"Take care of yourself. Come back rosier—and fatter."

"I'm perfectly well. Let me come with you."

"No, don't trouble yourself." For she had followed him into the hall and found his coat for him. All the arrangements for her little "evening" had been of the simplest. That had been a point of pride with her. Madame Bornier and Therese dispensing tea and coffee in the dining-room, one hired parlor-maid, and she herself active and busy everywhere. Certain French models were in her head, and memories of her mother's bare little salon in Bruges, with its good talk, and its thinnest of thin refreshments—a few cups of weak tea, or glasses of eau sucree, with a plate of patisserie.

The hired parlor-maid was whistling for a cab in the service of some other departing guest; so Julie herself put Lord Lackington into his coat, much to his discomfort.

"I don't think you ought to have come," she said to him, with soft reproach. "Why did you have that fainting fit before dinner?"

"I say! Who's been telling tales?"

"Sir Wilfrid Bury met your son, Mr. Chantrey, at dinner."

"Bill can never hold his tongue. Oh, it was nothing; not with the proper treatment, mind you. Of course, if the allopaths were to get their knives into me—but, thank God! I'm out of that galere. Well, in a fortnight, isn't it? We shall both be in town again. I don't like saying good-bye."

And he took both her hands in his.

"It all seems so strange to me still—so strange!" he murmured.

"Next week I shall see mamma's grave," said Julie, under her breath. "Shall I put some flowers there for you?"

The fine blue eyes above her wavered. He bent to her.

"Yes. And write to me. Come back soon. Oh, you'll see. Things will all come right, perfectly right, in spite of Lady Henry."

Confidence, encouragement, a charming raillery, an enthusiastic tenderness—all these beamed upon her from the old man's tone and gesture. She was puzzled. But with another pressure of the hand he was gone. She stood looking after him. And as the carriage drove away, the sound of the wheels hurt her. It was the withdrawal of something protecting—something more her own, when all was said, than anything else which remained to her.

As she returned to the drawing-room, Dr. Meredith intercepted her.

"You want me to send you some work to take abroad?" he said, in a low voice. "I shall do nothing of the kind."

"Why?"

"Because you ought to have a complete holiday."

"Very well. Then I sha'n't be able to pay my way," she said, with a tired smile.

"Remember the doctor's bills if you fall ill."

"Ill! I am never ill," she said, with scorn. Then she looked round the room deliberately, and her gaze returned to her companion. "I am not likely to be fatigued with society, am I?" she added, in a voice that did not attempt to disguise the bitterness within.

"My dear lady, you are hardly installed."

"I have been here a month—the critical month. Now was the moment to stand by me, or throw me over—n'est-ce pas? This is my first party, my house-warming. I gave a fortnight's notice; I asked about sixty people, whom I knew well. Some did not answer at all. Of the rest, half declined—rather curtly, in many instances. And of those who accepted, not all are here. And, oh, how it dragged!"

Meredith looked at her rather guiltily, not knowing what to say. It was true the evening had dragged. In both their minds there rose the memory of Lady Henry's "Wednesdays," the beautiful rooms, the varied and brilliant company, the power and consideration which had attended Lady Henry's companion.

"I suppose," said Julie, shrugging her shoulders, "I had been thinking of the French maitresses de salon, like a fool; of Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse—or Madame Mohl—imagining that people would come to me for a cup of tea and an agreeable hour. But in England, it seems, people must be paid to talk. Talk is a business affair—you give it for a consideration."

"No, no! You'll build it up," said Meredith. In his heart of hearts he said to himself that she had not been herself that night. Her wonderful social instincts, her memory, her adroitness, had somehow failed her. And from a hostess strained, conscious, and only artificially gay, the little gathering had taken its note.

"You have the old guard, anyway," added the journalist, with a smile, as he looked round the room. The Duchess, Delafield, Montresor and his wife, General McGill, and three or four other old habitues of the Bruton Street evenings were scattered about the little drawing-room. General Fergus, too, was there—had arrived early, and was staying late. His frank soldier's face, the accent, cheerful, homely, careless, with which he threw off talk full of marrow, talk only possible—for all its simplicity—to a man whose life had been already closely mingled with the fortunes of his country, had done something to bind Julie's poor little party together. Her eye rested on him with gratitude. Then she replied to Meredith.

"Mr. Montresor will scarcely come again."

"What do you mean? Ungrateful lady! Montresor! who has already sacrificed Lady Henry and the habits of thirty years to your beaux yeux!"

"That is what he will never forgive me," said Julie, sadly. "He has satisfied his pride, and I—have lost a friend."

"Pessimist! Mrs. Montresor seemed to me most friendly."

Julie laughed.

"She, of course, is enchanted. Her husband has never been her own till now. She married him, subject to Lady Henry's rights. But all that she will soon forget—and my existence with it."

