonly--with
+the man she had made suffer? Yet her restlessness, which was partly
+nervous fatigue, drove her on.
+
+Delafield flushed at her words.
+
+"How have I given you cause to say that?"
+
+"Oh, you are very transparent. One sees that you are always troubling
+yourself about the right and wrong of things."
+
+"All very well for one's self," said Delafield, trying to laugh. "I hope
+I don't seem to you to be setting up as a judge of other people's right
+and wrong?"
+
+"Yes, yes, you do!" she said, passionately. Then, as he winced, "No, I
+don't mean that. But you do judge--it is in your nature--and other
+people feel it."
+
+"I didn't know I was such a prig," said Delafield, humbly. "It is true I
+am always puzzling over things."
+
+Julie was silent. She was indeed secretly convinced that he no more
+approved the escapade of the night before than did Sir Wilfrid Bury.
+Through the whole evening she had been conscious of a watchful anxiety
+and resistance on his part. Yet he had stood by her to the end--so
+warmly, so faithfully.
+
+He sat down beside her, and Julie felt a fresh pang of remorse, perhaps
+of alarm. Why had she called him to her? What had they to do with each
+other? But he soon reassured her. He began to talk of Meredith, and the
+work before her--the important and glorious work, as he naively termed
+it, of the writer.
+
+And presently he turned upon her with sudden feeling.
+
+"You accused me, just now, of judging what I have no business to judge.
+If you think that I regret the severance of your relation with Lady
+Henry, you are quite, quite mistaken. It has been the dream of my life
+this last year to see you free--mistress of your own life. It--it made
+me mad that you should be ordered about like a child--dependent upon
+another person's will."
+
+She looked at him curiously.
+
+"I know. That revolts you always--any form of command? Evelyn tells me
+that you carry it to curious lengths with your servants and laborers."
+
+He drew back, evidently disconcerted.
+
+"Oh, I try some experiments. They generally break down."
+
+"You try to do without servants, Evelyn says, as much as possible."
+
+"Well, if I do try, I don't succeed," he said, laughing. "But"--his eyes
+kindled--"isn't it worth while, during a bit of one's life, to escape,
+if one can, from some of the paraphernalia in which we are all
+smothered? Look there! What right have I to turn my fellow-creatures
+into bedizened automata like that?"
+
+And he threw out an accusing hand towards the two powdered footmen, who
+were removing the coffee-cups and making up the fire in the next room,
+while the magnificent groom of the chambers stood like a statue,
+receiving some orders from the Duchess.
+
+Julie, however, showed no sympathy.
+
+"They are only automata in the drawing-room. Down-stairs they are as
+much alive as you or I."
+
+"Well, let us put it that I prefer other kinds of luxury," said
+Delafield. "However, as I appear to have none of the qualities necessary
+to carry out my notions, they don't get very far."
+
+"You would like to shake hands with the butler?" said Julie, musing. "I
+knew a case of that kind. But the butler gave warning."
+
+Delafield laughed.
+
+"Perhaps the simpler thing would be to do without the butler."
+
+"I am curious," she said, smiling--"very curious. Sir Wilfrid, for
+instance, talks of going down to stay with you?"
+
+"Why not? He'd come off extremely well. There's an ex-butler, and an
+ex-cook of Chudleigh's settled in the village. When I have a visitor,
+they come in and take possession. We live like fighting-cocks."
+
+"So nobody knows that, in general, you live like a workman?"
+
+Delafield looked impatient.
+
+"Somebody seems to have been cramming Evelyn with ridiculous tales, and
+she's been spreading them. I must have it out with her."
+
+"I expect there is a good deal in them," said Julie. Then, unexpectedly,
+she raised her eyes and gave him a long and rather strange look. "Why
+do you dislike having servants and being waited upon so much, I wonder?
+Is it--you won't be angry?--that you have such a strong will, and you do
+these things to tame it?"
+
+Delafield made a sudden movement, and Julie had no sooner spoken the
+words than she regretted them.
+
+"So you think I should have made a jolly tyrannical slave-owner?" said
+Delafield, after a moment's pause.
+
+Julie bent towards him with a charming look of appeal--almost of
+penitence. "On the contrary, I think you would have been as good to your
+slaves as you are to your friends."
+
+His eyes met hers quietly.
+
+"Thank you. That was kind of you. And as to giving orders, and getting
+one's way, don't suppose I let Chudleigh's estate go to ruin! It's
+only"--he hesitated--"the small personal tyrannies of every day that I'd
+like to minimize. They brutalize half the fellows I know."
+
+"You'll come to them," said Julie, absently. Then she colored, suddenly
+remembering the possible dukedom that awaited him.
+
+His brow contracted a little, as though he understood. He made no reply.
+Julie, with her craving to be approved--to say what pleased--could not
+leave it there.
+
+"I wish I understood," she said, softly, after a moment, "what, or who
+it was that gave you these opinions."
+
+Getting still no answer, she must perforce meet the gray eyes bent upon
+her, more expressively, perhaps, than their owner knew. "That you shall
+understand," he said, after a minute, in a voice which was singularly
+deep and full, "whenever you choose to ask."
+
+Julie shrank and drew back.
+
+"Very well," she said, trying to speak lightly. "I'll hold you to that.
+Alack! I had forgotten a letter I must write."
+
+And she pretended to write it, while Delafield buried himself in the
+newspapers.
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+Julie's curiosity--passing and perfunctory as it was--concerning the
+persons and influences that had worked upon Jacob Delafield since his
+college days, was felt in good earnest by not a few of Delafield's
+friends. For he was a person rich in friends, reserved as he generally
+was, and crotchety as most of them thought him. The mixture of
+self-evident strength and manliness in his physiognomy with something
+delicate and evasive, some hindering element of reflection or doubt, was
+repeated in his character. On the one side he was a robust, healthy
+Etonian, who could ride, shoot, and golf like the rest of his kind, who
+used the terse, slangy ways of speech of the ordinary Englishman, who
+loved the land and its creatures, and had a natural hatred for a
+poacher; and on another he was a man haunted by dreams and spiritual
+voices, a man for whom, as he paced his tired horse homeward after a
+day's run, there would rise on the grays and purples of the winter dusk
+far-shining "cities of God" and visions of a better life for man. He
+read much poetry, and the New Testament spoke to him imperatively,
+though in no orthodox or accustomed way. Ruskin, and the earlier work of
+Tolstoy, then just beginning to take hold of the English mind, had
+affected his thought and imagination, as the generation before him had
+been affected by Carlyle, Emerson, and George Sand.
+
+This present phase of his life, however, was the outcome of much that
+was turbulent and shapeless in his first youth. He seemed to himself to
+have passed through Oxford under a kind of eclipse. All that he could
+remember of two-thirds of his time there was an immoderate amount of
+eating, drinking, and sleeping. A heavy animal existence, disturbed by
+moments of unhappiness and remorse, or, at best, lightened by intervals
+and gleams of friendship with two or three men who tried to prod him out
+of his lethargy, and cherished what appeared, to himself in particular,
+a strange and unreasonable liking for him. Such, to his own thinking,
+had been his Oxford life, up to the last year of his residence there.
+
+Then, when he was just making certain of an ignominious failure in the
+final schools, he became more closely acquainted with one of the college
+tutors, whose influence was to be the spark which should at last fire
+the clay. This modest, heroic, and learned man was a paralyzed invalid,
+owing to an accident in the prime of life. He had lost the use of his
+lower limbs--"dead from the waist down." Yet such was the strength of
+his moral and intellectual life that he had become, since the
+catastrophe, one of the chief forces of his college. The invalid-chair
+on which he wheeled himself, recumbent, from room to room, and from
+which he gave his lectures, was, in the eyes of Oxford, a symbol not of
+weakness, but of touching and triumphant victory. He gave himself no
+airs of resignation or of martyrdom. He simply lived his life--except
+during those crises of weakness or pain when his friends were shut
+out--as though it were like any other life, save only for what he made
+appear an insignificant physical limitation. Scholarship, college
+business or college sports, politics and literature--his mind, at
+least, was happy, strenuous, and at home in them all. To have pitied him
+would have been a mere impertinence. While in his own heart, which never
+grieved over himself, there were treasures of compassion for the weak,
+the tempted, and the unsuccessful, which spent themselves in secret,
+simple ways, unknown to his most intimate friends.
+
+This man's personality it was which, like the branch of healing on
+bitter waters, presently started in Jacob Delafield's nature obscure
+processes of growth and regeneration. The originator of them knew little
+of what was going on. He was Delafield's tutor for Greats, in the
+ordinary college routine; Delafield took essays to him, and occasionally
+lingered to talk. But they never became exactly intimate. A few
+conversations of "pith and moment"; a warm shake of the hand and a keen
+look of pleasure in the blue eyes of the recumbent giant when, after one
+year of superhuman but belated effort, Delafield succeeded in obtaining
+a second class; a little note of farewell, affectionate and regretful,
+when Delafield left the university; an occasional message through a
+common friend--Delafield had little more than these to look back upon,
+outside the discussions of historical or philosophical subjects which
+had entered into their relation as pupil and teacher.
+
+And now the paralyzed tutor was dead, leaving behind him a volume of
+papers on classical subjects, the reputation of an admirable scholar,
+and the fragrance of a dear and honored name. His pupils had been many;
+they counted among the most distinguished of England's youth; and all of
+them owed him much. Few people thought of Delafield when the list of
+them was recited; and yet, in truth, Jacob's debt was greater than any;
+for he owed this man nothing less than his soul.
+
+No doubt the period at Oxford had been rather a period of obscure
+conflict than of mere idleness and degeneracy, as it had seemed to be.
+But it might easily have ended in physical and moral ruin, and, as it
+was--thanks to Courtenay--Delafield went out to the business of life, a
+man singularly master of himself, determined to live his own life for
+his own ends.
+
+In the first place, he was conscious, like many other young men of his
+time, of a strong repulsion towards the complexities and artificialities
+of modern society. As in the forties, a time of social stir was rising
+out of a time of stagnation. Social settlements were not yet founded,
+but the experiments which led to them were beginning. Jacob looked at
+the life of London, the clubs and the country-houses, the normal life of
+his class, and turned from it in aversion. He thought, sometimes, of
+emigrating, in search of a new heaven and a new earth, as men emigrated
+in the forties.
+
+But his mother and sister were alone in the world--his mother a somewhat
+helpless being, his sister still very young and unmarried. He could not
+reconcile it to his conscience to go very far from them.
+
+He tried the bar, amid an inner revolt that only increased with time.
+And the bar implied London, and the dinners and dances of London, which,
+for a man of his family, the probable heir to the lands and moneys of
+the Chudleighs, were naturally innumerable. He was much courted, in
+spite, perhaps because, of his oddities; and it was plain to him that
+with only a small exercise of those will-forces he felt accumulating
+within him, most of the normal objects of ambition were within his
+grasp. The English aristocratic class, as we all know, is no longer
+exclusive. It mingles freely with the commoner world on apparently equal
+terms. But all the while its personal and family cohesion is perhaps
+greater than ever. The power of mere birth, it seemed to Jacob, was
+hardly less in the England newly possessed of household suffrage than in
+the England of Charles James Fox's youth, though it worked through other
+channels. And for the persons in command of this power, a certain
+_appareil de vie_ was necessary, taken for granted. So much income, so
+many servants, such and such habits--these things imposed themselves.
+Life became a soft and cushioned business, with an infinity of layers
+between it and any hard reality--a round pea in a silky pod.
+
+And he meanwhile found himself hungry to throw aside these tamed and
+trite forms of existence, and to penetrate to the harsh, true, simple
+things behind. His imagination and his heart turned towards the
+primitive, indispensable labors on which society rests--the life of the
+husbandman, the laborer, the smith, the woodman, the builder; he dreamed
+the old, enchanted dream of living with nature; of becoming the brother
+not of the few, but of the many. He was still reading in chambers,
+however, when his first cousin, the Duke, a melancholy semi-invalid, a
+widower, with an only son tuberculous almost from his birth, arrived
+from abroad. Jacob was brought into new contact with him. The Duke liked
+him, and offered him the agency of his Essex property. Jacob accepted,
+partly that he might be quit of the law, partly that he might be in the
+country and among the poor, partly for reasons, or ghosts of reasons,
+unavowed even to himself. The one terror that haunted his life was the
+terror of the dukedom. This poor, sickly lad, the heir, with whom he
+soon made warm friends, and the silent, morbid Duke, with the face of
+Charles V. at St. Just--he became, in a short time, profoundly and
+pitifully attached to them. It pleased him to serve them; above all did
+it please him to do all he could, and to incite others to do all they
+could, to keep these two frail persons cheered and alive. His own
+passionate dread lest he should suddenly find himself in their place,
+gave a particular poignancy to the service he was always ready to render
+them of his best.
+
+The Duke's confidence in him had increased rapidly. Delafield was now
+about to take over the charge of another of the Duke's estates, in the
+Midlands, and much of the business connected with some important London
+property was also coming into his hands. He had made himself a good man
+of business where another's interests were concerned, and his dreams did
+no harm to the Duke's revenues. He gave, indeed, a liberal direction to
+the whole policy of the estate, and, as he had said to Julie, the Duke
+did not forbid experiments.
+
+As to his own money, he gave it away as wisely as he could, which is,
+perhaps, not saying very much for the schemes and Quixotisms of a young
+man of eight-and-twenty. At any rate, he gave it away--to his mother and
+sister first, then to a variety of persons and causes. Why should he
+save a penny of it? He had some money of his own, besides his income
+from the Duke. It was disgusting that he should have so much, and that
+it should be, apparently, so very easy for him to have indefinitely
+more if he wanted it.
+
+He lived in a small cottage, in the simplest, plainest way compatible
+with his work and with the maintenance of two decently furnished rooms
+for any friend who might chance to visit him. He read much and thought
+much. But he was not a man of any commanding speculative or analytic
+ability. It would have been hard for him to give any very clear or
+logical account of himself and his deepest beliefs. Nevertheless, with
+every year that passed he became a more remarkable _character_--his will
+stronger, his heart gentler. In the village where he lived they wondered
+at him a good deal, and often laughed at him. But if he had left them,
+certainly the children and the old people would have felt as though the
+sun had gone out.
+
+In London he showed little or nothing of his peculiar ways and pursuits;
+was, in fact, as far as anybody knew--outside half a dozen friends--just
+the ordinary, well-disposed young man, engaged in a business that every
+one understood. With Lady Henry, his relations, apart from his sympathy
+with Julie Le Breton, had been for some time rather difficult. She made
+gratitude hard for one of the most grateful of men. When the
+circumstances of the Hubert Delafields had been much straitened, after
+Lord Hubert's death, Lady Henry had come to their aid, and had, in
+particular, spent fifteen hundred pounds on Jacob's school and college
+education. But there are those who can make a gift burn into the bones
+of those who receive it. Jacob had now saved nearly the whole sum, and
+was about to repay her. Meanwhile his obligation, his relationship, and
+her age made it natural, or rather imperative, that he should be often
+in her house; but when he was with her the touch of arrogant brutality
+in her nature, especially towards servants and dependants, roused him
+almost to fury. She knew it, and would often exercise her rough tongue
+merely for the pleasure of tormenting him.
+
+No sooner, therefore, had he come to know the fragile, distinguished
+creature whom Lady Henry had brought back with her one autumn as her
+companion than his sympathies were instantly excited, first by the mere
+fact that she was Lady Henry's dependant, and then by the confidence, as
+to her sad story and strange position, which she presently reposed in
+him and his cousin Evelyn. On one or two occasions, very early in his
+acquaintance with her, he was a witness of some small tyranny of Lady
+Henry's towards her. He saw the shrinking of the proud nature, and the
+pain thrilled through his own nerves as though the lash had touched
+himself. Presently it became a joy to him whenever he was in town to
+conspire with Evelyn Crowborough for her pleasure and relief. It was the
+first time he had ever conspired, and it gave him sometimes a slight
+shock to see how readily these two charming women lent themselves, on
+occasion, to devices that had the aspect of intrigue, and involved a
+good deal of what, in his own case, he would have roundly dubbed lying.
+And, in truth, if he had known, they did not find him a convenient ally,
+and he was by no means always in their confidence.
+
+Once, about six months after Julie's arrival in Bruton Street, he met
+her on a spring morning crossing Kensington Gardens with the dogs. She
+looked startlingly white and ill, and when he spoke to her with eager
+sympathy her mouth quivered and her dark eyes clouded with tears. The
+sight produced an extraordinary effect on a man large-hearted and
+simple, for whom women still moved in an atmosphere of romance. His
+heart leaped within him as she let herself be talked with and comforted.
+And when her delicate hand rested in his as they said good-bye, he was
+conscious of feelings--wild, tumultuous feelings--to which, in his walk
+homeward through the spring glades of the park, he gave
+impetuous course.
+
+Romantic, indeed, the position was, for romance rests on contrast.
+Jacob, who knew Julie Le Breton's secret, was thrilled or moved by the
+contrasts of her existence at every turn. Her success and her
+subjection; the place in Lady Henry's circle which Lady Henry had, in
+the first instance, herself forced her to take, contrasted with the
+shifts and evasions, the poor, tortuous ways by which, alas! she must
+often escape Lady Henry's later jealousy; her intellectual strength and
+her most feminine weaknesses; these things stirred and kept up in Jacob
+a warm and passionate pity. The more clearly he saw the specks in her
+glory, the more vividly did she appear to him a princess in distress,
+bound by physical or moral fetters not of her own making. None of the
+well-born, well-trained damsels who had been freely thrown across his
+path had so far beguiled him in the least. Only this woman of doubtful
+birth and antecedents, lonely, sad, and enslaved amid what people called
+her social triumphs, stole into his heart--beautified by what he chose
+to consider her misfortunes, and made none the less attractive by the
+fact that as he pursued, she retreated; as he pressed, she grew cold.
+
+When, indeed, after their friendship had lasted about a year, he
+proposed to her and she refused him, his passion, instead of cooling,
+redoubled. It never occurred to him to think that she had done a strange
+thing from the worldly point of view--that would have involved an
+appreciation of himself, as a prize in the marriage market, he would
+have loathed to make. But he was one of the men for whom resistance
+enhances the value of what they desire, and secretly he said to himself,
+"Persevere!" When he was repelled or puzzled by certain aspects of her
+character, he would say to himself:
+
+"It is because she is alone and miserable. Women are not meant to be
+alone. What soft, helpless creatures they are!--even when intellectually
+they fly far ahead of us. If she would but put her hand in mine I would
+so serve and worship her, she would have no need for these strange
+things she does--the doublings and ruses of the persecuted." Thus the
+touches of falsity that repelled Wilfrid Bury were to Delafield's
+passion merely the stains of rough travel on a fair garment.
+
+But she refused him, and for another year he said no more. Then, as
+things got worse and worse for her, he spoke again--ambiguously--a word
+or two, thrown out to sound the waters. Her manner of silencing him on
+this second occasion was not what it had been before. His suspicions
+were aroused, and a few days later he divined the Warkworth affair.
+
+When Sir Wilfrid Bury spoke to him of the young officer's relations to
+Mademoiselle Le Breton, Delafield's stiff defence of Julie's
+prerogatives in the matter masked the fact that he had just gone through
+a week of suffering, wrestling his heart down in country lanes; a week
+which had brought him to somewhat curious results.
+
+In the first place, as with Sir Wilfrid, he stood up stoutly for her
+rights. If she chose to attach herself to this man, whose business was
+it to interfere? If he was worthy and loved her, Jacob himself would see
+fair play, would be her friend and supporter.
+
+But the scraps of gossip about Captain Warkworth which the Duchess--who
+had disliked the man at first sight--gathered from different quarters
+and confided to Jacob were often disquieting. It was said that at Simla
+he had entrapped this little heiress, and her obviously foolish and
+incapable mother, by devices generally held to be discreditable; and it
+had taken two angry guardians to warn him off. What was the state of the
+case now no one exactly knew; though it was shrewdly suspected that the
+engagement was only dormant. The child was known to have been in love
+with him; in two years more she would be of age; her fortune was
+enormous, and Warkworth was a poor and ambitious man.
+
+There was also an ugly tale of a civilian's wife in a hill station,
+referring to a date some years back; but Delafield did not think it
+necessary to believe it.
+
+As to his origins--there again, Delafield, making cautious inquiries,
+came across some unfavorable details, confided to him by a man of
+Warkworth's own regiment. His father had retired from the army
+immediately after the Mutiny, broken in health, and much straitened in
+means. Himself belonging to a family of the poorer middle class, he had
+married late, a good woman not socially his equal, and without fortune.
+They settled in the Isle of Wight, on his half-pay, and harassed by a
+good many debts. Their two children, Henry and Isabella, were then
+growing up, and the parents' hopes were fixed upon their promising and
+good-looking son. With difficulty they sent him to Charterhouse and a
+"crammer." The boy coveted a "crack" regiment; by dint of mustering all
+the money and all the interest they could, they procured him his heart's
+desire. He got unpardonably into debt; the old people's resources were
+lessening, not expanding; and ultimately the poor father died broken
+down by the terror of bankruptcy for himself and disgrace for Henry. The
+mother still survived, in very straitened circumstances.
+
+"His sister," said Delafield's informant, "married one of the big London
+tailors, whom she met first on the Ryde pier. I happen to know the
+facts, for my father and I have been customers of his for years, and one
+day, hearing that I was in Warkworth's regiment, he told me some stories
+of his brother-in-law in a pretty hostile tone. His sister, it appears,
+has often financed him of late. She must have done. How else could he
+have got through? Warkworth may be a fine, showy fellow when there's
+fighting about. In private life he's one of the most self-indulgent dogs
+alive. And yet he's ashamed of the sister and her husband, and turns his
+back on them whenever he can. Oh, he's not a person of nice feeling, is
+Warkworth--but, mark my words, he'll be one of the most successful men
+in the army."
+
+There was one side. On the other was to be set the man's brilliant
+professional record; his fine service in this recent campaign; the
+bull-dog defence of an isolated fort, which insured the safety of most
+important communications; contempt of danger, thirst, exposure; the
+rescue of a wounded comrade from the glacis of the fort, under a
+murderous fire; facts, all of them, which had fired the public
+imagination and brought his name to the front. No such acts as these
+could have been done by any mere self-indulgent pretender.
+
+Delafield reserved his judgment. He set himself to watch. In his inmost
+heart there was a strange assumption of the right to watch, and, if need
+be, to act. Julie's instinct had told her truly. Delafield, the
+individualist, the fanatic for freedom--he, also, had his instinct of
+tyranny. She should not destroy herself, the dear, weak, beloved woman!
+He would prevent it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus, during these hours of transition, Delafield thought much of Julie.
+Julie, on the other hand, had no sooner said good-night to him after the
+conversation described in the last chapter than she drove him from her
+thoughts--one might have said, with vehemence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _Times_ of the following morning duly contained the announcement of
+the appointment of Captain Warkworth, D.S.O., of the Queen's Grays, to
+the command of the military mission to Mokembe recently determined on by
+her Majesty's government. The mission would proceed to Mokembe as soon
+as possible, but of two officers who on the ground of especial knowledge
+would form part of it, under Captain Warkworth's command, one was at
+present in Canada and the other at the Cape. It would, therefore, hardly
+be possible for the mission to start from the coast for the interior
+before the beginning of May. In the same paper certain promotions and
+distinctions on account of the recent Mahsud campaign were reprinted
+from the _Gazette_. Captain Henry Warkworth's brevet majority was
+among them.
+
+The _Times_ leader on the announcement pointed out that the mission
+would be concerned with important frontier questions, still more with
+the revival of the prestige of England in regions where a supine
+government had allowed it to wither unaccountably. Other powers had been
+playing a filching and encroaching game at the expense of the British
+lion in these parts, and it was more than time that he should open his
+sleepy eyes upon what was going on. As to the young officer who was to
+command the mission, the great journal made a few civil though guarded
+remarks. His record in the recent campaign was indeed highly
+distinguished; still it could hardly be said that, take it as a whole,
+his history so far gave him a claim to promotion so important as that
+which he had now obtained.
+
+Well, now he had his chance. English soldiers had a way of profiting by
+such chances. The _Times_ courteously gave him the benefit of the doubt,
+prophesying that he would rise to the occasion and justify the choice of
+his superiors.
+
+The Duchess looked over Julie's shoulder as she read.
+
+"Schemer," she said, as she dropped a kiss on the back of Julie's neck,
+"I hope you're satisfied. The _Times_ doesn't know what to make of it."
+
+Julie put down the paper with a glowing cheek.
+
+"They'll soon know," she said, quietly.
+
+"Julie, do you believe in him so much?"
+
+"What does it matter what I think? It is not I who have appointed him."
+
+"Not so sure," laughed the Duchess. "As if he would have had a chance
+without you. Whom did he know last November when you took him up?"
+
+Julie moved to and fro, her hands behind her. The tremor on her lip, the
+light in her eye showed her sense of triumph.
+
+"What have I done," she said, laughing, "but push a few stones out of
+the way of merit?"
+
+"Some of them were heavy," said the Duchess, making a little face. "Need
+I invite Lady Froswick any more?"
+
+Julie threw her arms about her.
+
+"Evelyn, what a darling you've been! Now I'll never worry you again."
+
+"Oh, for some people I would do ten times as much!" cried the Duchess.
+"But, Julie, I wish I knew why you think so well of this man. I--I don't
+always hear very nice things about him."
+
+"I dare say not," said Julie, flushing. "It is easy to hate success."
+
+"No, come, we're not as mean as that!" cried the Duchess. "I vow that
+all the heroes I've ever known had a ripping time. Julie"--she kissed
+her friend impulsively--"Julie, don't like him too much. I don't think
+he's good enough."
+
+"Good enough for what?" said Julie's bitter voice. "Make yourself easy
+about Captain Warkworth, Evelyn; but please understand--_anything_ is
+good enough for me. Don't let your dear head be troubled about my
+affairs. They are never serious, and nothing counts--except," she added,
+recklessly, "that I get a little amusement by the way."
+
+"Julie," cried the Duchess, "as if Jacob--"
+
+Julie frowned and released herself; then she laughed.
+
+"Nothing that one ever says about ordinary mortals applies to Mr.
+Delafield. He is, of course, _hors concours_."
+
+"Julie!"
+
+"It is you, Evelyn, who make me _mechante_. I could be grateful--and
+excellent friends with that young man--in my own way."
+
+The Duchess sighed, and held her tongue with difficulty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the successful hero arrived that night for dinner he found a
+solitary lady in the drawing-room.
+
+Was this, indeed, Julie Le Breton--this soft, smiling vision in white?
+
+He expected to have found a martyr, pale and wan from the shock of the
+catastrophe which had befallen her, and, even amid the intoxication of
+his own great day, he was not easy as to how she might have taken his
+behavior on the fatal night. But here was some one, all joy, animation,
+and indulgence--a glorified Julie who trod on air. Why? Because
+good-fortune had befallen her friend? His heart smote him. He had never
+seen her so touching, so charming. Since the incubus of Lady Henry's
+house and presence had been removed she seemed to have grown years
+younger. A white muslin dress of her youth, touched here and there by
+the Duchess's maid, replaced the familiar black satin. When Warkworth
+first saw her he paused unconsciously in surprise.
+
+Then he advanced to meet her, broadly smiling, his blue eyes dancing.
+
+"You got my note this morning?"
+
+"Yes," she said, demurely. "You were much too kind, and much--much too
+absurd. I have done nothing."
+
+"Oh, nothing, of course." Then, after a moment: "Are you going to tie me
+to that fiction, or am I to be allowed a little decent sincerity? You
+know perfectly well that you have done it all. There, there; give me
+your hand."
+
+She gave it, shrinking, and he kissed it joyously.
+
+"Isn't it jolly!" he said, with a school-boy's delight as he released
+her hand. "I saw Lord M---- this morning." He named the Prime Minister.
+"Very civil, indeed. Then the Commander-in-Chief--and Montresor gave me
+half an hour. It is all right. They are giving me a capital staff.
+Excellent fellows, all of them. Oh, you'll see, I shall pull it
+through--I shall pull it through. By George! it is a chance!"
+
+And he stood radiant, rubbing his hands over the blaze.
+
+The Duchess came in accompanied by an elderly cousin of the Duke's, a
+white-haired, black-gowned spinster, Miss Emily Lawrence--one of those
+single women, travelled, cultivated, and good, that England produces in
+such abundance.
+
+"Well, so you're going," said the Duchess, to Warkworth. "And I hear
+that we ought to think you a lucky man."
+
+"Indeed you ought, and you must," he said, gayly. "If only the climate
+will behave itself. The blackwater fever has a way of killing you in
+twenty-four hours if it gets hold of you; but short of that--"
+
+"Oh, you will be quite safe," said the Duchess. "Let me introduce you to
+Miss Lawrence. Emily, this is Captain Warkworth."
+
+The elderly lady gave a sudden start. Then she quietly put on her
+spectacles and studied the young soldier with a pair of intelligent
+gray eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nothing could have been more agreeable than Warkworth at dinner. Even
+the Duchess admitted as much. He talked easily, but not too much, of the
+task before him; told amusing tales of his sporting experience of years
+back in the same regions which were now to be the scene of his mission;
+discussed the preparations he would have to make at Denga, the coast
+town, before starting on his five weeks' journey to the interior; drew
+the native porter and the native soldier, not to their advantage, and
+let fall, by the way, not a few wise or vivacious remarks as to the
+races, resources, and future of this illimitable and mysterious
+Africa--this cavern of the unknown, into which the waves of white
+invasion, one upon another, were now pressing fast and ceaselessly,
+towards what goal, only the gods knew.
+
+A few other men were dining; among them two officers from the staff of
+the Commander-in-Chief. Warkworth, much their junior, treated them with
+a skilful deference; but through the talk that prevailed his military
+competence and prestige appeared plainly enough, even to the women. His
+good opinion of himself was indeed sufficiently evident; but there was
+no crude vainglory. At any rate, it was a vainglory of youth, ability,
+and good looks, ratified by these budding honors thus fresh upon him,
+and no one took it amiss.
+
+When the gentlemen returned to the drawing-room, Warkworth and Julie
+once more found themselves together, this time in the Duchess's little
+sitting-room at the end of the long suite of rooms.
+
+"When do you go?" she asked him, abruptly.
+
+"Not for about a month." He mentioned the causes of delay.
+
+"That will bring you very late--into the worst of the heat?" Her voice
+had a note of anxiety.
+
+"Oh, we shall all be seasoned men. And after the first few days we shall
+get into the uplands."
+
+"What do your home people say?" she asked him, rather shyly. She knew,
+in truth, little about them.
+
+"My mother? Oh, she will be greatly pleased. I go down to the Isle of
+Wight for a day or two to see her to-morrow. But now, dear lady, that is
+enough of my wretched self. You--do you stay on here with the Duchess?"
+
+She told him of the house in Heribert Street. He listened with
+attention.
+
+"Nothing could be better. You will have a most distinguished little
+setting of your own, and Lady Henry will repent at leisure. You won't
+be lonely?"
+
+"Oh no!" But her smile was linked with a sigh.
+
+He came nearer to her.
+
+"You should never be lonely if I could help it," he said, in a low
+voice.
+
+"When people are nameless and kinless," was her passionate reply, in the
+same undertone as his, "they must be lonely."
+
+He looked at her with eagerness. She lay back in the firelight, her
+beautiful brow and eyes softly illuminated. He felt within him a sudden
+snapping of restraints. Why--why refuse what was so clearly within his
+grasp? Love has many manners--many entrances--and many exits.
+
+"When will you tell me all that I want to know about you?" he said,
+bending towards her with tender insistence. "There is so much I have
+to ask."
+
+"Oh, some time," she said, hurriedly, her pulses quickening. "Mine is
+not a story to be told on a great day like this."
+
+He was silent a moment, but his face spoke for him.
+
+"Our friendship has been a beautiful thing, hasn't it?" he said, at
+last, in a voice of emotion. "Look here!" He thrust his hand into his
+breast-pocket and half withdrew it. "Do you see where I carry
+your letters?"
+
+"You shouldn't--they are not worthy."
+
+"How charming you are in that dress--in that light! I shall always see
+you as you are to-night."
+
+A silence. Excitement mounted in their veins. Suddenly he stooped and
+kissed her hands. They looked into each other's eyes, and the seconds
+passed like hours.
+
+Presently, in the nearer drawing-room, there was a sound of approaching
+voices and they moved apart.
+
+"Julie, Emily Lawrence is going," said the Duchess's voice, pitched in
+what seemed to Julie a strange and haughty note. "Captain Warkworth,
+Miss Lawrence thinks that you and she have common friends--Lady Blanche
+Moffatt and her daughter."
+
+Captain Warkworth murmured some conventionality, and passed into the
+next drawing-room with Miss Lawrence.
+
+Julie rose to her feet, the color dying out of her face, her passionate
+eyes on the Duchess, who stood facing her friend, guiltily pale, and
+ready to cry.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+On the morning following these events, Warkworth went down to the Isle
+of Wight to see his mother. On the journey he thought much of Julie.
+They had parted awkwardly the night before. The evening, which had
+promised so well, had, after all, lacked finish and point. What on earth
+had that tiresome Miss Lawrence wanted with him? They had talked of
+Simla and the Moffatts. The conversation had gone in spurts, she looking
+at him every now and then with eyes that seemed to say more than her
+words. All that she had actually said was perfectly insignificant and
+trivial. Yet there was something curious in her manner, and when the
+time came for him to take his departure she had bade him a frosty
+little farewell.
+
+She had described herself once or twice as a _great_ friend of Lady
+Blanche Moffatt. Was it possible?
+
+But if Lady Blanche, whose habits of sentimental indiscretion were
+ingrained, _had_ gossiped to this lady, what then? Why should he be
+frowned on by Miss Lawrence, or anybody else? That malicious talk at
+Simla had soon exhausted itself. His present appointment was a
+triumphant answer to it all. His slanderers--including Aileen's
+ridiculous guardians--could only look foolish if they pursued the matter
+any further. What "trap" was there--what _mesalliance_? A successful
+soldier was good enough for anybody. Look at the first Lord Clyde, and
+scores besides.
+
+The Duchess, too. Why had she treated him so well at first, and so
+cavalierly after dinner? Her manners were really too uncertain.
+
+What was the matter, and why did she dislike him? He pondered over it a
+good deal, and with much soreness of spirit. Like many men capable of
+very selfish or very cruel conduct, he was extremely sensitive, and took
+keen notice of the fact that a person liked or disliked him.
+
+If the Duchess disliked him it could not be merely on account of the
+Simla story, even though the old maid might conceivably have given her a
+jaundiced account. The Duchess knew nothing of Aileen, and was little
+influenced, so far as he had observed her, by considerations of abstract
+justice or propriety, affecting persons whom she had never seen.
+
+No, she was Julie's friend, the little wilful lady, and it was for Julie
+she ruffled her feathers, like an angry dove.
+
+So his thoughts had come back to Julie, though, indeed, it seemed to him
+that they were never far from her. As he looked absently from the train
+windows on the flying landscape, Julie's image hovered between him and
+it--a magic sun, flooding soul and senses with warmth. How
+unconsciously, how strangely his feelings had changed towards her! That
+coolness of temper and nerve he had been able to preserve towards her
+for so long was, indeed, breaking down. He recognized the danger, and
+wondered where it would lead him. What a fascinating, sympathetic
+creature!--and, by George! what she had done for him!
+
+Aileen! Aileen was a little sylph, a pretty child-angel, white-winged
+and innocent, who lived in a circle of convent thoughts, knowing nothing
+of the world, and had fallen in love with him as the first man who had
+ever made love to her. But this intelligent, full-blooded woman, who
+could understand at a word, or a half word, who had a knowledge of
+affairs which many a high-placed man might envy, with whom one never had
+a dull moment--this courted, distinguished Julie Le Breton--his mind
+swelled with half-guilty pride at the thought that for six months he had
+absorbed all her energies, that a word from him could make her smile or
+sigh, that he could force her to look at him with eyes so melting and so
+troubled as those with which she had given him her hands--her slim,
+beautiful hands--that night in Grosvenor Square.
+
+How freedom became her! Dependency had dropped from her, like a cast-off
+cloak, and beside her fresh, melancholy charm, the airs and graces of a
+child of fashion and privilege like the little Duchess appeared almost
+cheap and trivial. Poor Julie! No doubt some social struggle was before
+her. Lady Henry was strong, after all, in this London world, and the
+solider and stupider people who get their way in the end were not, she
+thought, likely to side with Lady Henry's companion in a quarrel where
+the facts of the story were unquestionably, at first sight, damaging to
+Miss Le Breton. Julie would have her hours of bitterness and
+humiliation; and she would conquer by boldness, if she conquered at
+all--by originality, by determining to live her own life. That would
+preserve for her the small circle, if it lost her the large world. And
+the small circle was what she lived for, what she ought, at any rate,
+to live for.
+
+It was not likely she would marry. Why should she desire it? From any
+blundering tragedy a woman of so acute a brain would, of course, know
+how to protect herself. But within the limits of her life, why should
+she refuse herself happiness, intimacy, love?
+
+His heart beat fast; his thoughts were in a whirl. But the train was
+nearing Portsmouth, and with an effort he recalled his mind to the
+meeting with his mother, which was then close upon him.
+
+He spent nearly a week in the little cottage at Sea View, and Mrs.
+Warkworth got far more pleasure than usual, poor lady, out of his visit.
+She was a thin, plain woman, not devoid of either ability or character.
+But life had gone hardly with her, and since her husband's death what
+had been reserve had become melancholy. She had always been afraid of
+her only son since they had sent him to Charterhouse, and he had become
+so much "finer" than his parents. She knew that he must consider her a
+very ignorant and narrow-minded person; when he was with her she was
+humiliated in her own eyes, though as soon as he was gone she resumed
+what was in truth a leading place among her own small circle.
+
+She loved him, and was proud of him; yet at the bottom of her heart she
+had never absolved him from his father's death. But for his
+extravagance, and the misfortunes he had brought upon them, her old
+general would be alive still--pottering about in the spring sunshine,
+spudding the daisies from the turf, or smoking his pipe beneath the
+thickening trees. Silently her heart still yearned and hungered for the
+husband of her youth; his son did not replace him.
+
+Nevertheless, when he came down to her with this halo of glory upon him,
+and smoked up and down her small garden through the mild spring days,
+gossiping to her of all the great things that had befallen him,
+repeating to her, word for word, his conversation with the Prime
+Minister, and his interview with the Commander-in-Chief, or making her
+read all the letters of congratulation he had received, her mother's
+heart thawed within her as it had not done for long. Her ears told her
+that he was still vain and a boaster; her memory held the indelible
+records of his past selfishness; but as he walked beside her, his fair
+hair blown back from his handsome brow, and eyes that were so much
+younger than the rest of the face, his figure as spare and boyish now as
+when he had worn the colors of the Charterhouse eleven, she said to
+herself, in that inward and unsuspected colloquy she was always holding
+with her own heart about him, that if his father could have seen him now
+he would have forgiven him everything. According to her secret
+Evangelical faith, God "deals" with every soul he has created--through
+joy or sorrow, through good or evil fortune. He had dealt with herself
+through anguish and loss. Henry, it seemed, was to be moulded through
+prosperity. His good fortune was already making a better man of him.
+
+Certainly he was more affectionate and thoughtful than before. He would
+have liked to give her money, of which he seemed to have an unusual
+store; but she bade him keep what he had for his own needs. Her own
+little bit of money, saved from the wreck of their fortunes, was enough
+for her. Then he went into Ryde and brought her back a Shetland shawl
+and a new table-cloth for her little sitting-room, which she accepted
+with a warmer kiss than she had given him for years.
+
+He left her on a bright, windy morning which flecked the blue Solent
+with foam and sent the clouds racing to westward. She walked back along
+the sands, thinking anxiously of the African climate and the desert
+hard-ships he was going to face. And she wondered what significance
+there might be in the fact that he had written twice during his stay
+with her to a Miss Le Breton, whose name, nevertheless, he had not
+mentioned in their conversations. Well, he would marry soon, she
+supposed, and marry well, in circles out of her ken. With the common
+prejudice of the English middle class, she hoped that if this Miss Le
+Breton were his choice, she might be only French in name and not
+in blood.
+
+Meanwhile, Warkworth sped up to London in high spirits, enjoying the
+comforts of a good conscience.
+
+He drove first to his club, where a pile of letters awaited him--some
+letters of congratulation, others concerned with the business of his
+mission. He enjoyed the first, noticing jealously who had and who had
+not written to him; then he applied himself to the second. His mind
+worked vigorously and well; he wrote his replies in a manner that
+satisfied him. Then throwing himself into a chair, with a cigar, he gave
+himself up to the close and shrewd planning of the preparations
+necessary for his five weeks' march, or to the consideration of two or
+three alternative lines of action which would open before him as soon as
+he should find himself within the boundaries of Mokembe. Some five years
+before, the government of the day had sent a small expedition to this
+Debatable Land, which had failed disastrously, both from the diplomatic
+and the military points of view. He went backward and forward to the
+shelves of the fine "Service" library which surrounded him, taking down
+the books and reports which concerned this expedition. He buried himself
+in them for an hour, then threw them aside with contempt. What blunders
+and short-sight everywhere! The general public might well talk of the
+stupidity of English officers. And blunders so easily avoided, too! It
+was sickening. He felt within himself a fulness of energy and
+intelligence, a perspicacity of brain which judged mistakes of this kind
+unpardonable.
+
+As he was replacing some of the books he had been using in the shelves,
+the club began to fill up with men coming in to lunch. A great many
+congratulated him; and a certain number who of old had hardly professed
+to know him greeted him with cordiality. He found himself caught in a
+series of short but flattering conversations, in which he bore himself
+well--neither over-discreet nor too elate. "I declare that fellow's
+improved," said one man, who might certainly have counted as Warkworth's
+enemy the week before, to his companion at table. "The government's been
+beastly remiss so far. Hope he'll pull it off. Ripping chance, anyway.
+Though what they gave it to him for, goodness knows! There were a dozen
+fellows, at least, did as well as he in the Mahsud business. And the
+Staff-College man had a thousand times more claim."
+
+Nevertheless, Warkworth felt the general opinion friendly, a little
+surprised, no doubt, but showing that readiness to believe in the man
+coming to the front, which belongs much more to the generous than to the
+calculating side of the English character. Insensibly his mental and
+moral stature rose. He exchanged a few words on his way out with one of
+the most distinguished members of the club, a man of European
+reputation, whom he had seen the week before in the Commander-in-Chief's
+room at the War Office. The great man spoke to him with marked
+friendliness, and Warkworth walked on air as he went his way.
+Potentially he felt himself the great man's equal; the gates of life
+seemed to be opening before him.
+
+And with the rise of fortune came a rush of magnanimous resolution. No
+more shady episodes; no more mean devices; no more gambling, and no more
+debt. _Major_ Warkworth's sheet was clean, and it should remain so. A
+man of his prospects must run straight.
+
+He felt himself at peace with all the world. By-the-way, just time to
+jump into a cab and get to Park Crescent in time for his sister's
+luncheon. His last interview with his brother-in-law had not been
+agreeable. But now--he felt for the check-book in his pocket--he was in
+a position to repay at least half the last sum of money which Bella had
+lent him. He would go and give it her now, and report news of the
+mother. And if the two chicks were there--why, he had a free hour and he
+would take them to the Zoo--he vowed he would!--give them something
+pleasant to remember their uncle by.
+
+And a couple of hours later a handsome, soldierly man might have been
+seen in the lion-house at the Zoo, leading a plump little girl by either
+hand. Rose and Katie Mullins enjoyed a golden time, and started a
+wholly new adoration for the uncle who had so far taken small notice of
+them, and was associated in their shrewd, childish minds rather with
+tempests at home than buns abroad. But this time buns, biscuits,
+hansom-drives and elephant-rides were showered upon them by an uncle who
+seemed to make no account of money, while his gracious and captivating
+airs set their little hearts beating in a common devotion.
+
+"Now go home--go home, little beggars!" said that golden gentleman, as
+he packed them into a hansom and stood on the step to accept a wet kiss
+on his mustache from each pink mouth. "Tell your mother all about it,
+and don't forget your uncle Harry. There's a shilling for each of you.
+Don't you spend it on sweets. You're quite fat enough already.
+Good-bye!"
+
+"That's the hardest work I've done for many a long day," he said to
+himself, with a sigh of relief, as the hansom drove away. "I sha'n't
+turn nurse-maid when other trades fail. But they're nice little kids
+all the same.
+
+"Now, then, Cox's--and the City"--he ran over the list of his
+engagements for the afternoon--"and by five o'clock shall I find my fair
+lady--at home--and established? Where on earth is Heribert Street?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He solved the question, for a few minutes after five he was on Miss Le
+Breton's doorstep. A quaint little house--and a strange parlor-maid! For
+the door was opened to him by a large-eyed, sickly child, who looked at
+him with the bewilderment of one trying to follow out instructions still
+strange to her.
+
+[Illustration: "HE ENTERED UPON A MERRY SCENE"]
+
+"Yes, sir, Miss Le Breton is in the drawing-room," she said, in a
+sweet, deliberate voice with a foreign accent, and she led the way
+through the hall.
+
+Poor little soul--what a twisted back, and what a limp! She looked about
+fourteen, but was probably older. Where had Julie discovered her?
+
+Warkworth looked round him at the little hall with its relics of
+country-house sports and amusements; his eye travelled through an open
+door to the little dining-room and the Russell pastels of Lady Mary's
+parents, as children, hanging on the wall. The _character_ of the little
+dwelling impressed itself at once. Smiling; he acknowledged its
+congruity with Julie. Here was a lady who fell on her feet!
+
+The child, leading him, opened the door to the left.
+
+"Please walk in, sir," she said, shyly, and stood aside.
+
+As the door opened, Warkworth was conscious of a noise of tongues.
+
+So Julie was not alone? He prepared his manner accordingly.
+
+He entered upon a merry scene. Jacob Delafield was standing on a chair,
+hanging a picture, while Dr. Meredith and Julie, on either side,
+directed or criticised the operation. Meredith carried picture-cord and
+scissors; Julie the hammer and nails. Meredith was expressing the
+profoundest disbelief in Jacob's practical capacities; Jacob was
+defending himself hotly; and Julie laughed at both.
+
+Towards the other end of the room stood the tea-table, between the fire
+and an open window. Lord Lackington sat beside it, smiling to himself,
+and stroking a Persian kitten. Through the open window the twinkling
+buds on the lilacs in the Cureton House garden shone in the still
+lingering sun. A recent shower had left behind it odors of earth and
+grass. Even in this London air they spoke of the spring--the spring
+which already in happier lands was drawing veils of peach and cherry
+blossom, over the red Sienese earth or the green terraces of Como. The
+fire crackled in the grate. The pretty, old-fashioned room was fragrant
+with hyacinth and narcissus; Julie's books lay on the tables; Julie's
+hand and taste were already to be felt everywhere. And Lord Lackington
+with the kitten, beside the fire, gave the last touch of home and
+domesticity.
+
+"So I find you established?" said Warkworth, smiling, to the lady with
+the nails, while Delafield nodded to him from the top of the steps and
+Meredith ceased to chatter.
+
+"I haven't a hand, I fear," said Julie. "Will you have some tea? Ah,
+Leonie, tu vas en faire de nouveau, n'est-ce pas, pour ce monsieur?"
