Lady Rose's Daughter

A Novel

BY

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

Author of "Eleanor" "Robert Elsmere" etc. etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY
HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY

1903

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ILLUSTRATION

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.

"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 everything 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.

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.

"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."