"I won't argue. It only makes you more stubborn," said Meredith. "Ah, still they come!"

For the door opened to admit the tall figure of Major Warkworth.

"Am I very late?" he said, with a surprised look as he glanced at the thinly scattered room. Julie greeted him, and he excused himself on the ground of a dinner which had begun just an hour late, owing to the tardiness of a cabinet minister.

Meredith observed the young man with some attention, from the dark corner in which Julie had left him. The gossip of the moment had reached him also, but he had not paid much heed to it. It seemed to him that no one knew anything first-hand of the Moffatt affair. And for himself, he found it difficult to believe that Julie Le Breton was any man's dupe.

She must marry, poor thing! Of course she must marry. Since it had been plain to him that she would never listen to his own suit, this great-hearted and clear-brained man had done his best to stifle in himself all small or grasping impulses. But this fellow—with his inferior temper and morale—alack! why are the clever women such fools?

If only she had confided in him—her old and tried friend—he thought he could have put things before her, so as to influence without offending her. But he suffered—had always suffered—from the jealous reserve which underlay her charm, her inborn tendency to secretiveness and intrigue.

Now, as he watched her few words with Warkworth, it seemed to him that he saw the signs of some hidden relation. How flushed she was suddenly, and her eyes so bright!

He was not allowed much time or scope, however, for observation. Warkworth took a turn round the room, chatted a little with this person and that, then, on the plea that he was off to Paris early on the following morning, approached his hostess again to take his leave.

"Ah, yes, you start to-morrow," said Montresor, rising. "Well, good luck to you—good luck to you."

General Fergus, too, advanced. The whole room, indeed, awoke to the situation, and all the remaining guests grouped themselves round the young soldier. Even the Duchess was thawed a little by this actual moment of departure. After all, the man was going on his country's service.

"No child's play, this mission, I can assure you," General McGill had said to her. "Warkworth will want all the powers he has—of mind or body."

The slim, young fellow, so boyishly elegant in his well-cut evening-dress, received the ovation offered to him with an evident pleasure which tried to hide itself in the usual English ways. He had been very pale when he came in. But his cheek reddened as Montresor grasped him by the hand, as the two generals bade him a cordial godspeed, as Sir Wilfrid gave him a jesting message for the British representative in Egypt, and as the ladies present accorded him those flattering and admiring looks that woman keeps for valor.

Julie counted for little in these farewells. She stood apart and rather silent. "They have had their good-bye," thought the Duchess, with a thrill she could not help.

"Three days in Paris?" said Sir Wilfrid. "A fortnight to Denga—and then how long before you start for the interior?"

"Oh, three weeks for collecting porters and supplies. They're drilling the escort already. We should be off by the middle of May."

"A bad month," said General Fergus, shrugging his shoulders.

"Unfortunately, affairs won't wait. But I am already stiff with quinine," laughed Warkworth—"or I shall be by the time I get to Denga. Good-bye—good-bye."

And in another moment he was gone. Miss Le Breton had given him her hand and wished him "Bon voyage," like everybody else.

The party broke up. The Duchess kissed her Julie with peculiar tenderness; Delafield pressed her hand, and his deep, kind eyes gave her a lingering look, of which, however, she was quite unconscious; Meredith renewed his half-irritable, half-affectionate counsels of rest and recreation; Mrs. Montresor was conventionally effusive; Montresor alone bade the mistress of the house a somewhat cold and perfunctory farewell. Even Sir Wilfrid was a little touched, he knew not why; he vowed to himself that his report to Lady Henry on the morrow should contain no food for malice, and inwardly he forgave Mademoiselle Julie the old romancings.



XVIII

It was twenty minutes since the last carriage had driven away. Julie was still waiting in the little hall, pacing its squares of black-and-white marble, slowly, backward and forward.

There was a low knock on the door.

She opened it. Warkworth appeared on the threshold, and the high moon behind him threw a bright ray into the dim hall, where all but one faint light had been extinguished. She pointed to the drawing-room.

"I will come directly. Let me just go and ask Leonie to sit up."

Warkworth went into the drawing-room. Julie opened the dining-room door. Madame Bornier was engaged in washing and putting away the china and glass which had been used for Julie's modest refreshments.

"Leonie, you won't go to bed? Major Warkworth is here."

Madame Bornier did not raise her head.

"How long will he be?"

"Perhaps half an hour."

"It is already past midnight."

"Leonie, he goes to-morrow."

"Tres bien. Mais—sais-tu, ma chere, ce n'est pas convenable, ce que tu fais la!"

And the older woman, straightening herself, looked her foster-sister full in the face. A kind of watch-dog anxiety, a sulky, protesting affection breathed from her rugged features.

Julie went up to her, not angrily, but rather with a pleading humility.

The two women held a rapid colloquy in low tones—Madame Bornier remonstrating, Julie softly getting her way.