+
+A little woman in black, with a shawl over her shoulders, had just
+glided into the room. She had a small, wrinkled face, bright eyes, and a
+much-flattened nose.
+
+"Tout de suite, monsieur," she said, quickly, and disappeared with the
+teapot. Warkworth guessed, of course, that she was Madame Bornier, the
+foster-sister--the "Propriety" of this _menage_.
+
+"Can't I help?" he said to Julie, with a look at Delafield.
+
+"It's just done," she said, coldly, handing a nail to Delafield. "_Just_
+a trifle more to the right. Ecco! Perfection!"
+
+"Oh, you spoil him," said Meredith, "And not one word of praise for
+me!"
+
+"What have you done?" she said, laughing. "Tangled the cord--that's
+all!"
+
+Warkworth turned away. His face, so radiant as he entered, had settled
+into sharp, sudden lines. What was the meaning of this voice, this
+manner? He remembered that to his three letters he had received no word
+of reply. But he had interpreted that to mean that she was in the throes
+of moving and could find no time to write.
+
+As he neared the tea-table, Lord Lackington looked up. He greeted the
+new-comer with the absent stateliness he generally put on when his mind
+was in a state of confusion as to a person's identity.
+
+"Well, so they're sending you to D----? There'll be a row there before
+long. Wish you joy of the missionaries!"
+
+"No, not D----," said Warkworth, smiling. "Nothing so amusing. Mokembe's
+my destination."
+
+"Oh, Mokembe!" said Lord Lackington, a little abashed. "That's where
+Cecil Ray, Lord R's second son, was killed last year--lion-hunting? No,
+it was of fever that he died. By-the-way, a vile climate!"
+
+"In the plains, yes," said Warkworth, seating himself. "As to the
+uplands, I understand they are to be the Switzerland of Africa."
+
+Lord Lackington did not appear to listen.
+
+"Are you a homoeopath?" he said, suddenly, rising to his full and
+immense stature and looking down with eagerness on Warkworth.
+
+"No. Why?"
+
+"Because it's your only chance, for those parts. If Cecil Ray had had
+their medicines with him he'd be alive now. Look here; when do you
+start?" The speaker took out his note-book.
+
+"In rather less than a month I start for Denga."
+
+"All right. I'll send you a medicine-case--from Epps. If you're ill,
+take 'em."
+
+"You're very good."
+
+"Not at all. It's my hobby--one of the last." A broad, boyish smile
+flashed over the handsome old face. "Look at me; I'm seventy-five, and I
+can tire out my own grandsons at riding and shooting. That comes of
+avoiding all allopathic messes like the devil. But the allopaths are
+such mean fellows they filch all our ideas."
+
+The old man was off. Warkworth submitted to five minutes' tirade,
+stealing a glance sometimes at the group of Julie, Meredith, and
+Delafield in the farther window--at the happy ease and fun that seemed
+to prevail in it. He fiercely felt himself shut out and trampled on.
+
+Suddenly, Lord Lackington pulled up, his instinct for declamation
+qualified by an equally instinctive dread of boring or being bored.
+"What did you think of Montresor's statement?" he said, abruptly,
+referring to a batch of army reforms that Montresor the week before had
+endeavored to recommend to a sceptical House of Commons.
+
+"All very well, as far as it goes," said Warkworth, with a shrug.
+
+"Precisely! We English want an army and a navy; we don't like it when
+those fellows on the Continent swagger in our faces, and yet we won't
+pay either for the ships or the men. However, now that they've done away
+with purchase--Gad! I could fight them in the streets for the way in
+which they've done it!--now that they've turned the army into an
+examination-shop, tempered with jobbery, whatever we do, we shall go to
+the deuce. So it don't matter."
+
+"You were against the abolition?"
+
+"I was, sir--with Wellington and Raglan and everybody else of any
+account. And as for the violence, the disgraceful violence with which it
+was carried--"
+
+"Oh no, no," said Warkworth, laughing. "It was the Lords who behaved
+abominably, and it'll do a deal of good."
+
+Lord Lackington's eyes flashed.
+
+"I've had a long life," he said, pugnaciously. "I began as a middy in
+the American war of 1812, that nobody remembers now. Then I left the sea
+for the army. I knocked about the world. I commanded a brigade in
+the Crimea--"
+
+"Who doesn't remember that?" said Warkworth, smiling.
+
+The old man acknowledged the homage by a slight inclination of his
+handsome head.
+
+"And you may take my word for it that this new system will not give you
+men worth _a tenth part_ of those fellows who bought and bribed their
+way in under the old. The philosophers may like it, or lump it, but
+so it is."
+
+Warkworth dissented strongly. He was a good deal of a politician,
+himself a "new man," and on the side of "new men." Lord Lackington
+warmed to the fight, and Warkworth, with bitterness in his
+heart--because of that group opposite--was nothing loath to meet him.
+But presently he found the talk taking a turn that astonished him. He
+had entered upon a drawing-room discussion of a subject which had, after
+all, been settled, if only by what the Tories were pleased to call the
+_coup d'etat_ of the Royal Warrant, and no longer excited the passions
+of a few years back. What he had really drawn upon himself was a
+hand-to-hand wrestle with a man who had no sooner provoked contradiction
+than he resented it with all his force, and with a determination to
+crush the contradictor.
+
+Warkworth fought well, but with a growing amazement at the tone and
+manner of his opponent. The old man's eyes darted war-flames under his
+finely arched brows. He regarded the younger with a more and more
+hostile, even malicious air; his arguments grew personal, offensive; his
+shafts were many and barbed, till at last Warkworth felt his face
+burning and his temper giving way.
+
+"What _are_ you talking about?" said Julie Le Breton, at last, rising
+and coming towards them.
+
+Lord Lackington broke off suddenly and threw himself into his chair.
+
+Warkworth rose from his.
+
+"We had better have been handing nails," he said, "but you wouldn't give
+us any work." Then, as Meredith and Delafield approached, he seized the
+opportunity of saying, in a low voice:
+
+"Am I not to have a word?"
+
+She turned with composure, though it seemed to him she was very pale.
+
+"Have you just come back from the Isle of Wight?"
+
+"This morning." He looked her in the eyes. "You got my letters?"
+
+"Yes, but I have had no time for writing. I hope you found your mother
+well."
+
+"Very well, thank you. You have been hard at work?"
+
+"Yes, but the Duchess and Mr. Delafield have made it all easy."
+
+And so on, a few more insignificant questions and answers.
+
+"I must go," said Delafield, coming up to them, "unless there is any
+more work for me to do. Good-bye, Major, I congratulate you. They have
+given you a fine piece of work."
+
+Warkworth made a little bow, half ironical. Confound the fellow's grave
+and lordly ways! He did not want his congratulations.
+
+He lingered a little, sorely, full of rage, yet not knowing how to go.
+
+Lord Lackington's eyes ceased to blaze, and the kitten ventured once
+more to climb upon his knee. Meredith, too, found a comfortable
+arm-chair, and presently tried to beguile the kitten from his neighbor.
+Julie sat erect between them, very silent, her thin, white hands on her
+lap, her head drooped a little, her eyes carefully restrained from
+meeting Warkworth's. He meanwhile leaned against the mantel-piece,
+irresolute.
+
+Meredith, it was clear, made himself quite happy and at home in the
+little drawing-room. The lame child came in and took a stool beside him.
+He stroked her head and talked nonsense to her in the intervals of
+holding forth to Julie on the changes necessary in some proofs of his
+which he had brought back. Lord Lackington, now quite himself again,
+went back to dreams, smiling over them, and quite unaware that the
+kitten had been slyly ravished from him. The little woman in black sat
+knitting in the background. It was all curiously intimate and domestic,
+only Warkworth had no part in it.
+
+"Good-bye, Miss Le Breton," he said, at last, hardly knowing his own
+voice. "I am dining out."
+
+She rose and gave him her hand. But it dropped from his like a thing
+dead and cold. He went out in a sudden suffocation of rage and pain; and
+as he walked in a blind haste to Cureton Street, he still saw her
+standing in the old-fashioned, scented room, so coldly graceful, with
+those proud, deep eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he had gone, Julie moved to the window and looked out into the
+gathering dusk. It seemed to her as if those in the room must hear the
+beating of her miserable heart.
+
+When she rejoined her companions, Dr. Meredith had already risen and was
+stuffing various letters and papers into his pockets with a view to
+departure.
+
+"Going?" said Lord Lackington. "You shall see the last of me, too,
+Mademoiselle Julie."
+
+And he stood up. But she, flushing, looked at him with a wistful smile.
+
+"Won't you stay a few minutes? You promised to advise me about Therese's
+drawings."
+
+"By all means."
+
+Lord Lackington sat down again. The lame child, it appeared, had some
+artistic talent, which Miss Le Breton wished to cultivate. Meredith
+suddenly found his coat and hat, and, with a queer look at Julie,
+departed in a hurry.
+
+"Therese, darling," said Julie, "will you go up-stairs, please, and
+fetch me that book from my room that has your little drawings
+inside it?"
+
+The child limped away on her errand. In spite of her lameness she moved
+with wonderful lightness and swiftness, and she was back again quickly
+with a calf-bound book in her hand.
+
+"Leonie!" said Julie, in a low voice, to Madame Bornier.
+
+The little woman looked up startled, nodded, rolled up her knitting in a
+moment, and was gone.
+
+"Take the book to his lordship, Therese," she said, and then, instead of
+moving with the child, she again walked to the window, and, leaning her
+head against it, looked out. The hand hanging against her dress trembled
+violently.
+
+"What did you want me to look at, my dear?" said Lord Lackington, taking
+the book in his hand and putting on his glasses.
+
+But the child was puzzled and did not know. She gazed at him silently
+with her sweet, docile look.
+
+"Run away, Therese, and find mother," said Julie, from the window.
+
+The child sped away and closed the door behind her.
+
+Lord Lackington adjusted his glasses and opened the book. Two or three
+slips of paper with drawings upon them fluttered out and fell on the
+table beneath. Suddenly there was a cry. Julie turned round, her
+lips parted.
+
+Lord Lackington walked up to her.
+
+"Tell me what this means," he said, peremptorily. "How did you come by
+it?"
+
+It was a volume of George Sand. He pointed, trembling, to the name and
+date on the fly-leaf--"Rose Delaney, 1842."
+
+"It is mine," she said, softly, dropping her eyes.
+
+"But how--how, in God's name, did you come by it?"
+
+"My mother left it to me, with all her other few books and possessions."
+
+There was a pause. Lord Lackington came closer.
+
+"Who was your mother?" he said, huskily.
+
+The words in answer were hardly audible. Julie stood before him like a
+culprit, her beautiful head humbly bowed.
+
+Lord Lackington dropped the book and stood bewildered.
+
+"Rose's child?" he said--"Rose's child?"
+
+Then, approaching her, he placed his hand on her arm.
+
+"Let me look at you," he commanded.
+
+Julie raised her eyes to him, and at the same time dumbly held out to
+him a miniature she had been keeping hidden in her hand. It was one of
+the miniatures from the locked triptych.
+
+He took it, looked from the pictured to the living face, then, turning
+away with a groan, he covered his face with his hands and fell again
+into the chair from which he had risen.
+
+Julie hurried to him. Her own eyes were wet with tears. After a moment's
+hesitation she knelt down beside him.
+
+"I ought to ask your pardon for not having told you before," she
+murmured.
+
+It was some time before Lord Lackington looked up. When at last his
+hands dropped, the face they uncovered was very white and old.
+
+"So you," he said, almost in a whisper, "are the child she wrote to me
+about before she died?"
+
+Julie made a sign of assent.
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Twenty-nine."
+
+"_She_ was thirty-two when I saw her last."
+
+There was a silence. Julie lifted one of his hands and kissed it. But he
+took no notice.
+
+"You know that I was going to her, that I should have reached her in
+time"--the words seemed wrung from him--"but that I was myself
+dangerously ill?"
+
+"I know. I remember it all."
+
+"Did she speak of me?"
+
+"Not often. She was very reserved, you remember. But not long before she
+died--she seemed half asleep--I heard her say, 'Papa!--Blanche!' and
+she smiled."
+
+Lord Lackington's face contracted, and the slow tears of old age stood
+in his eyes.
+
+"You are like her in some ways," he said, brusquely, as though to cover
+his emotion; "but not very like her."
+
+"She always thought I was like you."
+
+A cloud came over Lord Lackington's face. Julie rose from her knees and
+sat beside him. He lost himself a few moments amid the painful ghosts of
+memory. Then, turning to her abruptly, he said:
+
+"You have wondered, I dare say, why I was so hard--why, for seventeen
+years, I cast her off?"
+
+"Yes, often. You could have come to see us without anybody knowing.
+Mother loved you very much."
+
+Her voice was low and sad. Lord Lackington rose, fidgeted restlessly
+with some of the small ornaments on the mantel-piece, and at last
+turned to her.
+
+"She brought dishonor," he said, in the same stifled voice, "and the
+women of our family have always been stainless. But that I could have
+forgiven. After a time I should have resumed relations--private
+relations--with her. But it was your father who stood in the way. I was
+then--I am now--you saw me with that young fellow just now--quarrelsome
+and hot-tempered. It is my nature." He drew himself up obstinately. "I
+can't help it. I take great pains to inform myself, then I cling to my
+opinions tenaciously, and in argument my temper gets the better of me.
+Your father, too, was hot-tempered. He came, with my consent, once to
+see me--after your mother had left her husband--to try and bring about
+some arrangement between us. It was the Chartist time. He was a Radical,
+a Socialist of the most extreme views. In the course of our conversation
+something was said that excited him. He went off at score. I became
+enraged, and met him with equal violence. We had a furious argument,
+which ended in each insulting the other past forgiveness. We parted
+enemies for life. I never could bring myself to see him afterwards, nor
+to run the risk of seeing him. Your mother took his side and espoused
+his opinions while he lived. After his death, I suppose, she was too
+proud and sore to write to me. I wrote to her once--it was not the
+letter it might have been. She did not reply till she felt herself
+dying. That is the explanation of what, no doubt, must seem strange
+to you."
+
+[Illustration: "'FOR MY ROSE'S CHILD,' HE SAID, GENTLY"]
+
+He turned to her almost pleadingly. A deep flush had replaced the pallor
+of his first emotion, as though in the presence of these primal
+realities of love, death, and sorrow which she had recalled to him, his
+old quarrel, on a political difference, cut but a miserable figure.
+
+"No," she said, sadly, "not very strange. I understood my father--my
+dear father," she added, with soft, deliberate tenderness.
+
+Lord Lackington was silent a little, then he threw her a sudden,
+penetrating look.
+
+"You have been in London three years. You ought to have told me before."
+
+It was Julie's turn to color.
+
+"Lady Henry bound me to secrecy."
+
+"Lady Henry did wrong," he said, with emphasis. Then he asked,
+jealously, with a touch of his natural irascibility, "Who else has been
+in the secret?"
+
+"Four people, at most--the Duchess, first of all. I couldn't help it,"
+she pleaded. "I was so unhappy with Lady Henry."
+
+"You should have come to me. It was my right."
+
+"But"--she dropped her head--"you had made it a condition that I should
+not trouble you."
+
+He was silenced; and once more he leaned against the mantel-piece and
+hid his face from her, till, by a secret impulse, both moved. She rose
+and approached him; he laid his hands on her arms. With his persistent
+instinct for the lovely or romantic he perceived, with sudden pleasure,
+the grave, poetic beauty of her face and delicate form. Emotion had
+softened away all that was harsh; a quivering charm hovered over the
+features. With a strange pride, and a sense of mystery, he recognized
+his daughter and his race.
+
+"For my Rose's child," he said, gently, and, stooping, he kissed her on
+the brow. She broke out into weeping, leaning against his shoulder,
+while the old man comforted and soothed her.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+After the long conversation between herself and Lord Lackington which
+followed on the momentous confession of her identity, Julie spent a
+restless and weary evening, which passed into a restless and weary
+night. Was she oppressed by this stirring of old sorrows?--haunted
+afresh by her parents' fate?
+
+Ah! Lord Lackington had no sooner left her than she sank motionless into
+her chair, and, with the tears excited by the memories of her mother
+still in her eyes, she gave herself up to a desperate and sombre
+brooding, of which Warkworth's visit of the afternoon was, in truth, the
+sole cause, the sole subject.
+
+Why had she received him so? She had gone too far--much too far. But,
+somehow, she had not been able to bear it--that buoyant, confident air,
+that certainty of his welcome. No! She would show him that she was _not_
+his chattel, to be taken or left on his own terms. The, careless
+good-humor of his blue eyes was too much, after those days she had
+passed through.
+
+He, apparently, to judge from his letters to her from the Isle of Wight,
+had been conscious of no crisis whatever. Yet he must have seen from the
+little Duchess's manner, as she bade farewell to him that night at
+Crowborough House, that something was wrong. He must have realized that
+Miss Lawrence was an intimate friend of the Moffatts, and that--Or was
+he really so foolish as to suppose that his quasi-engagement to this
+little heiress, and the encouragement given him, in defiance of the
+girl's guardians, by her silly and indiscreet mother, were still hidden
+and secret matters?--that he could still conceal them from the world,
+and deny them to Julie?
+
+Her whole nature was sore yet from her wrestle with the Duchess on that
+miserable evening.
+
+"Julie, I can't help it! I know it's impertinent--but--Julie,
+darling!--do listen! What business has that man to make love to you as
+he does, when all the time--Yes, he does make love to you--he does!
+Freddie had a most ill-natured letter from Lady Henry this morning. Of
+course he had--and of course she'll write that kind of letter to as many
+people as she can. And it wouldn't matter a bit, if--But, you see, you
+_have_ been moving heaven and earth for him! And now his manner to you"
+(while the sudden flush burned her cheek, Julie wondered whether by
+chance the Duchess had seen anything of the yielded hands and the kiss)
+"and that ill-luck of his being the first to arrive, last night, at Lady
+Henry's! Oh, Julie, he's a wretch--_he is!_ Of course he is in love with
+you. That's natural enough. But all the time--listen, that nice woman
+told me the whole story--he's writing regularly to that little girl. She
+and her mother, in spite of the guardians, regard it as an engagement
+signed and sealed, and all his friends believe he's _quite_ determined
+to marry her because of the money. You may think me an odious little
+meddler, Julie, if you like, but I vow I could stab him to the heart,
+with all the pleasure in life!"
+
+And neither the annoyance, nor the dignity, nor the ridicule of the
+supposed victim--not Julie's angry eyes, nor all her mocking words from
+tremulous lips--had availed in the least to silence the tumult of
+alarmed affection in the Duchess's breast. Her Julie had been flouted
+and trifled with; and if she was so blind, so infatuated, as not to see
+it, she should at least be driven to realize what other people
+felt about it.
+
+So she had her say, and Julie had been forced, willy-nilly, upon
+discussion and self-defence--nay, upon a promise also. Pale, and stiffly
+erect, yet determined all the same to treat it as a laughing matter, she
+had vouchsafed the Duchess some kind of assurance that she would for the
+future observe a more cautious behavior towards Warkworth. "He is my
+_friend_, and whatever any one may say, he shall remain so," she had
+said, with a smiling stubbornness which hid something before which the
+little Duchess shrank. "But, of course, if I can do anything to please
+you, Evelyn--you know I like to please you."
+
+But she had never meant, she had never promised to forswear his society,
+to ban him from the new house. In truth she would rather have left home
+and friends and prospects, at one stroke, rather than have pledged
+herself to anything of the sort. Evelyn should never bind her to that.
+
+Then, during his days of absence, she had passed through wave after wave
+of feeling, while all the time to the outer eye she was occupied with
+nothing but the settlement into Lady Mary's strange little house. She
+washed, dusted, placed chairs and tables. And meanwhile a wild
+expectancy of his first letter possessed her. Surely there would be some
+anxiety in it, some fear, some disclosure of himself, and of the
+struggle in his mind between interest and love?
+
+Nothing of the kind. His first letter was the letter of one sure of his
+correspondent, sure of his reception and of his ground; a happy and
+intimate certainty shone through its phrases; it was the letter, almost,
+of a lover whose doubts are over.
+
+The effect of it was to raise a tempest, sharp and obscure, in Julie's
+mind. The contrast between the _pose_ of the letter and the sly reality
+behind bred a sudden anguish of jealousy, concerned not so much with
+Warkworth as with this little, unknown creature, who, without any
+effort, any desert--by the mere virtue of money and blood--sat waiting
+in arrogant expectancy till what she desired should come to her. How was
+it possible to feel any compunction towards her? Julie felt none.
+
+As to the rest of Miss Lawrence's gossip--that Warkworth was supposed to
+have "behaved badly," to have led the pretty child to compromise herself
+with him at Simla in ways which Simla society regarded as inadmissible
+and "bad form"; that the guardians had angrily intervened, and that he
+was under a promise, habitually broken by the connivance of the girl's
+mother, not to see or correspond with the heiress till she was
+twenty-one, in other words, for the next two years--what did these
+things matter to her? Had she ever supposed that Warkworth, in regard to
+money or his career, was influenced by any other than the ordinary
+worldly motives? She knew very well that he was neither saint nor
+ascetic. These details--or accusations--did not, properly speaking,
+concern her at all. She had divined and accepted his character, in all
+its average human selfishness and faultiness, long ago. She loved him
+passionately in spite of it--perhaps, if the truth were known,
+because of it.
+
+As for the marrying, or rather the courting, for money, that excited in
+her no repulsion whatever. Julie, in her own way, was a great romantic;
+but owing to the economic notions of marriage, especially the whole
+conception of the _dot_, prevailing in the French or Belgian minds amid
+whom she had passed her later girlhood, she never dreamed for a moment
+of blaming Warkworth for placing money foremost in his plans of
+matrimony. She resembled one of the famous _amoureuses_ of the
+eighteenth century, who in writing to the man she loved but could not
+marry, advises him to take a wife to mend his fortunes, and proposes to
+him various tempting morsels--_une jeune personne_, sixteen, with
+neither father nor mother, only a brother. "They will give her on her
+marriage thirteen thousand francs a year, and the aunt will be quite
+content to keep her and look after her for some time." And if that won't
+do--"I know a man who would be only too happy to have you for a
+son-in-law; but his daughter is only eleven; she is an only child,
+however, and she will be _very_ rich. You know, _mon ami_, I desire your
+happiness above all things; how to procure it--there lies the chief
+interest of my life."
+
+This notion of things, more or less disguised, was to Julie customary
+and familiar; and it was no more incompatible in her with the notions
+and standards of high sentiment, such as she might be supposed to have
+derived from her parents, than it is in the Latin races generally.
+
+No doubt it had been mingled in her, especially since her settlement in
+Lady Henry's house, with the more English idea of "falling in love"--the
+idea which puts personal choice first in marriage, and makes the matter
+of dowry subordinate to that mysterious election and affinity which the
+Englishman calls "love." Certainly, during the winter, Julie had hoped
+to lead Warkworth to marry her. As a poor man, of course, he must have
+money. But her secret feeling had been that her place in society, her
+influence with important people, had a money value, and that he would
+perceive this.
+
+Well, she had been a mere trusting fool, and he had deceived her. There
+was his crime--not in seeking money and trusting to money. He had told
+her falsehoods and misled her. He was doing it still. His letter implied
+that he loved her? Possibly. It implied to Julie's ear still more
+plainly that he stood tacitly and resolutely by Aileen Moffatt and her
+money, and that all he was prepared to offer to the dear friend of his
+heart was a more or less ambiguous relation, lasting over two years
+perhaps--till his engagement might be announced.
+
+A dumb and bitter anger mounted within her. She recalled the manner in
+which he had evaded her first questions, and her opinion became very
+much that of the Duchess. She had, indeed, been mocked, and treated like
+a child. So she sent no answer to his first letter, and when his second
+came she forbade herself to open it. It lay there on her writing-table.
+At night she transferred it to the table beside her bed, and early in
+the spring dawn her groping fingers drew it trembling towards her and
+slipped it under her pillow. By the time the full morning had come she
+had opened it, read and reread it--had bathed it, indeed, with
+her tears.
+
+But her anger persisted, and when Warkworth appeared on her threshold it
+flamed into sudden expression. She would make him realize her friends,
+her powerful friends--above all, she would make him realize Delafield.
+
+Well, now it was done. She had repelled her lover. She had shown herself
+particularly soft and gracious to Delafield. Warkworth now would break
+with her--might, perhaps, be glad of the chance to return safely and
+without further risks to his heiress.
+
+She sat on in the dark, thinking over every word, every look. Presently
+Therese stole in.
+
+"Mademoiselle, le souper sera bientot pret."
+
+Julie rose wearily, and the child slipped a thin hand into hers.
+
+"J'aime tant ce vieux monsieur," she said, softly. "Je l'aime tant!"
+
+Julie started. Her thoughts had wandered far, indeed, from Lord
+Lackington.
+
+As she went up-stairs to her little room her heart reproached her. In
+their interview the old man had shown great sweetness of feeling, a
+delicate and remorseful tenderness, hardly to have been looked for in a
+being so fantastic and self-willed. The shock of their conversation had
+deepened the lines in a face upon which age had at last begun to make
+those marks which are not another beauty, but the end of beauty. When
+she had opened the door for him in the dusk, Julie had longed, indeed,
+to go with him and soothe his solitary evening. His unmarried son,
+William, lived with him intermittently; but his wife was dead. Lady
+Blanche seldom came to town, and, for the most part, he lived alone in
+the fine house in St. James's Square, of which she had heard her
+mother talk.
+
+He liked her--had liked her from the first. How natural that she should
+tend and brighten his old age--how natural, and how impossible! He was
+not the man to brave the difficulties and discomforts inseparable from
+the sudden appearance of an illegitimate granddaughter in his household,
+and if he had been, Julie, in her fierce, new-born independence, would
+have shrunk from such a step. But she had been drawn to him; her heart
+had yearned to her kindred.
+
+No; neither love nor kindred were for her. As she entered the little,
+bare room over the doorway, which she had begun to fill with books and
+papers, and all the signs of the literary trade, she miserably bid
+herself be content with what was easily and certainly within her grasp.
+The world was pleased to say that she had a remarkable social talent.
+Let her give her mind to the fight with Lady Henry, and prove whether,
+after all, the salon could not be acclimatized on English soil. She had
+the literary instinct and aptitude, and she must earn money. She looked
+at her half-written article, and sighed to her books to save her.
+
+That evening Therese, who adored her, watched her with a wistful and
+stealthy affection. Her idol was strangely sad and pale. But she asked
+no questions. All she could do was to hover about "mademoiselle" with
+soft, flattering services, till mademoiselle went to bed, and then to
+lie awake herself, quietly waiting till all sounds in the room opposite
+had died away, and she might comfort her dumb and timid devotion with
+the hope that Julie slept.
+
+Sleep, however, or no sleep, Julie was up early next day. Before the
+post arrived she was already dressed, and on the point of descending to
+the morning coffee, which, in the old, frugal, Bruges fashion, she and
+Leonie and the child took in the kitchen together. Lady Henry's opinion
+of her as a soft and luxurious person dependent on dainty living was, in
+truth, absurdly far from the mark. After those years of rich food and
+many servants in Lady Henry's household, she had resumed the penurious
+Belgian ways at once, without effort--indeed, with alacrity. In the
+morning she helped Leonie and Therese with the housework. Her quick
+fingers washed and rubbed and dusted. In less than a week she knew every
+glass and cup in Cousin Mary Leicester's well-filled china cupboard, and
+she and Therese between them kept the two sitting-rooms spotless. She
+who had at once made friends and tools of Lady Henry's servants,
+disdained, so it appeared, to be served beyond what was absolutely
+necessary in her own house. A charwoman, indeed, came in the morning for
+the roughest work, but by ten o'clock she was gone, and Julie, Madame
+Bornier, and the child remained in undisputed possession. Little,
+flat-nosed, silent Madame Bornier bought and brought in all they ate.
+She denounced the ways, the viands, the brigand's prices of English
+_fournisseurs_, but it seemed to Julie, all the same, that she handled
+them with a Napoleonic success. She bought as the French poor buy, so
+far as the West End would let her, and Julie had soon perceived that
+their expenditure, even in this heart of Mayfair, would be incredibly
+small. Whereby she felt herself more and more mistress of her fate. By
+her own unaided hands would she provide for herself and her household.
+Each year there should be a little margin, and she would owe no man
+anything. After six months, if she could not afford to pay the Duke a
+fair rent for his house--always supposing he allowed her to remain in
+it--she would go elsewhere.
+
+As she reached the hall, clad in an old serge dress, which was a
+survival from Bruges days, Therese ran up to her with the letters.
+
+Julie looked through them, turned and went back to her room. She had
+expected the letter which lay on the top, and she must brace herself
+to read it.
+
+It began abruptly:
+
+     "You will hardly wonder that I should write at once to ask if
+     you have no explanation to give me of your manner of this
+     afternoon. Again and again I go over what happened, but no
+     light comes. It was as though you had wiped out all the six
+     months of our friendship; as though I had become for you once
+     more the merest acquaintance. It is impossible that I can
+     have been mistaken. You meant to make me--and
+     others?--clearly understand--what? That I no longer deserved
+     your kindness--that you had broken altogether with the man on
+     whom you had so foolishly bestowed it?
+
+     "My friend, what have I done? How have I sinned? Did that
+     sour lady, who asked me questions she had small business to
+     ask, tell you tales that have set your heart against me? But
+     what have incidents and events that happened, or may have
+     happened, in India, got to do with our friendship, which grew
+     up for definite reasons and has come to mean so much--has it
+     not?--to both of us? I am not a model person, Heaven
+     knows!--very far from it. There are scores of things in my
+     life to be ashamed of. And please remember that last year I
+     had never seen you; if I had, much might have gone
+     differently.
+
+     "But how can I defend myself? I owe you so much. Ought not
+     that, of itself, to make you realize how great is your power
+     to hurt me, and how small are my powers of resistance? The
+     humiliations you can inflict upon me are infinite, and I have
+     no rights, no weapons, against you.
+
+     "I hardly know what I am saying. It is very late, and I am
+     writing this after a dinner at the club given me by two or
+     three of my brother officers. It was a dinner in my honor, to
+     congratulate me on my good fortune. They are good fellows,
+     and it should have been a merry time. But my half hour in
+     your room had killed all power of enjoyment for me. They
+     found me a wretched companion, and we broke up early. I came
+     home through the empty streets, wishing myself, with all my
+     heart, away from England--facing the desert. Let me just say
+     this. It is not of good omen that now, when I want all my
+     faculties at their best, I should suddenly find myself
+     invaded by this distress and despondency. You have some
+     responsibility now in my life and career; if you would, you
+     cannot get rid of it. You have not increased the chances of
+     your friend's success in his great task.
+
+     "You see how I restrain myself. I could write as madly as I
+     feel--violently and madly. But of set purpose we pitched our
+     relation in a certain key and measure; and I try, at least,
+     to keep the measure, if the music and the charm must go. But
+     why, in God's name, should they go? Why have you turned
+     against me? You have listened to slanderers; you have
+     secretly tried me by tests that are not in the bargain, and
+     you have judged and condemned me without a hearing, without a
+     word. I can tell you I am pretty sore.
+
+     "I will come and see you no more in company for the present.
+     You gave me a footing with you, which has its own dignity.
+     I'll guard it; not even from you will I accept anything else.
+     But--unless, indeed, the grove is cut down and the bird flown
+     forever--let me come when you are alone. Then charge me with
+     what you will. I am an earthy creature, struggling through
+     life as I best can, and, till I saw you, struggling often, no
+     doubt, in very earthy ways. I am not a philosopher, nor an
+     idealist, with expectations, like Delafield. This
+     rough-and-tumble world is all I know. It's good enough for
+     me--good enough to love a friend in, as--I vow to God,
+     Julie!--I have loved you.
+
+     "There, it's out, and you must put up with it. I couldn't
+     help it. I am too miserable.
+
+     "But--
+
+     "But I won't write any more. I shall stay in my rooms till
+     twelve o'clock. You owe me promptness."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Julie put down the letter.
+
+She looked round her little study with a kind of despair--the despair
+perhaps of the prisoner who had thought himself delivered, only to find
+himself caught in fresh and stronger bonds. As for ambition, as for
+literature--here, across their voices, broke this voice of the senses,
+this desire of "the moth for the star." And she was powerless to resist
+it. Ah, why had he not accepted his dismissal--quarrelled with her at
+once and forever?
+
+She understood the letter perfectly--what it offered, and what it
+tacitly refused. An intimate and exciting friendship--for two years. For
+two years he was ready to fill up such time as he could spare from his
+clandestine correspondence with her cousin, with this romantic,
+interesting, but unprofitable affection. And then?
+
+She fell again upon his letter. Ah, but there was a new note in it--a
+hard, strained note, which gave her a kind of desperate joy. It seemed
+to her that for months she had been covetously listening for it in vain.
+
+She was beginning to be necessary to him; he had _suffered_--through
+her. Never before could she say that to herself. Pleasure she had given
+him, but not pain; and it is pain that is the test and consecration of--
+
+Of what?... Well, now for her answer. It was short.
+
+     "I am very sorry you thought me rude. I was tired with
+     talking and unpacking, and with literary work--housework,
+     too, if the truth were known. I am no longer a fine lady, and
+     must slave for myself. The thought, also, of an interview
+     with Lord Lackington which faced me, which I went through as
+     soon as you, Dr. Meredith, and Mr. Delafield had gone,
+     unnerved me. You were good to write to me, and I am grateful
+     indeed. As to your appointment, and your career, you owe no
+     one anything. Everything is in your own hands. I rejoice in
+     your good fortune, and I beg that you will let no false ideas
+     with regard to me trouble your mind.
+
+     "This afternoon at five, if you can forgive me, you will find
+     me. In the early afternoon I shall be in the British Museum,
+     for my work's sake."
+
+She posted her letter, and went about her daily housework, oppressed the
+while by a mental and moral nausea. As she washed and tidied and dusted,
+a true housewife's love growing up in her for the little house and its
+charming, old-world appointments--a sort of mute relation between her
+and it, as though it accepted her for mistress, and she on her side
+vowed it a delicate and prudent care--she thought how she could have
+delighted in this life which had opened upon her had it come to her a
+year ago. The tasks set her by Meredith were congenial and within her
+power. Her independence gave her the keenest pleasure. The effort and
+conquests of the intellect--she had the mind to love them, to desire
+them; and the way to them was unbarred.
+
+What plucked her back?
+
+A tear fell upon the old china cup that she was dusting. A sort of
+maternal element had entered into her affection for Warkworth during the
+winter. She had upheld him and fought for him. And now, like a mother,
+she could not tear the unworthy object from her heart, though all the
+folly of their pseudo-friendship and her secret hopes lay bare
+before her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Warkworth came at five.
+
+He entered in the dusk; a little pale, with his graceful head thrown
+back, and that half-startled, timid look in his wide, blue eyes--that
+misleading look--which made him the boy still, when he chose.
+
+Julie was standing near the window as he came in. As she turned and saw
+him there, a flood of tenderness and compunction swept over her. He was
+going away. What if she never saw him again?
+
+She shuddered and came forward rapidly, eagerly. He read the meaning of
+her movement, her face; and, wringing her hands with a violence that
+hurt her, he drew a long breath of relief.
+
+"Why--why"--he said, under his breath--"have you made me so unhappy?"
+
+The blood leaped in her veins. These, indeed, were new words in a new
+tone.
+
+"Don't let us reproach each other," she said. "There is so much to say.
+Sit down."
+
+To-day there were no beguiling spring airs. The fire burned merrily in
+the grate; the windows were closed.
+
+A scent of narcissus--the Duchess had filled the tables with
+flowers--floated in the room. Amid its old-fashioned and distinguished
+bareness--tempered by flowers, and a litter of foreign books--Julie
+seemed at last to have found her proper frame. In her severe black
+dress, opening on a delicate vest of white, she had a muselike grace;
+and the wreath made by her superb black hair round the fine intelligence
+of her brow had never been more striking. Her slender hands busied
+themselves with Cousin Mary Leicester's tea-things; and every movement
+had in Warkworth's eyes a charm to which he had never yet been sensible,
+in this manner, to this degree.
+
+"Am I really to say no more of yesterday?" he said, looking at her
+nervously.
+
+Her flush, her gesture, appealed to him.
+
+"Do you know what I had before me--that day--when you came in?" she
+said, softly.
+
+"No. I cannot guess. Ah, you said something about Lord Lackington?"
+
+She hesitated. Then her color deepened.
+
+"You don't know my story. You suppose, don't you, that I am a Belgian
+with English connections, whom Lady Henry met by chance? Isn't that how
+you explain me?"
+
+Warkworth had pushed aside his cup.
+
+"I thought--"
+
+He paused in embarrassment, but there was a sparkle of astonished
+expectancy in his eyes.
+
+"My mother"--she looked away into the blaze of the fire, and her voice
+choked a little--"my mother was Lord Lackington's daughter."
+
+"Lord Lackington's daughter?" echoed Warkworth, in stupefaction. A rush
+of ideas and inferences sped through his mind. He thought of Lady
+Blanche--things heard in India--and while he stared at her in an
+agitated silence the truth leaped to light.
+
+"Not--not Lady Rose Delaney?" he said, bending forward to her.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"My father was Marriott Dalrymple. You will have heard of him. I should
+be Julie Dalrymple, but--they could never marry--because of
+Colonel Delaney."
+
+Her face was still turned away.
+
+All the details of that famous scandal began to come back to him. His
+companion, her history, her relations to others, to himself, began to
+appear to him in the most astonishing new lights. So, instead of the
+mere humble outsider, she belonged all the time to the best English
+blood? The society in which he had met her was full of her kindred. No
+doubt the Duchess knew--and Montresor.... He was meshed in a net of
+thoughts perplexing and confounding, of which the total result was
+perhaps that she appeared to him as she sat there, the slender outline
+so quiet and still, more attractive and more desirable than ever. The
+mystery surrounding her in some way glorified her, and he dimly
+perceived that so it must have been for others.
+
+"How did you ever bear the Bruton Street life?" he said, presently, in
+a low voice of wonder. "Lady Henry knew?"
+
+"Oh yes!"
+
+"And the Duchess?"
+
+"Yes. She is a connection of my mother's."
+
+Warkworth's mind went back to the Moffatts. A flush spread slowly over
+the face of the young officer. It was indeed an extraordinary imbroglio
+in which he found himself.
+
+"How did Lord Lackington take it?" he asked, after a pause.
+
+"He was, of course, much startled, much moved. We had a long talk.
+Everything is to remain just the same. He wishes to make me an
+allowance, and, if he persists, I suppose I can't hurt him by refusing.
+But for the present I have refused. It is more amusing to earn one's own
+living." She turned to him with a sharp brightness in her black eyes.
+"Besides, if Lord Lackington gives me money, he will want to give me
+advice. And I would rather advise myself."
+
+Warkworth sat silent a moment. Then he took a great resolve.
+
+"I want to speak to you," he said, suddenly, putting out his hand to
+hers, which lay on her knee.
+
+She turned to him, startled.
+
+"I want to have no secrets from you," he said, drawing his breath
+quickly. "I told you lies one day, because I thought it was my duty to
+tell lies. Another person was concerned. But now I can't. Julie!--you'll
+let me call you so, won't you? The name is already"--he hesitated; then
+the words rushed out--"part of my life! Julie, it's quite true, there is
+a kind of understanding between your little cousin Aileen and me. At
+Simla she attracted me enormously. I lost my head one day in the woods,
+when she--whom we were all courting--distinguished me above two or three
+other men who were there. I proposed to her upon a sudden impulse, and
+she accepted me. She is a charming, soft creature. Perhaps I wasn't
+justified. Perhaps she ought to have had more chance of seeing the
+world. Anyway, there was a great row. Her guardians insisted that I had
+behaved badly. They could not know all the details of the matter, and I
+was not going to tell them. Finally I promised to withdraw for
+two years."
+
+He paused, anxiously studying her face. It had grown very white, and, he
+thought, very cold. But she quickly rose, and, looking down upon
+him, said:
+
+"Nothing of that is news to me. Did you think it was?"
+
+And moving to the tea-table, she began to make provision for a fresh
+supply of tea.
+
+Both words and manner astounded him. He, too, rose and followed her.
+
+"How did you first guess?" he said, abruptly.
+
+"Some gossip reached me." She looked up with a smile. "That's what
+generally happens, isn't it?"
+
+"There are no secrets nowadays," he said, sorely. "And then, there was
+Miss Lawrence?"
+
+"Yes, there was Miss Lawrence."
+
+"Did you think badly of me?"
+
+"Why should I? I understand Aileen is very pretty, and--"
+
+"And will have a large fortune. You understand that?" he said, trying to
+carry it off lightly.
+
+"The fact is well known, isn't it?"
+
+He sat down, twisting his hat between his hands. Then with an
+exclamation he dashed it on the floor, and, rising, he bent over Julie,
+his hands in his pockets.
+
+"Julie," he said, in a voice that shook her, "don't, for God's sake,
+give me up! I have behaved abominably, but don't take your friendship
+from me. I shall soon be gone. Our lives will go different ways. That
+was settled--alack!--before we met. I am honorably bound to that poor
+child. She cares for me, and I can't get loose. But these last months
+have been happy, haven't they? There are just three weeks left. At
+present the strongest feeling in my heart is--" He paused for his word,
+and he saw that she was looking through the window to the trees of the
+garden, and that, still as she was, her lip quivered.
+
+"What shall I say?" he resumed, with emotion. "It seems to me our case
+stands all by itself, alone in the world. We have three weeks--give them
+to me. Don't let's play at cross purposes any more. I want to be
+sincere--I want to hide nothing from you in these days. Let us throw
+aside convention and trust each other, as friends may, so that when I go
+we may say to each other, 'Well, it was worth the pain. These have been
+days of gold--we shall get no better if we live to be a hundred.'"
+
+She turned her face to him in a tremulous amazement and there were tears
+on her cheek. Never had his aspect been so winning. What he proposed
+was, in truth, a mean thing; all the same, he proposed it nobly.
+
+It was in vain that something whispered in her ear: "This girl to whom
+he describes himself as 'honorably bound' has a fortune of half a
+million. He is determined to have both her money and my heart." Another
+inward voice, tragically generous, dashed down the thought, and, at the
+moment, rightly; for as he stood over her, breathless and imperious, to
+his own joy, to his own exaltation, Warkworth was conscious of a new
+sincerity flowing in a tempestuous and stormy current through all the
+veins of being.
+
+With a sombre passion which already marked an epoch in their relation,
+and contained within itself the elements of new and unforeseen
+developments, she gazed silently into his face. Then, leaning back in
+her chair, she once more held out to him both her hands.
+
+He gave an exclamation of joy, kissed the hands tenderly, and sat down
+beside her.
+
+"Now, then, all your cares, all your thoughts, all your griefs are to be
+mine--till fate call us. And I have a thousand things to tell you, to
+bless you for, to consult you about. There is not a thought in my mind
+that you shall not know--bad, good, and indifferent--if you care to turn
+out the rag-bag. Shall I begin with the morning--my experiences at the
+club, my little nieces at the Zoo?" He laughed, but suddenly grew
+serious again. "No, your story first; you owe it me. Let me know all
+that concerns you. Your past, your sorrows, ambitions--everything."
+
+He bent to her imperiously. With a faint, broken smile, her hands still
+in his, she assented. It was difficult to begin, then difficult to
+control the flood of memory; and it had long been dark when Madame
+Bornier, coming in to light the lamp and make up the fire, disturbed an
+intimate and searching conversation, which had revealed the two natures
+to each other with an agitating fulness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet the results of this memorable evening upon Julie Le Breton were
+ultimately such as few could have foreseen.
+
+When Warkworth had left her, she went to her own room and sat for a long
+while beside the window, gazing at the dark shrubberies of the Cureton
+House garden, at the few twinkling, distant lights.
+
+The vague, golden hopes she had cherished through these past months of
+effort and scheming were gone forever. Warkworth would marry Aileen
+Moffatt, and use her money for an ambitious career. After these weeks
+now lying before them--weeks of dangerous intimacy, dangerous
+emotion--she and he would become as strangers to each other. He would be
+absorbed by his profession and his rich marriage. She would be left
+alone to live her life.
+
+A sudden terror of her own weakness overcame her. No, she could not be
+alone. She must place a barrier between herself and this--this strange
+threatening of illimitable ruin that sometimes rose upon her from the
+dark. "I have no prejudices," she had said to Sir Wilfrid. There were
+many moments when she felt a fierce pride in the element of lawlessness,
+of defiance, that seemed to be her inheritance from her parents. But
+to-night she was afraid of it.
+
+Again, if love was to go, _power_, the satisfaction of ambition,
+remained. She threw a quick glance into the future--the future beyond
+these three weeks. What could she make of it? She knew well that she was
+not the woman to resign herself to a mere pining obscurity.
+
+Jacob Delafield? Was it, after all, so impossible?
+
+For a few minutes she set herself deliberately to think out what it
+would mean to marry him; then suddenly broke down and wept, with
+inarticulate cries and sobs, with occasional reminiscences of her old
+convent's prayers, appeals half conscious, instinctive, to a God only
+half believed.
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+Delafield was walking through the Park towards Victoria Gate. A pair of
+beautiful roans pulled up suddenly beside him, and a little figure with
+a waving hand bent to him from a carriage.
+
+"Jacob, where are you off to? Let me give you a lift?"
+
+The gentleman addressed took off his hat.
+
+"Much obliged to you, but I want some exercise. I say, where did Freddie
+get that pair?"
+
+"I don't know, he doesn't tell me. Jacob, you must get in. I want to
+speak to you."
+
+Rather unwillingly, Delafield obeyed, and away they sped.
+
+"J'ai un tas de choses a vous dire," she said, speaking low, and in
+French, so as to protect herself from the servants in front. "Jacob, I'm
+_very_ unhappy about Julie."
+
+Delafield frowned uncomfortably.
+
+"Why? Hadn't you better leave her alone?"
+
+"Oh, of course, I know you think me a chatterbox. I don't care. You
+_must_ let me tell you some fresh news about her. It _isn't_ gossip, and
+you and I are her best friends. Oh, Freddie's so disagreeable about her.
+Jacob, you've got to help and advise a little. Now, do listen. It's your
+duty--your downright catechism duty."
+
+And she poured into his reluctant ear the tale which Miss Emily
+Lawrence nearly a fortnight before had confided to her.
+
+"Of course," she wound up, "you'll say it's only what we knew or guessed
+long ago. But you see, Jacob, we didn't _know_. It might have been just
+gossip. And then, besides"--she frowned and dropped her voice till it
+was only just audible--"this horrid man hadn't made our Julie so--so
+conspicuous, and Lady Henry hadn't turned out such a toad--and,
+altogether, Jacob, I'm dreadfully worried."
+
+"Don't be," said Jacob, dryly.
+
+"And what a creature!" cried the Duchess, unheeding. "They say that poor
+Moffatt child will soon have fretted herself ill, if the guardians don't
+give way about the two years."
+
+"What two years?"
+
+"The two years that she must wait--till she is twenty-one. Oh, Jacob,
+you know that!" exclaimed the Duchess, impatient with him. "I've told
+you scores of times."
+
+"I'm not in the least interested in Miss Moffatt's affairs."
+
+"But you ought to be, for they concern Julie," cried the Duchess. "Can't
+you imagine what kind of things people are saying? Lady Henry has spread
+it about that it was all to see him she bribed the Bruton Street
+servants to let her give the Wednesday party as usual--that she had been
+flirting with him abominably for months, and using Lady Henry's name in
+the most impertinent ways. And now, suddenly, everybody seems to know
+_something_ about this Indian engagement. You may imagine it doesn't
+look very well for our poor Julie. The other night at Chatton House I
+was furious. I made Julie go. I wanted her to show herself, and keep up
+her friends. Well, it was _horrid_! One or two old frights, who used to
+be only too thankful to Julie for reminding Lady Henry to invite them,
+put their noses in the air and behaved odiously. And even some of the
+nicer ones seemed changed--I could see Julie felt it."
+
+"Nothing of all that will do her any real harm," said Jacob, rather
+contemptuously.
+
+"Well, no. I know, of course, that her real friends will never forsake
+her--never, never! But, Jacob"--the Duchess hesitated, her charming
+little face furrowed with thought--"if only so much of it weren't true.
+She herself--"
+
+"Please, Evelyn," said Delafield, with decision, "don't tell me anything
+she may have said to you."
+
+The Duchess flushed.
+
+"I shouldn't have betrayed any confidence," she said, proudly. "And I
+must consult with some one who cares about her. Dr. Meredith lunched
+with me to-day, and he said a few words to me afterwards. He's quite
+anxious, too--and unhappy. Captain Warkworth's always there--always!
+Even I have been hardly able to see her the last few days. Last Sunday
+they took the little lame child and went into the country for the
+whole day--"
+
+"Well, what is there to object to in that?" cried Jacob.
+
+"I didn't say there was anything to object to," said the Duchess,
+looking at him with eyes half angry, half perplexed. "Only it's so
+unlike her. She had promised to be at home that afternoon for several
+old friends, and they found her flown, without a word. And think how
+sweet Julie is always about such things--what delicious notes she
+writes, how she hates to put anybody out or disappoint them! And now,
+not a word of excuse to anybody. And she looks so _ill_--so white, so
+fixed--like a person in a dream which she can't shake off. I'm just
+miserable about her. And I hate, _hate_ that man--engaged to her own
+cousin all the time!" cried the little Duchess, under her breath, as she
+passionately tore some violets at her waist to pieces and flung them out
+of the carriage. Then she turned to Jacob.
+
+"But, of course, if you don't care twopence about all this, Jacob, it's
+no good talking to you!"
+
+Her taunt fell quite unnoticed. Jacob turned to her with smiling
+composure.
+
+"You have forgotten, my dear Evelyn, all this time, that Warkworth goes
+away--to mid-Africa--in little more than two weeks."
+
+"I wish it was two minutes," said the Duchess, fuming.
+
+Delafield made no reply for a while. He seemed to be studying the effect
+of a pale shaft of sunlight which had just come stealing down through
+layers of thin gray cloud to dance upon the Serpentine. Presently, as
+they left the Serpentine behind them, he turned to his companion with
+more apparent sympathy.
+
+"We can't do anything, Evelyn, and we've no right whatever to talk of
+alarm, or anxiety--to _talk_ of it, mind! It's--it's disloyal. Forgive
+me," he added, hastily, "I know you don't gossip. But it fills me with
+rage that other people should be doing it."
+
+The brusquerie of his manner disconcerted the little lady beside him.
+She recovered herself, however, and said, with a touch of sarcasm,
+tempered by a rather trembling lip:
+
+"Your rage won't prevent their gossiping, Mr. Jacob, I thought, perhaps,
+your _friendship_ might have done something to stop it--to--to influence
+Julie," she added, uncertainly.
+
+"My friendship, as you call it, is of no use whatever," he said,
+obstinately. "Warkworth will go away, and if you and others do their
+best to protect Miss Le Breton, talk will soon die out. Behave as if you
+had never heard the man's name before--stare the people down. Why, good
+Heavens! you have a thousand arts! But, of course, if the little flame
+is to be blown into a blaze by a score of so-called friends--"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+The Duchess did not take his rebukes kindly, not having, in truth,
+deserved them.
+
+"You are rude and unkind, Jacob," she said, almost with the tears in her
+eyes. "And you don't understand--it is because I myself am so anxious--"
+
+"For that reason, play the part with all your might," he said,
+unyieldingly. "Really, even you and I oughtn't to talk of it any more.
+But there _is_ one thing I want very much to know about Miss Le Breton."
+
+He bent towards her, smiling, though in truth he was disgusted with
+himself, vexed with her, and out of tune with all the world.
+
+The Duchess made a little face.
+
+"All very well, but after such a lecture as you have indulged in, I
+think I prefer not to say any more about Julie."
+
+"Do. I'm ashamed of myself--except that I don't retract one word, not
+one. Be kind, all the same, and tell me--if you know--has she spoken to
+Lord Lackington?"
+
+The Duchess still frowned, but a few more apologetic expressions on his
+part restored a temper that had always a natural tendency to peace.
+Indeed, Jacob's _boutades_ never went long unpardoned. An only child
+herself, he, her first cousin, had played the part of brother in her
+life, since the days when she first tottered in long frocks, and he had
+never played it in any mincing fashion. His words were often blunt. She
+smarted and forgave--much more quickly than she forgave her husband. But
+then, with him, she was in love.
+
+So she presently vouchsafed to give Jacob the news that Lord Lackington
+at last knew the secret--that he had behaved well--had shown much
+feeling, in fact--so that poor Julie--
+
+But Jacob again cut short the sentimentalisms, the little touching
+phrases in which the woman delighted.
+
+"What is he going to do for her?" he said, impatiently. "Will he make
+any provision for her? Is there any way by which she can live in his
+house--take care of him?"
+
+The Duchess shook her head.
+
+"At seventy-five one can't begin to explain a thing as big as that.
+Julie perfectly understands, and doesn't wish it."
+
+"But as to money?" persisted Jacob.
+
+"Julie says nothing about money. How odd you are, Jacob! I thought that
+was the last thing needful in your eyes."
+
+Jacob did not reply. If he had, he would probably have said that what
+was harmful or useless for men might be needful for women--for the
+weakness of women. But he kept silence, while the vague intensity of the
+eyes, the pursed and twisted mouth, showed that his mind was full
+of thoughts.
+
+Suddenly he perceived that the carriage was nearing Victoria Gate. He
+called to the coachman to stop, and jumped out.
+
+"Good-bye, Evelyn. Don't bear me malice. You're a good friend," he said
+in her ear--"a real good friend. But don't let people talk to you--not
+even elderly ladies with the best intentions. I tell you it will be a
+fight, and one of the best weapons is"--he touched his lips
+significantly, smiled at her, and was gone.
+
+The Duchess passed out of the Park. Delafield turned as though in the
+direction of the Marble Arch, but as soon as the carriage was out of
+sight he paused and quickly retraced his steps towards Kensington
+Gardens. Here, in this third week of March, some of the thorns and
+lilacs were already in leaf. The grass was springing, and the chatter of
+many sparrows filled the air. Faint patches of sun flecked the ground
+between the trees, and blue hazes, already redeemed from the dreariness
+of winter, filled the dim planes of distance and mingled with the low,
+silvery clouds. He found a quiet spot, remote from nursery-maids and
+children, and there he wandered to and fro, indefinitely, his hands
+behind his back. All the anxieties for which he had scolded his cousin
+possessed him, only sharpened tenfold; he was in torture, and he
+was helpless.
+
+However, when at last he emerged from his solitude, and took a hansom to
+the Chudleigh estate office in Spring Gardens, he resolutely shook off
+the thoughts which had been weighing upon him. He took his usual
+interest in his work, and did it with his usual capacity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Towards five o'clock in the afternoon, Delafield found himself in
+Cureton Street. As he turned down Heribert Street he saw a cab in front
+of him. It stopped at Miss Le Breton's door, and Warkworth jumped out.
+The door was quickly opened to him, and he went in without having turned
+his eyes towards the man at the far corner of the street.
+
+Delafield paused irresolute. Finally he walked back to his club in
+Piccadilly, where he dawdled over the newspapers till nearly seven.
+
+Then he once more betook himself to Heribert Street.
+
+"Is Miss Le Breton at home?"
+
+Therese looked at him with a sudden flickering of her clear eyes.
+
+"I think so, sir," she said, with soft hesitation, and she slowly led
+him across the hall.
+
+The drawing-room door opened. Major Warkworth emerged.
+
+"Ah, how do you do?" he said, shortly, staring in a kind of bewilderment
+as he saw Delafield. Then he hurriedly looked for his hat, ran down the
+stairs, and was gone.
+
+"Announce me, please," said Delafield, peremptorily, to the little girl.
+"Tell Miss Le Breton that I am here." And he drew back from the open
+door of the drawing-room. Therese slipped in, and reappeared.
+
+"Please to walk in, sir," she said, in her shy, low voice, and Delafield
+entered. From the hall he had caught one involuntary glimpse of Julie,
+standing stiff and straight in the middle of the room, her hands clasped
+to her breast--a figure in pain. When he went in, she was in her usual
+seat by the fire, with her embroidery frame in front of her.
+
+"May I come in? It is rather late."
+
+"Oh, by all means! Do you bring me any news of Evelyn? I haven't seen
+her for three days."
+
+He seated himself beside her. It was hard, indeed, for him to hide all
+signs of the tumult within. But he held a firm grip upon himself.
+
+"I saw Evelyn this afternoon. She complained that you had had no time
+for her lately."
+
+Julie bent over her work. He saw that her fingers were so unsteady that
+she could hardly make them obey her.
+
+"There has been a great deal to do, even in this little house. Evelyn
+forgets; she has an army of servants; we have only our hands and
+our time."
+
+She looked up, smiling. He made no reply, and the smile died from her
+face, suddenly, as though some one had blown out a light. She returned
+to her work, or pretended to. But her aspect had left him inwardly
+shaken. The eyes, disproportionately large and brilliant, were of an
+emphasis almost ghastly, the usually clear complexion was flecked and
+cloudy, the mouth dry-lipped. She looked much older than she had done a
+fortnight before. And the fact was the more noticeable because in her
+dress she had now wholly discarded the touch of stateliness--almost
+old-maidishness--which had once seemed appropriate to the position of
+Lady Henry's companion. She was wearing a little gown of her youth, a
+blue cotton, which two years before had been put aside as too slight
+and juvenile. Never had the form within it seemed so girlish, so
+appealing. But the face was heart-rending.
+
+After a pause he moved a little closer to her.
+
+"Do you know that you are looking quite ill?"
+
+"Then my looks are misleading. I am very well."
+
+"I am afraid I don't put much faith in that remark. When do you mean to
+take a holiday?"
+
+"Oh, very soon. Leonie, my little housekeeper, talks of going to Bruges
+to wind up all her affairs there and bring back some furniture that she
+has warehoused. I may go with her. I, too, have some property stored
+there. I should go and see some old friends--the _soeurs_, for instance,
+with whom I went to school. In the old days I was a torment to them, and
+they were tyrants to me. But they are quite nice to me now--they give me
+_patisserie_, and stroke my hands and spoil me."
+
+And she rattled on about the friends she might revisit, in a hollow,
+perfunctory way, which set him on edge.
+
+"I don't see that anything of that kind will do you any good. You want
+rest of mind and body. I expect those last scenes with Lady Henry cost
+you more than you knew. There are wounds one does not notice at
+the time--"
+
+"Which afterwards bleed inwardly?" She laughed. "No, no, I am not
+bleeding for Lady Henry. By-the-way, what news of her?"
+
+"Sir Wilfrid told me to-day that he had had a letter. She is at Torquay,
+and she thinks there are too many curates at Torquay. She is not at all
+in a good temper."
+
+Julie looked up.
+
+"You know that she is trying to punish me. A great many people seem to
+have been written to."
+
+"That will blow over."
+
+"I don't know. How confident I was at one time that, if there was a
+breach, it would be Lady Henry that would suffer! It makes me hot to
+remember some things I said--to Sir Wilfrid, in particular. I see now
+that I shall not be troubled with society in this little house."
+
+"It is too early for you to guess anything of that kind."
+
+"Not at all! London is pretty full. The affair has made a noise. Those
+who meant to stand by me would have called, don't you think?"
+
+The quivering bitterness of her face was most pitiful in Jacob's eyes.
+
+"Oh, people take their time," he said, trying to speak lightly.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"It's ridiculous that I should care. One's self-love, I suppose--_that_
+bleeds! Evelyn has made me send out cards for a little house-warming.
+She said I must. She made me go to that smart party at Chatton House the
+other night. It was a great mistake. People turned their backs on me.
+And this, too, will be a mistake--and a failure."
+
+"You were kind enough to send me a card."
+
+"Yes--and you must come?"
+
+She looked at him with a sudden nervous appeal, which made another tug
+on his self-control.
+
+"Of course I shall come."
+
+"Do you remember your own saying--that awful evening--that I had devoted
+friends? Well, we shall soon see."
+
+"That depends only on yourself," he replied, with gentle deliberation.
+
+She started--threw him a doubtful look.
+
+"If you mean that I must take a great deal of trouble, I am afraid I
+can't. I am too tired."
+
+And she sank back in her chair.
+
+The sigh that accompanied the words seemed to him involuntary,
+unconscious.
+
+"I didn't mean that--altogether," he said, after a moment.
+
+She moved restlessly.
+
+"Then, really, I don't know what you meant. I suppose all friendship
+depends on one's self."
+
+She drew her embroidery frame towards her again, and he was left to
+wonder at his own audacity. "Do you know," she said, presently, her eyes
+apparently busy with her silks, "that I have told Lord Lackington?"
+
+"Yes. Evelyn gave me that news. How has the old man behaved?"
+
+"Oh, very well--most kindly. He has already formed a habit, almost, of
+'dropping in' upon me at all hours. I have had to appoint him times and
+seasons, or there would be no work done. He sits here and raves about
+young Mrs. Delaray--you know he is painting her portrait, for the famous
+series?--and draws her profile on the backs of my letters. He recites
+his speeches to me; he asks my advice as to his fights with his tenants
+or his miners. In short, I'm adopted--I'm almost the real thing."
+
+She smiled, and then again, as she turned over her silks, he heard her
+sigh--a long breath of weariness. It was strange and terrible in his
+ear--the contrast between this unconscious sound, drawn as it were from
+the oppressed heart of pain, and her languidly, smiling words.
+
+"Has he spoken to you of the Moffatts?" he asked her, presently, not
+looking at her.
+
+A sharp crimson color rushed over her face.
+
+"Not much. He and Lady Blanche are not great friends. And I have made
+him promise to keep my secret from her till I give him leave to
+tell it."
+
+"It will have to be known to her some time, will it not?"
+
+"Perhaps," she said, impatiently. "Perhaps, when I can make up my mind."
+
+Then she pushed aside her frame and would talk no more about Lord
+Lackington. She gave him, somehow, the impression of a person
+suffocating, struggling for breath and air. And yet her hand was icy,
+and she presently went to the fire, complaining of the east wind; and as
+he put on the coal he saw her shiver.
+
+"Shall I force her to tell me everything?" he thought to himself.
+
+Did she divine the obscure struggle in his mind? At any rate she seemed
+anxious to cut short their _tete-a-tete_. She asked him to come and look
+at some engravings which the Duchess had sent round for the
+embellishment of the dining-room. Then she summoned Madame Bornier, and
+asked him a number of questions on Leonie's behalf, with reference to
+some little investment of the ex-governess's savings, which had been
+dropping in value. Meanwhile, as she kept him talking, she leaned
+herself against the lintel of the door, forgetting every now and then
+that any one else was there, and letting the true self appear, like some
+drowned thing floating into sight. Delafield disposed of Madame
+Bornier's affairs, hardly knowing what he said, but showing in truth his
+usual conscience and kindness. Then when Leonie was contented, Julie saw
+the little cripple crossing the hall, and called to her.
+
+"Ah, ma cherie! How is the poor little foot?"
+
+And turning to Delafield, she explained volubly that Therese had given
+herself a slight twist on the stairs that morning, pressing the child to
+her side the while with a tender gesture. The child nestled against her.
+
+"Shall maman keep back supper?" Therese half whispered, looking at
+Delafield.
+
+"No, no, I must go!" cried Delafield, rousing himself and looking for
+his hat.
+
+"I would ask you to stay," said Julie, smiling, "just to show off
+Leonie's cooking; but there wouldn't be enough for a great big man. And
+you're probably dining with dukes."
+
+Delafield disclaimed any such intention, and they went back to the
+drawing-room to look for his hat and stick. Julie still had her arm
+round Therese and would not let the child go. She clearly avoided being
+left alone with him; and yet it seemed, even to his modesty, that she
+was loath to see him depart. She talked first of her little _menage_, as
+though proud of their daily economies and contrivances; then of her
+literary work and its prospects; then of her debt to Meredith. Never
+before had she thus admitted him to her domestic and private life. It
+was as though she leaned upon his sympathy, his advice, his mere
+neighborhood. And her pale, changed face had never seemed to him so
+beautiful--never, in fact, truly beautiful till now. The dying down of
+the brilliance and energy of the strongly marked character, which had
+made her the life of the Bruton Street salon, into this mildness, this
+despondency, this hidden weariness, had left her infinitely more lovely
+in his eyes. But how to restrain himself much longer from taking the
+sad, gracious woman in his arms and coercing her into sanity and
+happiness!
+
+At last he tore himself away.
+
+"You won't forget Wednesday?" she said to him, as she followed him into
+the hall.
+
+"No. Is there anything else that you wish--that I could do?"
+
+"No, nothing. But if there is I will ask."
+
+Then, looking up, she shrank from something in his face--something
+accusing, passionate, profound.
+
+He wrung her hand.
+
+"Promise that you will ask."
+
+She murmured something, and he turned away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She came back alone into the drawing-room.
+
+"Oh, what a good man!" she said, sighing. "What a good man!"
+
+And then, all in a moment, she was thankful that he was gone--that she
+was alone with and mistress of her pain.
+
+The passion and misery which his visit had interrupted swept back upon
+her in a rushing swirl, blinding and choking every sense. Ah, what a
+scene, to which his coming had put an end--scene of bitterness, of
+recrimination, not restrained even by this impending anguish
+of parting!
+
+It came as a close to a week during which she and Warkworth had been
+playing the game which they had chosen to play, according to its
+appointed rules--the delicacies and restraints of friendship masking,
+and at the same time inflaming, a most unhappy, poisonous, and growing
+love. And, finally, there had risen upon them a storm-wave of
+feeling--tyrannous, tempestuous--bursting in reproach and agitation,
+leaving behind it, bare and menacing, the old, ugly facts, unaltered and
+unalterable.
+
+Warkworth was little less miserable than herself. That she knew. He
+loved her, as it were, to his own anger and surprise. And he suffered in
+deserting her, more than he had ever suffered yet through any human
+affection.
+
+But his purpose through it all remained stubbornly fixed; that, also,
+she knew. For nearly a year Aileen Moffatt's fortune and Aileen
+Moffatt's family connections had entered into all his calculations of
+the future. Only a few more years in the army, then retirement with
+ample means, a charming wife, and a seat in Parliament. To jeopardize a
+plan so manifestly desirable, so easy to carry out, so far-reaching in
+its favorable effects upon his life, for the sake of those hard and
+doubtful alternatives in which a marriage with Julie would involve him,
+never seriously entered his mind. When he suffered he merely said to
+himself, steadily, that time would heal the smart for both of them.
+
+"Only one thing would be absolutely fatal for all of us--that I should
+break with Aileen."
+
+Julie read these obscure processes in Warkworth's mind with perfect
+clearness. She was powerless to change them; but that afternoon she had,
+at any rate, beaten her wings against the bars, and the exhaustion and
+anguish of her revolt, her reproaches, were still upon her.
+
+The spring night had fallen. The room was hot, and she threw a window
+open. Some thorns in the garden beneath had thickened into leaf. They
+rose in a dark mass beneath the window. Overhead, beyond the haze of the
+great city, a few stars twinkled, and the dim roar of London life beat
+from all sides upon this quiet corner which still held Lady Mary's
+old house.
+
+Julie's eyes strained into the darkness; her head swam with weakness and
+weariness. Suddenly she gave a cry--she pressed her hands to her heart.
+Upon the darkness outside there rose a face, so sharply drawn, so
+life-like, that it printed itself forever upon the quivering tissues of
+the brain. It was Warkworth's face, not as she had seen it last, but in
+some strange extremity of physical ill--drawn, haggard, in a cold
+sweat--the eyes glazed, the hair matted, the parched lips open as though
+they cried for help. She stood gazing. Then the eyes turned, and the
+agony in them looked out upon her.
+
+Her whole sense was absorbed by the phantom; her being hung upon it.
+Then, as it faded on the quiet trees, she tottered to a chair and hid
+her face. Common sense told her that she was the victim of her own tired
+nerves and tortured fancy. But the memory of Cousin Mary Leicester's
+second sight, of her "visions" in this very room, crept upon her and
+gripped her heart. A ghostly horror seized her of the room, the house,
+and her own tempestuous nature. She groped her way out, in blind and
+hurrying panic--glad of the lamp in the hall, glad of the sounds in the
+house, glad, above all, of Therese's thin hands as they once more stole
+lovingly round her own.
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+The Duchess and Julie were in the large room of Burlington House. They
+had paused before a magnificent Turner of the middle period, hitherto
+unseen by the public, and the Duchess was reading from the catalogue in
+Julie's ear.
+
+She had found Julie alone in Heribert Street, surrounded by books and
+proofs, endeavoring, as she reported, to finish a piece of work for Dr.
+Meredith. Distressed by her friend's pale cheeks, the Duchess had
+insisted on dragging her from the prison-house and changing the current
+of her thoughts. Julie, laughing, hesitating, indignant, had at last
+yielded--probably in order to avoid another _tete-a-tete_ and another
+scene with the little, impetuous lady, and now the Duchess had her safe
+and was endeavoring to amuse her.
+
+But it was not easy. Julie, generally so instructed and sympathetic, so
+well skilled in the difficult art of seeing pictures with a friend,
+might, to-day, never have turned a phrase upon a Constable or a Romney
+before. She tried, indeed, to turn them as usual; but the Duchess,
+sharply critical and attentive where her beloved Julie was concerned,
+perceived the difference acutely! Alack, what languor, what fatigue!
+Evelyn became more and more conscious of an inward consternation.
+
+"But, thank goodness, he goes to-morrow--the villain! And when that's
+over, it will be all right."
+
+Julie, meanwhile, knew that she was observed, divined, and pitied. Her
+pride revolted, but it could wring from her nothing better than a
+passive resistance. She could prevent Evelyn from expressing her
+thoughts; she could not so command her own bodily frame that the Duchess
+should not think. Days of moral and mental struggle, nights of waking,
+combined with the serious and sustained effort of a new profession, had
+left their mark. There are, moreover, certain wounds to self-love and
+self-respect which poison the whole being.
+
+"Julie! you _must_ have a holiday!" cried the Duchess, presently, as
+they sat down to rest.
+
+Julie replied that she, Madame Bornier, and the child were going to
+Bruges for a week.
+
+"Oh, but that won't be comfortable enough! I'm sure I could arrange
+something. Think of all our tiresome houses--eating their heads off!"
+
+Julie firmly refused. She was going to renew old friendships at Bruges;
+she would be made much of; and the prospect was as pleasant as any one
+need wish.
+
+"Well, of course, if you have made up your mind. When do you go?"
+
+"In three or four days--just before the Easter rush. And you?"
+
+"Oh, we go to Scotland to fish. We must, of course, be killing
+something. How long, darling, will you be away?"
+
+"About ten days." Julie pressed the Duchess's little hand in
+acknowledgment of the caressing word and look.
+
+"By-the-way, didn't Lord Lackington invite you? Ah, there he is!"
+
+And suddenly, Lord Lackington, examining with fury a picture of his own
+which some rascally critic had that morning pronounced to be "Venetian
+school" and not the divine Giorgione himself, lifted an angry
+countenance to find the Duchess and Julie beside him.
+
+The start which passed through him betrayed itself. He could not yet see
+Julie with composure. But when he had pressed her hand and inquired
+after her health, he went back to his grievance, being indeed rejoiced
+to have secured a pair of listeners.
+
+"Really, the insolence of these fellows in the press! I shall let the
+Academy know what I think of it. Not a rag of mine shall they ever see
+here again. Ears and little fingers, indeed! Idiots and owls!"
+
+Julie smiled. But it had to be explained to the Duchess that a wise man,
+half Italian, half German, had lately arisen who proposed to judge the
+authenticity of a picture by its ears, assisted by any peculiarities of
+treatment in the little fingers.
+
+"What nonsense!" said the Duchess, with a yawn. "If I were an artist, I
+should always draw them different ways."
+
+"Well, not exactly," said Lord Lackington, who, as an artist himself,
+was unfortunately debarred from statements of this simplicity. "But the
+_ludicrous_ way in which these fools overdo their little discoveries!"
+
+And he walked on, fuming, till the open and unmeasured admiration of the
+two ladies for his great Rembrandt, the gem of his collection, now
+occupying the place of honor in the large room of the Academy, restored
+him to himself.
+
+"Ah, even the biggest ass among them holds his tongue about that!" he
+said, exultantly. "But, hallo! What does that call itself?" He looked at
+a picture in front of him, then at the catalogue, then at the Duchess.
+
+"That picture is ours," said the Duchess. "Isn't it a dear? It's a
+Leonardo da Vinci."
+
+"Leonardo fiddlesticks!" cried Lord Lackington. "Leonardo, indeed! What
+absurdity! Really, Duchess, you should tell Crowborough to be more
+careful about his things. We mustn't give handles to these fellows."
+
+"What do you mean?" said the Duchess, offended. "If it isn't a Leonardo,
+pray what is it?"
+
+"Why, a bad school copy, of course!" said Lord Lackington, hotly. "Look
+at the eyes"--he took out a pencil and pointed--"look at the neck, look
+at the fingers!"
+
+The Duchess pouted.
+
+"Oh!" she said. "Then there is something in fingers!"
+
+Lord Lackington's face suddenly relaxed. He broke into a shout of
+laughter, _bon enfant_ that he was; and the Duchess laughed, too; but
+under cover of their merriment she, mindful of quite other things, drew
+him a little farther away from Julie.
+
+"I thought you had asked her to Nonpareil for Easter?" she said, in his
+ear, with a motion of her pretty head towards Julie in the distance.
+
+"Yes, but, my dear lady, Blanche won't come home! She and Aileen put it
+off, and put it off. Now she says they mean to spend May in
+Switzerland--may perhaps be away the whole summer! I had counted on
+them for Easter. I am dependent on Blanche for hostess. It is really too
+bad of her. Everything has broken down, and William and I (he named his
+youngest son) are going to the Uredales' for a fortnight."
+
+Lord Uredale, his eldest son, a sportsman and farmer, troubled by none
+of his father's originalities, reigned over the second family "place,"
+in Herefordshire, beside the Wye.
+
+"Has Aileen any love affairs yet?" said the Duchess, abruptly, raising
+her face to his.
+
+Lord Lackington looked surprised.
+
+"Not that I know of. However, I dare say they wouldn't tell me. I'm a
+sieve, I know. Have you heard of any? Tell me." He stooped to her with
+roguish eagerness. "I like to steal a march on Blanche."
+
+So he knew nothing--while half their world was talking! It was very
+characteristic, however. Except for his own hobbies, artistic, medical,
+or military, Lord Lackington had walked through life as a Johnny
+Head-in-Air, from his youth till now. His children had not trusted him
+with their secrets, and he had never discovered them for himself.
+
+"Is there any likeness between Julie and Aileen?" whispered the Duchess.
+
+Lord Lackington started. Both turned their eyes towards Julie, as she
+stood some ten yards away from them, in front of a refined and
+mysterious profile of the cinque-cento--some lady, perhaps, of the
+d'Este or Sforza families, attributed to Ambrogio da Predis. In her
+soft, black dress, delicately folded and draped to hide her excessive
+thinness, her small toque fitting closely over her wealth of hair, her
+only ornaments a long and slender chain set with uncut jewels which Lord
+Lackington had brought her the day before, and a bunch of violets which
+the Duchess had just slipped into her belt, she was as rare and delicate
+as the picture. But she turned her face towards them, and Lord
+Lackington made a sudden exclamation.
+
+"No! Good Heavens, no! Aileen was a dancing-sprite when I saw her last,
+and this poor girl!--Duchess, why does she look like that? So sad, so
+bloodless!"
+
+He turned upon her impetuously, his face frowning and disturbed.
+
+The Duchess sighed.
+
+"You and I have just got to do all we can for her," she said, relieved
+to see that Julie had wandered farther away, as though it pleased her to
+be left to herself.
+
+"But I would do anything--everything!" cried Lord Lackington. "Of
+course, none of us can undo the past. But I offered yesterday to make
+full provision for her. She has refused. She has the most Quixotic
+notions, poor child!"
+
+"No, let her earn her own living yet awhile. It will do her good.
+But--shall I tell you secrets?" The Duchess looked at him, knitting her
+small brows.
+
+"Tell me what I ought to know--no more," he said, gravely, with a
+dignity contrasting oddly with his school-boy curiosity in the matter of
+little Aileen's lover.
+
+The Duchess hesitated. Just in front of her was a picture of the
+Venetian school representing St. George, Princess Saba, and the dragon.
+The princess, a long and slender victim, with bowed head and fettered
+hands, reminded her of Julie. The dragon--perfidious, encroaching
+wretch!--he was easy enough of interpretation. But from the blue
+distance, thank Heaven! spurs the champion. Oh, ye heavenly powers, give
+him wings and strength! "St. George--St. George to the rescue!"
+
+"Well," she said, slowly, "I can tell you of some one who is very
+devoted to Julie--some one worthy of her. Come with me."
+
+And she took him away into the next room, still talking in his ear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they returned, Lord Lackington was radiant. With a new eagerness he
+looked for Julie's distant figure amid the groups scattered about the
+central room. The Duchess had sworn him to secrecy, indeed; and he meant
+to be discretion itself. But--Jacob Delafield! Yes, that, indeed, would
+be a solution. His pride was acutely pleased; his affection--of which he
+already began to feel no small store for this charming woman of his own
+blood, this poor granddaughter _de la main gauche_--was strengthened and
+stimulated. She was sad now and out of spirits, poor thing, because, no
+doubt, of this horrid business with Lady Henry, to whom, by-the-way, he
+had written his mind. But time would see to that--time--gently and
+discreetly assisted by himself and the Duchess. It was impossible that
+she should finally hold out against such a good fellow--impossible, and
+most unreasonable. No. Rose's daughter would be brought back safely to
+her mother's world and class, and poor Rose's tragedy would at last work
+itself out for good. How strange, romantic, and providential!
+
+In such a mood did he now devote himself to Julie. He chattered about
+the pictures; he gossiped about their owners; he excused himself for
+the absence of "that gad-about Blanche"; he made her promise him a
+Whitsuntide visit instead, and whispered in her ear, "You shall have
+_her_ room"; he paid her the most handsome and gallant attentions,
+natural to the man of fashion _par excellence_, mingled with something
+intimate, brusque, capricious, which marked her his own, and of the
+family. Seventy-five!--with that step, that carriage of the shoulders,
+that vivacity! Ridiculous!
+
+And Julie could not but respond.
+
+Something stole into her heart that had never yet lodged there. She must
+love the old man--she did. When he left her for the Duchess her eyes
+followed him--her dark-rimmed, wistful eyes.
+
+"I must be off," said Lord Lackington, presently, buttoning up his coat.
+"This, ladies, has been dalliance. I now go to my duties. Read me in the
+_Times_ to-morrow. I shall make a rattling speech. You see, I shall
+rub it in."
+
+"Montresor?" said the Duchess.
+
+Lord Lackington nodded. That afternoon he proposed to strew the floor of
+the House of Lords with the _debris_ of Montresor's farcical reforms.
+
+Suddenly he pulled himself up.
+
+"Duchess, look round you, at those two in the doorway. Isn't it--by
+George, it is!--Chudleigh and his boy!"
+
+"Yes--yes, it is," said the Duchess, in some excitement. "Don't
+recognize them. Don't speak to him. Jacob implored me not."
+
+And she hurried her companions along till they were well out of the
+track of the new-comers; then on the threshold of another room she
+paused, and, touching Julie on the arm, said, in a whisper:
+
+"Now look back. That's Jacob's Duke, and his poor, poor boy!"
+
+Julie threw a hurried glance towards the two figures; but that glance
+impressed forever upon her memory a most tragic sight.
+
+A man of middle height, sallow, and careworn, with jet-black hair and
+beard, supported a sickly lad, apparently about seventeen, who clung to
+his arm and coughed at intervals. The father moved as though in a dream.
+He looked at the pictures with unseeing, lustreless eyes, except when
+the boy asked him a question. Then he would smile, stoop his head and
+answer, only to resume again immediately his melancholy passivity. The
+boy, meanwhile, his lips gently parted over his white teeth, his blue
+eyes wide open and intent upon the pictures, his emaciated cheeks deeply
+flushed, wore an aspect of patient suffering, of docile dependence,
+peculiarly touching.
+
+It was evident the father and son thought of none but each other. From
+time to time the man would make the boy rest on one of the seats in the
+middle of the room, and the boy would look up and chatter to his
+companion standing before him. Then again they would resume their walk,
+the boy leaning on his father. Clearly the poor lad was marked for
+death; clearly, also, he was the desire of his father's heart.
+
+"The possessor, and the heir, of perhaps the finest houses and the most
+magnificent estates in England," said Lord Lackington, with a shrug of
+pity. "And Chudleigh would gladly give them all to keep that
+boy alive."
+
+Julie turned away. Strange thoughts had been passing and repassing
+through her brain.
+
+Then, with angry loathing, she flung her thoughts from her. What did the
+Chudleigh inheritance matter to her? That night she said good-bye to the
+man she loved. These three miserable, burning weeks were done. Her
+heart, her life, would go with Warkworth to Africa and the desert. If at
+the beginning of this period of passion--so short in prospect, and, to
+look back upon, an eternity--she had ever supposed that power or wealth
+could make her amends for the loss of her lover, she was in no mood to
+calculate such compensations to-day. Parting was too near, the anguish
+in her veins too sharp.
+
+"Jacob takes them to Paris to-morrow," said the Duchess to Lord
+Lackington. "The Duke has heard of some new doctor."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour or two later, Sir Wilfrid Bury, in the smoking-room of his club,
+took out a letter which he had that morning received from Lady Henry
+Delafield and gave it a second reading.
+
+     "So I hear that mademoiselle's social prospects are not,
+     after all, so triumphant as both she and I imagined. I gave
+     the world credit for more fools than it seems actually to
+     possess; and she--well, I own I am a little puzzled. Has she
+     taken leave of her senses? I am told that she is constantly
+     seen with this man; that in spite of all denials there can be
+     no doubt of his engagement to the Moffatt girl; and that _en
+     somme_ she has done herself no good by the whole affair. But,
+     after all, poor soul, she is disinterested. She stands to
+     gain nothing, as I understand; and she risks a good deal.
+     From this comfortable distance, I really find something
+     touching in her behavior.
+
+     "She gives her first 'Wednesday,' I understand, to-morrow.
+     'Mademoiselle Le Breton at home!' I confess I am curious. By
+     all means go, and send me a full report. Mr. Montresor and
+     his wife will certainly be there. He and I have been
+     corresponding, of course. He wishes to persuade me that he
+     feels himself in some way responsible for mademoiselle's
+     position, and for my dismissal of her; that I ought to allow
+     him in consequence full freedom of action. I cannot see
+     matters in the same light. But, as I tell him, the change
+     will be all to his advantage. He exchanges a fractious old
+     woman, always ready to tell him unpleasant truths, for one
+     who has made flattery her _metier_. If he wants quantity she
+     will give it him. Quality he can dispense with--as I have
+     seen for some time past.
+
+     "Lord Lackington has written me an impertinent letter. It
+     seems she has revealed herself, and _il s'en prend a moi_,
+     because I kept the secret from him, and because I have now
+     dared to dismiss his granddaughter. I am in the midst of a
+     reply which amuses me. He is to cast off his belongings as he
+     pleases; but when a lady of the Chantrey blood--no matter how
+     she came by it--condescends to enter a paid employment,
+     legitimate or illegitimate, she must be treated _en reine_,
+     or Lord L. will know the reason why. 'Here is one hundred
+     pounds a year, and let me hear no more of you,' he says to
+     her at sixteen. Thirteen years later I take her in, respect
+     his wishes, and keep the secret. She misbehaves herself, and
+     I dismiss her. Where is the grievance? He himself made her a
+     _lectrice_, and now complains that she is expected to do her
+     duty in that line of life. He himself banished her from the
+     family, and now grumbles that I did not at once foist her
+     upon him. He would like to escape the odium of his former
+     action by blaming me; but I am not meek, and I shall make him
+     regret his letter.
+
+     "As for Jacob Delafield, don't trouble yourself to write me
+     any further news of him. He has insulted me lately in a way I
+     shall not soon forgive--nothing to do, however, with the lady
+     who says she refused him. Whether her report be veracious or
+     no matters nothing to me, any more than his chances of
+     succeeding to the Captain's place. He is one of the ingenious
+     fools who despise the old ways of ruining themselves, and in
+     the end achieve it as well as the commoner sort. He owes me a
+     good deal, and at one time it pleased me to imagine that he
+     was capable both of affection and gratitude. That is the
+     worst of being a woman; we pass from one illusion to another;
+     love is only the beginning; there are a dozen to come after.
+
+     "You will scold me for a bitter tongue. Well, my dear
+     Wilfrid, I am not gay here. There are too many women, too
+     many church services, and I see too much of my doctor. I pine
+     for London, and I don't see why I should have been driven out
+     of it by an _intrigante_.
+
+     "Write to me, my dear Wilfrid. I am not quite so bad as I
+     paint myself; say to yourself she has arthritis, she is
+     sixty-five, and her new companion reads aloud with a twang;
+     then you will only wonder at my moderation."
+
+Sir Wilfrid returned the letter to his pocket. That day, at luncheon
+with Lady Hubert, he had had the curiosity to question Susan Delafield,
+Jacob's fair-haired sister, as to the reasons for her brother's quarrel
+with Lady Henry.
+
+It appeared that being now in receipt of what seemed to himself, at any
+rate, a large salary as his cousin's agent, he had thought it his duty
+to save up and repay the sums which Lady Henry had formerly spent upon
+his education.
+
+His letter enclosing the money had reached that lady during the first
+week of her stay at Torquay. It was, no doubt, couched in terms less
+cordial or more formal than would have been the case before Miss Le
+Breton's expulsion. "Not that he defends her altogether," said Susan
+Delafield, who was herself inclined to side with Lady Henry; "but as
+Lady Henry has refused to see him since, it was not much good being
+friendly, was it?"
+
+Anyway, the letter and its enclosure had completed a breach already
+begun. Lady Henry had taken furious offence; the check had been
+insultingly returned, and had now gone to swell the finances of a
+London hospital.
+
+Sir Wilfrid was just reflecting that Jacob's honesty had better have
+waited for a more propitious season, when, looking up, he saw the War
+Minister beside him, in the act of searching for a newspaper.
+
+"Released?" said Bury, with a smile.
+
+"Yes, thank Heaven. Lackington is, I believe, still pounding at me in
+the House of Lords. But that amuses him and doesn't hurt me."
+
+"You'll carry your resolutions?"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes, with no trouble at all," said the Minister, almost with
+sulkiness, as he threw himself into a chair and looked with distaste at
+the newspaper he had taken up.
+
+Sir Wilfrid surveyed him.
+
+"We meet to-night?" he said, presently.
+
+"You mean in Heribert Street? I suppose so," said Montresor, without
+cordiality.
+
+"I have just got a letter from her ladyship."
+
+"Well, I hope it is more agreeable than those she writes to me. A more
+unreasonable old woman--"
+
+The tired Minister took up _Punch_, looked at a page, and flung it down
+again. Then he said:
+
+"Are you going?"
+
+"I don't know. Lady Henry gives me leave, which makes me feel myself a
+kind of spy."
+
+"Oh, never mind. Come along. Mademoiselle Julie will want all our
+support. I don't hear her as kindly spoken of just now as I
+should wish."
+
+"No. Lady Henry has more personal hold than we thought."
+
+"And Mademoiselle Julie less tact. Why, in the name of goodness, does
+she go and get herself talked about with the particular man who is
+engaged to her little cousin? You know, by-the-way, that the story of
+her parentage is leaking out fast? Most people seem to know something
+about it."
+
+"Well, that was bound to come. Will it do her good or harm?"
+
+"Harm, for the present. A few people are straitlaced, and a good many
+feel they have been taken in. But, anyway, this flirtation is
+a mistake."
+
+"Nobody really knows whether the man is engaged to the Moffatt girl or
+no. The guardians have forbidden it."
+
+"At any rate, everybody is kind enough to say so. It's a blunder on
+Mademoiselle Julie's part. As to the man himself, of course, there is
+nothing to say. He is a very clever fellow." Montresor looked at his
+companion with a sudden stiffness, as though defying contradiction. "He
+will do this piece of work that we have given him to do extremely well."
+
+"The Mokembe mission?"
+
+Montresor nodded.
+
+"He had very considerable claims, and was appointed entirely on his
+military record. All the tales as to Mademoiselle's influence--with me,
+for instance--that Lady Henry has been putting into circulation are
+either absurd fiction or have only the very smallest foundation
+in fact."
+
+Sir Wilfrid smiled amicably and diverted the conversation.
+
+"Warkworth starts at once?"
+
+"He goes to Paris to-morrow. I recommended him to see Pattison, the
+Military Secretary there, who was in the expedition of five years back."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"This hasn't gone as well as it ought," said Dr. Meredith, in the ear of
+the Duchess.
+
+They were standing inside the door of Julie's little drawing-room. The
+Duchess, in a dazzling frock of white and silver, which placed Clarisse
+among the divinities of her craft, looked round her with a look
+of worry.
+
+"What's the matter with the tiresome creatures? Why is everybody going
+so early? And there are not half the people here who ought to be here."
+
+Meredith shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I saw you at Chatton House the other night," he said, in the same tone.
+
+"Well?" said the Duchess, sharply.
+
+"It seemed to me there was something of a demonstration."
+
+"Against Julie? Let them try it!" said the little lady, with evasive
+defiance. "We shall be too strong for them."
+
+"Lady Henry is putting her back into it. I confess I never thought she
+would be either so venomous or so successful."
+
+"Julie will come out all right."
+
+"She would--triumphantly--if--"
+
+The Duchess glanced at him uneasily.
+
+"I believe you are overworking her. She looks skin and bone."
+
+Dr. Meredith shook his head.
+
+"On the contrary, I have been holding her back. But it seems she wants
+to earn a good deal of money."
+
+"That's so absurd," cried the Duchess, "when there are people only
+pining to give her some of theirs."
+
+"No, no," said the journalist, brusquely. "She is quite right there. Oh,
+it would be all right if she were herself. She would make short work of
+Lady Henry. But, Mademoiselle Julie"--for she glided past them, and he
+raised his voice--"sit down and rest yourself. Don't take so
+much trouble."
+
+She flung them a smile.
+
+"Lord Lackington is going," and she hurried on.
+
+Lord Lackington was standing in a group which contained Sir Wilfrid Bury
+and Mr. Montresor.
+
+"Well, good-bye, good-bye," he said, as she came up to him. "I must go.
+I'm nearly asleep."
+
+"Tired with abusing me?" said Montresor, nonchalantly, turning round
+upon him.
+
+"No, only with trying to make head or tail of you," said Lackington,
+gayly. Then he stooped over Julie.
+
+"Take care of yourself. Come back rosier--and _fatter_."
+
+"I'm perfectly well. Let me come with you."
+
+"No, don't trouble yourself." For she had followed him into the hall
+and found his coat for him. All the arrangements for her little
+"evening" had been of the simplest. That had been a point of pride with
+her. Madame Bornier and Therese dispensing tea and coffee in the
+dining-room, one hired parlor-maid, and she herself active and busy
+everywhere. Certain French models were in her head, and memories of her
+mother's bare little salon in Bruges, with its good talk, and its
+thinnest of thin refreshments--a few cups of weak tea, or glasses of
+_eau sucree_, with a plate of _patisserie_.
+
+The hired parlor-maid was whistling for a cab in the service of some
+other departing guest; so Julie herself put Lord Lackington into his
+coat, much to his discomfort.
+
+"I don't think you ought to have come," she said to him, with soft
+reproach. "Why did you have that fainting fit before dinner?"
+
+"I say! Who's been telling tales?"
+
+"Sir Wilfrid Bury met your son, Mr. Chantrey, at dinner."
+
+"Bill can never hold his tongue. Oh, it was nothing; not with the proper
+treatment, mind you. Of course, if the allopaths were to get their
+knives into me--but, thank God! I'm out of that _galere_. Well, in a
+fortnight, isn't it? We shall both be in town again. I don't like saying
+good-bye."
+
+And he took both her hands in his.
+
+"It all seems so strange to me still--so strange!" he murmured.
+
+"Next week I shall see mamma's grave," said Julie, under her breath.
+"Shall I put some flowers there for you?"
+
+The fine blue eyes above her wavered. He bent to her.
+
+"Yes. And write to me. Come back soon. Oh, you'll see. Things will all
+come right, perfectly right, in spite of Lady Henry."
+
+Confidence, encouragement, a charming raillery, an enthusiastic
+tenderness--all these beamed upon her from the old man's tone and
+gesture. She was puzzled. But with another pressure of the hand he was
+gone. She stood looking after him. And as the carriage drove away, the
+sound of the wheels hurt her. It was the withdrawal of something
+protecting--something more her own, when all was said, than anything
+else which remained to her.
+
+As she returned to the drawing-room, Dr. Meredith intercepted her.
+
+"You want me to send you some work to take abroad?" he said, in a low
+voice. "I shall do nothing of the kind."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you ought to have a complete holiday."
+
+"Very well. Then I sha'n't be able to pay my way," she said, with a
+tired smile.
+
+"Remember the doctor's bills if you fall ill."
+
+"Ill! I am never ill," she said, with scorn. Then she looked round the
+room deliberately, and her gaze returned to her companion. "I am not
+likely to be fatigued with society, am I?" she added, in a voice that
+did not attempt to disguise the bitterness within.
+
+"My dear lady, you are hardly installed."
+
+"I have been here a month--the critical month. Now was the moment to
+stand by me, or throw me over--n'est-ce pas? This is my first party, my
+house-warming. I gave a fortnight's notice; I asked about sixty people,
+whom I knew _well_. Some did not answer at all. Of the rest, half
+declined--rather curtly, in many instances. And of those who accepted,
+not all are here. And, oh, how it dragged!"
+
+Meredith looked at her rather guiltily, not knowing what to say. It was
+true the evening had dragged. In both their minds there rose the memory
+of Lady Henry's "Wednesdays," the beautiful rooms, the varied and
+brilliant company, the power and consideration which had attended Lady
+Henry's companion.
+
+"I suppose," said Julie, shrugging her shoulders, "I had been thinking
+of the French _maitresses de salon_, like a fool; of Mademoiselle de
+l'Espinasse--or Madame Mohl--imagining that people would come to _me_
+for a cup of tea and an agreeable hour. But in England, it seems, people
+must be paid to talk. Talk is a business affair--you give it for a
+consideration."
+
+"No, no! You'll build it up," said Meredith. In his heart of hearts he
+said to himself that she had not been herself that night. Her wonderful
+social instincts, her memory, her adroitness, had somehow failed her.
+And from a hostess strained, conscious, and only artificially gay, the
+little gathering had taken its note.
+
+"You have the old guard, anyway," added the journalist, with a smile, as
+he looked round the room. The Duchess, Delafield, Montresor and his
+wife, General McGill, and three or four other old _habitues_ of the
+Bruton Street evenings were scattered about the little drawing-room.
+General Fergus, too, was there--had arrived early, and was staying late.
+His frank soldier's face, the accent, cheerful, homely, careless, with
+which he threw off talk full of marrow, talk only possible--for all its
+simplicity--to a man whose life had been already closely mingled with
+the fortunes of his country, had done something to bind Julie's poor
+little party together. Her eye rested on him with gratitude. Then she
+replied to Meredith.
+
+"Mr. Montresor will scarcely come again."
+
+"What do you mean? Ungrateful lady! Montresor! who has already
+sacrificed Lady Henry and the habits of thirty years to your
+_beaux yeux_!"
+
+"That is what he will never forgive me," said Julie, sadly. "He has
+satisfied his pride, and I--have lost a friend."
+
+"Pessimist! Mrs. Montresor seemed to me most friendly."
+
+Julie laughed.
+
+"_She_, of course, is enchanted. Her husband has never been her own till
+now. She married him, subject to Lady Henry's rights. But all that she
+will soon forget--and my existence with it."
+
+"I won't argue. It only makes you more stubborn," said Meredith. "Ah,
+still they come!"
+
+For the door opened to admit the tall figure of Major Warkworth.
+
+"Am I very late?" he said, with a surprised look as he glanced at the
+thinly scattered room. Julie greeted him, and he excused himself on the
+ground of a dinner which had begun just an hour late, owing to the
+tardiness of a cabinet minister.
+
+Meredith observed the young man with some attention, from the dark
+corner in which Julie had left him. The gossip of the moment had
+reached him also, but he had not paid much heed to it. It seemed to him
+that no one knew anything first-hand of the Moffatt affair. And for
+himself, he found it difficult to believe that Julie Le Breton was any
+man's dupe.
+
+She must marry, poor thing! Of course she must marry. Since it had been
+plain to him that she would never listen to his own suit, this
+great-hearted and clear-brained man had done his best to stifle in
+himself all small or grasping impulses. But this fellow--with his
+inferior temper and morale--alack! why are the clever women such fools?
+
+If only she had confided in him--her old and tried friend--he thought he
+could have put things before her, so as to influence without offending
+her. But he suffered--had always suffered--from the jealous reserve
+which underlay her charm, her inborn tendency to secretiveness
+and intrigue.
+
+Now, as he watched her few words with Warkworth, it seemed to him that
+he saw the signs of some hidden relation. How flushed she was suddenly,
+and her eyes so bright!
+
+He was not allowed much time or scope, however, for observation.
+Warkworth took a turn round the room, chatted a little with this person
+and that, then, on the plea that he was off to Paris early on the
+following morning, approached his hostess again to take his leave.
+
+"Ah, yes, you start to-morrow," said Montresor, rising. "Well, good luck
+to you--good luck to you."
+
+General Fergus, too, advanced. The whole room, indeed, awoke to the
+situation, and all the remaining guests grouped themselves round the
+young soldier. Even the Duchess was thawed a little by this actual
+moment of departure. After all, the man was going on his
+country's service.
+
+"No child's play, this mission, I can assure you," General McGill had
+said to her. "Warkworth will want all the powers he has--of mind
+or body."
+
+The slim, young fellow, so boyishly elegant in his well-cut
+evening-dress, received the ovation offered to him with an evident
+pleasure which tried to hide itself in the usual English ways. He had
+been very pale when he came in. But his cheek reddened as Montresor
+grasped him by the hand, as the two generals bade him a cordial
+godspeed, as Sir Wilfrid gave him a jesting message for the British
+representative in Egypt, and as the ladies present accorded him those
+flattering and admiring looks that woman keeps for valor.
+
+Julie counted for little in these farewells. She stood _apart_ and
+rather silent. "_They_ have had their good-bye," thought the Duchess,
+with a thrill she could not help.
+
+"Three days in Paris?" said Sir Wilfrid. "A fortnight to Denga--and then
+how long before you start for the interior?"
+
+"Oh, three weeks for collecting porters and supplies. They're drilling
+the escort already. We should be off by the middle of May."
+
+"A bad month," said General Fergus, shrugging his shoulders.
+
+"Unfortunately, affairs won't wait. But I am already stiff with
+quinine," laughed Warkworth--"or I shall be by the time I get to Denga.
+Good-bye--good-bye."
+
+And in another moment he was gone. Miss Le Breton had given him her
+hand and wished him "Bon voyage," like everybody else.
+
+The party broke up. The Duchess kissed her Julie with peculiar
+tenderness; Delafield pressed her hand, and his deep, kind eyes gave her
+a lingering look, of which, however, she was quite unconscious; Meredith
+renewed his half-irritable, half-affectionate counsels of rest and
+recreation; Mrs. Montresor was conventionally effusive; Montresor alone
+bade the mistress of the house a somewhat cold and perfunctory farewell.
+Even Sir Wilfrid was a little touched, he knew not why; he vowed to
+himself that his report to Lady Henry on the morrow should contain no
+food for malice, and inwardly he forgave Mademoiselle Julie the old
+romancings.
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+It was twenty minutes since the last carriage had driven away. Julie was
+still waiting in the little hall, pacing its squares of black-and-white
+marble, slowly, backward and forward.
+
+There was a low knock on the door.
+
+She opened it. Warkworth appeared on the threshold, and the high moon
+behind him threw a bright ray into the dim hall, where all but one faint
+light had been extinguished. She pointed to the drawing-room.
+
+"I will come directly. Let me just go and ask Leonie to sit up."
+
+Warkworth went into the drawing-room. Julie opened the dining-room door.
+Madame Bornier was engaged in washing and putting away the china and
+glass which had been used for Julie's modest refreshments.
+
+"Leonie, you won't go to bed? Major Warkworth is here."
+
+Madame Bornier did not raise her head.
+
+"How long will he be?"
+
+"Perhaps half an hour."
+
+"It is already past midnight."
+
+"Leonie, he goes to-morrow."
+
+"Tres bien. Mais--sais-tu, ma chere, ce n'est pas convenable, ce que tu
+fais la!"
+
+And the older woman, straightening herself, looked her foster-sister
+full in the face. A kind of watch-dog anxiety, a sulky, protesting
+affection breathed from her rugged features.
+
+Julie went up to her, not angrily, but rather with a pleading humility.
+
+The two women held a rapid colloquy in low tones--Madame Bornier
+remonstrating, Julie softly getting her way.
+
+Then Madame Bornier returned to her work, and Julie went to the
+drawing-room.
+
+Warkworth sprang up as she entered. Both paused and wavered. Then he
+went up to her, and roughly, irresistibly, drew her into his arms. She
+held back a moment, but finally yielded, and clasping her hands round
+his neck she buried her face on his breast.
+
+They stood so for some minutes, absolutely silent, save for her hurried
+breathing, his head bowed upon hers.
+
+"Julie, how can we say good-bye?" he whispered, at last.
+
+She disengaged herself, and, seeing his face, she tried for composure.
+
+"Come and sit down."
+
+She led him to the window, which he had thrown open as he entered the
+room, and they sat beside it, hand in hand. A mild April night shone
+outside. Gusts of moist air floated in upon them. There were dim lights
+and shadows in the garden and on the shuttered facade of the
+great house.
+
+"Is it forever?" said Julie, in a low, stifled voice.
+"Good-bye--forever?"
+
+She felt his hand tremble, but she did not look at him. She seemed to
+be reciting words long since spoken in the mind.
+
+"You will be away--perhaps a year? Then you go back to India, and
+then--"
+
+She paused.
+
+Warkworth was physically conscious, as it were, of a letter he carried
+in his coat-pocket--a letter from Lady Blanche Moffatt which had reached
+him that morning, the letter of a _grande dame_, reduced to undignified
+remonstrance by sheer maternal terror--terror for the health and life of
+a child as fragile and ethereal as a wild rose in May. Reports had
+reached her; but no--they could not be true! She bade him be thankful
+that not a breath of suspicion had yet touched Aileen. As for herself,
+let him write and reassure her at once. Otherwise--
+
+And the latter part of the letter conveyed a veiled menace that
+Warkworth perfectly understood.
+
+No--in that direction, no escape; his own past actions closed him in.
+And henceforth, it was clear, he must walk more warily.
+
+But how blame himself for these feelings of which he was now conscious
+towards Julie Le Breton--the strongest, probably, that a man not built
+for passion would ever know. His relation towards her had grown upon him
+unawares, and now their own hands were about to cut it at the root. What
+blame to either of them? Fate had been at work; and he felt himself
+glorified by a situation so tragically sincere, and by emotions of which
+a month before he would have secretly held himself incapable.
+
+Resolutely, in this last meeting with Julie, he gave these emotions
+play. He possessed himself of her cold hands as she put her desolate
+question--"And then?"--and kissed them fervently.
+
+"Julie, if you and I had met a year ago, what happened in India would
+never have happened. You know that!"
+
+"Do I? But it only hurts me to _think it away_ like that. There it
+is--it has happened."
+
+She turned upon him suddenly.
+
+"Have you any picture of her?"
+
+He hesitated.
+
+"Yes," he said, at last.
+
+"Have you got it here?"
+
+"Why do you ask, dear one? This one evening is _ours_."
+
+And again he tried to draw her to him. But she persisted.
+
+"I feel sure you have it. Show it me."
+
+"Julie, you and you only are in my thoughts!"
+
+"Then do what I ask." She bent to him with a wild, entreating air; her
+lips almost touched his cheek. Unwillingly he drew out a letter-case
+from his breast-pocket, and took from it a little photograph which he
+handed to her.
+
+She looked at it with eager eyes. A face framed, as it were, out of snow
+and fire lay in her hand, a thing most delicate, most frail, yet steeped
+in feeling and significance--a child's face with its soft curls of brown
+hair, and the upper lip raised above the white, small teeth, as though
+in a young wonder; yet behind its sweetness, what suggestions of a
+poetic or tragic sensibility! The slender neck carried the little head
+with girlish dignity; the clear, timid eyes seemed at once to shrink
+from and trust the spectator.
+
+Julie returned the little picture, and hid her face with her hands.
+Warkworth watched her uncomfortably, and at last drew her hands away.
+
+"What are you thinking of?" he said, almost with violence. "Don't shut
+me out!"
+
+"I am not jealous now," she said, looking at him piteously. "I don't
+hate her. And if she knew all--she couldn't--hate me."
+
+"No one could hate her. She is an angel. But she is not my Julie!" he
+said, vehemently, and he thrust the little picture into his
+pocket again.
+
+"Tell me," she said, after a pause, laying her hand on his knee, "when
+did you begin to think of me--differently? All the winter, when we used
+to meet, you never--you never loved me then?"
+
+"How, placed as I was, could I let myself think of love? I only knew
+that I wanted to see you, to talk to you, to write to you--that the day
+when we did not meet was a lost day. Don't be so proud!" He tried to
+laugh at her. "You didn't think of me in any special way, either. You
+were much too busy making bishops, or judges, or academicians. Oh,
+Julie, I was so afraid of you in those early days!"
+
+"The first night we met," she said, passionately, "I found a carnation
+you had worn in your button-hole. I put it under my pillow, and felt for
+it in the dark like a talisman. You had stood between me and Lady Henry
+twice. You had smiled at me and pressed my hand--not as others did, but
+as though you understood _me_, myself--as though, at least, you wished
+to understand. Then came the joy of joys, that I could help you--that I
+could do something for you. Ah, how it altered life for me! I never
+turned the corner of a street that I did not count on the chance of
+seeing you beyond--suddenly--on my path. I never heard your voice that
+it did not thrill me from head to foot. I never made a new friend or
+acquaintance that I did not ask myself first how I could thereby serve
+you. I never saw you come into the room that my heart did not leap. I
+never slept but you were in my dreams. I loathed London when you were
+out of it. It was paradise when you were there."
+
+Straining back from him as he still held her hands, her whole face and
+form shook with the energy of her confession. Her wonderful hair,
+loosened from the thin gold bands in which it had been confined during
+the evening, fell in a glossy confusion about her brow and slender neck;
+its black masses, the melting brilliance of the eyes, the tragic freedom
+of the attitude gave both to form and face a wild and poignant beauty.
+
+Warkworth, beside her, was conscious first of amazement, then of a kind
+of repulsion--a kind of fear--till all else was lost in a hurry of joy
+and gratitude.
+
+The tears stood on his cheek. "Julie, you shame me--you trample me into
+the earth!"
+
+He tried to gather her in his arms, but she resisted, Caresses were not
+what those eyes demanded--eyes feverishly bright with the memory of her
+own past dreams, Presently, indeed, she withdrew herself from him. She
+rose and closed the window; she put the lamp in another place; she
+brought her rebellious hair into order.
+
+"We must not be so mad," she said, with a quivering smile, as she again
+seated herself, but at some distance from him. "You see, for me the
+great question is "--her voice became low and rapid--"What am I going to
+do with the future? For you it is all plain. We part to-night. You have
+your career, your marriage. I withdraw from your life--absolutely.
+But for me--"
+
+She paused. It was the manner of one trying to see her way in the dark.
+
+"Your social gifts," said Warkworth, in agitation, "your friends,
+Julie--these will occupy your mind. Then, of course, you will, you must
+marry! Oh, you'll soon forget me, Julie! I pray you may!"
+
+"My social gifts?" she repeated, disregarding the rest of his speech. "I
+have told you already they have broken down. Society sides with Lady
+Henry. I am to be made to know my place--I do know it!"
+
+"The Duchess will fight for you."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"The Duke won't let her--nor shall I."
+
+"You'll marry," he repeated, with emotion. "You'll find some one worthy
+of you--some one who will give you the great position for which you
+were born."
+
+"I could have it at any moment," she said, looking him quietly in the
+eyes.
+
+Warkworth drew back, conscious of a disagreeable shock. He had been
+talking in generalities, giving away the future with that fluent
+prodigality, that easy prophecy which costs so little. What did
+she mean?
+
+"_Delafield?"_ he cried.
+
+And he waited for her reply--which lingered--in a tense and growing
+eagerness. The notion had crossed his mind once or twice during the
+winter, only to be dismissed as ridiculous. Then, on the occasion of
+their first quarrel, when Julie had snubbed him in Delafield's presence
+and to Delafield's advantage, he had been conscious of a momentary
+alarm. But Julie, who on that one and only occasion had paraded her
+intimacy with Delafield, thenceforward said not a word of him, and
+Warkworth's jealousy had died for lack of fuel. In relation to Julie,
+Delafield had been surely the mere shadow and agent of his little cousin
+the Duchess--a friendly, knight-errant sort of person, with a liking for
+the distressed. What! the heir-presumptive of Chudleigh Abbey, and one
+of the most famous of English dukedoms, when even he, the struggling,
+penurious officer, would never have dreamed of such a match?
+
+Julie, meanwhile, heard only jealousy in his exclamation, and it
+caressed her ear, her heart. She was tempted once more, woman-like, to
+dwell upon the other lover, and again something compelling and delicate
+in her feeling towards Delafield forbade.
+
+"No, you mustn't make me tell you any more," she said, putting the name
+aside with a proud gesture. "It would be poor and mean. But it's true. I
+have only to put out my hand for what you call 'a great position,' I
+have refused to put it out. Sometimes, of course, it has dazzled me.
+To-night it seems to me--dust and ashes. No; when we two have said
+good-bye, I shall begin life again. And this time I shall live it in my
+own way, for my own ends. I'm very tired. Henceforth 'I'll walk where my
+own nature would be leading--it vexes me to choose another guide.'"
+
+And as she spoke the words of one of the chainless souls of history, in
+a voice passionately full and rich, she sprang to her feet, and, drawing
+her slender form to its full height, she locked her hands behind her,
+and began to pace the room with a wild, free step.
+
+Every nerve in Warkworth's frame was tingling. He was carried out of
+himself, first by the rebellion of her look and manner, then by this
+fact, so new, so astounding, which her very evasion had confirmed.
+During her whole contest with Lady Henry, and now, in her present
+ambiguous position, she had Delafield, and through Delafield the English
+great world, in the hollow of her hand? This nameless woman--no longer
+in her first youth. And she had refused? He watched her in a speechless
+wonder and incredulity.
+
+The thought leaped. "And this sublime folly--this madness--was for
+_me_?"
+
+It stirred and intoxicated him. Yet she was not thereby raised in his
+eyes. Nay, the contrary. With the passion which was rapidly mounting in
+his veins there mingled--poor Julie!--a curious diminution of respect.
+
+"Julie!" He held out his hand to her peremptorily. "Come to me again.
+You are so wonderful to-night, in that white dress--like a wild muse. I
+shall always see you so. Come!"
+
+She obeyed, and gave him her hands, standing beside his chair. But her
+face was still absorbed.
+
+"To be free," she said, under her breath--"free, like my parents, from
+all these petty struggles and conventions!"
+
+Then she felt his kisses on her hands, and her expression changed.
+
+"How we cheat ourselves with words!" she whispered, trembling, and,
+withdrawing one hand, she smoothed back the light-brown curls from his
+brow with that protecting tenderness which had always entered into her
+love for him. "To-night we are here--together--this one last night! And
+to-morrow, at this time, you'll be in Paris; perhaps you'll be looking
+out at the lights--and the crowds on the Boulevard--and the
+chestnut-trees. They'll just be in their first leaf--I know so
+well!--and the little thin leaves will be shining so green under the
+lamps--and I shall be here--and it will be all over and done
+with--forever. What will it matter whether I am free or not free? I
+shall be _alone_! That's all a woman knows."
+
+Her voice died away. Warkworth rose. He put his arms round her, and she
+did not resist.
+
+"Julie," he said in her ear, "why should you be alone?"
+
+A silence fell between them.
+
+"I--I don't understand," she said, at last.
+
+"Julie, listen! I shall be three days in Paris, but my business can be
+perfectly done in one. What if you met me there after to-morrow? What
+harm would it be? We are not babes, we two. We understand life. And who
+would have any right to blame or to meddle? Julie, I know a little inn
+in the valley of the Bievre, quite near Paris, but all wood and field.
+No English tourists ever go there. Sometimes an artist or two--but this
+is not the time of year. Julie, why shouldn't we spend our last two days
+there--together--away from all the world, before we say good-bye? You've
+been afraid here of prying people--of the Duchess even--of Madame
+Bornier--how she scowls at me sometimes! Why shouldn't we sweep all that
+away--and be happy! Nobody should ever--nobody _could_ ever know." His
+voice dropped, became still more hurried and soft. "We might go as
+brother and sister--that would be quite simple. You are practically
+French. I speak French well. Who is to have an idea, a suspicion of our
+identity? The spring there is mild and warm. The Bois de Verrieres close
+by is full of flowers. When my father was alive, and I was a child, we
+went once, to economize, for a year, to a village a mile or two away.
+But I knew this place quite well. A lovely, green, quiet spot! With your
+poetical ideas, Julie, you would delight in it. Two days--wandering in
+the woods--together! Then I put you into the train for Brussels, and I
+go my way. But to all eternity, Julie, those days will have been ours!"
+
+At the first words, almost, Julie had disengaged herself. Pushing him
+from her with both hands, she listened to him in a dumb amazement. The
+color first deserted her face, then returned in a flood.
+
+"So you despise me?" she said, catching her breath.
+
+"No. I adore you."
+
+She fell upon a chair and hid her eyes. He first knelt beside her,
+arguing and soothing; then he paced up and down before her, talking very
+fast and low, defending and developing the scheme, till it stood before
+them complete and tempting in all its details.
+
+Julie did not look up, nor did she speak. At last, Warkworth, full of
+tears, and stifled with his own emotions, threw open the window again in
+a craving for air and coolness. A scent of fresh leaves and moistened
+earth floated up from the shrubbery beneath the window. The scent, the
+branching trees, the wide, mild spaces of air brought relief. He leaned
+out, bathing his brow in the night. A tumult of voices seemed to be
+echoing through his mind, dominated by one which held the rest
+defiantly in check.
+
+"Is she a mere girl, to be 'led astray'? A moment of happiness--what
+harm?--for either of us?"
+
+Then he returned to Julie.
+
+"Julie!" He touched her shoulder, trembling. Had she banished him
+forever? It seemed to him that in these minutes he had passed through an
+infinity of experience. Was he not the nobler, the more truly man? Let
+the moralists talk.
+
+"Julie!" he repeated, in an anguish.
+
+She raised her head, and he saw that she had been crying. But there was
+in her face a light, a wildness, a yearning that reassured him. She put
+her arm round him and pressed her cheek to his. He divined that she,
+too, had lived and felt a thousand hours in one. With a glow of ecstatic
+joy he began to talk to her again, her head resting on his shoulder, her
+slender hands crushed in his.
+
+And Julie, meanwhile, was saying to herself, "Either I go to him, as he
+asks, or in a few minutes I must send him away--forever."
+
+And then as she clung to him, so warm and near, her strength failed her.
+Nothing in the world mattered to her at that moment but this handsome,
+curly head bowed upon her own, this voice that called her all the names
+of love, this transformation of the man's earlier prudence, or ambition,
+or duplicity, into this eager tenderness, this anguish in separation....
+
+"Listen, dear!" He whispered to her. "All my business can be got through
+the day before you come. I have two men to see. A day will be ample. I
+dine at the Embassy to-morrow night--that is arranged; the day after I
+lunch with the Military Secretary; then--a thousand regrets, but I must
+hurry on to meet some friends in Italy. So I turn my back on Paris, and
+for two days I belong to Julie--and she to me. Say yes,
+Julie--my Julie!"
+
+He bent over her, his hands framing her face.
+
+"Say yes," he urged, "and put off for both of us that word--_alone_!"
+
+His low voice sank into her heart. He waited, till his strained sense
+caught the murmured words which conveyed to him the madness and the
+astonishment of victory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Leonie had shut up the house, in a grim silence, and had taken her way
+up-stairs to bed.
+
+Julie, too, was in her room. She sat on the edge of her bed, her head
+drooped, her hands clasped before her absently, like Hope still
+listening for the last sounds of the harp of life. The candle beside her
+showed her, in the big mirror opposite, her grace, the white confusion
+of her dress.
+
+She had expected reaction, but it did not come. She was still borne on a
+warm tide of will and energy. All that she was about to do seemed to her
+still perfectly natural and right. Petty scruples, conventional
+hesitations, the refusal of life's great moments--these are what are
+wrong, these are what disgrace!
+
+Romance beckoned to her, and many a secret tendency towards the lawless
+paths of conduct, infused into her by the associations and affections of
+her childhood. The _horror naturalis_ which protects the great majority
+of women from the wilder ways of passion was in her weakened or dormant.
+She was the illegitimate child of a mother who had defied law for love,
+and of that fact she had been conscious all her life.
+
+A sharp contempt, indeed, arose within her for the interpretation that
+the common mind would be sure to place upon her action.
+
+"What matter! I am my own mistress--responsible to no one. I choose for
+myself--I dare for myself!"
+
+And when at last she rose, first loosening and then twisting the black
+masses of her hair, it seemed to her that the form in the glass was that
+of another woman, treading another earth. She trampled cowardice under
+foot; she freed herself from--"was uns alle baendigt, das Gemeine!"
+
+Then as she stood before the oval mirror in a classical frame, which
+adorned the mantel-piece of what had once been Lady Mary Leicester's
+room, her eye was vaguely caught by the little family pictures and texts
+which hung on either side of it. Lady Mary and her sister as children,
+their plain faces emerging timidly from their white, high-waisted
+frocks; Lady 'Mary's mother, an old lady in a white coif and kerchief,
+wearing a look austerely kind; on the other side a clergyman, perhaps
+the brother of the old lady, with a similar type of face, though
+gentler--a face nourished on the _Christian Year_; and above and below
+them two or three card-board texts, carefully illuminated by Lady Mary
+Leicester herself:
+
+"Thou, Lord, knowest my down-sitting and my uprising."
+
+"Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."
+
+"Fear not, little flock. It is your Father's good pleasure to give you
+the kingdom."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Julie observed these fragments, absently at first, then with repulsion.
+This Anglican pietism, so well fed, so narrowly sheltered, which
+measured the universe with its foot-rule, seemed to her quasi-Catholic
+eye merely fatuous and hypocritical. It is not by such forces, she
+thought, that the true world of men and women is governed.
+
+As she turned away she noticed two little Catholic pictures, such as she
+had been accustomed in her convent days to carry in her books of
+devotion, carefully propped up beneath the texts.
+
+"Ah, Therese!" she said to herself, with a sudden feeling of pain. "Is
+the child asleep?"
+
+She listened. A little cough sounded from the neighboring room. Julie
+crossed the landing.
+
+"Therese! tu ne dors pas encore?"
+
+A voice said, softly, in the darkness, "Je t'attendais, mademoiselle."
+
+Julie went to the child's bed, put down her candle, and stooped to kiss
+her.
+
+The child's thin hand caressed her cheek.
+
+"Ah, it will be good--to be in Bruges--with mademoiselle."
+
+Julie drew herself away.
+
+"I sha'n't be there to-morrow, dear."
+
+"Not there! Oh, mademoiselle!"
+
+The child's voice was pitiful.
+
+"I shall join you there. But I find I must go to Paris first. I--I have
+some business there."
+
+"But maman said--"
+
+"Yes, I have only just made up my mind. I shall tell maman to-morrow
+morning,"
+
+"You go alone, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Why not, dear goose?"
+
+"Vous etes fatiguee. I would like to come with you, and carry your cloak
+and the umbrellas."
+
+"You, indeed!" said Julie. "It would end, wouldn't it, in my carrying
+you--besides the cloak and the umbrellas?"
+
+Then she knelt down beside the child and took her in her arms.
+
+"Do you love me, Therese?"
+
+The child drew a long breath. With her little, twisted hands she stroked
+the beautiful hair so close to her.
+
+"Do you, Therese?"
+
+A kiss fell on Julie's cheek.
+
+"Ce soir, j'ai beaucoup prie la Sainte Vierge pour vous!" she said, in a
+timid and hurried whisper.
+
+Julie made no immediate reply. She rose from her knees, her hand still
+clasped in that of the crippled girl.
+
+"Did you put those pictures on my mantel-piece, Therese?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why?"
+
+The child hesitated.
+
+"It does one good to look at them--n'est-ce pas?--when one is sad?"
+
+"Why do you suppose I am sad?"
+
+Therese was silent a moment; then she flung her little skeleton arms
+round Julie, and Julie felt her crying.
+
+"Well, I won't be sad any more," said Julie, comforting her. "When we're
+all in Bruges together, you'll see."
+
+And smiling at the child, she tucked her into her white bed and left
+her.
+
+Then from this exquisite and innocent affection she passed back into the
+tumult of her own thoughts and plans. Through the restless night her
+parents were often in her mind. She was the child of revolt, and as she
+thought of the meeting before her she seemed to be but entering upon a
+heritage inevitable from the beginning. A sense of enfranchisement, of
+passionate enlargement, upheld her, as of a life coming to its fruit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Creil!"
+
+A flashing vision of a station and its lights, and the Paris train
+rushed on through cold showers of sleet and driving wind, a return of
+winter in the heart of spring.
+
+On they sped through the half-hour which still divided them from the
+Gare du Nord. Julie, in her thick veil, sat motionless in her corner.
+She was not conscious of any particular agitation. Her mind was strained
+not to forget any of Warkworth's directions. She was to drive across
+immediately to the Gare de Sceaux, in the Place Denfert-Rochereau, where
+he would meet her. They were to dine at an obscure inn near the station,
+and go down by the last train to the little town in the wooded valley of
+the Bievre, where they were to stay.
+
+She had her luggage with her in the carriage. There would be no
+custom-house delays.
+
+Ah, the lights of Paris beginning! She peered into the rain, conscious
+of a sort of home-coming joy. She loved the French world and the French
+sights and sounds--these tall, dingy houses of the _banlieue_, the dregs
+of a great architecture; the advertisements; the look of the streets.
+
+The train slackened into the Nord Station. The blue-frocked porters
+crowded into the carriages.
+
+"C'est tout, madame? Vous n'avez pas de grands bagages?"
+
+"No, nothing. Find me a cab at once."
+
+There was a great crowd outside. She hurried on as quickly as she could,
+revolving what was to be said if any acquaintance were to accost her. By
+great good luck, and by travelling second class both in the train and on
+the boat, she had avoided meeting anybody she knew. But the Nord Station
+was crowded with English people, and she pushed her way through in a
+nervous terror.
+
+"Miss Le Breton!"
+
+She turned abruptly. In the white glare of the electric lights she did
+not at first recognize the man who had spoken to her. Then she drew
+back. Her heart beat wildly. For she had distinguished the face of Jacob
+Delafield.
+
+He came forward to meet her as she passed the barrier at the end of the
+platform, his aspect full of what seemed to her an extraordinary
+animation, significance, as though she were expected.
+
+"Miss Le Breton! What an astonishing, what a fortunate meeting! I have a
+message for you from Evelyn."
+
+"From Evelyn?" She echoed the words mechanically as she shook hands.
+
+"Wait a moment," he said, leading her aside towards the waiting-room,
+while the crowd that was going to the _douane_ passed them by. Then he
+turned to Julie's porter.
+
+"Attendez un instant."
+
+The man sulkily shook his head, dropped Julie's bag at their feet, and
+hurried off in search of a more lucrative job.
+
+"I am going back to-night," added Delafield, hurriedly. "How strange
+that I should have met you, for I have very sad news for you! Lord
+Lackington had an attack this morning, from which he cannot recover. The
+doctors give him perhaps forty-eight hours. He has asked for
+you--urgently. The Duchess tells me so in a long telegram I had from her
+to-day. But she supposed you to be in Bruges. She has wired there. You
+will go back, will you not?"
+
+"Go back?" said Julie, staring at him helplessly. "Go back to-night?"
+
+"The evening train starts in little more than an hour. You would be just
+in time, I think, to see the old man alive."
+
+She still looked at him in bewilderment, at the blue eyes under the
+heavily moulded brows, and the mouth with its imperative, and yet
+eager--or tremulous?--expression. She perceived that he hung upon
+her answer.
+
+She drew her hand piteously across her eyes as though to shut out the
+crowds, the station, and the urgency of this personality beside her.
+Despair was in her heart. How to consent? How to refuse?
+
+"But my friends," she stammered--"the friends with whom I was going to
+stay--they will be alarmed."
+
+"Could you not telegraph to them? They would understand, surely. The
+office is close by."
+
+She let herself be hurried along, not knowing what to do. Delafield
+walked beside her. If she had been able to observe him, she must have
+been struck afresh by the pale intensity, the controlled agitation
+of his face.
+
+"Is it really so serious?" she asked, pausing a moment, as though in
+resistance.
+
+"It is the end. Of that there can be no question. You have touched his
+heart very deeply. He longs to see her, Evelyn says. And his daughter
+and granddaughter are still abroad--Miss Moffatt, indeed, is ill at
+Florence with a touch of diphtheria. He is alone with his two sons.
+You will go?"
+
+Even in her confusion, the strangeness of it all was borne in upon
+her--his insistence, the extraordinary chance of their meeting, his
+grave, commanding manner.
+
+"How could you know I was here?" she said, in bewilderment.
+
+"I didn't know," he said, slowly. "But, thank God, I have met you. I
+dread to think of your fatigue, but you will be glad just to see him
+again--just to give him his last wish--won't you?" he said, pleadingly.
+"Here is the telegraph-office. Shall I do it for you?"
+
+"No, thank you. I--I must think how to word it. Please wait."
+
+She went in alone. As she took the pencil into her hands a low groan
+burst from her lips. The man writing in the next compartment turned
+round in astonishment. She controlled herself and began to write. There
+was no escape. She must submit; and all was over.
+
+She telegraphed to Warkworth, care of the Chef de Gare, at the Sceaux
+Station, and also to the country inn.
+
+"Have met Mr. Delafield by chance at Nord Station. Lord Lackington
+dying. Must return to-night. Where shall I write? Good-bye."
+
+When it was done she could hardly totter out of the office. Delafield
+made her take his arm.
+
+"You must have some food. Then I will go and get a sleeping-car for you
+to Calais. There will be no crowd to-night. At Calais I will look after
+you if you will allow me."
+
+"You are crossing to-night?" she said, vaguely. Her lips framed the
+words with difficulty.
+
+"Yes. I came over with my cousins yesterday."
+
+She asked nothing more. It did not occur to her to notice that he had no
+luggage, no bag, no rug, none of the paraphernalia of travel. In her
+despairing fatigue and misery she let him guide her as he would.
+
+He made her take some soup, then some coffee, all that she could make
+herself swallow. There was a dismal period of waiting, during which she
+was hardly conscious of where she was or of what was going on round her.
+
+Then she found herself in the sleeping-car, in a reserved compartment,
+alone. Once more the train moved through the night. The miles flew
+by--the miles that forever parted her from Warkworth.
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+The train was speeding through the forest country of Chantilly. A pale
+moon had risen, and beneath its light the straight forest roads,
+interminably long, stretched into the distance; the vaporous masses of
+young and budding trees hurried past the eye of the traveller; so, also,
+the white hamlets, already dark and silent; the stations with their
+lights and figures; the great wood-piles beside the line.
+
+Delafield, in his second-class carriage, sat sleepless and erect. The
+night was bitterly cold. He wore the light overcoat in which he had left
+the Hotel du Rhin that afternoon for a stroll before dinner, and had no
+other wrap or covering. But he felt nothing, was conscious of nothing
+but the rushing current of his own thoughts.
+
+The events of the two preceding days, the meaning of them, the
+significance of his own action and its consequences--it was with these
+materials that his mind dealt perpetually, combining, interpreting,
+deducing, now in one way, now in another. His mood contained both
+excitement and dread. But with a main temper of calmness, courage,
+invincible determination, these elements did not at all interfere.
+
+The day before, he had left London with his cousins, the Duke of
+Chudleigh, and young Lord Elmira, the invalid boy. They were bound to
+Paris to consult a new doctor, and Jacob had offered to convey them
+there. In spite of all the apparatus of servants and couriers with which
+they were surrounded, they always seemed to him, on their journeys, a
+singularly lonely and hapless pair, and he knew that they leaned upon
+him and prized his company.
+
+On the way to Paris, at the Calais buffet, he had noticed Henry
+Warkworth, and had given him a passing nod. It had been understood the
+night before in Heribert Street that they would both be crossing on
+the morrow.
+
+On the following day--the day of Julie's journey--Delafield, who was
+anxiously awaiting the return of his two companions from their interview
+with the great physician they were consulting, was strolling up the Rue
+de la Paix, just before luncheon, when, outside the Hotel Mirabeau, he
+ran into a man whom he immediately perceived to be Warkworth.
+
+Politeness involved the exchange of a few sentences, although a secret
+antagonism between the two men had revealed itself from the first day of
+their meeting in Lady Henry's drawing-room. Each word of their short
+conversation rang clearly through Delafield's memory.
+
+"You are at the 'Rhin'?" said Warkworth.
+
+"Yes, for a couple more days. Shall we meet at the Embassy to-morrow?"
+
+"No. I dined there last night. My business here is done. I start for
+Rome to-night."
+
+"Lucky man. They have put on a new fast train, haven't they?"
+
+"Yes. You leave the Gare de Lyon at 7.15, and you are at Rome the second
+morning, in good time."
+
+"Magnificent! Why don't we all rush south? Well, good-bye again, and
+good luck."
+
+They touched hands perfunctorily and parted.
+
+This happened about mid-day. While Delafield and his cousins were
+lunching, a telegram from the Duchess of Crowborough was handed to
+Jacob. He had wired to her early in the morning to ask for the address
+in Paris of an old friend of his, who was also a cousin of hers. The
+telegram contained:
+
+     "Thirty-six Avenue Friedland. Lord Lackington heart-attack
+     this morning. Dying. Has asked urgently for Julie. Blanche
+     Moffatt detained Florence by daughter's illness. All
+     circumstances most sad. Woman Heribert Street gave me Bruges
+     address. Have wired Julie there."
+
+The message set vibrating in Delafield's mind the tender memory which
+already existed there of his last talk with Julie, of her strange
+dependence and gentleness, her haunting and pleading personality. He
+hoped with all his heart she might reach the old man in time, that his
+two sons, Uredale and William, would treat her kindly, and that it would
+be found when the end came that he had made due provision for her as his
+granddaughter.
+
+But he had small leisure to give to thoughts of this kind. The
+physician's report in the morning had not been encouraging, and his two
+travelling companions demanded all the sympathy and support he could
+give them. He went out with them in the afternoon to the Hotel de la
+Terrasse at St. Germain. The Duke, a nervous hypochondriac, could not
+sleep in the noise of Paris, and was accustomed to a certain apartment
+in this well-known hotel, which was often reserved for him. Jacob left
+them about six o'clock to return to Paris. He was to meet one of the
+Embassy attaches--an old Oxford friend--at the Cafe Gaillard for dinner.
+He dressed at the "Rhin," put on an overcoat, and set out to walk to the
+Rue Gaillard about half-past seven. As he approached the "Mirabeau," he
+saw a cab with luggage standing at the door. A man came out with the
+hotel _concierge_. To his astonishment, Delafield recognized Warkworth.
+
+The young officer seemed in a hurry and out of temper. At any rate, he
+jumped into the cab without taking any notice of the two _sommeliers_
+and the _concierge_ who stood round expectant of francs, and when the
+_concierge_ in his stiffest manner asked where the man was to drive,
+Warkworth put his head out of the window and said, hastily, to
+the _cocher_:
+
+"D'abord, a la Gare de Sceaux! Puis, je vous dirai. Mais depechez-vous!"
+
+The cab rolled away, and Delafield walked on.
+
+Half-past seven, striking from all the Paris towers! And Warkworth's
+intention in the morning was to leave the Gare de Lyon at 7.15. But it
+seemed he was now bound, at 7.30, for the Gare de Sceaux, from which
+point of departure it was clear that no reasonable man would think of
+starting for the Eternal City.
+
+"_D'abord,_ a la Gare de Sceaux!"
+
+Then he was not catching a train?--at any rate, immediately. He had some
+other business first, and was perhaps going to the station to deposit
+his luggage?
+
+Suddenly a thought, a suspicion, flashed through Delafield's mind, which
+set his heart thumping in his breast. In after days he was often puzzled
+to account for its origin, still more for the extraordinary force with
+which it at once took possession of all his energies. In his more
+mystical moments of later life he rose to the secret belief that God had
+spoken to him.
+
+At any rate, he at once hailed a cab, and, thinking no more of his
+dinner engagement, he drove post-haste to the Nord Station. In those
+days the Calais train arrived at eight. He reached the station a few
+minutes before it appeared. When at last it drew up, amid the crowd on
+the platform it took him only a few seconds to distinguish the dark and
+elegant head of Julie Le Breton.
+
+A pang shot through him that pierced to the very centre of life. He was
+conscious of a prayer for help and a clear mind. But on his way to the
+station he had rapidly thought out a plan on which to act should this
+mad notion in his brain turn out to have any support in reality.
+
+It had so much support that Julie Le Breton was there--in Paris--and not
+at Bruges, as she had led the Duchess to suppose. And when she turned
+her startled face upon him, his wild fancy became, for himself, a
+certainty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Amiens! Cinq minutes d'arret."
+
+Delafield got out and walked up and down the platform. He passed the
+closed and darkened windows of the sleeping-car; and it seemed to his
+abnormally quickened sense that he was beside her, bending over her, and
+that he said to her:
+
+"Courage! You are saved! Let us thank God!"
+
+A boy from the refreshment-room came along, wheeling a barrow on which
+were tea and coffee.
+
+Delafield eagerly drank a cup of tea and put his hand into his pocket to
+pay for it. He found there three francs and his ticket. After paying for
+the tea he examined his purse. That contained an English half-crown.
+
+So he had had with him just enough to get his own second-class ticket,
+her first-class, and a sleeping-car. That was good fortune, seeing that
+the bulk of his money, with his return ticket, was reposing in his
+dressing-case at the Hotel du Rhin.
+
+"En voiture! En voiture, s'il vous plait!"
+
+He settled himself once more in his corner, and the train rushed on.
+This time it was the strange hour at the Gare du Nord which he lived
+through again, her white face opposite to him in the refreshment-room,
+the bewilderment and misery she had been so little able to conceal, her
+spasmodic attempts at conversation, a few vague words about Lord
+Lackington or the Duchess, and then pauses, when her great eyes, haggard
+and weary, stared into vacancy, and he knew well enough that her
+thoughts were with Warkworth, and that she was in fierce rebellion
+against his presence there, and this action into which he had
+forced her.
+
+As for him, he perfectly understood the dilemma in which she stood.
+Either she must accept the duty of returning to the death-bed of the old
+man, her mother's father, or she must confess her appointment with
+Warkworth.
+
+Yet--suppose he had been mistaken? Well, the telegram from the Duchess
+covered his whole action. Lord Lackington _was_ dying; and apart from
+all question of feeling, Julie Le Breton's friends must naturally desire
+that he should see her, acknowledge her before his two sons, and, with
+their consent, provide for her before his death.
+
+But, ah, he had not been mistaken! He remembered her hurried refusal
+when he had asked her if he should telegraph for her to her Paris
+"friends"--how, in a sudden shame, he had turned away that he might not
+see the beloved false face as she spoke, might not seem to watch or
+suspect her.
+
+He had just had time to send off a messenger, first to his friend at the
+Cafe Gaillard, and then to the Hotel du Rhin, before escorting her to
+the sleeping-car.
+
+Ah, how piteous had been that dull bewilderment with which she had
+turned to him!
+
+"But--my ticket?"
+
+"Here they are. Oh, never mind--we will settle in town. Try to sleep.
+You must be very tired."
+
+And then it seemed to him that her lips trembled, like those of a
+miserable child; and surely, surely, she must hear that mad beating of
+his pulse!
+
+Boulogne was gone in a flash. Here was the Somme, stretched in a pale
+silver flood beneath the moon--a land of dunes and stunted pines, of
+wide sea-marshes, over which came the roar of the Channel. Then again
+the sea was left behind, and the rich Picard country rolled away to
+right and left. Lights here and there, in cottage or villa--the lights,
+perhaps, of birth or death--companions of hope or despair.
+
+Calais!
+
+The train moved slowly up to the boat-side. Delafield jumped out. The
+sleeping-car was yielding up its passengers. He soon made out the small
+black hat and veil, the slender form in the dark travelling-dress.
+
+Was she fainting? For she seemed to him to waver as he approached her,
+and the porter who had taken her rugs and bag was looking at her in
+astonishment. In an instant he had drawn her arm within his, and was
+supporting her as he best could,
+
+"The car was very hot, and I am so tired. I only want some air."
+
+They reached the deck.
+
+"You will go down-stairs?"
+
+"No, no--some air!" she murmured, and he saw that she could hardly keep
+her feet.
+
+But in a few moments they had reached the shelter on the upper deck
+usually so well filled with chairs and passengers on a day crossing. Now
+it was entirely deserted. The boat was not full, the night was cold and
+stormy, and the stream of passengers had poured down into the shelter of
+the lower deck.
+
+Julie sank into a chair. Delafield hurriedly loosened the shawl she
+carried with her from its attendant bag and umbrella, and wrapped it
+round her.
+
+"It will be a rough crossing," he said, in her ear. "Can you stand it on
+deck?"
+
+"I am a good sailor. Let me stay here."
+
+Her eyes closed. He stooped over her in an anguish. One of the boat
+officials approached him.
+
+"Madame ferait mieux de descendre, monsieur. La traversee ne sera pas
+bonne."
+
+Delafield explained that the lady must have air, and was a good sailor.
+Then he pressed into the man's hand his three francs, and sent him for
+brandy and an extra covering of some kind. The man went unwillingly.
+
+During the whole bustle of departure, Delafield saw nothing but Julie's
+helpless and motionless form; he heard nothing but the faint words by
+which, once or twice, she tried to convey to him that she was not
+unconscious.
+
+The brandy came. The man who brought it again objected to Julie's
+presence on deck. Delafield took no heed. He was absorbed in making
+Julie swallow some of the brandy.
+
+At last they were off. The vessel glided slowly out of the old harbor,
+and they were immediately in rough water.
+
+Delafield was roused by a peremptory voice at his elbow.
+
+"This lady ought not to stay here, sir. There is plenty of room in the
+ladies' cabin."
+
+Delafield looked up and recognized the captain of the boat, the same man
+who, thirty-six hours before, had shown special civilities to the Duke
+of Chudleigh and his party.
+
+"Ah, you are Captain Whittaker," he said.
+
+The shrewd, stout man who had accosted him raised his eyebrows in
+astonishment.
+
+Delafield drew him aside a moment. After a short conversation the
+captain lifted his cap and departed, with a few words to the subordinate
+officer who had drawn his attention to the matter. Henceforward they
+were unmolested, and presently the officer brought a pillow and striped
+blanket, saying they might be useful to the lady. Julie was soon
+comfortably placed, lying down on the seat under the wooden shelter.
+Delicacy seemed to suggest that her companion should leave her
+to herself.
+
+Jacob walked up and down briskly, trying to shake off the cold which
+benumbed him. Every now and then he paused to look at the lights on the
+receding French coast, at its gray phantom line sweeping southward under
+the stormy moon, or disappearing to the north in clouds of rain. There
+was a roar of waves and a dashing of spray. The boat, not a large one,
+was pitching heavily, and the few male passengers who had at first
+haunted the deck soon disappeared.
+
+Delafield hung over the surging water in a strange exaltation, half
+physical, half moral. The wild salt strength and savor of the sea
+breathed something akin to that passionate force of will which had
+impelled him to the enterprise in which he stood. No mere man of the
+world could have dared it; most men of the world, as he was well aware,
+would have condemned or ridiculed it. But for one who saw life and
+conduct _sub specie aeternitatis_ it had seemed natural enough.
+
+The wind blew fierce and cold. He made his way back to Julie's side. To
+his surprise, she had raised herself and was sitting propped up against
+the corner of the seat, her veil thrown back.
+
+"You are better?" he said, stooping to her, so as to be heard against
+the boom of the waves. "This rough weather does not affect you?"
+
+She made a negative sign. He drew his camp-stool beside her. Suddenly
+she asked him what time it was. The haggard nobleness of her pale face
+amid the folds of black veil, the absent passion of the eye, thrilled to
+his heart. Where were her thoughts?
+
+"Nearly four o'clock." He drew out his watch. "You see it is beginning
+to lighten,"
+
+And he pointed to the sky, in which that indefinable lifting of the
+darkness which precedes the dawn was taking place, and to the far
+distances of sea, where a sort of livid clarity was beginning to absorb
+and vanquish that stormy play of alternate dark and moonlight which had
+prevailed when they left the French shore.
+
+He had hardly spoken, when he felt that her eyes were fixed upon him.
+
+To look at his watch, he had thrown open his long Newmarket coat,
+forgetting that in so doing he disclosed the evening-dress in which he
+had robed himself at the Hotel du Rhin for his friend's dinner at the
+Cafe Gaillard.
+
+He hastily rebuttoned his coat, and turned his face seaward once more.
+But he heard her voice, and was obliged to come close to her that he
+might catch the words.
+
+"You have given me your wraps," she said, with difficulty. "You will
+suffer."
+
+"Not at all. You have your own rug, and one that the captain provided. I
+keep myself quite warm with moving about."
+
+There was a pause. His mind began to fill with alarm. He was not of the
+men who act a part with ease; but, having got through so far, he had
+calculated on preserving his secret.
+
+Flight was best, and he was just turning away when a gesture of hers
+arrested him. Again he stooped till their faces were near enough to let
+her voice reach him.
+
+"Why are you in evening-dress?"
+
+"I had intended to dine with a friend. There was not time to change."
+
+"Then you did not mean to cross to-night?"
+
+He delayed a moment, trying to collect his thoughts.
+
+"Not when I dressed for dinner, but some sudden news decided me."
+
+Her head fell back wearily against the support behind it. The eyes
+closed, and he, thinking she would perhaps sleep, was about to rise from
+his seat, when the pressure of her hand upon his arm detained him. He
+sat still and the hand was withdrawn.
+
+There was a lessening of the roar in their ears. Under the lee of the
+English shore the wind was milder, the "terror-music" of the sea less
+triumphant. And over everything was stealing the first discriminating
+touch of the coming light. Her face was clear now; and Delafield, at
+last venturing to look at her, saw that her eyes were open again, and
+trembled at their expression. There was in them a wild suspicion.
+Secretly, steadily, he nerved himself to meet the blow that he foresaw.
+
+"Mr. Delafield, have you told me all the truth?"
+
+She sat up as she spoke, deadly pale but rigid. With an impatient hand
+she threw off the wraps which had covered her. Her face commanded
+an answer.
+
+"Certainly I have told you the truth."
+
+"Was it the whole truth? It seems--it seems to me that you were not
+prepared yourself for this journey--that there is some mystery--which I
+do not understand--which I resent!"
+
+"But what mystery? When I saw you, I of course thought of Evelyn's
+telegram."
+
+"I should like to see that telegram."
+
+He hesitated. If he had been more skilled in the little falsehoods of
+every day he would simply have said that he had left it at the hotel.
+But he lost his chance. Nor at the moment did he clearly perceive what
+harm it would do to show it to her. The telegram was in his pocket, and
+he handed it to her.
+
+There was a dim oil-lamp in the shelter. With difficulty she held the
+fluttering paper up and just divined the words. Then the wind carried it
+away and blew it overboard. He rose and leaned against the edge of the
+shelter, looking down upon her. There was in his mind a sense of
+something solemn approaching, round which this sudden lull of blast and
+wave seemed to draw a "wind-warm space," closing them in.
+
+"Why did you come with me?" she persisted, in an agitation she could now
+scarcely control. "It is evident you had not meant to travel. You have
+no luggage, and you are in evening-dress. And I remember now--you sent
+two letters from the station!"
+
+"I wished to be your escort."
+
+Her gesture was almost one of scorn at the evasion.
+
+"Why were you at the station at all? Evelyn had told you I was at
+Bruges. And--you were dining out. I--I can't understand!"
+
+She spoke with a frowning intensity, a strange queenliness, in which was
+neither guilt nor confusion.
+
+A voice spoke in Delafield's heart. "Tell her!" it said.
+
+He bent nearer to her.
+
+"Miss Le Breton, with what friends were you going to stay in Paris?"
+
+She breathed quick.
+
+"I am not a school-girl, I think, that I should be asked questions of
+that kind."
+
+"But on your answer depends mine."
+
+She looked at him in amazement. His gentle kindness had disappeared. She
+saw, instead, that Jacob Delafield whom her instinct had divined from
+the beginning behind the modest and courteous outer man, the Jacob
+Delafield of whom she had told the Duchess she was afraid.
+
+But her passion swept every other thought out of its way. With dim agony
+and rage she began to perceive that she had been duped.
+
+"Mr. Delafield"--she tried for calm--"I don't understand your attitude,
+but, so far as I do understand it, I find it intolerable. If you have
+deceived me--"
+
+"I have not deceived you. Lord Lackington is dying."
+
+"But that is not why you were at the station," she repeated,
+passionately. "Why did you meet the English train?"
+
+Her eyes, clear now in the cold light, shone upon him imperiously.
+
+Again the inner voice said: "Speak--get away from conventionalities.
+Speak--soul to soul!"
+
+He sat down once more beside her. His gaze sought the ground. Then, with
+sharp suddenness, he looked her in the face.
+
+"Miss Le Breton, you were going to Paris to meet Major Warkworth?"
+
+She drew back.
+
+"And if I was?" she said, with a wild defiance.
+
+"I had to prevent it, that was all."
+
+His tone was calm and resolution itself.
+
+"Who--who gave you authority over me?"
+
+"One may save--even by violence. You were too precious to be allowed to
+destroy yourself."
+
+His look, so sad and strong, the look of a deep compassion, fastened
+itself upon her. He felt himself, indeed, possessed by a force not his
+own, that same force which in its supreme degree made of St. Francis
+"the great tamer of souls."
+
+"Who asked you to be our judge? Neither I nor Major Warkworth owe you
+anything."
+
+"No. But I owed you help--as a man--as your friend. The truth was
+somehow borne in upon me. You were risking your honor--I threw myself
+in the way."
+
+Every word seemed to madden her.
+
+"What--what could you know of the circumstances?" cried her choked,
+laboring voice. "It is unpardonable--an outrage! You know nothing either
+of him or of me."
+
+She clasped her hands to her breast in a piteous, magnificent gesture,
+as though she were defending her lover and her love.
+
+"I know that you have suffered much," he said, dropping his eyes before
+her, "but you would suffer infinitely more if--"
+
+"If you had not interfered." Her veil had fallen over her face again.
+She flung it back in impatient despair. "Mr. Delafield, I can do without
+your anxieties."
+
+"But not"--he spoke slowly--"without your own self-respect."
+
+Julie's face trembled. She hid it in her hands.
+
+"Go!" she said. "Go!"
+
+He went to the farther end of the ship and stood there motionless,
+looking towards the land but seeing nothing. On all sides the darkness
+was lifting, and in the distance there gleamed already the whiteness
+that was Dover. His whole being was shaken with that experience which
+comes so rarely to cumbered and superficial men--the intimate wrestle of
+one personality with another. It seemed to him he was not worthy of it.
+
+After some little time, when only a quarter of an hour lay between the
+ship and Dover pier, he went back to Julie.
+
+She was sitting perfectly still, her hands clasped in front of her, her
+veil drawn down.
+
+"May I say one word to you?" he said, gently.
+
+She did not speak.
+
+"It is this. What I have confessed to you to-night is, of course, buried
+between us. It is as though it had never been said. I have given you
+pain. I ask your pardon from the bottom of my heart, and, at the same
+time"--his voice trembled--"I thank God that I had the courage to
+do it!"
+
+She threw him a glance that showed her a quivering lip and the pallor of
+intense emotion.
+
+"I know you think you were right," she said, in a voice dull and
+strained, "but henceforth we can only be enemies. You have tyrannized
+over me in the name of standards that you revere and I reject. I can
+only beg you to let my life alone for the future."
+
+He said nothing. She rose, dizzily, to her feet. They were rapidly
+approaching the pier.
+
+[Illustration: "HER HANDS CLASPED IN FRONT OF HER"]
+
+With the cold aloofness of one who feels it more dignified to submit
+than to struggle, she allowed him to assist her in landing. He put her
+into the Victoria train, travelling himself in another carriage.
+
+As he walked beside her down the platform of Victoria Station, she said
+to him:
+
+"I shall be obliged if you will tell Evelyn that I have returned."
+
+"I go to her at once."
+
+She suddenly paused, and he saw that she was looking helplessly at one
+of the newspaper placards of the night before. First among its items
+appeared: "Critical state of Lord Lackington."
+
+He hardly knew how far she would allow him to have any further
+communication with her, but her pale exhaustion made it impossible not
+to offer to serve her.
+
+"It would be early to go for news now," he said, gently. "It would
+disturb the house. But in a couple of hours from now"--the station clock
+pointed to 6.15--"if you will allow me, I will leave the morning
+bulletin at your door."
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"You must rest, or you will have no strength for nursing," he continued,
+in the same studiously guarded tone. "But if you would prefer another
+messenger--"
+
+"I have none," and she raised her hand to her brow in mute, unconscious
+confession of an utter weakness and bewilderment.
+
+"Then let me go," he said, softly.
+
+It seemed to him that she was so physically weary as to be incapable
+either of assent or resistance. He put her into her cab, and gave the
+driver his directions. She looked at him uncertainly. But he did not
+offer his hand. From those blue eyes of his there shot out upon her one
+piercing glance--manly, entreating, sad. He lifted his hat and was gone.
+
+
+
+XX
+
+"Jacob, what brings you back so soon?" The Duchess ran into the room, a
+trim little figure in her morning dress of blue-and-white cloth, with
+her small spitz leaping beside her.
+
+Delafield advanced.
+
+"I came to tell you that I got your telegram yesterday, and that in the
+evening, by an extraordinary and fortunate chance, I met Miss Le Breton
+in Paris--"
+
+"You met Julie in Paris?" echoed the Duchess, in astonishment.
+
+"She had come to spend a couple of days with some friends there before
+going on to Bruges. I gave her the news of Lord Lackington's illness,
+and she at once turned back. She was much fatigued and distressed, and
+the night was stormy. I put her into the sleeping-car, and came back
+myself to see if I could be any assistance to her. And at Calais I was
+of some use. The crossing was very rough."
+
+"Julie was in Paris?" repeated the Duchess, as though she had heard
+nothing else of what he had been saying.
+
+Her eyes, so blue and large in her small, irregular face, sought those
+of her cousin and endeavored to read them.
+
+"It seems to have been a rapid change of plan. And it was a great stroke
+of luck my meeting her."
+
+"But how--and where?"
+
+"Oh, there is no time for going into that," said Delafield, impatiently.
+"But I knew you would like to know that she was here--after your message
+yesterday. We arrived a little after six this morning. About nine I went
+for news to St. James's Square. There is a slight rally."
+
+"Did you see Lord Uredale? Did you say anything about Julie?" asked the
+Duchess, eagerly.
+
+"I merely asked at the door, and took the bulletin to Miss Le Breton.
+Will you see Uredale and arrange it? I gather you saw him yesterday."
+
+"By all means," said the Duchess, musing. "Oh, it was so curious
+yesterday. Lord Lackington had just told them. You should have seen
+those two men."
+
+"The sons?"
+
+The Duchess nodded.
+
+"They don't like it. They were as stiff as pokers. But they will do
+absolutely the right thing. They see at once that she must be provided
+for. And when he asked for her they told me to telegraph, if I could
+find out where she was. Well, of all the extraordinary chances."
+
+She looked at him again, oddly, a spot of red on either small cheek.
+Delafield took no notice. He was pacing up and down, apparently
+in thought.
+
+"Suppose you take her there?" he said, pausing abruptly before her.
+
+"To St. James's Square? What did you tell her?"
+
+"That he was a trifle better, and that you would come to her."
+
+"Yes, it would be hard for her to go alone," said the Duchess,
+reflectively. She looked at her watch. "Only a little after eleven.
+Ring, please, Jacob."
+
+The carriage was ordered. Meanwhile the little lady inquired eagerly
+after her Julie. Had she been exhausted by the double journey? Was she
+alone in Paris, or was Madame Bornier with her?
+
+Jacob had understood that Madame Bornier and the little girl had gone
+straight to Bruges.
+
+The Duchess looked down and then looked up.
+
+"Did--did you come across Major Warkworth?"
+
+"Yes, I saw him for a moment in the Rue de la Paix, He was starting for
+Rome."
+
+The Duchess turned away as though ashamed of her question, and gave her
+orders for the carriage. Then her attention was suddenly drawn to her
+cousin. "How pale you look, Jacob," she said, approaching him. "Won't
+you have something--some wine?"
+
+Delafield refused, declaring that all he wanted was an hour or two's
+sleep.
+
+"I go back to Paris to-morrow," he said, as he prepared to take his
+leave. "Will you be here to-night if I look in?"
+
+"Alack! we go to Scotland to-night! It was just a piece of luck that you
+found me this morning. Freddie is fuming to get away."
+
+Delafield paused a moment. Then he abruptly shook hands and went.
+
+"He wants news of what happens at St. James's Square," thought the
+Duchess, suddenly, and she ran after him to the top of the stairs.
+"Jacob! If you don't mind a horrid mess to-night, Freddie and I shall be
+dining alone--of course we must have something to eat. Somewhere about
+eight. Do look in. There'll be a cutlet--on a trunk--anyway."
+
+Delafield laughed, hesitated, and finally accepted.
+
+The Duchess went back to the drawing-room, not a little puzzled and
+excited.
+
+"It's very, _very_ odd," she said to herself. "And what _is_ the matter
+with Jacob?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half an hour later she drove to the splendid house in St. James's Square
+where Lord Lackington lay dying.
+
+She asked for Lord Uredale, the eldest son, and waited in the library
+till he came.
+
+He was a tall, squarely built man, with fair hair already gray, and
+somewhat absent and impassive manners.
+
+At sight of him the Duchess's eyes filled with tears. She hurried to
+him, her soft nature dissolved in sympathy.
+
+"How is your father?"
+
+"A trifle easier, though the doctors say there is no real improvement.
+But he is quite conscious--knows us all. I have just been reading him
+the debate."
+
+"You told me yesterday he had asked for Miss Le Breton," said the
+Duchess, raising herself on tiptoe as though to bring her low tones
+closer to his ear. "She's here--in town, I mean. She came back from
+Paris last night."
+
+Lord Uredale showed no emotion of any kind. Emotion was not in his line.
+
+"Then my father would like to see her," he said, in a dry, ordinary
+voice, which jarred upon the sentimental Duchess.
+
+"When shall I bring her?"
+
+"He is now comfortable and resting. If you are free--"
+
+The Duchess replied that she would go to Heribert Street at once. As
+Lord Uredale took her to her carriage a young man ran down the steps
+hastily, raised his hat, and disappeared.
+
+Lord Uredale explained that he was the husband of the famous young
+beauty, Mrs. Delaray, whose portrait Lord Lackington had been engaged
+upon at the time of his seizure. Having been all his life a skilful
+artist, a man of fashion, and a harmless haunter of lovely women, Lord
+Lackington, as the Duchess knew, had all but completed a gallery of a
+hundred portraits, representing the beauty of the reign. Mrs. Delaray's
+would have been the hundredth in a series of which Mrs. Norton was
+the first.
+
+"He has been making arrangements with the husband to get it finished,"
+said Lord Uredale; "it has been on his mind."
+
+The Duchess shivered a little.
+
+"He knows he won't finish it?"
+
+"Quite well."
+
+"And he still thinks of those things?"
+
+"Yes--or politics," said Lord Uredale, smiling faintly. "I have written
+to Mr. Montresor. There are two or three points my father wants to
+discuss with him."
+
+"And he is not depressed, or troubled about himself?"
+
+"Not in the least. He will be grateful if you will bring him Miss Le
+Breton."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Julie, my darling, are you fit to come with me?"
+
+The Duchess held her friend in her arms, soothing and caressing her.
+How forlorn was the little house, under its dust-sheets, on this rainy,
+spring morning! And Julie, amid the dismantled drawing-room, stood
+spectrally white and still, listening, with scarcely a word in reply, to
+the affection, or the pity, or the news which the Duchess poured
+out upon her.
+
+"Shall we go now? I am quite ready."
+
+And she withdrew herself from the loving grasp which held her, and put
+on her hat and gloves.
+
+"You ought to be in bed," said the Duchess. "Those night journeys are
+too abominable. Even Jacob looks a wreck. But what an extraordinary
+chance, Julie, that Jacob should have found you! How did you come across
+each other?"
+
+"At the Nord Station," said Julie, as she pinned her veil before the
+glass over the mantel-piece.
+
+Some instinct silenced the Duchess. She asked no more questions, and
+they started for St. James's Square.
+
+"You won't mind if I don't talk?" said Julie, leaning back and closing
+her eyes. "I seem still to have the sea in my ears."
+
+The Duchess looked at her tenderly, clasping her hand close, and the
+carriage rolled along. But just before they reached St. James's Square,
+Julie hastily raised the fingers which held her own and kissed them.
+
+"Oh, Julie," said the Duchess, reproachfully, "I don't like you to do
+that!"
+
+She flushed and frowned. It was she who ought to pay such acts of
+homage, not Julie.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Father, Miss Le Breton is here."
+
+"Let her come in, Jack--and the Duchess, too."
+
+Lord Uredale went back to the door. Two figures came noiselessly into
+the room, the Duchess in front, with Julie's hand in hers.
+
+Lord Lackington was propped up in bed, and breathing fast. But he smiled
+as they approached him.
+
+"This is good-bye, dear Duchess," he said, in a whisper, as she bent
+over him. Then, with a spark of his old gayety in the eyes, "I should be
+a cur to grumble. Life has been very agreeable. Ah, Julie!"
+
+Julie dropped gently on her knees beside him and laid her cheek against
+his arm. At the mention of her name the old man's face had clouded as
+though the thoughts she called up had suddenly rebuked his words to the
+Duchess. He feebly moved his hands towards hers, and there was silence
+in the room for a few moments.
+
+"Uredale!"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"This is Rose's daughter."
+
+His eyes lifted themselves to those of his son.
+
+"I know, father. If Miss Le Breton will allow us, we will do what we can
+to be of service to her."
+
+Bill Chantrey, the younger brother, gravely nodded assent. They were
+both men of middle age, the younger over forty. They did not resemble
+their father, nor was there any trace in either of them of his wayward
+fascination. They were a pair of well-set-up, well-bred Englishmen,
+surprised at nothing, and quite incapable of showing any emotion in
+public; yet just and kindly men. As Julie entered the house they had
+both solemnly shaken hands with her, in a manner which showed at once
+their determination, as far as they were concerned, to avoid anything
+sentimental or in the nature of a scene, and their readiness to do what
+could be rightly demanded of them.
+
+Julie hardly listened to Lord Uredale's little speech. She had eyes and
+ears only for her grandfather. As she knelt beside him, her face bowed
+upon his hand, the ice within her was breaking up, that dumb and
+straitening anguish in which she had lived since that moment at the Nord
+Station in which she had grasped the meaning and the implications of
+Delafield's hurried words. Was everything to be swept away from her at
+once--her lover, and now this dear old man, to whom her heart, crushed
+and bleeding as it was, yearned with all its strength?
+
+Lord Lackington supposed that she was weeping.
+
+"Don't grieve, my dear," he murmured. "It must come to an end some
+time--'_cette charmante promenade a travers la realite_!'"
+
+And he smiled at her, agreeably vain to the last of that French accent
+and that French memory which--so his look implied--they two could
+appreciate, each in the other. Then he turned to the Duchess.
+
+"Duchess, you knew this secret before me. But I forgive _you_, and thank
+you. You have been very good to Rose's child. Julie has told me--and--I
+have observed--"
+
+"Oh, dear Lord Lackington!" Evelyn bent over him. "Trust her to me," she
+said, with a lovely yearning to comfort and cheer him breathing from her
+little face.
+
+He smiled.
+
+"To you--and--"
+
+He did not finish the sentence.
+
+After a pause he made a little gesture of farewell which the Duchess
+understood. She kissed his hand and turned away weeping.
+
+"Nurse--where is nurse?" said Lord Lackington.
+
+Both the nurse and the doctor, who had withdrawn a little distance from
+the family group, came forward.
+
+"Doctor, give me some strength," said the laboring voice, not without
+its old wilfulness of accent.
+
+He moved his arm towards the young homoeopath, who injected strychnine.
+Then he looked at the nurse.
+
+"Brandy--and--lift me."
+
+All was done as he desired.
+
+"Now go, please," he said to his sons. "I wish to be left with Julie."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For some moments, that seemed interminable to Julie, Lord Lackington lay
+silent. A feverish flush, a revival of life in the black eyes had
+followed on the administration of the two stimulants. He seemed to be
+gathering all his forces.
+
+At last he laid his hand on her arm. "You shouldn't be alone," he said,
+abruptly.
+
+His expression had grown anxious, even imperious. She felt a vague pang
+of dread as she tried to assure him that she had kind friends, and that
+her work would be her resource.
+
+Lord Lackington frowned.
+
+"That won't do," he said, almost vehemently. "You have great talents,
+but you are weak--you are a woman--you must marry."
+
+Julie stared at him, whiter even than when she had entered his
+room--helpless to avert what she began to foresee.
+
+"Jacob Delafield is devoted to you. You should marry him, dear--you
+should marry him."
+
+The room seemed to swim around her. But his face was still plain--the
+purpled lips and cheeks, the urgency in the eyes, as of one pursued by
+an overtaking force, the magnificent brow, the crown of white hair.
+
+She summoned all her powers and told him hurriedly that he was
+mistaken--entirely mistaken. Mr. Delafield had, indeed, proposed to her,
+but, apart from her own unwillingness, she had reason to know that his
+feelings towards her were now entirely changed. He neither loved her nor
+thought well of her.
+
+Lord Lackington lay there, obstinate, patient, incredulous. At last he
+interrupted her.
+
+"You make yourself believe these things. But they are not true.
+Delafield is attached to you. I know it."
+
+He nodded to her with his masterful, affectionate look. And before she
+could find words again he had resumed.
+
+"He could give you a great position. Don't despise it. We English
+big-wigs have a good time."
+
+A ghostly, humorous ray shot out upon her; then he felt for her hand.
+
+"Dear Julie, why won't you?"
+
+"If you were to ask him," she cried, in despair, "he would tell you as I
+do."
+
+And across her miserable thoughts there flashed two mingled
+images--Warkworth waiting, waiting for her at the Sceaux Station, and
+that look of agonized reproach in Delafield's haggard face as he had
+parted from her in the dawn of this strange, this incredible day.
+
+And here beside her, with the tyranny of the dying, this dear babbler
+wandered on in broken words, with painful breath, pleading, scolding,
+counselling. She felt that he was exhausting himself. She begged him to
+let her recall nurse and doctor. He shook his head, and when he could no
+longer speak, he clung to her hand, his gaze solemnly, insistently,
+fixed upon her.
+
+Her spirit writhed and rebelled. But she was helpless in the presence of
+this mortal weakness, this affection, half earthly, half beautiful, on
+its knees before her.
+
+A thought struck her. Why not content him? Whatever pledges she gave
+would die with him. What did it matter? It was cruelty to deny him the
+words--the mere empty words--he asked of her.
+
+"I--I would do anything to please you!" she said, with a sudden burst of
+uncontrollable tears, as she laid her head down beside him on the
+pillow. "If he _were_ to ask me again, of course, for your sake, I would
+consider it once more. Dear, dear friend, won't that satisfy you?"
+
+Lord Lackington was silent a few moments, then he smiled.
+
+"That's a promise?"
+
+She raised herself and looked at him, conscious of a sick movement of
+terror. What was there in his mind, still so quick, fertile, ingenious,
+under the very shadow of death?
+
+He waited for her answer, feebly pressing her hand.
+
+"Yes," she said, faintly, and once more hid her face beside him.
+
+Then, for some little time, the dying man neither stirred nor spoke. At
+last Julie heard:
+
+"I used to be afraid of death--that was in middle life. Every night it
+was a torment. But now, for many years, I have not been afraid at
+all.... Byron--Lord Byron--said to me, once, he would not change
+anything in his life; but he would have preferred not to have lived at
+all. I could not say that. I have enjoyed it all--being an Englishman,
+and an English peer--pictures, politics, society--everything. Perhaps it
+wasn't fair. There are so many poor devils."
+
+Julie pressed his hand to her lips. But in her thoughts there rose the
+sudden, sharp memory of her mother's death--of that bitter stoicism and
+abandonment in which the younger life had closed, in comparison with
+this peace, this complacency.
+
+Yet it was a complacency rich in sweetness. His next words were to
+assure her tenderly that he had made provision for her. "Uredale and
+Bill--will see to it. They're good fellows. Often--they've thought me--a
+pretty fool. But they've been kind to me--always."
+
+Then, after another interval, he lifted himself in bed, with more
+strength than she had supposed he could exert, looked at her earnestly,
+and asked her, in the same painful whisper, whether she believed in
+another life.
+
+"Yes," said Julie. But her shrinking, perfunctory manner evidently
+distressed him. He resumed, with a furrowed brow:
+
+"You ought. It is good for us to believe it."
+
+"I must hope, at any rate, that I shall see you again--and mamma," she
+said, smiling on him through her tears.
+
+"I wonder what it will be like," he replied, after a pause. His tone and
+look implied a freakish, a whimsical curiosity, yet full of charm.
+Then, motioning to her to come nearer, and speaking into her ear:
+
+"Your poor mother, Julie, was never happy--never! There must be laws,
+you see--and churches--and religious customs. It's because--we're made
+of such wretched stuff. My wife, when she died--made me promise to
+continue going to church--and praying. And--without it--I should have
+been a bad man. Though I've had plenty of sceptical thoughts--plenty.
+Your poor parents rebelled--against all that. They suffered--they
+suffered. But you'll make up--you're a noble woman--you'll make up."
+
+He laid his hand on her head. She offered no reply; but through the
+inner mind there rushed the incidents, passions, revolts of the
+preceding days.
+
+But for that strange chance of Delafield's appearance in her path--a
+chance no more intelligible to her now, after the pondering of several
+feverish hours, than it had been at the moment of her first
+suspicion--where and what would she be now? A dishonored woman, perhaps,
+with a life-secret to keep; cut off, as her mother had been, from the
+straight-living, law-abiding world.
+
+The touch of the old man's hand upon her hair roused in her a first
+recoil, a first shattering doubt of the impulse which had carried her to
+Paris. Since Delafield left her in the early dawn she had been pouring
+out a broken, passionate heart in a letter to Warkworth. No misgivings
+while she was writing it as to the all-sufficing legitimacy of love!
+
+But here, in this cold neighborhood of the grave--brought back to gaze
+in spirit; on her mother's tragedy--she shrank, she trembled. Her proud
+intelligence denied the stain, and bade her hate and despise her
+rescuer. And, meanwhile, things also inherited and inborn, the fruit of
+a remoter ancestry, rising from the dimmest and deepest caverns of
+personality, silenced the clamor of the naturalist mind. One moment she
+felt herself seized with terror lest anything should break down the veil
+between her real self and this unsuspecting tenderness of the dying man;
+the next she rose in revolt against her own fear. Was she to find
+herself, after all, a mere weak penitent--meanly grateful to Jacob
+Delafield? Her heart cried out to Warkworth in a protesting anguish.
+
+So absorbed in thought was she that she did not notice how long the
+silence had lasted.
+
+"He seems to be sleeping," said a low voice beside her.
+
+She looked up to see the doctor, with Lord Uredale. Gently releasing
+herself, she kissed Lord Lackington's forehead, and rose to her feet.
+
+Suddenly the patient opened his eyes, and as he seemed to become aware
+of the figures beside him, he again lifted himself in bed, and a gleam
+most animated, most vivacious, passed over his features.
+
+"Brougham's not asked," he said, with a little chuckle of amusement.
+"Isn't it a joke?"
+
+The two men beside him looked at each other. Lord Uredale approached the
+bed.
+
+"Not asked to what, father?" he said, gently.
+
+"Why, to the Queen's fancy ball, of course," said Lord Lackington, still
+smiling. "Such a to-do! All the elderly sticks practising minuets for
+their lives!"
+
+A voluble flow of talk followed--hardly intelligible. The words
+"Melbourne" and "Lady Holland" emerged--the fragment, apparently, of a
+dispute with the latter, in which "Allen" intervened--the names of
+"Palmerston" and "that dear chap, Villiers."
+
+Lord Uredale sighed. The young doctor looked at him interrogatively.
+
+"He is thinking of his old friends," said the son. "That was the Queen's
+ball, I imagine, of '42. I have often heard him describe my
+mother's dress."
+
+But while he was speaking the fitful energy died away. The old man
+ceased to talk; his eyelids fell. But the smile still lingered about his
+mouth, and as he settled himself on his pillows, like one who rests, the
+spectators were struck by the urbane and distinguished beauty of his
+aspect. The purple flush had died again into mortal pallor. Illness had
+masked or refined the weakness of mouth and chin; the beautiful head and
+countenance, with their characteristic notes of youth, impetuosity, a
+kind of gay detachment, had never been more beautiful.
+
+The young doctor looked stealthily from the recumbent figure to the tall
+and slender woman standing absorbed and grief-stricken beside the bed.
+The likeness was as evident to him as it had been, in the winter, to Sir
+Wilfrid Bury.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As he was escorting her down-stairs, Lord Uredale said to his companion,
+"Foster thinks he may still live twenty-four hours."
+
+"If he asks for me again," said Julie, now shrouded once more behind a
+thick, black veil, "you will send?"
+
+He gravely assented.
+
+"It is a great pity," he said, with a certain stiffness--did it
+unconsciously mark the difference between her and his legitimate
+kindred?--"that my sister Lady Blanche and her daughter cannot be
+with us."
+
+"They are in Italy?"
+
+"At Florence. My niece has had an attack of diphtheria. She could
+neither travel nor could her mother leave her."
+
+Then pausing in the hall, he added in a low voice, and with some
+embarrassment:
+
+"My father has told you, I believe, of the addition he has made to his
+will?"
+
+Julie drew back.
+
+"I neither asked for it nor desired it," she said, in her coldest and
+clearest voice.
+
+"That I quite understand," said Lord Uredale. "But--you cannot hurt him
+by refusing."
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"No. But afterwards--I must be free to follow my own judgment."
+
+"We cannot take what does not belong to us," he said, with some
+sharpness. "My brother and I are named as your trustees. Believe me, we
+will do our best."
+
+Meanwhile the younger brother had come out of the library to bid her
+farewell. She felt that she was under critical observation, though both
+pairs of gray eyes refrained from any appearance of scrutiny. Her pride
+came to her aid, and she did not shrink from the short conversation
+which the two brothers evidently desired. When it was over, and the
+brothers returned to the hall after putting her into the Duchess's
+carriage, the younger said to the elder:
+
+"She can behave herself, Johnnie."
+
+They looked at each other, with their hands in their pockets. A little
+nod passed between them--an augur-like acceptance of this new and
+irregular member of the family.
+
+"Yes, she has excellent manners," said Uredale. "And really, after the
+tales Lady Henry has been spreading--that's something!"
+
+"Oh, I always thought Lady Henry an old cat," said Bill, tranquilly.
+"That don't matter."
+
+The Chantrey brothers had not been among Lady Henry's _habitues_. In her
+eyes, they were the dull sons of an agreeable father. They were
+humorously aware of it, and bore her little malice.
+
+"No," said Uredale, raising his eyebrows; "but the 'affaire Warkworth'?
+If there's any truth in what one hears, that's deuced unpleasant."
+
+Bill Chantrey whistled.
+
+"It's hard luck on that poor child Aileen that it should be her own
+cousin interfering with her preserves. By-the-way"--he stooped to look
+at the letters on the hall table--"do you see there's a letter for
+father from Blanche? And in a letter I got from her by the same post,
+she says that she has told him the whole story. According to her,
+Aileen's too ill to be thwarted, and she wants the governor to see the
+guardians. I say, Johnnie"--he looked at his brother--"we'll not trouble
+the father with it now?"
+
+"Certainly not," said Uredale, with a sigh. "I saw one of the
+trustees--Jack Underwood--yesterday. He told me Blanche and the child
+were more infatuated than ever. Very likely what one hears is a pack of
+lies. If not, I hope this woman will have the good taste to drop it.
+Father has charged me to write to Blanche and tell her the whole story
+of poor Rose, and of this girl's revealing herself. Blanche, it appears,
+is just as much in the dark as we were."
+
+"If this gossip has got round to her, her feelings will be mixed. Oh,
+well, I've great faith in the money," said Bill Chantrey, carelessly, as
+they began to mount the stairs again. "It sounds disgusting; but if the
+child wants him I suppose she must have him. And, anyway, the man's off
+to Africa for a twelvemonth at least. Miss Le Breton will have time to
+forget him. One can't say that either he or she has behaved with
+delicacy--unless, indeed, she knew nothing of Aileen, which is quite
+probable."
+
+"Well, don't ask me to tackle her," said Uredale. "She has the ways of
+an empress."
+
+Bill Chantrey shrugged his shoulders. "And, by George! she looks as if
+she could fall in love," he said, slowly. "Magnificent eyes, Johnnie. I
+propose to make a study of our new niece."
+
+"Lord Uredale!" said a voice on the stairs.
+
+The young doctor descended rapidly to meet them.
+
+"His lordship is asking for some one," he said. "He seems excited. But I
+cannot catch the name."
+
+Lord Uredale ran up-stairs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later in the day a man emerged from Lackington House and walked rapidly
+towards the Mall. It was Jacob Delafield.
+
+He passed across the Mall and into St. James's Park. There he threw
+himself on the first seat he saw, in an absorption so deep that it
+excited the wondering notice of more than one passer-by.
+
+After about half an hour he roused himself, and walked, still in the
+same brown study, to his lodgings in Jermyn Street. There he found a
+letter which he eagerly opened.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"DEAR JACOB,--Julie came back this morning about one o'clock. I waited
+for her--and at first she seemed quite calm and composed. But suddenly,
+as I was sitting beside her, talking, she fainted away in her chair, and
+I was terribly alarmed. We sent for a doctor at once. He shakes his head
+over her, and says there are all the signs of a severe strain of body
+and mind. No wonder, indeed--our poor Julie! Oh, how I _loathe_ some
+people! Well, there she is in bed, Madame Bornier away, and everybody. I
+simply _can't_ go to Scotland. But Freddie is just mad. Do, Jacob,
+there's a dear, go and dine with him to-night and cheer him up. He vows
+he won't go north without me. _Perhaps_ I'll come to-morrow. I could no
+more leave Julie to-night than fly.
+
+"She'll be ill for weeks. What I ought to do is to take her abroad.
+She's _very_ dear and good; but, oh, Jacob, as she lies there I _feel_
+her heart's broken. And it's not Lord Lackington. Oh no! though I'm sure
+she loved him. _Do_ go to Freddie, there's a dear."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"No, that I won't!" said Delafield, with a laugh that choked him, as he
+threw the letter down.
+
+He tried to write an answer, but could not achieve even the simplest
+note. Then he began a pacing of his room, which lasted till he dropped
+into his chair, worn out with the sheer physical exhaustion of the night
+and day. When his servant came in he found his master in a heavy sleep.
+And, at Crowborough House, the Duke dined and fumed alone.
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+"Why does any one stay in England who _can_ make the trip to Paradise?"
+said the Duchess, as she leaned lazily back in the corner of the boat
+and trailed her fingers in the waters of Como.
+
+It was a balmy April afternoon, and she and Julie were floating through
+a scene enchanted, incomparable. When spring descends upon the shores of
+the Lago di Como, she brings with her all the graces, all the beauties,
+all the fine, delicate, and temperate delights of which earth and sky
+are capable, and she pours them forth upon a land of perfect loveliness.
+Around the shores of other lakes--Maggiore, Lugano, Garda--blue
+mountains rise, and the vineyards spread their green and dazzling
+terraces to the sun. Only Como can show in unmatched union a main
+composition, incomparably grand and harmonious, combined with every
+jewelled, or glowing, or exquisite detail. Nowhere do the mountains lean
+towards each other in such an ordered splendor as that which bends round
+the northern shores of Como. Nowhere do buttressed masses rise behind
+each other, to right and left of a blue water-way, in lines statelier or
+more noble than those kept by the mountains of the Lecco Lake, as they
+marshal themselves on either hand, along the approaches to Lombardy and
+Venetia; bearing aloft, as though on the purple pillars of some majestic
+gateway, the great curtain of dazzling cloud which, on a sunny day,
+hangs over the Brescian plain--a glorious drop-scene, interposed between
+the dwellers on the Como Mountains, and those marble towns, Brescia,
+Verona, Padua, which thread the way to Venice.
+
+And within this divine frame-work, between the glistening snows which
+still, in April, crown and glorify the heights, and those reflections of
+them which lie encalmed in the deep bosom of the lake, there's not a
+foot of pasture, not a shelf of vineyard, not a slope of forest where
+the spring is not at work, dyeing the turf with gentians, starring it
+with narcissuses, or drawing across it the first golden net-work of the
+chestnut leaves; where the mere emerald of the grass is not in itself a
+thing to refresh the very springs of being; where the peach-blossom and
+the wild-cherry and the olive are not perpetually weaving patterns on
+the blue, which ravish the very heart out of your breast. And already
+the roses are beginning to pour over the walls; the wistaria is climbing
+up the cypresses; a pomp of camellias and azaleas is in all the gardens;
+while in the grassy bays that run up into the hills the primrose banks
+still keep their sweet austerity, and the triumph of spring over the
+just banished winter is still sharp and new.
+
+And in the heart and sense of Julie Le Breton, as she sat beside the
+Duchess, listening absently to the talk of the old boatman, who, with
+his oars resting idly in his hands, was chattering to the ladies, a
+renewing force akin to that of the spring was also at its healing and
+life-giving work. She had still the delicate, tremulous look of one
+recovering from a sore wrestle with physical ill; but in her aspect
+there were suggestions more intimate, more moving than this. Those who
+have lain down and risen up with pain; those who have been face to face
+with passion and folly and self-judgment; those who have been forced to
+seek with eagerness for some answer to those questions which the
+majority of us never ask, "Whither is my life leading me--and what is it
+worth to me or to any other living soul?"--these are the men and women
+who now and then touch or startle us with the eyes and the voice of
+Julie, if, at least, we have the capacity that responds. Sir Wilfrid
+Bury, for instance, prince of self-governed and reasonable men, was not
+to be touched by Julie. For him, in spite of her keen intelligence, she
+was the _type passionne_, from which he instinctively recoiled--the Duke
+of Crowborough the same. Such men feel towards such women as Julie Le
+Breton hostility or satire; for what they ask, above all, of the women
+of their world is a kind of simplicity, a kind of lightness which makes
+life easier for men.
+
+But for natures like Evelyn Crowborough--or Meredith--or Jacob
+Delafield--the Julie-type has perennial attractions. For these are all
+_children of feeling_, allied in this, however different in intelligence
+or philosophy. They are attracted by the storm-tossed temperament in
+itself; by mere sensibility; by that which, in the technical language of
+Catholicism, suggests or possesses "the gift of tears." At any rate,
+pity and love for her poor Julie--however foolish, however faulty--lay
+warm in Evelyn Crowborough's breast; they had brought her to Como; they
+kept her now battling on the one hand with her husband's angry letters
+and on the other with the melancholy of her most perplexing, most
+appealing friend.
+
+"I had often heard" [wrote the sore-tried Duke] "of the ravages wrought
+in family life by these absurd and unreasonable female friendships, but
+I never thought that it would be you, Evelyn, who would bring them home
+to me. I won't repeat the arguments I have used a hundred times in vain.
+But once again I implore and demand that you should find some kind,
+responsible person to look after Miss Le Breton--I don't care what you
+pay--and that you yourself should come home to me and the children and
+the thousand and one duties you are neglecting.
+
+"As for the spring month in Scotland, which I generally enjoy so much,
+that has been already entirely ruined. And now the season is apparently
+to be ruined also. On the Shropshire property there is an important
+election coming on, as I am sure you know; and the Premier said to me
+only yesterday that he hoped you were already up and doing. The Grand
+Duke of C---- will be in London within the next fortnight. I
+particularly want to show him some civility. But what can I do without
+you--and how on earth am I to explain your absence?
+
+"Once more, Evelyn, I beg and I demand that you should come home."
+
+To which the Duchess had rushed off a reply without a post's delay.
+
+"Oh, Freddie, you are such a wooden-headed darling! As if I hadn't
+explained till I'm black in the face. I'm glad, anyway, you didn't say
+command; that would really have made difficulties.
+
+"As for the election, I'm sure if I was at home I should think it very
+good fun. Out here I am extremely doubtful whether we ought to do such
+things as you and Lord M---- suggest. A duke shouldn't interfere in
+elections. Anyway, I'm sure it's good for my character to consider it a
+little--though I quite admit you may lose the election.
+
+"The Grand Duke is a horrid wretch, and if he wasn't a grand duke you'd
+be the first to cut him. I had to spend a whole dinner-time last year in
+teaching him his proper place. It was very humiliating, and not at all
+amusing. You can have a men's dinner for him. That's all he's fit for.
+
+"And as for the babies, Mrs. Robson sends me a telegram every morning. I
+can't make out that they have had a finger-ache since I went away, and I
+am sure mothers are entirely superfluous. All the same, I think about
+them a great deal, especially at night. Last night I tried to think
+about their education--if only I wasn't such a sleepy creature! But, at
+any rate, I never in my life tried to think about it at home. So that's
+so much to the good.
+
+"Indeed, I'll come back to you soon, you poor, forsaken, old thing! But
+Julie has no one in the world, and I feel like a Newfoundland dog who
+has pulled some one out of the water. The water was deep; and the life's
+only just coming back; and the dog's not much good. But he sits there,
+for company, till the doctor comes, and that's just what I'm doing.
+
+"I know you don't approve of the notions I have in my head now. But
+that's because you don't understand. Why don't you come out and join us?
+Then you'd like Julie as much as I do; everything would be quite simple;
+and I shouldn't be in the least jealous.
+
+"Dr. Meredith is coming here, probably to-night, and Jacob should arrive
+to-morrow on his way to Venice, where poor Chudleigh and his boy are."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _breva_, or fair-weather wind, from the north was blowing freshly
+yet softly down the lake. The afternoon sun was burning on Bellaggio, on
+the long terrace of the Melzi villa, on the white mist of fruit-blossom
+that lay lightly on the green slopes above San Giovanni.
+
+Suddenly the Duchess and the boatman left the common topics of every day
+by which the Duchess was trying to improve her Italian--such as the
+proposed enlargement of the Bellevue Hotel, the new villas that were
+springing up, the gardens of the Villa Carlotta, and so forth. Evelyn
+had carelessly asked the old man whether he had been in any of the
+fighting of '59, and in an instant, under her eyes, he became another
+being. Out rolled a torrent of speech; the oars lay idly on the water;
+and through the man's gnarled and wrinkled face there blazed a high and
+illumining passion. Novara and its beaten king, in '49; the ten years of
+waiting, when a whole people bode its time, in a gay, grim silence; the
+grudging victory of Magenta; the fivefold struggle that wrenched the
+hills of San Martino from the Austrians; the humiliations and the rage
+of Villafranca--of all these had this wasted graybeard made a part. And
+he talked of them with the Latin eloquence and facility, as no veteran
+of the north could have talked; he was in a moment the equal of these
+great affairs in which he had mingled; so that one felt in him the son
+of a race which had been rolled and polished--a pebble, as it were, from
+rocks which had made the primeval frame-work of the world--in the main
+course and stream of history.
+
+Then from the campaign of '59 he fell back on the Five Days of Milan in
+'48--the immortal days, when a populace drove out an army, and what
+began almost in jest ended in a delirium, a stupefaction of victory. His
+language was hot, broken, confused, like the street fighting it
+chronicled. Afterwards--a further sharpening and blanching of the old
+face--and he had carried them deep into the black years of Italy's
+patience and Austria's revenge. Throwing out a thin arm, he pointed
+towards town after town on the lake shores, now in the brilliance of
+sunset, now in the shadow of the northern slope--Gravedona, Varenna,
+Argegno--towns which had each of them given their sons to the Austrian
+bullet and the Austrian lash for the ransom of Italy.
+
+He ran through the sacred names--Stazzonelli, Riccini, Crescieri,
+Ronchetti, Ceresa, Previtali--young men, almost all of them, shot for
+the possession of a gun or a knife, for helping their comrades in the
+Austrian army to desert, for "insulting conduct" towards an Austrian
+soldier or officer.
+
+Of one of these executions, which he had himself witnessed at
+Varese--the shooting of a young fellow of six-and-twenty, his own friend
+and kinsman--he gave an account which blanched the Duchess's cheeks and
+brought the big tears into her eyes. Then, when he saw the effect he had
+produced, the old man trembled.
+
+"Ah, eccellenza," he cried, "but it had to be! The Italians had to show
+they knew how to die; then God let them live. Ecco, eccellenza!"
+
+And he drew from his breast-pocket, with shaking hands, an old envelope
+tied round with string. When he had untied it, a piece of paper emerged,
+brown with age and worn with much reading. It was a rudely printed
+broadsheet containing an account of the last words and sufferings of the
+martyrs of Mantua--those conspirators of 1852--from whose graves and
+dungeons sprang, tenfold renewed, the regenerating and liberating forces
+which, but a few years later, drove out the Austrian with the Bourbon,
+together.
+
+"See here, eccellenza," he said, as he tenderly spread out its tattered
+folds and gave it into the Duchess's hand. "Have the goodness to look
+where is that black mark. There you will find the last words of Don
+Enrico Tazzoli, the half-brother of my father. He was a priest,
+eccellenza. Ah, it was not then as it is now! The priests were then for
+Italy. They hanged three of them at Mantua alone. As for Don Enrico,
+first they stripped him of his priesthood, and then they hanged him. And
+those were his last words, and the last words of Scarsellini also, who
+suffered with him. _Veda eccellenza_! As for me, I know them from
+a boy."
+
+And while the Duchess read, the old man repeated tags and fragments
+under his breath, as he once more resumed the oars and drove the boat
+gently towards Menaggio.
+
+"_The multitude of victims has not robbed us of courage in the past, nor
+will it so rob us in the future--till victory dawns. The cause of the
+people is like the cause of religion--it triumphs only through its
+martyrs.... You--who survive--will conquer, and in your victory we, the
+dead, shall live_....
+
+"_Take no thought for us; the blood of the forerunners is like the seed
+which the wise husbandman scatters on the fertile ground_.... _Teach our
+young men how to adore and how to suffer for a great idea. Work
+incessantly at that; so shall our country come to birth; and grieve not
+for us!... Yes, Italy shall be one! To that all things point._ WORK!
+_There is no obstacle that cannot be overcome, no opposition that cannot
+be destroyed. The_ HOW _and the_ WHEN _only remain to be solved. You,
+more fortunate than we, will find the clew to the riddle, when all
+things are accomplished, and the times are ripe.... Hope!--my parents,
+and my brothers--hope always!--waste no time in weeping_."
+
+The Duchess read aloud the Italian, and Julie stooped over her shoulder
+to follow the words.
+
+"Marvellous!" said Julie, in a low voice, as she sank back into her
+place. "A youth of twenty-seven, with the rope round his neck, and he
+comforts himself with 'Italy.' What's 'Italy' to him, or he to 'Italy'?"
+Not even an immediate paradise. "Is there anybody capable of it now?"
+
+Her face and attitude had lost their languor. As the Duchess returned
+his treasure to the old man she looked at Julie with joy. Not since her
+illness had there been any such sign of warmth and energy.
+
+And, indeed, as they floated on, past the glow of Bellaggio, towards the
+broad gold and azure of the farther lake, the world-defying passion that
+breathed from these words of dead and murdered Italians played as a
+bracing and renewing power on Julie's still feeble being. It was akin to
+the high snows on those far Alps that closed in the lake--to the pure
+wind that blew from them--to the "gleam, the shadow, and the peace
+supreme," amid which their little boat pressed on towards the shore.
+
+"What matter," cried the intelligence, but as though through sobs--"what
+matter the individual struggle and misery? These can be lived down. The
+heart can be silenced--nerves steadied--strength restored. Will and idea
+remain--the eternal spectacle of the world, and the eternal thirst of
+man to see, to know, to feel, to realize himself, if not in one passion,
+then in another. If not in love, then in patriotism--art--thought."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Duchess and Julie landed presently beneath the villa of which they
+were the passing tenants. The Duchess mounted the double staircase where
+the banksia already hung in a golden curtain over the marble balustrade.
+Her face was thoughtful. She had to write her daily letter to the absent
+and reproachful Duke.
+
+Julie parted from her with a caress, and paused awhile to watch the
+small figure till it mounted out of sight. Her friend had become very
+dear to her. A new humility, a new gratitude filled her heart. Evelyn
+should not sacrifice herself much longer. When she had insisted on
+carrying her patient abroad, Julie had neither mind nor will wherewith
+to resist. But now--the Duke should soon come to his own again.
+
+She herself turned inland for that short walk by which each day she
+tested her returning strength. She climbed the winding road to Criante,
+the lovely village above Cadenabbia; then, turning to the left, she
+mounted a path that led to the woods which overhang the famous gardens
+of the Villa Carlotta.
+
+Such a path! To the left hand, and, as it seemed, steeply beneath her
+feet, all earth and heaven--the wide lake, the purple mountains, the
+glories of a flaming sky. On the calm spaces of water lay a shimmer of
+crimson and gold, repeating the noble splendor of the clouds; the
+midgelike boats crept from shore to shore; and, midway between Bellaggio
+and Cadenabbia, the steam-boat, a white speck, drew a silver furrow. To
+her right a green hill-side--each blade of grass, each flower, each
+tuft of heath, enskied, transfigured, by the broad light that poured
+across it from the hidden west. And on the very hill-top a few scattered
+olives, peaches, and wild cherries scrawled upon the blue, their bare,
+leaning stems, their pearly whites, their golden pinks and feathery
+grays all in a glory of sunset that made of them things enchanted,
+aerial, fantastical, like a dance of Botticelli angels on the height.
+
+And presently a sheltered bank in a green hollow, where Julie sat down
+to rest. But nature, in this tranquil spot, had still new pageants, new
+sorceries wherewith to play upon the nerves of wonder. Across the hollow
+a great crag clothed in still leafless chestnut-trees reared itself
+against the lake. The innumerable lines of stem and branch, warm brown
+or steely gray, were drawn sharp on silver air, while at the very summit
+of the rock one superb tree with branching limbs, touched with intense
+black, sprang high above the rest, the proud plume or ensign of the
+wood. Through the trunks the blaze of distant snow and the purples of
+craggy mountains; in front the glistening spray of peach or cherry
+blossom, breaking the still wintry beauty of that majestic grove. And in
+all the air, dropping from the heaven, spread on the hills, or
+shimmering on the lake, a diffusion of purest rose and deepest blue,
+lake and cloud and mountain each melting into the other, as though
+heaven and earth conspired merely to give value and relief to the year's
+new birth, to this near sparkle of young leaf and blossom which shone
+like points of fire on the deep breast of the distance.
+
+On the green ledge which ran round the hollow were children tugging at a
+goat. Opposite was a _contadino's_ house of gray stone. A water-wheel
+turned beside it, and a stream, brought down from the hills, ran
+chattering past, a white and dancing thread of water. Everything was
+very still and soft. The children and the river made their voices heard;
+and there were nightingales singing in the woods below. Otherwise all
+was quiet. With a tranquil and stealthy joy the spring was taking
+possession. Nay--the Angelus! It swung over the lake and rolled from
+village to village....
+
+The tears were in Julie's eyes. Such beauty as this was apt now to crush
+and break her. All her being was still sore, and this appeal of nature
+was sometimes more than she could bear.
+
+Only a few short weeks since Warkworth had gone out of her life--since
+Delafield at a stroke had saved her from ruin--since Lord Lackington had
+passed away.
+
+One letter had reached her from Warkworth, a wild and incoherent letter,
+written at night in a little room of a squalid hotel near the Gare de
+Sceaux. Her telegram had reached him, and for him, as for her, all
+was over.
+
+But the letter was by no means a mere cry of baffled passion. There was
+in it a new note of moral anguish, as fresh and startling in her ear,
+coming from him, as the cry of passion itself. In the language of
+religion, it was the utterance of a man "convicted of sin."
+
+     "How long is it since that man gave me your telegram? I was
+     pacing up and down the departure platform, working myself
+     into an agony of nervousness and anxiety as the time went by,
+     wondering what on earth had happened to you, when the _chef
+     de gare_ came up: 'Monsieur attend une depeche?' There were
+     some stupid formalities--at last I got it. It seemed to me I
+     had already guessed what it contained.
+
+     "So it was _Delafield_ who met you--Delafield who turned you
+     back?
+
+     "I saw him outside the hotel yesterday, and we exchanged a
+     few words. I have always disliked his long, pale face and his
+     high and mighty ways--at any rate, towards plain fellows, who
+     don't belong to the classes, like me. Yesterday I was more
+     than usually anxious to get rid of him.
+
+     "So he guessed?
+
+     "It can't have been chance. In some way he guessed. And you
+     have been torn from me. My God! If I could only reach him--if
+     I could fling his contempt in his face! And yet--
+
+     "I have been walking up and down this room all night. The
+     longing for you has been the sharpest suffering I suppose
+     that I have ever known. For I am not one of the many people
+     who enjoy pain. I have kept as free of it as I could. This
+     time it caught and gripped me. Yet that isn't all. There has
+     been something else.
+
+     "What strange, patched creatures we are! Do you know, Julie,
+     that by the time the dawn came I was on my knees--thanking
+     God that we were parted--that you were on your way
+     home--safe--out of my reach? Was I mad, or what? I can't
+     explain it. I only know that one moment I hated Delafield as
+     a mortal enemy--whether he was conscious of what he had done
+     or no--and the next I found myself blessing him!
+
+     "I understand now what people mean when they talk of
+     conversion. It seems to me that in the hours I have just
+     passed through things have come to light in me that I myself
+     never suspected. I came of an Evangelical stock--I was
+     brought up in a religious household. I suppose that one
+     can't, after all, get away from the blood and the life that
+     one inherits. My poor, old father--I was a bad son, and I
+     know I hastened his death--was a sort of Puritan saint, with
+     very stern ideas. I seem to have been talking with him this
+     night, and shrinking under his condemnation. I could see his
+     old face, as he put before me the thoughts I had dared to
+     entertain, the risks I had been ready to take towards the
+     woman I loved--the woman to whom I owed a deep debt of
+     eternal gratitude.
+
+     "Julie, it is strange how this appointment affects me. Last
+     night I saw several people at the Embassy--good fellows--who
+     seemed anxious to do all they could for me. Such men never
+     took so much notice of me before. It is plain to me that this
+     task will make or mar me. I may fail. I may die. But if I
+     succeed England will owe me something, and these men at the
+     top of the tree--
+
+     "Good God! how can I go on writing this to you? It's because
+     I came back to the hotel and tossed about half the night
+     brooding over the difference between what these men--these
+     honorable, distinguished fellows--were prepared to think of
+     me, and the blackguard I knew myself to be. What, take
+     everything from a woman's hand, and then turn and try and
+     drag her in the mire--propose to her what one would shoot a
+     man for proposing to one's sister! Thief and cur.
+
+     "Julie--kind, beloved Julie--forget it all! For God's sake,
+     let's cast it all behind us! As long as I live, your name,
+     your memory will live in my heart. We shall not meet,
+     probably, for many years. You'll marry and be happy yet. Just
+     now I know you're suffering. I seem to see you in the
+     train--on the steamer--your pale face that has lighted up
+     life for me--your dear, slender hands that folded so easily
+     into one of mine. You are in pain, my darling. Your nature is
+     wrenched from its natural supports. And you gave me all your
+     fine, clear mind, and all your heart. I ought to be damned to
+     the deepest hell!
+
+     "Then, again, I say to myself, if only she were here! If only
+     I had her _here_, with her arms round my neck, surely I might
+     have found the courage and the mere manliness to extricate
+     both herself and me from these entanglements. Aileen might
+     have released and forgiven one.
+
+     "No, no! It's all over! I'll go and do my task. You set it
+     me. You sha'n't be ashamed of me there.
+
+     "Good-bye, Julie, my love--good-bye--forever!"
+
+These were portions of that strange document composed through the
+intervals of a long night, which showed in Warkworth's mind the survival
+of a moral code, inherited from generations of scrupulous and
+God-fearing ancestors, overlaid by selfish living, and now revived under
+the stress, the purification partly of deepening passion, partly of a
+high responsibility. The letter was incoherent, illogical; it showed now
+the meaner, now the nobler elements of character; but it was human; it
+came from the warm depths of life, and it had exerted in the end a
+composing and appeasing force upon the woman to whom it was addressed.
+He had loved her--if only at the moment of parting--he had loved her! At
+the last there had been feeling, sincerity, anguish, and to these all
+things may be forgiven.
+
+And, indeed, what in her eyes there was to forgive, Julie had long
+forgiven. Was it his fault if, when they met first, he was already
+pledged--for social and practical reasons which her mind perfectly
+recognized and understood--to Aileen Moffatt? Was it his fault if the
+relations between herself and him had ripened into a friendship which in
+its turn could only maintain itself by passing into love? No! It was
+she, whose hidden, insistent passion--nourished, indeed, upon a tragic
+ignorance--had transformed what originally he had a perfect right to
+offer and to feel.
+
+So she defended him; for in so doing she justified herself. And as to
+the Paris proposal, he had a right to treat her as a woman capable of
+deciding for herself how far love should carry her; he had a right to
+assume that her antecedents, her training, and her circumstances were
+not those of the ordinary sheltered girl, and that for her love might
+naturally wear a bolder and wilder aspect than for others. He blamed
+himself too severely, too passionately; but for this very blame her
+heart remembered him the more tenderly. For it meant that his mind was
+torn and in travail for her, that his thoughts clung to her in a
+passionate remorse; and again she felt herself loved, and forgave with
+all her heart.
+
+All the same, he was gone out of her life, and through the strain and
+the unconscious progress to other planes and phases of being, wrought by
+sickness and convalescence, her own passion for him even was now a
+changed and blunted thing.
+
+Was she ashamed of the wild impulse which had carried her to Paris? It
+is difficult to say. She was often seized with the shuddering
+consciousness of an abyss escaped, with wonder that she was still in the
+normal, accepted world, that Evelyn might still be her companion, that
+Therese still adored her more fervently than any saint in the calendar.
+Perhaps, if the truth were known, she was more abased in her own eyes by
+the self-abandonment which had preceded the assignation with Warkworth.
+She had much intellectual arrogance, and before her acquaintance with
+Warkworth she had been accustomed to say and to feel that love was but
+one passion among many, and to despise those who gave it too great a
+place. And here she had flung herself into it, like any dull or foolish
+girl for whom a love affair represents the only stirring in the pool of
+life that she is ever likely to know.
+
+Well, she must recapture herself and remake her life. As she sat there
+in the still Italian evening she thought of the old boatman, and those
+social and intellectual passions to which his burst of patriotism had
+recalled her thoughts. Society, literature, friends, and the ambitions
+to which these lead--let her go back to them and build her days afresh.
+Dr. Meredith was coming. In his talk and companionship she would once
+more dip and temper the tools of mind and taste. No more vain
+self-arraignment, no more useless regrets. She looked back with
+bitterness upon a moment of weakness when, in the first stage of
+convalescence, in mortal weariness and loneliness, she had slipped one
+evening into the Farm Street church and unburdened her heart in
+confession. As she had told the Duchess, the Catholicism instilled into
+her youth by the Bruges nuns still laid upon her at times its ghostly
+and compelling hand. Now in her renewed strength she was inclined to
+look upon it as an element of weakness and disintegration in her nature.
+She resolved, in future, to free herself more entirely from a useless
+_Aberglaube_.
+
+But Meredith was not the only visitor expected at the villa in the next
+few days. She was already schooling herself to face the arrival of Jacob
+Delafield.
+
+It was curious how the mere thought of Delafield produced an agitation,
+a shock of feeling, which seemed to spread through all the activities of
+being. The faint, renascent glamour which had begun to attach to
+literature and social life disappeared. She fell into a kind of
+brooding, the sombre restlessness of one who feels in the dark the
+recurrent presence of an attacking and pursuing power, and is in a
+tremulous uncertainty where or how to meet it.
+
+The obscure tumult within her represented, in fact, a collision between
+the pagan and Christian conceptions of life. In self-dependence, in
+personal pride, in her desire to refer all things to the arbitrament of
+reason, Julie, whatever her practice, was theoretically a stoic and a
+pagan. But Delafield's personality embodied another "must," another
+"ought," of a totally different kind. And it was a "must" which, in a
+great crisis of her life, she also had been forced to obey. There was
+the thought which stung and humiliated. And the fact was irreparable;
+nor did she see how she was ever to escape from the strange, silent,
+penetrating relation it had established between her and the man who
+loved her and had saved her, against her will.
+
+During her convalescence at Crowborough House, Delafield had been often
+admitted. It would have been impossible to exclude him, unless she had
+confided the whole story of the Paris journey to the Duchess. And
+whatever Evelyn might tremblingly guess, from Julie's own mouth she knew
+nothing. So Delafield had come and gone, bringing Lord Lackington's last
+words, and the account of his funeral, or acting as intermediary in
+business matters between Julie and the Chantrey brothers. Julie could
+not remember that she had ever asked him for these services. They fell
+to him, as it were, by common consent, and she had been too weak
+to resist.
+
+At first, whenever he entered the room, whenever he approached her, her
+sense of anger and resentment had been almost unbearable. But little by
+little his courtesy, tact, and coolness had restored a relation between
+them which, if not the old one, had still many of the outward characters
+of intimacy. Not a word, not the remotest allusion reminded her of what
+had happened. The man who had stood before her transfigured on the deck
+of the steamer, stammering out, "I thank God I had the courage to do
+it!"--it was often hard for her to believe, as she stole a look at
+Delafield, chatting or writing in the Duchess's drawing-room, that such
+a scene had ever taken place.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The evening stole on. How was it that whenever she allowed the thought
+of Delafield to obtain a real lodgment in the mind, even the memory of
+Warkworth was for the time effaced? Silently, irresistibly, a wild heat
+of opposition would develop within her. These men round whom, as it
+were, there breathes an air of the heights; in whom one feels the secret
+guard that religion keeps over thoughts and words and acts--her
+passionate yet critical nature flung out against them. How are they
+better than others, after all? What right have they over the wills
+of others?
+
+Nevertheless, as the rose of evening burned on the craggy mountain face
+beyond Bellaggio, retreating upward, step by step, till the last
+glorious summit had died into the cool and already starlit blues of
+night, Julie, held, as it were, by a reluctant and half-jealous
+fascination, sat dreaming on the hill-side, not now of Warkworth, not of
+the ambitions of the mind, or society, but simply of the goings and
+comings, the aspects and sayings of a man in whose eyes she had once
+read the deepest and sternest things of the soul--a condemnation and an
+anguish above and beyond himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. Meredith arrived in due time, a jaded Londoner athirst for idleness
+and fresh air. The Duchess and Julie carried him hither and thither
+about the lake in the four-oar boat which had been hired for the
+Duchess's pleasure. Here, enthroned between the two ladies, he passed
+luxurious hours, and his talk of politics, persons, and books brought
+just that stimulus to Julie's intelligence and spirits for which the
+Duchess had been secretly longing.
+
+A first faint color returned to Julie's cheeks. She began to talk again;
+to resume certain correspondences; to show herself once more--at any
+rate intermittently--the affectionate, sympathetic, and
+beguiling friend.
+
+As for Meredith, he knew little, but he suspected a good deal. There
+were certain features in her illness and convalescence which suggested
+to him a mental cause; and if there were such a cause, it must, of
+course, spring from her relations to Warkworth.
+
+The name of that young officer was never mentioned. Once or twice
+Meredith was tempted to introduce it. It rankled in his mind that Julie
+had never been frank with him, freely as he had poured his affection at
+her feet. But a moment of languor or of pallor disarmed him.
+
+"She is better," he said to the Duchess one day, abruptly. "Her mind is
+full of activity. But why, at times, does she still look so
+miserable--like a person without hope or future?"
+
+The Duchess looked pensive. They were sitting in the corner of one of
+the villa's terraced walks, amid a scented wilderness of flowers. Above
+them was a canopy of purple and yellow--rose and wistaria; while through
+the arches of the pergola which ran along the walk gleamed all those
+various blues which make the spell of Como--the blue and white of the
+clouds, the purple of the mountains, the azure of the lake.
+
+"Well, she was in love with him. I suppose it takes a little time," said
+the Duchess, sighing.
+
+"Why was she in love with him?" said Meredith, impatiently. "As to the
+Moffatt engagement, naturally, she was kept in the dark?"
+
+"At first," said the Duchess, hesitating. "And when she knew, poor dear,
+it was too late!"
+
+"Too late for what?"
+
+"Well, when one falls in love one doesn't all at once shake it off
+because the man deceives you."
+
+"One _should_," said Meredith, with energy. "Men are not worth all that
+women spend upon them."
+
+"Oh, that's true!" cried the Duchess--"so dreadfully true! But what's
+the good of preaching? We shall go on spending it to the end of time."
+
+"Well, at any rate, don't choose the dummies and the frauds."
+
+"Ah, there you talk sense," said the Duchess. "And if only we had the
+French system in England! If only one could say to Julie: 'Now look
+here, _there's_ your husband! It's all settled--down to plate and
+linen--and you've _got_ to marry him!' how happy we should all be."
+
+Dr. Meredith stared.
+
+"You have the man in your eye," he said.
+
+The Duchess hesitated.
+
+"Suppose you come a little walk with me in the wood," she said, at last,
+gathering up her white skirts.
+
+Meredith obeyed her. They were away for half an hour, and when they
+returned the journalist's face, flushed and furrowed with thought, was
+not very easy to read.
+
+Nor was his temper in good condition. It required a climb to the very
+top of Monte Crocione to send him back, more or less appeased, a
+consenting player in the Duchess's game. For if there are men who are
+flirts and egotists--who ought to be, yet never are, divined by the
+sensible woman at a glance--so also there are men too well equipped for
+this wicked world, too good, too well born, too desirable.
+
+It was in this somewhat flinty and carping mood that Meredith prepared
+himself for the advent of Jacob Delafield.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But when Delafield appeared, Meredith's secret antagonisms were soon
+dissipated. There was certainly no challenging air of prosperity about
+the young man.
+
+At first sight, indeed, he was his old cheerful self, always ready for a
+walk or a row, on easy terms at once with the Italian servants or
+boatmen. But soon other facts emerged--stealthily, as it were, from the
+concealment in which a strong man was trying to keep them.
+
+"That young man's youth is over," said Meredith, abruptly, to the
+Duchess one evening. He pointed to the figure of Delafield, who was
+pacing, alone with his pipe, up and down one of the lower terraces of
+the garden.
+
+The Duchess showed a teased expression.
+
+"It's like something wearing through," she said, slowly. "I suppose it
+was always there, but it didn't show."
+
+"Name your 'it.'"
+
+"I can't." But she gave a little shudder, which made Meredith look at
+her with curiosity.
+
+"You feel something ghostly--unearthly?"
+
+She nodded assent; crying out, however, immediately afterwards, as
+though in compunction, that he was one of the dearest and best
+of fellows.
+
+"Of course he is," said Meredith. "It is only the mystic in him coming
+out. He is one of the men who have the sixth sense."
+
+"Well, all I know is, he has the oddest power over people," said Evelyn,
+with another shiver. "If Freddie had it, my life wouldn't be worth
+living. Thank goodness, he hasn't a vestige!"
+
+"At bottom it's the power of the priest," said Meredith. "And you women
+are far too susceptible towards it. Nine times out of ten it plays the
+mischief."
+
+The Duchess was silent a moment. Then she bent towards her companion,
+finger on lip, her charming eyes glancing significantly towards the
+lower terrace. The figures on it were now two. Julie and Delafield
+paced together.
+
+"But this is the tenth!" she said, in an eager whisper.
+
+Meredith smiled at her, then flung her a dubious "Chi sa?" and changed
+the subject.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Delafield, who was a fine oar, had soon taken command of the lake
+expeditions; and by the help of two stalwart youths from Tremezzo, the
+four-oar was in use from morning till night. Through the broad lake
+which lies between Menaggio and Varenna it sped northward to Gravedona;
+or beneath the shadowy cliffs of the Villa Serbelloni it slipped over
+deep waters, haunted and dark, into the sunny spaces of Lecco; or it
+coasted along the steep sides of Monte Primo, so that the travellers in
+it might catch the blue stain of the gentians on the turf, where it
+sloped into the lucent wave below, or watch the fishermen on the rocks,
+spearing their prey in the green or golden shallows.
+
+The weather was glorious--a summer before its time. The wild cherries
+shook down their snow upon the grass; but the pears were now in bridal
+white, and a warmer glory of apple-blossom was just beginning to break
+upon the blue. The nights were calm and moonlit; the dawns were visions
+of mysterious and incredible beauty, wherein mountain and forest and
+lake were but the garments, diaphanous, impalpable, of some delicate,
+indwelling light and fire spirit, which breathed and pulsed through the
+solidity of rock, no less visibly than through the crystal leagues of
+air or the sunlit spaces of water.
+
+Yet presently, as it were, a hush of waiting, of tension, fell upon
+their little party. Nature offered her best; but there was only an
+apparent acceptance of her bounties. Through the outward flow of talk
+and amusement, of wanderings on lake or hill, ugly hidden forces of pain
+and strife, regret, misery, resistance, made themselves rarely yet
+piercingly felt.
+
+Julie drooped again. Her cheeks were paler even than when Meredith
+arrived. Delafield, too, began to be more silent, more absent. He was
+helpful and courteous as ever, but it began to be seen that his gayety
+was an effort, and now and then there were sharp or bitter notes in
+voice or manner, which jarred, and were not soon forgotten.
+
+Presently, Meredith and the Duchess found themselves looking on,
+breathless and astonished, at the struggle of two personalities, the
+wrestle between two wills. They little knew that it was a renewed
+struggle--second wrestle. But silently, by a kind of tacit agreement,
+they drew away from Delafield and Julie. They dimly understood that he
+pursued and she resisted; and that for him life was becoming gradually
+absorbed into the two facts of her presence and her resistance.
+
+"_On ne s'appuie que sur ce qui resiste_." For both of them these words
+were true. Fundamentally, and beyond all passing causes of grief and
+anger, each was fascinated by the full strength of nature in the other.
+Neither could ever forget the other. The hours grew electric, and every
+tiny incident became charged with spiritual meaning.
+
+Often for hours together Julie would try to absorb herself in talk with
+Meredith. But the poor fellow got little joy from it. Presently, at a
+word or look of Delafield's she would let herself be recaptured, as
+though with a proud reluctance; they wandered away together; and once
+more Meredith and the Duchess became the merest by-standers.
+
+The Duchess shrugged her shoulders over it, and, though she laughed,
+sometimes the tears were in her eyes. She felt the hovering of passion,
+but it was no passion known to her own blithe nature.
+
+And if only this strange state of things might end, one way or other,
+and set her free to throw her arms round her Duke's neck, and beg his
+pardon for all these weeks of desertion! She said to herself, ruefully,
+that her babies would indeed have forgotten her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet she stood stoutly to her post, and the weeks passed quickly by. It
+was the dramatic energy of the situation--so much more dramatic in truth
+than either she or Meredith suspected--that made it such a strain upon
+the onlookers.
+
+One evening they had left the boat at Tremezzo, that they might walk
+back along that most winning of paths that skirts the lake between the
+last houses of Tremezzo and the inn at Cadenabbia. The sunset was nearly
+over, but the air was still suffused with its rose and pearl, and
+fragrant with the scent of flowering laurels. Each mountain face, each
+white village, either couched on the water's edge or grouped about its
+slender campanile on some shoulder of the hills, each house and tree and
+figure seemed still penetrated with light, the glorified creatures of
+some just revealed and already fading world. The echoes of the evening
+bell were floating on the lake, and from a boat in front, full of
+peasant-folk, there rose a sound of singing, some litany of saint or
+virgin, which stole in harmonies, rudely true, across the water.
+
+"They have been to the pilgrimage church above Lenno," said Julie,
+pointing to the boat, and in order to listen to the singing, she found a
+seat on a low wall above the lake.
+
+There was no reply, and, looking round her, she saw with a start that
+only Delafield was beside her, that the Duchess and Meredith had
+already rounded the corner of the Villa Carlotta and were out of sight.
+
+Delafield's gaze was fixed upon her. He was very pale, and suddenly
+Julie's breath seemed to fail her.
+
+"I don't think I can bear it any longer," he said, as he came close to
+her.
+
+"Bear what?"
+
+"That you should look as you do now."
+
+Julie made no reply. Her eyes, very sad and bitter, searched the blue
+dimness of the lake in silence.
+
+Delafield sat down on the wall beside her. Not a soul was in sight. At
+the Cadenabbia Hotel, the _table d'hote_ had gathered in the visitors; a
+few boats passed and repassed in the distance, but on land all
+was still.
+
+Suddenly he took her hand with a firm grasp.
+
+"Are you never going to forgive me?" he said, in a low voice.
+
+"I suppose I ought to bless you."
+
+Her face seemed to him to express the tremulous misery of a heart
+deeply, perhaps irrevocably, wounded. Emotion rose in a tide, but he
+crushed it down.
+
+He bent over her, speaking with deliberate tenderness.
+
+"Julie, do you remember what you promised Lord Lackington when he was
+dying?"
+
+"Oh!" cried Julie.
+
+She sprang to her feet, speechless and suffocated. Her eyes expressed a
+mingled pride and terror.
+
+He paused, confronting her with a pale resolution.
+
+"You didn't know that I had seen him?"
+
+"Know!"
+
+She turned away fiercely, choking with sobs she could hardly control,
+as the memory of that by-gone moment returned upon her.
+
+"I thought as much," said Delafield, in a low voice. "You hoped never to
+hear of your promise again."
+
+She made no answer; but she sank again upon the seat beside the lake,
+and supporting herself on one delicate hand, which clung to the coping
+of the wall, she turned her pale and tear-stained face to the lake and
+the evening sky. There was in her gesture an unconscious yearning, a
+mute and anguished appeal, as though from the oppressions of human
+character to the broad strength of nature, that was not lost on
+Delafield. His mind became the centre of a swift and fierce debate. One
+voice said: "Why are you persecuting her? Respect her weakness and her
+grief." And another replied: "It is because she is weak that she must
+yield--must allow herself to be guided and adored."
+
+He came close to her again. Any passer-by might have supposed that they
+were both looking at the distant boat and listening to the
+pilgrimage chant.
+
+"Do you think I don't understand why you made that promise?" he said,
+very gently, and the mere self-control of his voice and manner carried a
+spell with it for the woman beside him. "It was wrung out of you by
+kindness for a dying man. You thought I should never know, or I should
+never claim it. Well, I am selfish. I take advantage. I do claim it. I
+saw Lord Lackington only a few hours before his death. 'She mustn't be
+alone,' he said to me, several times. And then, almost at the last, 'Ask
+her again. She'll consider it--she promised.'"
+
+Julie turned impetuously.
+
+"Neither of us is bound by that--neither of us."
+
+Delafield smiled.
+
+"Does that mean that I am asking you now because he bade me?"
+
+A pause. Julie must needs raise her eyes to his. She flushed red and
+withdrew them.
+
+"No," he said, with a long breath, "you don't mean that, and you don't
+think it. As for you--yes, you are bound! Julie, once more I bring you
+my plea, and you must consider it."
+
+"How can I be your wife?" she said, her breast heaving. "You know all
+that has happened. It would be monstrous."
+
+"Not at all," was his quiet reply. "It would be natural and right.
+Julie, it is strange that I should be talking to you like this. You're
+so much cleverer than I--in some ways, so much stronger. And yet, in
+others--you'll let me say it, won't you?--I could help you. I could
+protect you. It's all I care for in the world."
+
+"How can I be your wife?" she repeated, passionately, wringing her
+hands.
+
+"Be what you will--at home. My friend, comrade, housemate. I ask nothing
+more--_nothing_." His voice dropped, and there was a pause. Then he
+resumed. "But, in the eyes of the world, make me your servant and
+your husband!"
+
+"I can't condemn you to such a fate," she cried. "You know where my
+heart is."
+
+Delafield did not waver.
+
+"I know where your heart was," he said, with firmness. "You will banish
+that man from your thoughts in time. He has no right to be there. I take
+all the risks--all."
+
+"Well, at least for you, I am no hypocrite," she said, with a quivering
+lip. "You know what I am."
+
+"Yes, I know, and I am at your feet."
+
+The tears dropped from Julie's eyes. She turned away and hid her face
+against one of the piers of the wall.
+
+Delafield attempted no caress. He quietly set himself to draw the life
+that he had to offer her, the comradeship that he proposed to her. Not a
+word of what the world called his "prospects" entered in. She knew very
+well that he could not bring himself to speak of them. Rather, a sort of
+ascetic and mystical note made itself heard in all he said of the
+future, a note that before now had fascinated and controlled a woman
+whose ambition was always strangely tempered with high, poetical
+imagination.
+
+Yet, ambitious she was, and her mind inevitably supplied what his voice
+left unsaid.
+
+"He will have to fill his place whether he wishes it or no," she said to
+herself. "And if, in truth, he desires my help--"
+
+Then she shrank from her own wavering. Look where she would into her
+life, it seemed to her that all was monstrous and out of joint.
+
+"You don't realize what you ask," she said, at last, in despair. "I am
+not what you call a good woman--you know it too well. I don't measure
+things by your standards. I am capable of such a journey as you found me
+on. I can't find in my own mind that I repent it at all. I can tell a
+lie--you can't. I can have the meanest and most sordid thoughts--you
+can't. Lady Henry thought me an intriguer--I am one. It is in my blood.
+And I don't know whether, in the end, I could understand your language
+and your life. And if I don't, I shall make you miserable."
+
+She looked up, her slender frame straightening under what was, in truth,
+a noble defiance.
+
+Delafield bent over her and took both her hands forcibly in his own.
+
+"If all that were true, I would rather risk it a thousand times over
+than go out of your life again--a stranger. Julie, you have done mad
+things for love--you should know what love is. Look in my
+face--there--your eyes in mine! Give way! The dead ask it of you--and it
+is God's will."
+
+And as, drawn by the last, low-spoken words, Julie looked up into his
+face, she felt herself enveloped by a mystical and passionate tenderness
+that paralyzed her resistance. A force, superhuman, laid its grasp upon
+her will. With a burst of tears, half in despair, half in revolt, she
+submitted.
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+In the first week of May, Julie Le Breton married Jacob Delafield in the
+English Church at Florence. The Duchess was there. So was the Duke--a
+sulky and ill-resigned spectator of something which he believed to be
+the peculiar and mischievous achievement of his wife.
+
+At the church door Julie and Delafield left for Camaldoli.
+
+"Well, if you imagine that I intend to congratulate you or anybody else
+upon that performance you are very much mistaken," said the Duke, as he
+and his wife drove back to the "Grand Bretagne" together.
+
+"I don't deny it's--risky," said the Duchess, her hands on her lap, her
+eyes dreamily following the streets.
+
+"Risky!" repeated the Duke, shrugging his shoulders. "Well, I don't want
+to speak harshly of your friends, Evelyn, but Miss Le Breton--"
+
+"Mrs. Delafield," said the Duchess.
+
+"Mrs. Delafield, then"--the name was evidently a difficult
+mouthful--"seems to me a most undisciplined and unmanageable woman. Why
+does she look like a tragedy queen at her marriage? Jacob is twice too
+good for her, and she'll lead him a life. And how you can reconcile it
+to your conscience to have misled me so completely as you have in this
+matter, I really can't imagine."
+
+"Misled you?" said Evelyn.
+
+Her innocence was really a little hard to bear, and not even the beauty
+of her blue eyes, now happily restored to him, could appease the mentor
+at her side.
+
+"You led me plainly to believe," he repeated, with emphasis, "that if I
+helped her through the crisis of leaving Lady Henry she would relinquish
+her designs on Delafield."
+
+"Did I?" said the Duchess. And putting her hands over her face she
+laughed rather hysterically. "But that wasn't why you lent her the
+house, Freddie."
+
+"You coaxed me into it, of course," said the Duke.
+
+"No, it was Julie herself got the better of you," said Evelyn,
+triumphantly. "You felt her spell, just as we all do, and wanted to do
+something for her."
+
+"Nothing of the sort," said the Duke, determined to admit no
+recollection to his disadvantage. "It was your doing entirely."
+
+The Duchess thought it discreet to let him at least have the triumph of
+her silence, smiling, and a little sarcastic though it were.
+
+"And of all the undeserved good fortune!" he resumed, feeling in his
+irritable disapproval that the moral order of the universe had been
+somehow trifled with. "In the first place, she is the daughter of people
+who flagrantly misconducted themselves--_that_ apparently does her no
+harm. Then she enters the service of Lady Henry in a confidential
+position, and uses it to work havoc in Lady Henry's social relations.
+That, I am glad to say, _has_ done her a little harm, although not
+nearly as much as she deserves. And finally she has a most discreditable
+flirtation with a man already engaged--to her own cousin, please
+observe!--and pulls wires for him all over the place in the most
+objectionable and unwomanly manner."
+
+"As if everybody didn't do that!" cried the Duchess. "You know, Freddie,
+that your own mother always used to boast that she had made six bishops
+and saved the Establishment."
+
+The Duke took no notice.
+
+"And yet there she is! Lord Lackington has left her a fortune--a
+competence, anyway. She marries Jacob Delafield--rather a fool, I
+consider, but all the same one of the best fellows in the world. And at
+any time, to judge from what one hears of the health both of Chudleigh
+and his boy, she may find herself Duchess of Chudleigh."
+
+The Duke threw himself back in the carriage with the air of one who
+waits for Providence to reply.
+
+"Oh, well, you see, you can't make the world into a moral tale to please
+you," said the Duchess, absently.
+
+Then, after a pause, she asked, "Are you still going to let them have
+the house, Freddie?"
+
+"I imagine that if Jacob Delafield applies to me to let it to _him_,
+that I shall not refuse him," said the Duke, stiffly.
+
+The Duchess smiled behind her fan. Yet her tender heart was not in
+reality very happy about her Julie. She knew well enough that it was a
+strange marriage of which they had just been witnesses--a marriage
+containing the seeds of many untoward things only too likely to develop
+unless fate were kinder than rash mortals have any right to expect.
+
+"I wish to goodness Delafield weren't so religious," murmured the
+Duchess, fervently, pursuing her own thoughts.
+
+"Evelyn!"
+
+"Well, you see, Julie isn't, at all," she added, hastily.
+
+"You need not have troubled yourself to tell me that," was the Duke's
+indignant reply.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a fortnight at Camaldoli and Vallombrosa the Delafields turned
+towards Switzerland. Julie, who was a lover of Rousseau and Obermann,
+had been also busy with the letters of Byron. She wished to see with her
+own eyes St. Gingolphe and Chillon, Bevay and Glion.
+
+So one day at the end of May they found themselves at Montreux. But
+Montreux was already hot and crowded, and Julie's eyes turned in longing
+to the heights. They found an old inn at Charnex, whereof the garden
+commanded the whole head of the lake, and there they settled themselves
+for a fortnight, till business, in fact, should recall Delafield to
+England. The Duke of Chudleigh had shown all possible kindness and
+cordiality with regard to the marriage, and the letter in which he
+welcomed his cousin's new wife had both touched Julie's feelings and
+satisfied her pride. "You are marrying one of the best of men," wrote
+this melancholy father of a dying son. "My boy and I owe him more than
+can be written. I can only tell you that for those he loves he grudges
+nothing--no labor, no sacrifice of himself. There are no half-measures
+in his affections. He has spent himself too long on sick and sorry
+creatures like ourselves. It is time he had a little happiness on his
+own account. You will give it him, and Mervyn and I will be most
+grateful to you. If joy and health can never be ours, I am not yet so
+vile as to grudge them to others. God bless you! Jacob will tell you
+that my house is not a gay one; but if you and he will sometimes visit
+it, you will do something to lighten its gloom."
+
+Julie wondered, as she wrote her very graceful reply, how much the Duke
+might know about herself. Jacob had told his cousin, as she knew, the
+story of her parentage and of Lord Lackington's recognition of his
+granddaughter. But as soon as the marriage was announced it was not
+likely that Lady Henry had been able to hold her tongue.
+
+A good many interesting tales of his cousin's bride had, indeed, reached
+the melancholy Duke. Lady Henry had done all that she conceived it her
+duty to do, filling many pages of note-paper with what the Duke regarded
+as most unnecessary information.
+
+At any rate, he had brushed it all aside with the impatience of one for
+whom nothing on earth had now any savor or value beyond one or two
+indispensable affections. "What's good enough for Jacob is good for me,"
+he wrote to Lady Henry, "and if I may offer you some advice, it is that
+you should not quarrel with Jacob about a matter so vital as his
+marriage. Into the rights and wrongs of the story you tell me, I really
+cannot enter; but rather than break with Jacob I would welcome _anybody_
+he chose to present to me. And in this case I understand the lady is
+very clever, distinguished, and of good blood on both sides. Have you
+had no trouble in your life, my dear Flora, that you can make quarrels
+with a light heart? If so, I envy you; but I have neither the energy nor
+the good spirits wherewith to imitate you."
+
+Julie, of course, knew nothing of this correspondence, though from the
+Duke's letters to Jacob she divined that something of the kind had taken
+place. But it was made quite plain to her that she was to be spared all
+the friction and all the difficulty which may often attend the entrance
+of a person like herself within the circle of a rich and important
+family like the Delafields. With Lady Henry, indeed, the fight had still
+to be fought. But Jacob's mother, influenced on one side by her son and
+on the other by the head of the family, accepted her daughter-in-law
+with the facile kindliness and good temper that were natural to her;
+while his sister, the fair-haired and admirable Susan, owed her brother
+too much and loved him too well to be other than friendly to his wife.
+
+No; on the worldly side all was smooth. The marriage had been carried
+through with ease and quietness The Duke, in spite of Jacob's
+remonstrances, had largely increased his cousin's salary, and Julie was
+already enjoying the income left her by Lord Lackington. She had only to
+reappear in London as Jacob's wife to resume far more than her old
+social ascendency. The winning cards had all passed into her hands, and
+if now there was to be a struggle with Lady Henry, Lady Henry would
+be worsted.
+
+All this was or should have been agreeable to the sensitive nerves of a
+woman who knew the worth of social advantages. It had no effect,
+however, on the mortal depression which was constantly Julie's portion
+during the early weeks of her marriage.
+
+As for Delafield, he had entered upon this determining experiment of his
+life--a marriage, which was merely a legalized comradeship, with the
+woman he adored--in the mind of one resolved to pay the price of what he
+had done. This graceful and stately woman, with her high intelligence
+and her social gifts, was now his own property. She was to be the
+companion of his days and the mistress of his house. But although he
+knew well that he had a certain strong hold upon her, she did not love
+him, and none of the fusion of true marriage had taken place or could
+take place. So be it. He set himself to build up a relation between them
+which should justify the violence offered to natural and spiritual law.
+His own delicacy of feeling and perception combined with the strength of
+his passion to make every action of their common day a symbol and
+sacrament. That her heart regretted Warkworth, that bitterness and
+longing, an unspent and baffled love, must be constantly overshadowing
+her--these things he not only knew, he was forever reminding himself of
+them, driving them, as it were, into consciousness, as the ascetic
+drives the spikes into his flesh. His task was to comfort her, to make
+her forget, to bring her back to common peace and cheerfulness of mind.
+
+To this end he began with appealing as much as possible to her
+intelligence. He warmly encouraged her work for Meredith. From the first
+days of their marriage he became her listener, scholar, and critic.
+Himself interested mainly in social, economical, or religious
+discussion, he humbly put himself to school in matters of
+_belles-lettres_. His object was to enrich Julie's daily life with new
+ambitions and new pleasures, which might replace the broodings of her
+illness and convalescence, and then, to make her feel that she had at
+hand, in the companion of that life, one who felt a natural interest in
+all her efforts, a natural pride in all her successes.
+
+Alack! the calculation was too simple--and too visible. It took too
+little account of the complexities of Julie's nature, of the ravages and
+the shock of passion. Julie herself might be ready enough to return to
+the things of the mind, but they were no sooner offered to her, as it
+were, in exchange for the perilous delights of love, than she grew
+dumbly restive. She felt herself, also, too much observed, too much
+thought over, made too often, if the truth were known, the subject of
+religious or mystical emotion.
+
+More and more, also, was she conscious of strangeness and eccentricity
+in the man she had married. It often seemed to that keen and practical
+sense which in her mingled so oddly with the capacity for passion that,
+as they grew older, and her mind recovered tone and balance, she would
+probably love the world disastrously more and he disastrously less. And
+if so, the gulf between them, instead of closing, could but widen.
+
+One day--a showery day in early June--she was left alone for an hour,
+while Delafield went down to Montreux to change some circular notes.
+Julie took a book from the table and strolled out along the lovely road
+that slopes gently downward from Charnex to the old field-embowered
+village of Brent.
+
+The rain was just over. It had been a cold rain, and the snow had crept
+downward on the heights, and had even powdered the pines of the Cubly.
+The clouds were sweeping low in the west. Towards Geneva the lake was
+mere wide and featureless space--a cold and misty water, melting into
+the fringes of the rain-clouds. But to the east, above the Rhone
+valley, the sky was lifting; and as Julie sat down upon a midway seat
+and turned herself eastward, she was met by the full and unveiled glory
+of the higher Alps--the Rochers de Naye, the Velan, the Dent du Midi. On
+the jagged peaks of the latter a bright shaft of sun was playing, and
+the great white or rock-ribbed mass raised itself above the mists of the
+lower world, once more unstained and triumphant.
+
+But the cold _bise_ was still blowing, and Julie, shivering, drew her
+wrap closer round her. Her heart pined for Como and the south; perhaps
+for the little Duchess, who spoiled and petted her in the common,
+womanish ways.
+
+The spring--a second spring--was all about her; but in this chilly
+northern form it spoke to her with none of the ravishment of Italy. In
+the steep fields above her the narcissuses were bent and bowed with
+rain; the red-browns of the walnuts glistened in the wet gleams of sun;
+the fading apple-blossom beside her wore a melancholy beauty; only in
+the rich, pushing grass, with its wealth of flowers and its branching
+cow-parsley, was there the stubborn life and prophecy of summer.
+
+Suddenly Julie caught up the book that lay beside her and opened it with
+a hasty hand. It was one of that set of Saint-Simon which had belonged
+to her mother, and had already played a part in her own destiny.
+
+She turned to the famous "character" of the Dauphin, of that model
+prince, in whose death Saint-Simon, and Fenelon, and France herself, saw
+the eclipse of all great hopes.
+
+"A prince, affable, gentle, humane, patient, modest, full of
+compunctions, and, as much as his position allowed--sometimes beyond
+it--humble, and severe towards himself."
+
+Was it not to the life? "_Affable, doux, humain--patient,
+modeste--humble et austere pour soi_"--beyond what was expected, beyond,
+almost, what was becoming?
+
+She read on to the mention of the Dauphine, terrified, in her human
+weakness, of so perfect a husband, and trying to beguile or tempt him
+from the heights; to the picture of Louis Quatorze, the grandfather,
+shamed in his worldly old age by the presence beside him of this saintly
+and high-minded youth; of the Court, looking forward with dismay to the
+time when it should find itself under the rule of a man who despised and
+condemned both its follies and its passions, until she reached that
+final rapture, where, in a mingled anguish and adoration, Saint-Simon
+bids eternal farewell to a character and a heart of which France was
+not worthy.
+
+The lines passed before her, and she was conscious, guiltily conscious,
+of reading them with a double mind.
+
+Then she closed the book, held by the thought of her husband--in a
+somewhat melancholy reverie.
+
+There is a Catholic word with which in her convent youth she had been
+very familiar--the word _recueilli_--"recollected." At no time
+had it sounded kindly in her ears; for it implied fetters and
+self--suppressions--of the voluntary and spiritual sort--wholly
+unwelcome to and unvalued by her own temperament. But who that knew him
+well could avoid applying it to Delafield? A man of "recollection"
+living in the eye of the Eternal; keeping a guard over himself in the
+smallest matters of thought and action; mystically possessed by the
+passion of a spiritual ideal; in love with charity, purity,
+simplicity of life.
+
+She bowed her head upon her hands in dreariness of spirit. Ultimately,
+what could such a man want with her? What had she to give him? In what
+way could she ever be _necessary_ to him? And a woman, even in
+friendship, must feel herself that to be happy.
+
+Already this daily state in which she found herself--of owing everything
+and giving nothing--produced in her a secret irritation and repulsion;
+how would it be in the years to come?
+
+"He never saw me as I am," she thought to herself, looking fretfully
+back to their past acquaintance. "I am neither as weak as he thinks
+me--nor as clever. And how strange it is--this _tension_ in which
+he lives!"
+
+And as she sat there idly plucking at the wet grass, her mind was
+overrun with a motley host of memories--some absurd, some sweet, some of
+an austerity that chilled her to the core. She thought of the difficulty
+she had in persuading Delafield to allow himself even necessary comforts
+and conveniences; a laugh, involuntary, and not without tenderness,
+crossed her face as she recalled a tale he had told her at Camaldoli, of
+the contempt excited in a young footman of a smart house by the
+mediocrity and exiguity of his garments and personal appointments
+generally. "I felt I possessed nothing that he would have taken as a
+gift," said Delafield, with a grin. "It was chastening."
+
+Yet though he laughed, he held to it; and Julie was already so much of
+the wife as to be planning how to coax him presently out of a
+portmanteau and a top-hat that were in truth a disgrace to
+their species.
+
+And all the time _she_ must have the best of everything--a maid,
+luxurious travelling, dainty food. They had had one or two wrestles on
+the subject already. "Why are you to have all the high thinking and
+plain living to yourself?" she had asked him, angrily, only to be met by
+the plea, "Dear, get strong first--then you shall do what you like."
+
+But it was at La Verna, the mountain height overshadowed by the memories
+of St. Francis, that she seemed to have come nearest to the ascetic and
+mystical tendency in Delafield. He went about the mountain-paths a
+transformed being, like one long spiritually athirst who has found the
+springs and sources of life. Julie felt a secret terror. Her impression
+was much the same as Meredith's--as of "something wearing through" to
+the light of day. Looking back she saw that this temperament, now so
+plain to view, had been always there; but in the young and capable agent
+of the Chudleigh property, in the Duchess's cousin, or Lady Henry's
+nephew, it had passed for the most part unsuspected. How remarkably it
+had developed!--whither would it carry them both in the future? When
+thinking about it, she was apt to find herself seized with a sudden
+craving for Mayfair, "little dinners," and good talk.
+
+"What a pity you weren't born a Catholic!--you might have been a
+religious," she said to him one night at La Verna, when he had been
+reading her some of the _Fioretti_ with occasional comments of his own.
+
+But he had shaken his head with a smile.
+
+"You see, I have no creed--or next to none."
+
+The answer startled her. And in the depths of his blue eyes there seemed
+to her to be hovering a swarm of thoughts that would not let themselves
+loose in her presence, but were none the less the true companions of his
+mind. She saw herself a moment as Elsa, and her husband as a modern
+Lohengrin, coming spiritually she knew not whence, bound on some quest
+mysterious and unthinkable.
+
+"What will you do," she said, suddenly, "when the dukedom comes to you?"
+
+Delafield's aspect darkened in an instant. If he could have shown anger
+to her, anger there would have been.
+
+"That is a subject I never think of or discuss, if I can help it," he
+said, abruptly; and, rising to his feet, he pointed out that the sun was
+declining fast towards the plain of the Casentino, and they were far
+from their hotel.
+
+"Inhuman!--unreasonable!" was the cry of the critical sense in her as
+she followed him in silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Innumerable memories of this kind beat on Julie's mind as she sat
+dreamily on her bench among the Swiss meadows. How natural that in the
+end they should sweep her by reaction into imaginations wholly
+indifferent--of a drum-and-trumpet history, in the actual
+fighting world.
+
+... Far, far in the African desert she followed the march of Warkworth's
+little troop.
+
+Ah, the blinding light--the African scrub and sand--the long, single
+line--the native porters with their loads--the handful of English
+officers with that slender figure at their head--the endless, waterless
+path with its palms and mangoes and mimosas--the scene rushed upon the
+inward eye and held it. She felt the heat, the thirst, the weariness of
+bone and brain--all the spell and mystery of the unmapped,
+unconquered land.
+
+Did he think of her sometimes, at night, under the stars, or in the
+blaze and mirage of noon? Yes, yes; he thought of her. Each to the other
+their thoughts must travel while they lived.
+
+In Delafield's eyes, she knew, his love for her had been mere outrage
+and offence.
+
+Ah, well, _he_, at least, had needed her. He had desired only very
+simple, earthy things--money, position, success--things it was possible
+for a woman to give him, or get for him; and at the last, though it were
+only as a traitor to his word and his _fiancee_, he had asked for
+love--asked commonly, hungrily, recklessly, because he could not help
+it--and then for pardon! And those are things the memory of which lies
+deep, deep in the pulsing, throbbing heart.
+
+At this point she hurriedly checked and scourged herself, as she did a
+hundred times a day.
+
+No, no, _no_! It was all over, and she and Jacob would still make a fine
+thing of their life together. Why not?
+
+And all the time there were burning hot tears in her eyes; and as the
+leaves of Saint-Simon passed idly through her fingers, the tears blotted
+out the meadows and the flowers, and blurred the figure of a young girl
+who was slowly mounting the long slope of road that led from the village
+of Brent towards the seat on which Julie was sitting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gradually the figure approached. The mist cleared from Julie's eyes.
+Suddenly she found herself giving a close and passionate attention to
+the girl upon the road.
+
+Her form was slight and small; under her shady hat there was a gleam of
+fair hair arranged in smooth, shining masses about her neck and temples.
+As she approached Julie she raised her eyes absently, and Julie saw a
+face of singular and delicate beauty, marred, however, by the suggestion
+of physical fragility, even sickliness, which is carried with it. One
+might have thought it a face blanched by a tropical climate, and for the
+moment touched into faint color by the keen Alpine air. The eyes,
+indeed, were full of life; they were no sooner seen but they defined and
+enforced a personality. Eager, intent, a little fretful, they expressed
+a nervous energy out of all proportion to their owner's slender
+physique. In this, other bodily signs concurred. As she perceived Julie
+on the bench, for instance, the girl's slight, habitual frown sharply
+deepened; she looked at the stranger with keen observation, both glance
+and gesture betraying a quick and restless sensibility.
+
+As for Julie, she half rose as the girl neared her. Her cheeks were
+flushed, her lips parted; she had the air of one about to speak. The
+girl looked at her in a little surprise and passed on.
+
+She carried a book under her arm, into which were thrust a few
+just-opened letters. She had scarcely passed the bench when an envelope
+fell out of the book and lay unnoticed on the road.
+
+Julie drew a long breath. She picked up the envelope. It lay in her
+hand, and the name she had expected to see was written upon it.
+
+For a moment she hesitated. Then she ran after the owner of the letter.
+
+"You dropped this on the road."
+
+The girl turned hastily.
+
+"Thank you very much. I am sorry to have given you the trouble--"
+
+Then she paused, arrested evidently by the manner in which Julie stood
+regarding her.
+
+"Did--did you wish to speak to me?" she said, uncertainly.
+
+"You are Miss Moffatt?"
+
+"Yes. That is my name. But, excuse me. I am afraid I don't remember
+you." The words were spoken with a charming sweetness and timidity.
+
+"I am Mrs. Delafield."
+
+The girl started violently.
+
+"Are you? I--I beg your pardon!"
+
+She stood in a flushed bewilderment, staring at the lady who had
+addressed her, a troubled consciousness possessing itself of her face
+and manner more and more plainly with every moment.
+
+Julie asked herself, hurriedly: "How much does she know? What has she
+heard?" But aloud she gently said: "I thought you must have heard of me.
+Lord Uredale told me he had written--his father wished it--to Lady
+Blanche. Your mother and mine were sisters."
+
+The girl shyly withdrew her eyes.
+
+"Yes, mother told me."
+
+There was a moment's silence. The mingled fear and recklessness which
+had accompanied Julie's action disappeared from her mind. In the girl's
+manner there was neither jealousy nor hatred, only a young shrinking
+and reserve.
+
+"May I walk with you a little?"
+
+"Please do. Are you staying at Montreux?"
+
+"No; we are at Charnex--and you?"
+
+"We came up two days ago to a little _pension_ at Brent. I wanted to be
+among the fields, now the narcissuses are out. If it were warm weather
+we should stay, but mother is afraid of the cold for me. I have
+been ill."
+
+"I heard that," said Julie, in a voice gravely kind and winning. "That
+was why your mother could not come home."
+
+The girl's eyes suddenly filled with tears.
+
+"No; poor mother! I wanted her to go--we had a good nurse--but she would
+not leave me, though she was devoted to my grandfather. She--"
+
+"She is always anxious about you?"
+
+"Yes. My health has been a trouble lately, and since father died--"
+
+"She has only you."
+
+They walked on a few paces in silence. Then the girl looked up eagerly.
+
+"You saw grandfather at the last? Do tell me about it, please. My uncles
+write so little."
+
+Julie obeyed with difficulty. She had not realized how hard it would be
+for her to talk of Lord Lackington. But she described the old man's
+gallant dying as best she could; while Aileen Moffatt listened with that
+manner at once timid and rich in feeling which seemed to be her
+characteristic.
+
+As they neared the top of the hill where the road begins to incline
+towards Charnex, Julie noticed signs of fatigue in her companion.
+
+"You have been an invalid," she said. "You ought not to go farther. May
+I take you home? Would your mother dislike to see me?"
+
+The girl paused perceptibly. "Ah, there she is!"
+
+They had turned towards Brent, and Julie saw coming towards them, with
+somewhat rapid steps, a small, elderly lady, gray-haired, her features
+partly hidden by her country hat.
+
+A thrill passed through Julie. This was the sister whose name her mother
+had mentioned in her last hour. It was as though something of her
+mother, something that must throw light upon that mother's life and
+being, were approaching her along this Swiss road.
+
+But the lady in question, as she neared them, looked with surprise, not
+unmingled with hauteur, upon her daughter and the stranger beside her.
+
+"Aileen, why did you go so far? You promised me only to be a quarter of
+an hour."
+
+"I am not tired, mother. Mother, this is Mrs. Delafield. You remember,
+Uncle Uredale wrote--"
+
+Lady Blanche Moffatt stood still. Once more a fear swept through Julie's
+mind, and this time it stayed. After an evident hesitation, a hand was
+coldly extended.
+
+"How do you do? I heard from my brothers of your marriage, but they said
+you were in Italy."
+
+"We have just come from there."
+
+"And your husband?"
+
+"He has gone down to Montreux, but he should be home very soon now. We
+are only a few steps from our little inn. Would you not rest there? Miss
+Moffatt looks very tired."
+
+There was a pause. Lady Blanche was considering her daughter. Julie saw
+the trembling of her wide, irregular mouth, of which the lips were
+slightly turned outward. Finally she drew her daughter's hand into her
+arm, and bent anxiously towards her, scrutinizing her face.
+
+"Thank you. We will rest a quarter of an hour. Can we get a carriage at
+Charnex?"
+
+"Yes, I think so, if you will wait a little on our balcony."
+
+They walked on towards Charnex. Lady Blanche began to talk resolutely of
+the weather, which was, indeed, atrocious. She spoke as she would have
+done to the merest acquaintance. There was not a word of her father; not
+a word, either, of her brother's letter, or of Julie's relationship to
+herself. Julie accepted the situation with perfect composure, and the
+three kept up some sort of a conversation till they reached the paved
+street of Charnex and the old inn at its lower end.
+
+Julie guided her companions through its dark passages, till they reached
+an outer terrace where there were a few scattered seats, and among them
+a deck-chair with cushions.
+
+"Please," said Julie, as she kindly drew the girl towards it. Aileen
+smiled and yielded. Julie placed her among the cushions, then brought
+out a shawl, and covered her warmly from the sharp, damp air. Aileen
+thanked her, and lightly touched her hand. A secret sympathy seemed to
+have suddenly sprung up between them.
+
+Lady Blanche sat stiffly beside her daughter, watching her face. The
+warm touch of friendliness in Aileen's manner towards Mrs. Delafield
+seemed only to increase the distance and embarrassment of her own. Julie
+appeared to be quite unconscious. She ordered tea, and made no further
+allusion of any kind to the kindred they had in common. She and Lady
+Blanche talked as strangers.
+
+Julie said to herself that she understood. She remembered the evening at
+Crowborough House, the spinster lady who had been the Moffatts' friend,
+her own talk with Evelyn. In that way, or in some other, the current
+gossip about herself and Warkworth, gossip they had been too mad and
+miserable to take much account of, had reached Lady Blanche. Lady
+Blanche probably abhorred her; though, because of her marriage, there
+was to be an outer civility. Meanwhile no sign whatever of any angry or
+resentful knowledge betrayed itself in the girl's manner. Clearly the
+mother had shielded her.
+
+Julie felt the flutter of an exquisite relief. She stole many a look at
+Aileen, comparing the reality with that old, ugly notion her jealousy
+had found so welcome--of the silly or insolent little creature,
+possessing all that her betters desired, by the mere brute force of
+money or birth. And all the time the reality was _this_--so soft,
+suppliant, ethereal! Here, indeed, was the child of Warkworth's
+picture--the innocent, unknowing child, whom their passion had
+sacrificed and betrayed. She could see the face now, as it lay piteous,
+in Warkworth's hand. Then she raised her eyes to the original. And as it
+looked at her with timidity and nascent love her own heart beat wildly,
+now in remorse, now in a reviving jealousy.
+
+Secretly, behind this mask of convention, were they both thinking of
+him? A girl's thoughts are never far from her lover; and Julie was
+conscious, this afternoon, of a strange and mysterious preoccupation,
+whereof Warkworth was the centre.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gradually the great mountains at the head of the lake freed themselves
+from the last wandering cloud-wreaths. On the rock faces of the Rochers
+de Naye the hanging pine-woods, brushed with snow, came into sight. The
+white walls of Glion shone faintly out, and a pearly gold, which was but
+a pallid reflection of the Italian glory, diffused itself over mountain
+and lake. The sun was grudging; there was no caress in the air. Aileen
+shivered a little in her shawls, and when Julie spoke of Italy the
+girl's enthusiasm and longing sprang, as it were, to meet her, and both
+were conscious of another slight link between them.
+
+Suddenly a sound of steps came to them from below.
+
+"My husband," said Julie, rising, and, going to the balustrade, she
+waved to Delafield, who had come up from Montreux by one of the steep
+vineyard paths. "I will tell him you are here," she added, with what
+might have been taken for the shyness of the young wife.
+
+She ran down the steps leading from the terrace to the lower garden.
+Aileen looked at her mother.
+
+"Isn't she wonderful?" she said, in an ardent whisper. "I could watch
+her forever. She is the most graceful person I ever saw. Mother, is she
+like Aunt Rose?"
+
+Lady Blanche shook her head.
+
+"Not in the least," she said, shortly. "She has too much manner for me."
+
+"Oh, mother!" And the girl caught her mother's hand in caressing
+remonstrance, as though to say: "Dear little mother, you must like her,
+because I do; and you mustn't think of Aunt Rose, and all those
+terrible things, except for pity."
+
+"Hush!" said Lady Blanche, smiling at her a little excitedly. "Hush;
+they're coming!"
+
+Delafield and Julie emerged from the iron staircase. Lady Blanche turned
+and looked at the tall, distinguished pair, her ugly lower lip hardening
+ungraciously. But she and Delafield had a slight previous acquaintance,
+and she noticed instantly the charming and solicitous kindness with
+which he greeted her daughter.
+
+"Julie tells me Miss Moffatt is still far from strong," he said,
+returning to the mother.
+
+Lady Blanche only sighed for answer. He drew a chair beside her, and
+they fell into the natural talk of people who belong to the same social
+world, and are travelling in the same scenes.
+
+Meanwhile Julie was sitting beside the heiress. Not much was said, but
+each was conscious of a lively interest in the other, and every now and
+then Julie would put out a careful hand and draw the shawls closer about
+the girl's frail form. The strain of guilty compunction that entered
+into Julie's feeling did but make it the more sensitive. She said to
+herself in a vague haste that now she would make amends. If only Lady
+Blanche were willing--
+
+But she should be willing! Julie felt the stirrings of the old
+self-confidence, the old trust in a social ingenuity which had, in
+truth, rarely failed her. Her intriguing, managing instinct made itself
+felt--the mood of Lady Henry's companion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently, as they were talking, Aileen caught sight of an English
+newspaper which Delafield had brought up from Montreux. It lay still
+unopened on one of the tables of the terrace.
+
+"Please give it me," said the girl, stretching out an eager hand. "It
+will have Tiny's marriage, mamma! A cousin of mine," she explained to
+Julie, who rose to hand it to her. "A very favorite cousin. Oh,
+thank you."
+
+She opened the paper. Julie turned away, that she might relieve Lady
+Blanche of her teacup.
+
+Suddenly a cry rang out--a cry of mortal anguish. Two ladies who had
+just stepped out upon the terrace from the hotel drawing-room turned in
+terror; the gardener who was watering the flower-boxes at the farther
+end stood arrested.
+
+"Aileen!" shrieked Lady Blanche, running to her. "What--what is it?"
+
+The paper had dropped to the floor, but the child still pointed to it,
+gasping.
+
+"Mother--mother!"
+
+Some intuition woke in Julie. She stood dead-white and dumb, while Lady
+Blanche threw herself on her daughter.
+
+"Aileen, darling, what is it?"
+
+The girl, in her agony, threw her arms frantically round her mother, and
+dragged herself to her feet. She stood tottering, her hand over
+her eyes.
+
+"He's dead, mother! He's--dead!"
+
+The last word sank into a sound more horrible even than the first cry.
+Then she swayed out of her mother's arms. It was Julie who caught her,
+who laid her once more on the deck-chair--a broken, shrunken form, in
+whom all the threads and connections of life had suddenly, as it were,
+fallen to ruin. Lady Blanche hung over her, pushing Julie away,
+gathering the unconscious girl madly in her arms. Delafield rushed for
+water-and-brandy. Julie snatched the paper and looked at the telegrams.
+
+High up in the first column was the one she sought.
+
+     "CAIRO, _June_ 12.--Great regret is felt here at the sudden
+     and tragic news of Major Warkworth's death from fever, which
+     seems to have occurred at a spot some three weeks' distance
+     from the coast, on or about May 25. Letters from the officer
+     who has succeeded him in the command of the Mokembe
+     expedition have now reached Denga. A fortnight after leaving
+     the coast Major Warkworth was attacked with fever; he made a
+     brave struggle against it, but it was of a deadly type, and
+     in less than a week he succumbed. The messenger brought also
+     his private papers and diaries, which have been forwarded to
+     his representatives in England. Major Warkworth was a most
+     promising and able officer, and his loss will be keenly
+     felt."
+
+Julie fell on her knees beside her swooning cousin. Lady Blanche,
+meanwhile, was loosening her daughter's dress, chafing her icy hands, or
+moaning over her in a delirium of terror.
+
+"My darling--my darling! Oh, my God! Why did I allow it? Why did I ever
+let him come near her? It was my fault--my fault! And it's killed her!"
+
+And clinging to her child's irresponsive hands, she looked down upon her
+in a convulsion of grief, which included not a shadow of regret, not a
+gleam of pity for anything or any one else in the world but this bone of
+her bone and flesh of her flesh, which lay stricken there.
+
+But Julie's mind had ceased to be conscious of the tragedy beside her.
+It had passed for the second time into the grasp of an illusion which
+possessed itself of the whole being and all its perceptive powers.
+Before her wide, terror-stricken gaze there rose once more the same
+piteous vision which had tortured her in the crisis of her love for
+Warkworth. Against the eternal snows which close in the lake the phantom
+hovered in a ghastly relief--emaciated, with matted hair, and purpled
+cheeks, and eyes--not to be borne!--expressing the dumb anger of a man,
+still young, who parts unwillingly from life in a last lonely spasm of
+uncomforted pain.
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+It was midnight in the little inn at Charnex. The rain which for so many
+nights in this miserable June had been beating down upon the village had
+at last passed away. The night was clear and still--a night when the
+voice of mountain torrents, far distant, might reach the ear
+suddenly--sharply pure--from the very depths of silence.
+
+Julie was in bed. She had been scarcely aware of her maid's help in
+undressing. The ordinary life was, as it were, suspended. Two scenes
+floated alternately before her--one the creation of memory, the other of
+imagination; and the second was, if possible, the more vivid, the more
+real of the two. Now she saw herself in Lady Henry's drawing-room; Sir
+Wilfrid Bury and a white-haired general were beside her. The door opened
+and Warkworth entered--young, handsome, soldierly, with that boyish,
+conquering air which some admired and others disliked. His eyes met
+hers, and a glow of happiness passed through her.
+
+Then, at a stroke, the London drawing-room melted away. She was in a low
+bell-tent. The sun burned through its sides; the air was stifling. She
+stood with two other men and the doctor beside the low camp-bed; her
+heart was wrung by every movement, every sound; she heard the clicking
+of the fan in the doctor's hands, she saw the flies on the poor,
+damp brow.
+
+And still she had no tears. Only, existence seemed to have ended in a
+gulf of horror, where youth and courage, repentance and high resolve,
+love and pleasure were all buried and annihilated together.
+
+That poor girl up-stairs! It had not been possible to take her home. She
+was there with nurse and doctor, her mother hanging upon every difficult
+breath. The attack of diphtheria had left a weakened heart and nervous
+system; the shock had been cruel, and the doctor could promise nothing
+for the future.
+
+"Mother--mother!... _Dead!_"
+
+The cry echoed in Julie's ears. It seemed to fill the old, low-ceiled
+room in which she lay. Her fancy, preternaturally alive, heard it thrown
+back from the mountains outside--returned to her in wailing from the
+infinite depths of the lake. She was conscious of the vast forms and
+abysses of nature, there in the darkness, beyond the walls of her room,
+as something hostile, implacable....
+
+And while he lay there dead, under the tropical sand, she was still
+living and breathing here, in this old Swiss inn--Jacob Delafield's
+wife, at least in name.
+
+There was a knock at her door. At first she did not answer it. It seemed
+to be only one of the many dream sounds which tormented her nerves. Then
+it was repeated. Mechanically she said "Come in."
+
+The door opened, and Delafield, carrying a light, which he shaded with
+his hand, stood on the threshold.
+
+"May I come and talk to you?" he said, in a low voice. "I know you are
+not sleeping."
+
+It was the first time he had entered his wife's room. Through all her
+misery, Julie felt a strange thrill as her husband's face was thus
+revealed to her, brightly illumined, in the loneliness of the night.
+Then the thrill passed into pain--the pain of a new and sharp
+perception.
+
+Delafield, in truth, was some two or three years younger than Warkworth.
+But the sudden impression on Julie's mind, as she saw him thus, was of a
+man worn and prematurely aged--markedly older and graver, even, since
+their marriage, since that memorable evening by the side of Como when,
+by that moral power of which he seemed often to be the mere channel and
+organ, he had overcome her own will and linked her life with his.
+
+She looked at him in a kind of terror. Why was he so pale--an embodied
+grief? Warkworth's death was not a mortal stroke for _him_.
+
+He came closer, and still Julie's eyes held him. Was it her fault,
+this--this shadowed countenance, these suggestions of a dumb strain and
+conflict, which not even his strong youth could bear without betrayal?
+Her heart cried out, first in a tragic impatience; then it melted within
+her strangely, she knew not how.
+
+She sat up in bed and held out her hands. He thought of that evening in
+Heribert Street, after Warkworth had left her, when she had been so sad
+and yet so docile. The same yearning, the same piteous agitation was in
+her attitude now.
+
+He knelt down beside the bed and put his arms round her. She clasped her
+hands about his neck and hid her face on his shoulder. There ran through
+her the first long shudder of weeping.
+
+"He was so young!" he heard her say through sobs. "So young!"
+
+He raised his hand and touched her hair tenderly.
+
+"He died serving his country," he said, commanding his voice with
+difficulty. "And you grieve for him like this! I can't pity him
+so much."
+
+"You thought ill of him--I know you did." She spoke between deep,
+sobbing breaths. "But he wasn't--he wasn't a bad man."
+
+She fell back on her pillow and the tears rained down her cheeks.
+
+Delafield kissed her hand in silence.
+
+"Some day--I'll tell you," she said, brokenly.
+
+"Yes, you shall tell me. It would help us both."
+
+"I'll prove to you he wasn't vile. When--when he proposed that to me he
+was distracted. So was I. How could he break off his engagement? Now you
+see how she loved him. But we couldn't part--we couldn't say good-bye.
+It had all come on us unawares. We wanted to belong to each other--just
+for two days--and then part forever. Oh, I'll tell you--"
+
+"You shall tell me all--here!" he said, firmly, crushing her delicate
+hands in his own against his breast, so that she felt the beating of
+his heart.
+
+"Give me my hand. I'll show you his letter--his last letter to me." And,
+trembling, she drew from under her pillow that last scrawled letter,
+written from the squalid hotel near the Gare de Sceaux.
+
+No sooner, however, had she placed it in Delafield's hands than she was
+conscious of new forces of feeling in herself which robbed the act of
+its simplicity. She had meant to plead her lover's cause and her own
+with the friend who was nominally her husband. Her action had been a
+cry for sympathy, as from one soul to another.
+
+But as Delafield took the letter and began to read, her pulses began to
+flutter strangely. She recalled the phrases of passion which the letter
+contained. She became conscious of new fears, new compunctions.
+
+For Delafield, too, the moment was one of almost intolerable complexity.
+This tender intimacy of night--the natural intimacy of husband and wife;
+this sense, which would not be denied, however sternly he might hold it
+in check, of her dear form beside him; the little refinements and
+self-revelations of a woman's room; his half-rights towards her,
+appealing at once to love, and to the memory of that solemn pledge by
+which he had won her--what man who deserved the name but must be
+conscious, tempestuously conscious, of such thoughts and facts?
+
+And then, wrestling with these smarts, these impulses, belonging to the
+natural, physical life, the powers of the moral being--compassion,
+self-mastery, generosity; while strengthening and directing all, the man
+of faith was poignantly aware of the austere and tender voices
+of religion.
+
+Amid this play of influences he read the letter, still kneeling beside
+her and holding her fingers clasped in his. She had closed her eyes and
+lay still, save for the occasional tremulous movement of her free hand,
+which dried the tears on her cheek.
+
+"Thank you," he said, at last, with a voice that wavered, as he put the
+letter down. "Thank you. It was good of you to let me see it. It changes
+all my thoughts of him henceforward. If he had lived--"
+
+"But he's dead! He's dead!" cried Julie, in a sudden agony, wrenching
+her hand from his and burying her face in the pillow. "Just when he
+wanted to live. Oh, my God--my God! No, there's no God--nothing that
+cares--that takes any notice!"
+
+She was shaken by deep, convulsive weeping. Delafield soothed her as
+best he could. And presently she stretched out her hand with a quick,
+piteous gesture, and touched his face.
+
+"You, too! What have I done to you? How you looked, just now! I bring a
+curse. Why did you want to marry me? I can't tear this out of my
+heart--I can't!"
+
+And again she hid herself from him. Delafield bent over her.
+
+"Do you imagine that I should be poor-souled enough to ask you?"
+
+Suddenly a wild feeling of revolt ran through Julie's mind. The
+loftiness of his mood chilled her. An attitude more weakly, passionately
+human, a more selfish pity for himself would, in truth, have served him
+better. Had the pain of the living man escaped his control, avenging
+itself on the supremacy that death had now given to the lover, Delafield
+might have found another Julie in his arms. As it was, her husband
+seemed to her perhaps less than man, in being more; she admired
+unwillingly, and her stormy heart withdrew itself.
+
+And when at last she controlled her weeping, and it became evident to
+him that she wished once more to be alone, his sensitiveness perfectly
+divined the secret reaction in her. He rose from his place beside her
+with a deep, involuntary sigh. She heard it, but only to shrink away.
+
+"You will sleep a little?" he said, looking down upon her.
+
+"I will try, _mon ami_."
+
+"If you don't sleep, and would like me to read to you, call me. I am in
+the next room."
+
+She thanked him faintly, and he went away. At the door he paused and
+came back again.
+
+"To-night"--he hesitated--"while the doctors were here, I ran down to
+Montreux by the short path and telegraphed. The consul at Zanzibar is an
+old friend of mine. I asked him for more particulars at once, by wire.
+But the letters can't be here for a fortnight."
+
+"I know. You're very, very good."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hour after hour Delafield sat motionless in his room, till "high in the
+Valais depths profound" he "saw the morning break."
+
+There was a little balcony at his command, and as he noiselessly stepped
+out upon it, between three and four o'clock, he felt himself the
+solitary comrade of the mist-veiled lake, of those high, rosy mountains
+on the eastern verge, the first throne and harbor of the light--of the
+lower forest-covered hills that "took the morning," one by one, in a
+glorious and golden succession. All was fresh, austere, and vast--the
+spaces of the lake, the distant hollows of high glaciers filled with
+purple shadow, the precipices of the Rochers de Naye, where the new snow
+was sparkling in the sun, the cool wind that blew towards him from the
+gates of Italy, down the winding recesses of that superb valley which
+has been a thoroughfare of nations from the beginning of time.
+
+Not a boat on the wide reaches of the lake; not a voice or other sound
+of human toil, either from the vineyards below or the meadows above.
+Meanwhile some instinct, perhaps also some faint movements in her room,
+told him that Julie was no less wakeful than himself. And was not that a
+low voice in the room above him--the trained voice and footsteps of a
+nurse? Ah, poor little heiress, she, too, watched with sorrow!
+
+A curious feeling of shame, of self-depreciation crept into his heart.
+Surely he himself of late had been lying down with fear and rising up
+with bitterness? Never a day had passed since they had reached
+Switzerland but he, a man of strong natural passions, had bade himself
+face the probable truth that, by a kind of violence, he had married a
+woman who would never love him--had taken irrevocably a false step, only
+too likely to be fatal to himself, intolerable to her.
+
+Nevertheless, steeped as he had been in sadness, in foreboding, and,
+during this by-gone night, in passionate envy of the dead yet beloved
+Warkworth, he had never been altogether unhappy. That mysterious
+_It_--that other divine self of the mystic--God--the enwrapping,
+sheltering force--had been with him always. It was with him now--it
+spoke from the mysterious color and light of the dawn.
+
+How, then, could he ever equal Julie in _experience_, in the true and
+poignant feeling of any grief whatever? His mind was in a strange,
+double state. It was like one who feels himself unfairly protected by a
+magic armor; he would almost throw it aside in a remorseful eagerness
+to be with his brethren, and as his brethren, in the sore weakness and
+darkness of the human combat; and then he thinks of the hand that gave
+the shield, and his heart melts in awe.
+
+"_Friend of my soul and of the world, make me thy tool--thy instrument!
+Thou art Love! Speak through me! Draw her heart to mine_."
+
+At last, knowing that there was no sleep in him, and realizing that he
+had brooded enough, he made his way out of the hotel and up through the
+fresh and dew-drenched meadows, where the haymakers were just appearing,
+to the Les Avants stream. A plunge into one of its cool basins
+retempered the whole man. He walked back through the scented
+field-paths, resolutely restraining his mind from the thoughts of the
+night, hammering out, indeed, in his head a scheme for the establishment
+of small holdings on certain derelict land in Wiltshire belonging to
+his cousin.
+
+As he was descending on Charnex, he met the postman and took his
+letters. One among them, from the Duke of Chudleigh, contained a most
+lamentable account of Lord Elmira. The father and son had returned to
+England, and an angry, inclement May had brought a touch of pneumonia to
+add to all the lad's other woes. In itself it was not much--was, indeed,
+passing away. "But it has used up most of his strength," said the Duke,
+"and you know whether he had any to waste. Don't forget him. He
+constantly thinks and talks of you."
+
+Delafield restlessly wondered when he could get home. But he realized
+that Julie would now feel herself tragically linked to the Moffatts, and
+how could he leave her? He piteously told himself that here, and now,
+was his chance with her. As he bore himself now towards her, in this
+hour of her grief for Warkworth, so, perhaps, would their future be.
+
+Yet the claims of kindred were strong. He suffered much inward distress
+as he thought of the father and son, and their old touching dependence
+upon him. Chudleigh, as Jacob knew well, was himself incurably ill.
+Could he long survive his poor boy?
+
+And so that other thought, which Jacob spent so much ingenuity in
+avoiding, rushed upon him unawares. The near, inevitable expectation of
+the famous dukedom, which, in the case of almost any other man in
+England, must at least have quickened the blood with a natural
+excitement, produced in Delafield's mind a mere dull sense of
+approaching torment. Perhaps there was something non-sane in his
+repulsion, something that linked itself with his father's "queerness,"
+or the bigotry and fanaticism of his grandmother, the Evangelical
+Duchess, with her "swarm of parsons," as Sir Wilfrid remembered her. The
+oddity, which had been violent or brutal in earlier generations, showed
+itself in him, one might have said, in a radical transposition of
+values, a singularity of criterion, which the ordinary robust Englishman
+might very well dismiss with impatience as folly or cant.
+
+Yet it was neither; and the feeling had, in truth, its own logic and
+history. He had lived from his youth up among the pageants of rank and
+possession. They had no glamour for him; he realized their burdens,
+their ineffectiveness for all the more precious kinds of happiness--how
+could he not, with these two forlorn figures of Chudleigh and his boy
+always before him? As for imagination and poetry, Delafield, with a
+mind that was either positive or mystical--the mind, one might say, of
+the land-agent or the saint--failed to see where they came in. Family
+tradition, no doubt, carries a thrill. But what thrill is there in the
+mere possession of a vast number of acres of land, of more houses, new
+and old, than any human being can possibly live in, of more money than
+any reasonable man can ever spend, and more responsibilities than he can
+ever meet? Such things often seemed to Delafield pure calamity--mere
+burdens upon life and breath. That he could and must be forced, some
+time, by law and custom, to take them up, was nothing but a social
+barbarity.
+
+Mingled with all which, of course, was his passionate sense of spiritual
+democracy. To be throned apart, like a divine being, surrounded by the
+bought homage of one's fellows, and possessed of more power than a man
+can decently use, was a condition which excited in Delafield the same
+kind of contemptuous revolt that it would have excited in St. Francis.
+"Be not ye called master"--a Christian even of his transcendental and
+heterodox sort, if he _were_ a Christian, must surely hold these words
+in awe, at least so far as concerned any mastery of the external or
+secular kind. To masteries of another order the saint has never been
+disinclined.
+
+As he once more struck the village street, this familiar whirl of
+thoughts was buzzing in Delafield's mind, pierced, however, by one
+sharper and newer. Julie! Did he know--had he ever dared to find
+out--how she regarded this future which was overtaking them? She had
+tried to sound _him_; she had never revealed herself.
+
+In Lady Henry's house he had often noticed in Julie that she had an
+imaginative tenderness for rank or great fortune. At first it had seemed
+to him a woman's natural romanticism; then he explained it to himself as
+closely connected with her efforts to serve Warkworth.
+
+But suppose he were made to feel that there, after all, lay her
+compensation? She had submitted to a loveless marriage and lost her
+lover; but the dukedom was to make amends. He knew well that it would be
+so with nine women out of ten. But the bare thought that it might be so
+with Julie maddened him. He then was to be for her, in the future, the
+mere symbol of the vulgarer pleasures and opportunities, while Warkworth
+held her heart?
+
+Nay!
+
+He stood still, strengthening in himself the glad and sufficient answer.
+She had refused him twice--knowing all his circumstances. At this moment
+he adored her doubly for those old rebuffs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Within twenty-four hours Delafield had received a telegram from his
+friend at Zanzibar. For the most part it recapitulated the news already
+sent to Cairo, and thence transmitted to the English papers. But it
+added the information that Warkworth had been buried in the neighborhood
+of a certain village on the caravan route to Mokembe, and that special
+pains had been taken to mark the spot. And the message concluded: "Fine
+fellow. Hard luck. Everybody awfully sorry here."
+
+These words brought Delafield a sudden look of passionate gratitude from
+Julie's dark and sunken eyes. She rested her face against his sleeve and
+pressed his hand.
+
+Lady Blanche also wept over the telegram, exclaiming that she had
+always believed in Henry Warkworth, and now, perhaps, those busybodies
+who at Simla had been pleased to concern themselves with her affairs and
+Aileen's would see cause to be ashamed of themselves.
+
+To Delafield's discomfort, indeed, she poured out upon him a stream of
+confidences he would have gladly avoided. He had brought the telegram to
+her sitting-room. In the room adjoining it was Aileen, still, according
+to her mother's account, very ill, and almost speechless. Under the
+shadow of such a tragedy it seemed to him amazing that a mother could
+find words in which to tell her daughter's story to a comparative
+stranger. Lady Blanche appeared to him an ill-balanced and foolish
+woman; a prey, on the one hand, to various obscure jealousies and
+antagonisms, and on the other to a romantic and sentimental temper
+which, once roused, gloried in despising "the world," by which she
+generally meant a very ordinary degree of prudence.
+
+She was in chronic disagreement, it seemed, with her daughter's
+guardians, and had been so from the first moment of her widowhood, the
+truth being that she was jealous of their legal powers over Aileen's
+fortune and destiny, and determined, notwithstanding, to have her own
+way with her own child. The wilfulness and caprice of the father, which
+had taken such strange and desperate forms in Rose Delaney, appeared
+shorn of all its attraction and romance in the smaller, more
+conventional, and meaner egotisms of Lady Blanche.
+
+And yet, in her own way, she was full of heart. She lost her head over a
+love affair. She could deny Aileen nothing. That was what her casual
+Indian acquaintances meant by calling her "sweet." When Warkworth's
+attentions, pushed with an ardor which would have driven any prudent
+mother to an instant departure from India, had made a timid and charming
+child of eighteen the talk of Simla, Lady Blanche, excited and
+dishevelled--was it her personal untidiness which accounted for the
+other epithet of "quaint," which had floated to the Duchess's ear, and
+been by her reported to Julie?--refused to break her daughter's heart.
+Warkworth, indeed, had begun long before by flattering the mother's
+vanity and sense of possession, and she now threw herself hotly into his
+cause as against Aileen's odious trustees.
+
+They, of course, always believed the worst of everybody. As for her, all
+she wanted for the child was a good husband. Was it not better, in a
+world of fortune-hunters, that Aileen, with her half-million, should
+marry early? Of money, she had, one would think, enough. It was only the
+greed of certain persons which could possibly desire more. Birth? The
+young man was honorably born, good-looking, well mannered. What did you
+want more? _She_ accepted a democratic age; and the obstacles thrown by
+Aileen's guardians in the way of an immediate engagement between the
+young people appeared to her, so she declared, either vulgar or
+ridiculous.
+
+Well, poor lady, she had suffered for her whims. First of all, her
+levity had perceived, with surprise and terror, the hold that passion
+was taking on the delicate and sensitive nature of Aileen. This young
+girl, so innocent and spotless in thought, so virginally sweet in
+manner, so guileless in action, developed a power of loving, an
+absorption of the whole being in the beloved, such as our modern world
+but rarely sees.
+
+She lived, she breathed for Warkworth. Her health, always frail,
+suffered from their separation. She became a thin and frail vision--a
+"gossamer girl" indeed. The ordinary life of travel and society lost all
+hold upon her; she passed through it in a mood of weariness and distaste
+that was in itself a danger to vital force. The mother became
+desperately alarmed, and made a number of flurried concessions. Letters,
+at any rate, should be allowed, in spite of the guardians, and without
+their knowledge. Yet each letter caused emotions which ran like a
+storm-wind through the child's fragile being, and seemed to exhaust the
+young life at its source. Then came the diphtheria, acting with
+poisonous effect on a nervous system already overstrained.
+
+And in the midst of the mother's anxieties there burst upon her the
+sudden, incredible tale that Warkworth--to whom she herself was writing
+regularly, and to whom Aileen, from her bed, was sending little
+pencilled notes, sweetly meant to comfort a sighing lover--had been
+entangling himself in London with another, a Miss Le Breton, positively
+a nobody, as far as birth and position were concerned, the paid
+companion of Lady Henry Delafield, and yet, as it appeared, a handsome,
+intriguing, unscrupulous hussy, just the kind of hawk to snatch a morsel
+from a dove's mouth--a woman, in fact, with whom a little
+bread-and-butter girl like Aileen might very well have no chance.
+
+Emily Lawrence's letter, in the tone of the candid friend, written after
+her evening at Crowborough House, had roused a mingled anguish and fury
+in the mother's breast. She lifted her eyes from it to look at Aileen,
+propped up in bed, her head thrown back against the pillow, and her
+little hands closed happily over Warkworth's letters; and she went
+straight from that vision to write to the traitor.
+
+The traitor defended and excused himself by return of post. He implored
+her to pay no attention to the calumnious distortion of a friendship
+which had already served Aileen's interests no less than his own. It was
+largely to Miss Le Breton's influence that he owed the appointment which
+was to advance him so materially in his career. At the same time he
+thought it would be wise if Lady Blanche kept not only the silly gossip
+that was going about, but even this true and innocent fact, from
+Aileen's knowledge. One never knew how a girl would take such things,
+and he would rather explain it himself at his own time.
+
+Lady Blanche had to be content. And meanwhile the glory of the Mokembe
+appointment was a strong factor in Aileen's recovery. She exulted over
+it by day and night, and she wrote the letters of an angel.
+
+The mother watched her writing them with mixed feelings. As to
+Warkworth's replies, which she was sometimes allowed to see, Lady
+Blanche, who had been a susceptible girl, and the heroine of several
+"affairs," was secretly and strongly of opinion that men's love-letters,
+at any rate, were poor things nowadays, compared with what they
+had been.
+
+But Aileen was more than satisfied with them. How busy he must be, and
+with such important business! Poor, harassed darling, how good of him to
+write her a word--to give her a thought!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now Lady Blanche beheld her child crushed and broken, a nervous
+wreck, before her life had truly begun. The agonies which the mother
+endured were very real, and should have been touching. But she was not a
+touching person. All her personal traits--her red-rimmed eyes, her
+straggling hair, the slight, disagreeable twist in her nose and
+mouth--combined, with her signal lack of dignity and reticence, to stir
+the impatience rather than the sympathy of the by-stander.
+
+"And mamma was so fond of her," Julie would say to herself sometimes, in
+wonder, proudly contrasting the wild grace and originality of her
+disgraced mother with the awkward, slipshod ways of the sister who had
+remained a great lady.
+
+Meanwhile, Lady Blanche was, indeed, perpetually conscious of her
+strange niece, perpetually thinking of the story her brothers had told
+her, perpetually trying to recall the sister she had lost so young, and
+then turning from all such things to brood angrily over the Lawrence
+letter, and the various other rumors which had reached her of
+Warkworth's relations to Miss Le Breton.
+
+What was in the woman's mind now? She looked pale and tragic enough. But
+what right had she to grieve--or, if she did grieve, to be pitied?
+
+Jacob Delafield had been fool enough to marry her, and fate would make
+her a duchess. So true it is that they who have no business to flourish
+do flourish, like green bay-trees.
+
+As to poor Rose--sometimes there would rise on Lady Blanche's mind the
+sudden picture of herself and the lost, dark-eyed sister, scampering on
+their ponies through the country lanes of their childhood; of her
+lessons with Rose, her worship of Rose; and then of that black curtain
+of mystery and reprobation which for the younger child of sixteen had
+suddenly descended upon Rose and all that concerned her.
+
+But Rose's daughter! All one could say was that she had turned out as
+the child of such proceedings might be expected to turn out--a minx. The
+aunt's conviction as to that stood firm. And while Rose's face and fate
+had sunk into the shadows of the past, even for her sister, Aileen was
+_here_, struggling for her delicate, threatened life, her hand always in
+the hand of this woman who had tried to steal her lover from her, her
+soft, hopeless eyes, so tragically unconscious, bent upon the bold
+intriguer.
+
+What possessed the child? Warkworth's letters, Julie's company--those
+seemed to be all she desired.
+
+And at last, in the June beauty and brilliance, when a triumphant summer
+had banished the pitiful spring, when the meadows were all perfume and
+color, and the clear mountains, in a clear sky, upheld the ever-new and
+never-ending pomp of dawn and noon and night, the little, wasted
+creature looked up into Julie's face, and, without tears, gasped out
+her story.
+
+"These are his letters. Some day I'll--I'll read you some of them; and
+this--is his picture. I know you saw him at Lady Henry's. He mentioned
+your name. Will you please tell me everything--all the times you saw
+him, and what he talked of? You see I am much stronger. I can bear
+it all now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, for Delafield, this fortnight of waiting--waiting for the
+African letters, waiting for the revival of life in Aileen--was a period
+of extraordinary tension, when all the powers of nerve and brain seemed
+to be tested and tried to the utmost. He himself was absorbed in
+watching Julie and in dealing with her.
+
+In the first place, as he saw, she could give no free course to grief.
+The tragic yearning, the agonized tenderness and pity which consumed
+her, must be crushed out of sight as far as possible. They would have
+been an offence to Lady Blanche, a bewilderment to Aileen. And it was on
+her relation to her new-found cousin that, as Delafield perceived, her
+moral life for the moment turned. This frail girl was on the brink of
+perishing because death had taken Warkworth from her. And Julie knew
+well that Warkworth had neither loved her nor deserved her--that he had
+gone to Africa and to death with another image in his heart.
+
+There was a perpetual and irreparable cruelty in the situation. And from
+the remorse of it Julie could not escape. Day by day she was more
+profoundly touched by the clinging, tender creature, more sharply
+scourged by the knowledge that the affection developing between them
+could never be without its barrier and its mystery, that something must
+always remain undisclosed, lest Aileen cast her off in horror.
+
+It was a new moral suffering, in one whose life had been based hitherto
+on intellect, or passion. In a sense it held at bay even her grief for
+Warkworth, her intolerable compassion for his fate. In sheer dread lest
+the girl should find her out and hate her, she lost insensibly the first
+poignancy of sorrow.
+
+These secrets of feeling left her constantly pale and silent. Yet her
+grace had never been more evident. All the inmates of the little
+_pension_, the landlord's family, the servants, the visitors, as the
+days passed, felt the romance and thrill of her presence. Lady Blanche
+evoked impatience of ennui. She was inconsiderate; she was meddlesome;
+she soon ceased even to be pathetic. But for Julie every foot ran, every
+eye smiled.
+
+Then, when the day was over, Delafield's opportunity began. Julie could
+not sleep. He gradually established the right to read with her and talk
+with her. It was a relation very singular, and very intimate. She would
+admit him at his knock, and he would find her on her sofa, very sad,
+often in tears, her black hair loose upon her shoulders. Outwardly there
+was often much ceremony, even distance between them; inwardly, each was
+exploring the other, and Julie's attitude towards Delafield was becoming
+more uncertain, more touched with emotion.
+
+What was, perhaps, most noticeable in it was a new timidity, a touch of
+anxious respect towards him. In the old days, what with her literary
+cultivation and her social success, she had always been the flattered
+and admired one of their little group. Delafield felt himself clumsy and
+tongue-tied beside her. It was a superiority on her part very natural
+and never ungraceful, and it was his chief delight to bring it forward,
+to insist upon it, to take it for granted.
+
+But the relation between them had silently shifted.
+
+"You _judge_--you are always judging," she had said once, impatiently,
+to Delafield. And now it was round these judgments, these inward
+verdicts of his, on life or character, that she was perpetually
+hovering. She was infinitely curious about them. She would wrench them
+from him, and then would often shiver away from him in resentment.
+
+He, meanwhile, as he advanced further in the knowledge of her strange
+nature, was more and more bewildered by her--her perversities and
+caprices, her brilliancies and powers, her utter lack of any standard or
+scheme of life. She had been for a long time, as it seemed to him, the
+creature of her exquisite social instincts--then the creature of
+passion. But what a woman through it all, and how adorable, with those
+poetic gestures and looks, those melancholy, gracious airs that ravished
+him perpetually! And now this new attitude, as of a child leaning,
+wistfully looking in your face, asking to be led, to be wrestled and
+reasoned with.
+
+The days, as they passed, produced in him a secret and mounting
+intoxication. Then, perhaps for a day or two, there would be a reaction,
+both foreseeing that a kind of spiritual tyranny might arise from their
+relation, and both recoiling from it....
+
+One night she was very restless and silent. There seemed to be no means
+of approach to her true mind. Suddenly he took her hand--it was some
+days since they had spoken of Warkworth--and almost roughly reminded her
+of her promise to tell him all.
+
+She rebelled. But his look and manner held her, and the inner misery
+sought an outlet. Submissively she began to speak, in her low, murmuring
+voice; she went back over the past--the winter in Bruton Street; the
+first news of the Moffatt engagement; her efforts for Warkworth's
+promotion; the history of the evening party which had led to her
+banishment; the struggle in her own mind and Warkworth's; the sudden mad
+schemes of their last interview; the rush of the Paris journey.
+
+The mingled exaltation and anguish, the comparative absence of regret
+with which she told the story, produced an astonishing effect on
+Delafield. And in both minds, as the story proceeded, there emerged ever
+more clearly the consciousness of that imperious act by which he had
+saved her.
+
+Suddenly she stopped.
+
+"I know you can find no excuse for it all," she said, in excitement.
+
+"Yes; for all--but for one thing," was his low reply.
+
+She shrank, her eyes on his face.
+
+"That poor child," he said, under his breath.
+
+She looked at him piteously.
+
+"Did you ever realize what you were doing?" he asked her, raising her
+hand to his lips.
+
+"No, no! How could I? I thought of some one so different--I had never
+seen her--"
+
+She paused, her wide--seeking gaze fixed upon him through tears, as
+though she pleaded with him to find explanations--palliatives.
+
+But he gently shook his head.
+
+Suddenly, shaken with weeping, she bowed her face upon the hands that
+held her own. It was like one who relinquishes all pleading, all
+defence, and throws herself on the mercy of the judge.
+
+He tenderly asked her pardon if he had wounded her. But he shrank from
+offering any caress. The outward signs of life's most poignant and most
+beautiful moments are generally very simple and austere.
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+"You have had a disquieting letter?"
+
+The voice was Julie's. Delafield was standing, apparently in thought, at
+the farther corner of the little, raised terrace of the hotel. She
+approached him with an affectionate anxiety, of which he was instantly
+conscious.
+
+"I am afraid I may have to leave you to-night," he said, turning towards
+her, and holding out the letter in his hand.
+
+It contained a few agitated lines from the Duke of Chudleigh.
+
+"They tell me my lad can't get over this. He's made a gallant fight, but
+this beats us. A week or two--no more. Ask Mrs. Delafield to let you
+come. She will, I know. She wrote to me very kindly. Mervyn keeps
+talking of you. You'd come, if you heard him. It's ghastly--the cruelty
+of it all. Whether I can live without him, that's the point."
+
+"You'll go, of course?" said Julie, returning it.
+
+"To-night, if you allow it."
+
+"Of course. You ought."
+
+"I hate leaving you alone, with this trouble on your hands," said Jacob,
+in some agitation. "What are your plans?"
+
+"I could follow you next week. Aileen comes down to-day. And I should
+like to wait here for the mail."
+
+"In five days, about, it should be here," said Delafield.
+
+There was a silence. She dropped into a chair beside the balustrade of
+the terrace, which was wreathed in wistaria, and looked out upon the
+vast landscape of the lake. His thought was, "How can the mail matter to
+her? She cannot suppose that he had written--"
+
+Aloud he said, in some embarrassment, "You expect letters yourself?"
+
+"I expect nothing," she said, after a pause. "But Aileen is living on
+the chance of letters."
+
+"There may be nothing for her--except, indeed, her letters to him--poor
+child!"
+
+"She knows that. But the hope keeps her alive."
+
+"And you?" thought Delafield, with an inward groan, as he looked down
+upon her pale profile. He had a moment's hateful vision of himself as
+the elder brother in the parable. Was Julie's mind to be the home of an
+eternal antithesis between the living husband and the dead lover--in
+which the latter had forever the _beau role_?
+
+Then, impatiently, Jacob wrenched himself from mean thoughts. It was as
+though he bared his head remorse-fully before the dead man.
+
+"I will go to the Foreign Office," he said, in her ear, "as I pass
+through town. They will have letters. All the information I can get you
+shall have at once."
+
+"Thank you, _mon ami_", she said, almost inaudibly.
+
+Then she looked up, and he was startled by her eyes. Where he had
+expected grief, he saw a shrinking animation.
+
+"Write to me often," she said, imperiously.
+
+"Of course. But don't trouble to answer much. Your hands are so full
+here."
+
+She frowned.
+
+"Trouble! Why do you spoil me so? Demand--insist--that I should write!"
+
+"Very well," he said, smiling, "I demand--I insist!"
+
+She drew a long breath, and went slowly away from him into the house.
+Certainly the antagonism of her secret thoughts, though it persisted,
+was no longer merely cold or critical. For it concerned one who was not
+only the master of his own life, but threatened unexpectedly to become
+the master of hers.
+
+She had begun, indeed, to please her imagination with the idea of a
+relation between them, which, while it ignored the ordinary relations of
+marriage, should yet include many of the intimacies and refinements of
+love. More and more did the surprises of his character arrest and occupy
+her mind. She found, indeed, no "plaster saint." Her cool intelligence
+soon detected the traces of a peevish or stubborn temper, and of a
+natural inertia, perpetually combated, however, by the spiritual energy
+of a new and other self exfoliating from the old; a self whose acts and
+ways she watched, sometimes with the held breath of fascination,
+sometimes with a return of shrinking or fear. That a man should not only
+appear but be so good was still in her eyes a little absurd. Perhaps her
+feeling was at bottom the common feeling of the sceptical nature. "We
+should listen to the higher voices; but in such a way that if another
+hypothesis were true, we should not have been too completely duped."
+
+She was ready, also, to convict him of certain prejudices and
+superstitions which roused in her an intellectual impatience. But when
+all was said, Delafield, unconsciously, was drawing her towards him, as
+the fowler draws a fluttering bird. It was the exquisite refinement of
+those spiritual insights and powers he possessed which constantly
+appealed, not only to her heart, but--a very important matter in Julie's
+case--to her taste, to her own carefully tempered instinct for the rare
+and beautiful.
+
+He was the master, then, she admitted, of a certain vein of spiritual
+genius. Well, here should he lead--and even, if he pleased, command her.
+She would sit at his feet, and he should open to her ranges of feeling,
+delights, and subtleties of moral sensation hitherto unknown to her.
+
+Thus the feeling of ennui and reaction which had marked the first weeks
+of her married life had now wholly disappeared. Delafield was no longer
+dull or pedantic in her eyes. She passed alternately from moments of
+intolerable smart and pity for the dead to moments of agitation and
+expectancy connected with her husband. She thought over their meeting of
+the night before; she looked forward to similar hours to come.
+
+Meanwhile his relation towards her in many matters was still naively
+ignorant and humble--determined by the simplicity of a man of some real
+greatness, who never dreamed of claiming tastes or knowledge he did not
+possess, whether in small things or large. This phase, however, only
+gave the more value to one which frequently succeeded it. For suddenly
+the conversation would enter regions where he felt himself peculiarly at
+home, and, with the same unconsciousness on his part, she would be made
+to feel the dignity and authority which surrounded his ethical and
+spiritual life. And these contrasts--this weakness and this
+strength--combined with the man-and-woman element which is always
+present in any situation of the kind, gave rise to a very varied and
+gradually intensifying play of feeling between them. Feeling only
+possible, no doubt, for the _raffines_ of this world; but for them full
+of strange charm, and even of excitement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Delafield left the little inn for Montreux, Lausanne, and London that
+afternoon. He bent to kiss his wife at the moment of his departure, in
+the bare sitting-room that had been improvised for them on the ground
+floor of the hotel, and as she let her face linger ever so little
+against his she felt strong arms flung round her, and was crushed
+against his breast in a hungry embrace. When he released her with a
+flush and a murmured word of apology she shook her head, smiling sadly
+but saying nothing. The door closed on him, and at the sound she made a
+hasty step forward.
+
+"Jacob! Take me with you!"
+
+But her voice died in the rattle and bustle of the diligence outside,
+and she was left trembling from head to foot, under a conflict of
+emotions that seemed now to exalt, now to degrade her.
+
+Half an hour after Delafield's departure there appeared on the terrace
+of the hotel a tottering, emaciated form--Aileen Moffatt, in a black
+dress and hat, clinging to her mother's arm. But she refused the
+deck--chair, which they had spread with cushions and shawls.
+
+"No; let me sit up." And she took an ordinary chair, looking round upon
+the lake and the little flowery terrace with a slow, absorbed look, like
+one trying to remember. Suddenly she bowed her head on her hands.
+
+"Aileen!" cried Lady Blanche, in an agony.
+
+But the girl motioned her away. "Don't, mummy. I'm all right."
+
+And restraining any further emotion, she laid her arms on the balustrade
+and gazed long and calmly into the purple depths and gleaming snows of
+the Rhone valley. Her hat oppressed her and she took it off, revealing
+the abundance of her delicately golden hair, which, in its lack of
+lustre and spring, seemed to share in the physical distress and loss of
+the whole personality.
+
+The face was that of a doomed creature, incapable now of making any
+successful struggle for the right to live. What had been sensibility had
+become melancholy; the slight, chronic frown was deeper, the pale lips
+more pinched. Yet intermittently there was still great sweetness, the
+last effort of a "beautiful soul" meant for happiness, and withered
+before its time.
+
+As Julie stood beside her, while Lady Blanche had gone to fetch a book
+from the salon, the poor child put out her hand and grasped that
+of Julie.
+
+"It is quite possible I may get the letter to-night," she said, in a
+hurried whisper. "My maid went down to Montreux--there is a clever man
+at the post-office who tried to make it out for us. He thinks it'll be
+to-night."
+
+"Don't be too disappointed if nothing comes," said Julie, caressing the
+hand. Its thinness, its icy and lifeless touch, dismayed her. Ah, how
+easily might this physical wreck have been her doing!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bells of Montreux struck half-past six. A restless and agonized
+expectation began to show itself in all the movements of the invalid.
+She left her chair and began to pace the little terrace on Julie's arm.
+Her dragging step, the mournful black of her dress, the struggle between
+youth and death in her sharpened face, made her a tragic presence. Julie
+could hardly bear it, while all the time she, too, was secretly and
+breathlessly waiting for Warkworth's last words.
+
+Lady Blanche returned, and Julie hurried away.
+
+She passed through the hotel and walked down the Montreux road. The post
+had already reached the first houses of the village, and the postman,
+who knew her, willingly gave her the letters.
+
+Yes, a packet for Aileen, addressed in an unknown hand to a London
+address, and forwarded thence. It bore the Denga postmark.
+
+And another for herself, readdressed from London by Madame Bornier. She
+tore off the outer envelope; beneath was a letter of which the address
+was feebly written in Warkworth's hand: "Mademoiselle Le Breton, 3
+Heribert Street, London."
+
+She had the strength to carry her own letter to her room, to call
+Aileen's maid and send her with the other packet to Lady Blanche. Then
+she locked herself in....
+
+Oh, the poor, crumpled page, and the labored hand-writing!
+
+"Julie, I am dying. They are such good fellows, but they can't save me.
+It's horrible.
+
+"I saw the news of your engagement in a paper the day before I left
+Denga. You're right. He'll make you happy. Tell him I said so. Oh, my
+God, I shall never trouble you again! I bless you for the letter you
+wrote me. Here it is.... No, I can't--can't read it. Drowsy. No pain--"
+
+And here the pen had dropped from his hand. Searching for something
+more, she drew from the envelope the wild and passionate letter she had
+written him at Heribert Street, in the early morning after her return
+from Paris, while she was waiting for Delafield to bring her the news of
+Lord Lackington's state.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The small _table d'hote_ of the Hotel Michel was still further
+diminished that night. Lady Blanche was with her daughter, and Mrs.
+Delafield did not appear.
+
+But the moon was hanging in glory over the lake when Julie, unable to
+bear her room and her thoughts any longer, threw a lace scarf about her
+head and neck, and went blindly climbing through the upward paths
+leading to Les Avants. The roads were silver in the moonlight; so was
+the lake, save where the great mountain shadows lay across the eastern
+end. And suddenly, white, through pine-trees, "Jaman, delicately tall!"
+
+The air cooled her brow, and from the deep, enveloping night her torn
+heart drew balm, and a first soothing of the pulse of pain. Every now
+and then, as she sat down to rest, a waking dream overshadowed her. She
+seemed to be supporting Warkworth in her arms; his dying head lay upon
+her breast, and she murmured courage and love into his ear. But not as
+Julie Le Breton. Through all the anguish of what was almost an illusion
+of the senses, she still felt herself Delafield's wife. And in that
+flood of silent speech she poured out on Warkworth, it was as though she
+offered him also Jacob's compassion, Jacob's homage, mingled with
+her own.
+
+Once she found herself sitting at the edge of a meadow, environed by the
+heavy scents of flowers. Some apple-trees with whitened trunks rose
+between her and the lake a thousand feet below. The walls of Chillon,
+the houses of Montreux, caught the light; opposite, the deep forests of
+Bouveret and St. Gingolphe lay black upon the lake; above them rode the
+moon. And to the east the high Alps, their pure lines a little effaced
+and withdrawn, as when a light veil hangs over a sanctuary.
+
+Julie looked out upon a vast freedom of space, and by a natural
+connection she seemed to be also surveying her own world of life and
+feeling, her past and her future. She thought of her childhood and her
+parents, of her harsh, combative youth, of the years with Lady Henry, of
+Warkworth, of her husband, and the life into which his strong hand had
+so suddenly and rashly drawn her. Her thoughts took none of the
+religious paths so familiar to his. And yet her reverie was so far
+religious that her mind seemed to herself to be quivering under the
+onset of affections, emotions, awes, till now unknown, and that, looking
+back, she was conscious of a groping sense of significance, of purpose,
+in all that had befallen her. Yet to this sense she could put no words.
+Only, in the end, through the constant action of her visualizing
+imagination, it connected itself with Delafield's face, and with the
+memory of many of his recent acts and sayings.
+
+It was one of those hours which determine the history of a man or woman.
+And the august Alpine beauty entered in, so that Julie, in this sad and
+thrilling act of self-probing, felt herself in the presence of powers
+and dominations divine.
+
+Her face, stained with tears, took gradually some of the calm, the
+loftiness of the night. Yet the close-shut, brooding mouth would slip
+sometimes into a smile exquisitely soft and gentle, as though the heart
+remembered something which seemed to the intelligence at once folly and
+sweetness.
+
+What was going on within her was, to her own consciousness, a strange
+thing. It appeared to her as a kind of simplification, a return to
+childhood; or, rather, was it the emergence in the grown mind, tired
+with the clamor of its own egotistical or passionate life, of some
+instincts, natural to the child, which she, nevertheless, as a child had
+never known; instincts of trust, of self-abandonment, steeped, perhaps,
+in those tears which are themselves only another happiness?...
+
+But hush! What are our poor words in the presence of these nobler
+secrets of the wrestling and mounting spirit!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the way down she saw another figure emerge from the dark.
+
+"Lady Blanche!"
+
+Lady Blanche stood still.
+
+"The hotel was stifling," she said, in a voice that vainly tried for
+steadiness.
+
+Julie perceived that she had been weeping.
+
+"Aileen is asleep?"
+
+"Perhaps. They have given her something to make her sleep."
+
+They walked on towards the hotel.
+
+Julie hesitated.
+
+"She was not disappointed?" she said, at last, in a low voice.
+
+"No!" said the mother, sharply. "But one knew, of course, there must be
+letters for her. Thank God, she can feel that his very last thought was
+for her! The letters which have reached her are dated the day before the
+fatal attack began--giving a complete account of his march--most
+interesting--showing how he trusted her already--though she is such a
+child. It will tranquillize her to feel how completely she possessed his
+heart--poor fellow!"
+
+Julie said nothing, and Lady Blanche, with bitter satisfaction, felt
+rather than saw what seemed to her the just humiliation expressed in the
+drooping and black-veiled figure beside her.
+
+Next day there was once more a tinge of color on Aileen's cheeks. Her
+beautiful hair fell round her once more in a soft life and confusion,
+and the roses which her mother had placed beside her on the bed were not
+in too pitiful contrast with her frail loveliness.
+
+"Read it, please," she said, as soon as she found herself alone with
+Julie, pushing her letter tenderly towards her. "He tells me
+everything--everything! All he was doing and hoping--consults me in
+everything. Isn't it an honor--when I'm so ignorant and childish? I'll
+try to be brave--try to be worthy--"
+
+And while her whole frame was shaken with deep, silent sobs, she
+greedily watched Julie read the letter.
+
+"Oughtn't I to try and live," she said, dashing away her tears, as Julie
+returned it, "when he loved me so?"
+
+Julie kissed her with a passionate and guilty pity. The letter might
+have been written to any friend, to any charming child for whom a much
+older man had a kindness. It gave a business-like account of their
+march, dilated on one or two points of policy, drew some humorous
+sketches of his companions, and concluded with a few affectionate and
+playful sentences.
+
+But when the wrestle with death began, Warkworth wrote but one last
+letter, uttered but one cry of the heart, and it lay now in
+Julie's bosom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few days passed. Delafield's letters were short and full of sadness.
+Elmira still lived; but any day or hour might see the end. As for the
+father--But the subject was too tragic to be written of, even to her.
+Not to feel, not to realize; there lay the only chance of keeping one's
+own courage, and so of being any help whatever to two of the most
+miserable of human beings.
+
+At last, rather more than a week after Delafield's departure, came
+two telegrams. One was from Delafield--"Mervyn died this morning.
+Duke's condition causes great anxiety." The other from Evelyn
+Crowborough--"Elmira died this morning. Going down to Shropshire to
+help Jacob."
+
+Julie threw down the telegrams. A rush of proud tears came to her eyes.
+She swept to the door of her room, opened it, and called her maid.
+
+The maid came, and when she saw the sparkling looks and strained bearing
+of her mistress, wondered what crime she was to be rebuked for. Julie
+merely bade her pack at once, as it was her intention to catch the
+eight o'clock through train at Lausanne that night for England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Twenty hours later the train carrying Julie to London entered Victoria
+Station. On the platform stood the little Duchess, impatiently
+expectant. Julie was clasped in her arms, and had no time to wonder at
+the pallor and distraction of her friend before she was hurried into the
+brougham waiting beyond the train.
+
+"Oh, Julie!" cried the Duchess, catching the traveller's hands, as they
+drove away. "Julie, darling!"
+
+Julie turned to her in amazement. The blue eyes fixed upon her had no
+tears, but in them, and in the Duchess's whole aspect, was expressed a
+vivid horror and agitation which struck at Julie's heart.
+
+"What is it?" she said, catching her breath. "What is it?"
+
+"Julie, I was going to Faircourt this morning. First your telegram
+stopped me. I thought I'd wait and go with you. Then came another, from
+Delafield. The Duke! The poor Duke!"
+
+Julie's attitude changed unconsciously--instantly.
+
+"Yes; tell me!"
+
+"It's in all the papers to-night--on the placards--don't look out!" And
+the Duchess lifted her hand and drew down the blinds of the brougham.
+"He was in a most anxious state yesterday, but they thought him calmer
+at night, and he insisted on being left alone. The doctors still kept a
+watch, but he managed in some mysterious way to evade them all, and this
+morning he was missed. After two hours they found him--in the river
+that runs below the house!"
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"And Jacob?" said Julie, hoarsely.
+
+"That's what I'm so anxious about," exclaimed the Duchess. "Oh, I am
+thankful you've come! You know how Jacob's always felt about the Duke
+and Mervyn--how he's hated the notion of succeeding. And Susan, who went
+down yesterday, telegraphed to me last night--before this horror--that
+he was 'terribly strained and overwrought.'"
+
+"Succeeding?" said Julie, vaguely. Mechanically she had drawn up the
+blind again, and her eyes followed the dingy lines of the Vauxhall
+Bridge Road, till suddenly they turned away from the placards outside a
+small stationer's shop which announced: "Tragic death of the Duke of
+Chudleigh and his son."
+
+The Duchess looked at her curiously without replying. Julie seemed to be
+grappling with some idea which escaped her, or, rather, was presently
+expelled by one more urgent.
+
+"Is Jacob ill?" she said, abruptly, looking her companion full in the
+face.
+
+"I only know what I've told you. Susan says 'strained and overwrought.'
+Oh, it'll be all right when he gets you!"
+
+Julie made no reply. She sat motionless, and the Duchess, stealing
+another glance at her, must needs, even in this tragic turmoil, allow
+herself the reflection that she was a more delicate study in
+black-and-white, a more refined and accented personality than ever.
+
+"You won't mind," said Evelyn, timidly, after a pause; "but Lady Henry
+is staying with me, and also Sir Wilfrid Bury, who had such a bad cold
+in his lodgings that I went down there a week ago, got the doctor's
+leave, and carried him off there and then. And Mr. Montresor's coming
+in. He particularly wanted, he said, just to press your hand. But they
+sha'n't bother you if you're tired. Our train goes at 10.10, and Freddie
+has got the express stopped for us at Westonport--about three in
+the morning."
+
+The carriage rolled into Grosvenor Square, and presently stopped before
+Crowborough House. Julie alighted, looked round her at the July green of
+the square, at the brightness of the window-boxes, and then at the groom
+of the chambers who was taking her wraps from her--the same man who, in
+the old days, used to feed Lady Henry's dogs with sweet biscuit. It
+struck her that he was showing her a very particular and eager
+attention.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile in the Duchess's drawing--room a little knot of people was
+gathered--Lady Henry, Sir Wilfrid Bury, and Dr. Meredith. Their demeanor
+illustrated both the subduing and the exciting influence of great
+events. Lady Henry was more talkative than usual. Sir Wilfrid
+more silent.
+
+Lady Henry seemed to have profited by her stay at Torquay. As she sat
+upright in a stiff chair, her hands resting on her stick, she presented
+her characteristic aspect of English solidity, crossed by a certain free
+and foreign animation. She had been already wrangling with Sir Wilfrid,
+and giving her opinion freely on the "socialistic" views on rank and
+property attributed to Jacob Delafield. "If _he_ can't digest the cake,
+that doesn't mean it isn't good," had been her last impatient remark,
+when Sir Wilfrid interrupted her.
+
+"Only a few minutes more," he said, looking at his watch. "Now, then,
+what line do we take? How much is our friend likely to know?"
+
+"Unless she has lost her eyesight--which Evelyn has not reported--she
+will know most of what matters before she has gone a hundred yards from
+the station," said Lady Henry, dryly.
+
+"Oh, the streets! Yes; but persons are often curiously dazed by such a
+gallop of events."
+
+"Not Julie Le Breton!"
+
+"I should like to be informed as to the part you are about to play,"
+said Sir Wilfrid, in a lower voice, "that I may play up to it. Where
+are you?"
+
+Both looked at Meredith, who had walked to a distant window and was
+standing there looking out upon the square. Lady Henry was well aware
+that _he_ had not forgiven her, and, to tell the truth, was rather
+anxious that he should. So she, too, dropped her voice.
+
+"I bow to the institutions of my country," she said, a little sparkle in
+the strong, gray eye.
+
+"In other words, you forgive a duchess?"
+
+"I acknowledge the head of the family, and the greater carries the
+less."
+
+"Suppose Jacob should be unforgiving?"
+
+"He hasn't the spirit."
+
+"And she?"
+
+"Her conscience will be on my side."
+
+"I thought it was your theory that she had none?"
+
+"Jacob, let us hope, will have developed some. He has a good deal to
+spare."
+
+Sir Wilfrid laughed. "So it is you who will do the pardoning?"
+
+"I shall offer an armed and honorable peace. The Duchess of Chudleigh
+may intrigue and tell lies, if she pleases. I am not giving her a
+hundred a year."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Why, if I may ask," said Sir Wilfrid, at the end of it, "did you
+quarrel with Jacob? I understand there was a separate cause:"
+
+Lady Henry hesitated.
+
+"He paid me a debt," she said, at last, and a sudden flush rose in her
+old, blanched cheek.
+
+"And that annoyed you? You have the oddest code!"
+
+Lady Henry bit her lip.
+
+"One does not like one's money thrown in one's face."
+
+"Most unreasonable of women!"
+
+"Never mind, Wilfrid. We all have our feelings."
+
+"Precisely. Well, no doubt Jacob will make peace. As for--Ah, here comes
+Montresor!"
+
+A visible tremor passed through Lady Henry. The door was thrown open,
+and the footman announced the Minister for War.
+
+"Her grace, sir, is not yet returned."
+
+Montresor stumbled into the room, and even with his eye-glasses
+carefully adjusted, did not at once perceive who was in it.
+
+Sir Wilfrid went towards him.
+
+"Ah, Bury! Convalescent, I hope?"
+
+"Quite. The Duchess has gone to meet Mrs. Delafield."
+
+"Mrs.--?" Montresor's mouth opened. "But, of course, you know?"
+
+"Oh yes, I know. But one's tongue has to get oiled. You see Lady Henry?"
+
+Montresor started.
+
+"I am glad to see Lady Henry," he replied, stiffly.
+
+Lady Henry slowly rose and advanced two steps. She quietly held out her
+hand to him, and, smiling, looked him in the face.
+
+"Take it. There is no longer any cause of quarrel between us. I raise
+the embargo."
+
+The Minister took the hand, and shook his head.
+
+"Ah, but you had no right to impose it," he said, with energy.
+
+"Oh, for goodness sake, meet me half-way," cried Lady Henry, "or I shall
+never hold out!"
+
+Sir Wilfrid, whose half-embarrassed gaze was bent on the ground, looked
+up and was certain that he saw a gleam of moisture in those
+wrinkled eyes.
+
+"Why have you held out so long? What does it matter to me whether Miss
+Julie be a duchess or no? That doesn't make up to me for all the months
+you've shut your door on me. And I was always given to understand,
+by-the-way, that it wouldn't matter to you."
+
+"I've had three months at Torquay," said Lady Henry, raising her
+shoulders.
+
+"I hope it was dull to distraction."
+
+"It was. And my doctor tells me the more I fret the more gout I may
+expect."
+
+"So all this is not generosity, but health?"
+
+"Kiss my hand, sir, and have done with it! You are all avenged. At
+Torquay I had four companions in seven weeks."
+
+"More power to them!" said Montresor. "Meredith, come here. Shall we
+accept the pleas?"
+
+Meredith came slowly from the window, his hands behind his back.
+
+"Lady Henry commands and we obey," he said, slowly. "But to-day begins a
+new world--founded in ruin, like the rest of them."
+
+He raised his fine eyes, in which there was no laughter, rather a dreamy
+intensity. Lady Henry shrank.
+
+"If you're thinking of Chudleigh," she said, uncertainly, "be glad for
+him. It was release. As for Henry Warkworth--"
+
+"Ah, poor fellow!" said Montresor, perfunctorily. "Poor fellow!"
+
+He had dropped Lady Henry's hand, but he now recaptured it, enclosing
+the thin, jewelled fingers in his own.
+
+"Well, well, then it's peace, with all my heart." He stooped and lightly
+kissed the fingers. "And now, when do you expect our friend?"
+
+"At any moment," said Lady Henry.
+
+She seated herself, and Montresor beside her.
+
+"I am told," said Montresor, "that this horror will not only affect
+Delafield personally, but that he will regard the dukedom as a
+calamity."
+
+"Hm!--and you believe it?" said Lady Henry.
+
+"I try to," was the Minister's laughing reply. "Ah, surely, here they
+are!"
+
+Meredith turned from the window, to which he had gone back.
+
+"The carriage has just arrived," he announced, and he stood fidgeting,
+standing first on one foot, then on the other, and running his hand
+through his mane of gray hair. His large features were pale, and any
+close observer would have detected the quiver of emotion.
+
+A sound of voices from the anteroom, the Duchess's light tones floating
+to the top. At the same time a door on the other side of the
+drawing-room opened and the Duke of Crowborough appeared.
+
+"I think I hear my wife," he said, as he greeted Montresor and hurriedly
+crossed the room.
+
+There was a rustle of quick steps, and the little Duchess entered.
+
+"Freddie, here is Julie!"
+
+Behind appeared a tall figure in black. Everybody in the room advanced,
+including Lady Henry, who, however, after a few steps stood still behind
+the others, leaning on her stick.
+
+Julie looked round the little circle, then at the Duke of Crowborough,
+who had gravely given her his hand. The suppressed excitement already in
+the room clearly communicated itself to her. She did not lose her
+self-command for an instant, but her face pleaded.
+
+"Is it really true? Perhaps there is some mistake?"
+
+"I fear there can be none," said the Duke, sadly. "Poor Chudleigh had
+been long dead when they found him."
+
+"Freddie," said the Duchess, interrupting, "I have told Greswell we
+shall want the carriage at half-past nine for Euston. Will that do?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+Greswell, the handsome groom of the chambers, approached Julie.
+
+"Your grace's maid wishes to know whether it is your grace's wish that
+she should go round to Heribert Street before taking the luggage
+to Euston?"
+
+Julie looked at the man, bewildered. Then a stormy color rushed into her
+cheeks.
+
+"Does he mean my maid?" she said to the Duke, piteously.
+
+"Certainly. Will you give your orders?"
+
+She gave them, and then, turning again to the Duke, she covered her eyes
+with her hands a moment.
+
+"What does it all mean?" she said, faltering. "It seems as though we
+were all mad."
+
+"You understand, of course, that Jacob succeeds?" said the Duke, not
+without coldness; and he stood still an instant, gazing at this woman,
+who must now, he supposed, feel herself at the very summit of her
+ambitions.
+
+Julie drew a long breath. Then she perceived Lady Henry. Instantly,
+impetuously, she crossed the room. But as she reached that composed and
+formidable figure, the old timidity, the old fear, seized her. She
+paused abruptly, but she held out her hand.
+
+Lady Henry took it. The two women stood regarding each other, while the
+other persons in the room instinctively turned away from their meeting.
+Lady Henry's first look was one of curiosity. Then, before the
+indefinable, ennobling change in Julie's face, now full of the pale
+agitation of memory, the eyes of the older woman wavered and dropped.
+But she soon recovered herself.
+
+"We meet again under very strange circumstances," she said, quietly;
+"though I have long foreseen them. As for our former experience, we were
+in a false relation, and it made fools of us both. You and Jacob are now
+the heads of the family. And if you like to make friends with me on this
+new footing, I am ready. As to my behavior, I think it was natural; but
+if it rankles in your mind, I apologize."
+
+The personal pride of the owner, curbed in its turn by the pride of
+tradition and family, spoke strangely from these words. Julie stood
+trembling, her chest heaving.
+
+"I, too, regret--and apologize," she said, in a low voice.
+
+"Then we begin again. But now you must let Evelyn take you to rest for
+an hour or two. I am sorry you have this hurried journey to-night."
+
+Julie pressed her hands to her breast with one of those dramatic
+movements that were natural to her.
+
+"Oh, I must see Jacob!" she said, under her breath--"I must see Jacob!"
+
+And she turned away, looking vaguely round her. Meredith approached.
+
+"Comfort yourself," he said, very gently, pressing her hand in both of
+his. "It has been a great shock, but when you get there he'll be
+all right."
+
+"Jacob?"
+
+Her expression, the piteous note in her voice, awoke in him an answering
+sense of pain. He wondered how it might be between the husband and wife.
+Yet it was borne in upon him, as upon Lady Henry, that her marriage,
+however interpreted, had brought with it profound and intimate
+transformation. A different woman stood before him. And when, after a
+few more words, the Duchess swept down upon them, insisting that Julie
+must rest awhile, Meredith stood looking after the retreating figures,
+filled with the old, bitter sense of human separateness, and the
+fragmentariness of all human affections. Then he made his farewells to
+the Duke and Lady Henry, and slipped away. He had turned a page in the
+book of life; and as he walked through Grosvenor Square he applied his
+mind resolutely to one of the political "causes" with which, as a
+powerful and fighting journalist, he was at that moment occupied.
+
+Lady Henry, too, watched Julie's exit from the room.
+
+"So now she supposes herself in love with Jacob?" she thought, with
+amusement, as she resumed her seat.
+
+"What if Delafield refuses to be made a duke?" said Sir Wilfrid, in her
+ear.
+
+"It would be a situation new to the Constitution," said Lady Henry,
+composedly. "I advise you, however, to wait till it occurs."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The northern express rushed onward through the night. Rugby, Stafford,
+Crewe had been left behind. The Yorkshire valleys and moors began to
+show themselves in pale ridges and folds under the moon. Julie, wakeful
+in her corner opposite the little, sleeping Duchess, was conscious of an
+interminable rush of images through a brain that longed for a few
+unconscious and forgetful moments. She thought of the deferential
+station-master at Euston; of the fuss attending their arrival on the
+platform; of the arrangements made for stopping the express at the
+Yorkshire Station, where they were to alight.
+
+Faircourt? Was it the great Early-Georgian house of which she had heard
+Jacob speak--the vast pile, half barrack, half palace, in which,
+according to him, no human being could be either happy or at home?
+
+And this was now his--and hers? Again the whirl of thoughts swept and
+danced round her.
+
+A wild, hill country. In the valleys, the blackness of thick trees, the
+gleam of rivers, the huge, lifeless factories; and beyond, the high,
+silver edges, the sharp shadows of the moors.... The train slackened,
+and the little Duchess woke at once.
+
+"Ten minutes to three. Oh, Julie, here we are!"
+
+The dawn was just coldly showing as they alighted. Carriages and
+servants were waiting, and various persons whose identity and function
+it was not easy to grasp. One of them, however, at once approached Julie
+with a privileged air, and she perceived that he was a doctor.
+
+"I am very glad that your grace has come," he said, as he raised his
+hat. "The trouble with the Duke is shock, and want of sleep."
+
+Julie looked at him, still bewildered.
+
+"How long has my husband been ill?"
+
+He walked on beside her, describing in as few words as possible the
+harrowing days preceding the death of the boy, Delafield's attempts to
+soothe and control the father, the stratagem by which the poor Duke had
+outwitted them all, and the weary hours of search through the night,
+under a drizzling rain, which had resulted, about dawn, in the discovery
+of the Duke's body in one of the deeper holes of the river.
+
+"When the procession returned to the house, your husband"--the speaker
+framed the words uncertainly--"had a long fainting-fit. It was probably
+caused by the exhaustion of the search--many hours without food--and
+many sleepless nights. We kept him in his room all day. But towards
+evening he insisted on getting up. The restlessness he shows is itself a
+sign of shock. I trust, now you are here, you may be able to persuade
+him to spare himself. Otherwise the consequences might be grave."
+
+The drive to the house lay mainly through a vast park, dotted with stiff
+and melancholy woods. The morning was cloudy; even the wild roses in the
+hedges and the daisies in the grass had neither gayety nor color. Soon
+the house appeared--an immense pile of stone, with a pillared centre,
+and wings to east and west, built in a hollow, gray and sunless. The
+mournful blinds drawn closely down made of it rather a mausoleum for the
+dead than a home for the living.
+
+At the approach of the carriage, however, doors were thrown open,
+servants appeared, and on the steps, trembling and heavy-eyed, stood
+Susan Delafield.
+
+She looked timidly at Julie, and then, as they passed into the great
+central hall, the two kissed each other with tears.
+
+"He is in his room, waiting for you. The doctors persuaded him not to
+come down. But he is dressed, and reading and writing. We don't believe
+he has slept at all for a week."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Through there," said Susan Delafield, stepping back. "That is the
+door."
+
+[Illustration: "SHE FOUND HERSELF KNEELING BESIDE HIM"]
+
+Julie softly opened it, and closed it behind her. Delafield had heard
+her approach, and was standing by the table, supporting himself upon it.
+His aspect filled Julie with horror. She ran to him and threw her
+arms round him. He sank back into his chair, and she found herself
+kneeling beside him, murmuring to him, while his head rested upon
+her shoulder.
+
+"Jacob, I am here! Oh, I ought to have been here all through! It's
+terrible--terrible! But, Jacob, you won't suffer so--now I'm here--now
+we're together--now I love you, Jacob?"
+
+Her voice broke in tears. She put back the hair from his brow, kissing
+him with a tenderness in which there was a yearning and lovely humility.
+Then she drew a little away, waiting for him to speak, in an agony.
+
+But for a time he seemed unable to speak. He feebly released himself, as
+though he could not bear the emotion she offered him, and his
+eyes closed.
+
+"Jacob, come and lie down!" she said, in terror. "Let me call the
+doctors."
+
+He shook his head, and a faint pressure from his hand bade her sit
+beside him.
+
+"I shall be better soon. Give me time. I'll tell you--"
+
+Then silence again. She sat holding his hand, her eyes fixed upon him.
+Time passed, she knew not how. Susan came into the room--a small
+sitting-room in the east wing--to tell her that the neighboring bedroom
+had been prepared for herself. Julie only looked up for an instant with
+a dumb sign of refusal. A doctor came in, and Delafield made a painful
+effort to take the few spoonfuls of food and stimulant pressed upon him.
+Then he buried his face in the side of the arm-chair.
+
+"Please let us be alone," he said, with a touch of his old
+peremptoriness, and both Susan and the doctor obeyed.
+
+But it was long before he could collect energy enough to talk. When he
+did, he made an effort to tell her the story of the boy's death, and the
+father's self-destruction. He told it leaning forward in his chair, his
+eyes on the ground, his hands loosely joined, his voice broken and
+labored. Julie listened, gathering from his report an impression of
+horror, tragic and irremediable, similar to that which had shaken the
+balance of his own mind. And when he suddenly looked up with the words,
+"And now _I_ am expected to take their place--to profit by their deaths!
+What rightful law of God or man binds me to accept a life and a
+responsibility that I loathe?" Julie drew back as though he had struck
+her. His face, his tone were not his own--there was a violence, a threat
+in them, addressed, as it were, specially to _her_. "If it were not for
+you," his eyes seemed to say, "I could refuse this thing, which will
+destroy me, soul and body."
+
+She was silent, her pulses fluttering, and he resumed, speaking like one
+groping his way:
+
+"I could have done the work, of course--I have done it for five years. I
+could have looked after the estate and the people. But the money, the
+paraphernalia, the hordes of servants, the mummery of the life! Why,
+Julie, should we be forced into it? What happiness--I ask you--what
+happiness can it bring to either of us?"
+
+And again he looked up, and again it seemed to Julie that his expression
+was one of animated hostility and antagonism--antagonism to her, as
+embodying for the moment all the arguments--of advantage, custom,
+law--he was, in his own mind, fighting and denying. With a failing heart
+she felt herself very far from him. Was there not also something in his
+attitude, unconsciously, of that old primal antagonism of the man to
+the woman, of the stronger to the weaker, the more spiritual to the
+more earthy?
+
+"You think, no doubt," he said, after a pause, "that it is my duty to
+take this thing, even if I _could_ lay it down?"
+
+"I don't know what I think," she said, hurriedly. "It is very strange,
+of course, what you say. We ought to discuss it thoroughly. Let me have
+a little time."
+
+He gave an impatient sigh, then suddenly rose.
+
+"Will you come and look at them?"
+
+She, too, rose and put her hand in his.
+
+"Take me where you will."
+
+"It is not horrible," he said, shading his eyes a moment. "They are at
+peace."
+
+With a feeble step, leaning on her arm, he guided her through the great,
+darkened house. Julie was dimly aware of wide staircases, of galleries
+and high halls, of the pictures of past Delafields looking down upon
+them. The morning was now far advanced. Many persons were at work in the
+house, but Julie was conscious of them only as distant figures that
+vanished at their approach. They walked alone, guarded from all
+intrusion by the awe and sympathy of the unseen human beings
+around them.
+
+Delafield opened the closed door.
+
+The father and son lay together, side by side, the boy's face in a very
+winning repose, which at first sight concealed the traces of his long
+suffering; the father's also--closed eyes and sternly shut
+mouth--suggesting, not the despair which had driven him to his death,
+but, rather, as in sombre triumph, the all-forgetting, all-effacing
+sleep which he had won from death.
+
+They stood a moment, till Delafield fell on his knees. Julie knelt
+beside him. She prayed for a while; then she wearied, being, indeed,
+worn out with her journey. But Delafield was motionless, and it seemed
+to Julie that he hardly breathed.
+
+She rose to her feet, and found her eyes for the first time flooded with
+tears. Never for many weeks had she felt so lonely, or so utterly
+unhappy. She would have given anything to forget herself in comforting
+Jacob. But he seemed to have no need of her, no thought of her.
+
+As she vaguely looked round her, she saw that beside the dead man was a
+table holding some violets--the only flowers in the room--some
+photographs, and a few well--worn books. Softly she took up one. It was
+a copy of the _Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_, much noted and
+underlined. It would have seemed to her sacrilege to look too close; but
+she presently perceived a letter between its pages, and in the morning
+light, which now came strongly into the room through a window looking on
+the garden, she saw plainly that it was written on thin, foreign paper,
+that it was closed, and addressed to her husband.
+
+"Jacob!"
+
+She touched him softly on the shoulder, alarmed by his long immobility.
+
+He looked up, and it appeared to Julie as though he were shaking off
+with difficulty some abnormal and trancelike state. But he rose, looking
+at her strangely.
+
+"Jacob, this is yours."
+
+He took the book abruptly, almost as if she had no right to be holding
+it. Then, as he saw the letter, the color rushed into his face. He took
+it, and after a moment's hesitation walked to the window and opened it.
+
+She saw him waver, and ran to his support. But he put out a hand which
+checked her.
+
+"It was the last thing he wrote," he said; and then, uncertainly, and
+without reading any but the first words of the letter, he put it into
+his pocket.
+
+Julie drew back, humiliated. His gesture said that to a secret so
+intimate and sacred he did not propose to admit his wife.
+
+They went back silently to the room from which they had come. Sentence
+after sentence came to Julie's lips, but it seemed useless to say them,
+and once more, but in a totally new way, she was "afraid" of the man
+beside her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She left him shortly after, by his own wish.
+
+"I will lie down, and you must rest," he said, with decision.
+
+So she bathed and dressed, and presently she allowed the kind,
+fair-haired Susan to give her food, and pour out her own history of the
+death-week which she and Jacob had passed through. But in all that was
+said, Julie noticed that Susan spoke of her brother very little, and of
+his inheritance and present position not at all. And once or twice she
+noticed a wondering or meditative expression in the girl's charming eyes
+as they rested on herself, and realized that the sense of mystery, of
+hushed expectancy, was not confined to her own mind.
+
+When Susan left her at nine o'clock, it was to give a number of
+necessary orders in the house. The inquest was to be held in the
+morning, and the whole day would be filled with arrangements for the
+double funeral. The house would be thronged with officials of all sorts.
+"Poor Jacob!" said the sister, sighing, as she went away.
+
+But the tragic tumult had not yet begun. The house was still quiet, and
+Julie was for the first time alone.
+
+She drew up the blinds, and stood gazing out upon the park, now flooded
+with light; at the famous Italian garden beneath the windows, with its
+fountains and statues; at the wide lake which filled the middle
+distance; and the hills beyond it, with the plantations and avenues
+which showed the extension of the park as far as the eye could see.
+
+Julie knew very well what it all implied. Her years with Lady Henry, in
+connection with her own hidden sense of birth and family, had shown her
+with sufficient plainness the conditions under which the English noble
+lives. She _was_ actually, at that moment, Duchess of Chudleigh; her
+strong intelligence faced and appreciated the fact; the social scope and
+power implied in those three words were all the more vivid to her
+imagination because of her history and up-bringing. She had not grown to
+maturity _inside_, like Delafield, but as an exile from a life which was
+yet naturally hers--an exile, full, sometimes, of envy, and the
+passions of envy.
+
+It had no terrors for her--quite the contrary--this high social state.
+Rather, there were moments when her whole nature reached out to it, in a
+proud and confident ambition. Nor had she any mystical demurrer to make.
+The originality which in some ways she richly possessed was not
+concerned in the least with the upsetting of class distinctions, and as
+a Catholic she had been taught loyally to accept them.
+
+The minutes passed away. Julie sank deeper and deeper into reverie, her
+head leaning against the side of the window, her hands clasped before
+her on her black dress. Once or twice she found the tears dropping from
+her eyes, and once or twice she smiled.
+
+She was not thinking of the tragic circumstances amid which she stood.
+From that short trance of feeling even the piteous figures of the dead
+father and son faded away. Warkworth entered into it, but already
+invested with the passionless and sexless beauty of a world
+where--whether it be to us poetry or reality--"they neither marry nor
+are given in marriage." Her warm and living thoughts spent themselves on
+one theme only--the redressing of a spiritual balance. She was no longer
+a beggar to her husband; she had the wherewithal to give. She had been
+the mere recipient, burdened with debts beyond her paying; now--
+
+And then it was that her smiles came--tremluous, fugitive, exultant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A bell rang in the long corridor, and the slight sound recalled her to
+life and action. She walked towards the door which separated her from
+the sitting-room where she had left her husband, and opened it
+without knocking.
+
+Delafield was sitting at a writing-table in the window. He had
+apparently been writing; but she found him in a moment of pause, playing
+absently with the pen he still held.
+
+As she entered he looked up, and it seemed to her that his aspect and
+his mood had changed. Her sudden and indefinable sense of this made it
+easier for her to hasten to him, and to hold out her hands to him.
+
+"Jacob, you asked me a question just now, and I begged you to give me
+time. But I am here to answer it. If it would be to your happiness to
+refuse the dukedom, refuse it. I will not stand in your way, and I will
+never reproach you. I suppose"--she made herself smile upon him--"there
+are ways of doing such a strange thing. You will be much criticised,
+perhaps much blamed. But if it seems to you right, do it. I'll just
+stand by you and help you. Whatever makes you happy shall make me happy,
+if only--"
+
+Delafield had risen impetuously and held her by both hands. His breast
+heaved, and the hurrying of her own breath would now hardly let
+her speak.
+
+"If only what?" he said, hoarsely.
+
+She raised her eyes.
+
+"If only, _mon ami_"--she disengaged one hand and laid it gently on his
+shoulder--"you will give me your trust, and"--her voice
+dropped--"your love!"
+
+They gazed at each other. Between them, around them hovered thoughts of
+the past--of Warkworth, of the gray Channel waves, of the spiritual
+relation which had grown up between them in Switzerland, mingled with
+the consciousness of this new, incalculable present, and of the growth
+and change in themselves.
+
+"You'd give it all up?" said Delafield, gently, still holding her at
+arm's-length.
+
+"Yes," she nodded to him, with a smile.
+
+"For me? For my sake?"
+
+She smiled again. He drew a long breath, and turning to the table
+behind him, took up a letter which was lying there.
+
+"I want you to read that," he said, holding it out to her.
+
+She drew back, with a little, involuntary frown.
+
+He understood.
+
+"Dearest," he cried, pressing her hand passionately, "I have been in the
+grip of all the powers of death! Read it--be good to me!"
+
+Standing beside him, with his arm round her, she read the melancholy
+Duke's last words:
+
+     "My Dear Jacob,--I leave you a heavy task, which I know well
+     is, in your eyes, a mere burden. But, for my sake, accept it.
+     The man who runs away has small right to counsel courage. But
+     you know what my struggle has been. You'll judge me
+     mercifully, if no one else does. There is in you, too, the
+     little, bitter drop that spoils us all; but you won't be
+     alone. You have your wife, and you love her. Take my place
+     here, care for our people, speak of us sometimes to your
+     children, and pray for us. I bless you, dear fellow. The only
+     moments of comfort I have ever known this last year have come
+     from you. I would live on if I could, but I must--_must_ have
+     sleep."
+
+Julie dropped the paper. She turned to look at her husband.
+
+"Since I read that," he said, in a low voice, "I have been sitting here
+alone--or, rather, it is my belief that I have not been alone. But"--he
+hesitated--"it is very difficult for me to speak of that--even to you.
+At any rate, I have felt the touch of discipline, of command. My poor
+cousin deserted. I, it seems"--he drew a long and painful breath--"must
+keep to the ranks."
+
+"Let us discuss it," said Julie; and sitting down, hand in hand, they
+talked quietly and gravely.
+
+Suddenly, Delafield turned to her with renewed emotion.
+
+"I feel already the energy, the honorable ambition you will bring to it.
+But still, you'd have given it up, Julie? You'd have given it up?"
+
+Julie chose her words.
+
+"Yes. But now that we are to keep it, will you hate me if, some
+day--when we are less sad--I get pleasure from it? I sha'n't be able to
+help it. When we were at La Verna, I felt that you ought to have been
+born in the thirteenth century, that you were really meant to wed
+poverty and follow St. Francis. But now you have got to be horribly,
+hopelessly rich. And I, all the time, am a worldling, and a modern. What
+you'll suffer from, I shall perhaps--enjoy."
+
+The word fell harshly on the darkened room. Delafield shivered, as
+though he felt the overshadowing dead. Julie impetuously took his hand.
+
+"It will be my part to be a worldling--for your sake," she said, her
+breath wavering. Their eyes met. From her face shone a revelation, a
+beauty that enwrapped them both. Delafield fell on his knees beside her,
+and laid his head upon her breast. The exquisite gesture with which she
+folded her arms about him told her inmost thought. At last he needed
+her, and the dear knowledge filled and tamed her heart.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Lady Rose's Daughter, by Mrs. Humphry Ward
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