Then Madame Bornier returned to her work, and Julie went to the drawing-room.

Warkworth sprang up as she entered. Both paused and wavered. Then he went up to her, and roughly, irresistibly, drew her into his arms. She held back a moment, but finally yielded, and clasping her hands round his neck she buried her face on his breast.

They stood so for some minutes, absolutely silent, save for her hurried breathing, his head bowed upon hers.

"Julie, how can we say good-bye?" he whispered, at last.

She disengaged herself, and, seeing his face, she tried for composure.

"Come and sit down."

She led him to the window, which he had thrown open as he entered the room, and they sat beside it, hand in hand. A mild April night shone outside. Gusts of moist air floated in upon them. There were dim lights and shadows in the garden and on the shuttered facade of the great house.

"Is it forever?" said Julie, in a low, stifled voice. "Good-bye—forever?"

She felt his hand tremble, but she did not look at him. She seemed to be reciting words long since spoken in the mind.

"You will be away—perhaps a year? Then you go back to India, and then—"

She paused.

Warkworth was physically conscious, as it were, of a letter he carried in his coat-pocket—a letter from Lady Blanche Moffatt which had reached him that morning, the letter of a grande dame, reduced to undignified remonstrance by sheer maternal terror—terror for the health and life of a child as fragile and ethereal as a wild rose in May. Reports had reached her; but no—they could not be true! She bade him be thankful that not a breath of suspicion had yet touched Aileen. As for herself, let him write and reassure her at once. Otherwise—

And the latter part of the letter conveyed a veiled menace that Warkworth perfectly understood.

No—in that direction, no escape; his own past actions closed him in. And henceforth, it was clear, he must walk more warily.

But how blame himself for these feelings of which he was now conscious towards Julie Le Breton—the strongest, probably, that a man not built for passion would ever know. His relation towards her had grown upon him unawares, and now their own hands were about to cut it at the root. What blame to either of them? Fate had been at work; and he felt himself glorified by a situation so tragically sincere, and by emotions of which a month before he would have secretly held himself incapable.

Resolutely, in this last meeting with Julie, he gave these emotions play. He possessed himself of her cold hands as she put her desolate question—"And then?"—and kissed them fervently.

"Julie, if you and I had met a year ago, what happened in India would never have happened. You know that!"

"Do I? But it only hurts me to think it away like that. There it is—it has happened."

She turned upon him suddenly.

"Have you any picture of her?"

He hesitated.

"Yes," he said, at last.

"Have you got it here?"

"Why do you ask, dear one? This one evening is ours."

And again he tried to draw her to him. But she persisted.

"I feel sure you have it. Show it me."

"Julie, you and you only are in my thoughts!"

"Then do what I ask." She bent to him with a wild, entreating air; her lips almost touched his cheek. Unwillingly he drew out a letter-case from his breast-pocket, and took from it a little photograph which he handed to her.

She looked at it with eager eyes. A face framed, as it were, out of snow and fire lay in her hand, a thing most delicate, most frail, yet steeped in feeling and significance—a child's face with its soft curls of brown hair, and the upper lip raised above the white, small teeth, as though in a young wonder; yet behind its sweetness, what suggestions of a poetic or tragic sensibility! The slender neck carried the little head with girlish dignity; the clear, timid eyes seemed at once to shrink from and trust the spectator.

Julie returned the little picture, and hid her face with her hands. Warkworth watched her uncomfortably, and at last drew her hands away.

"What are you thinking of?" he said, almost with violence. "Don't shut me out!"

"I am not jealous now," she said, looking at him piteously. "I don't hate her. And if she knew all—she couldn't—hate me."

"No one could hate her. She is an angel. But she is not my Julie!" he said, vehemently, and he thrust the little picture into his pocket again.

"Tell me," she said, after a pause, laying her hand on his knee, "when did you begin to think of me—differently? All the winter, when we used to meet, you never—you never loved me then?"

"How, placed as I was, could I let myself think of love? I only knew that I wanted to see you, to talk to you, to write to you—that the day when we did not meet was a lost day. Don't be so proud!" He tried to laugh at her. "You didn't think of me in any special way, either. You were much too busy making bishops, or judges, or academicians. Oh, Julie, I was so afraid of you in those early days!"

"The first night we met," she said, passionately, "I found a carnation you had worn in your button-hole. I put it under my pillow, and felt for it in the dark like a talisman. You had stood between me and Lady Henry twice. You had smiled at me and pressed my hand—not as others did, but as though you understood me, myself—as though, at least, you wished to understand. Then came the joy of joys, that I could help you—that I could do something for you. Ah, how it altered life for me! I never turned the corner of a street that I did not count on the chance of seeing you beyond—suddenly—on my path. I never heard your voice that it did not thrill me from head to foot. I never made a new friend or acquaintance that I did not ask myself first how I could thereby serve you. I never saw you come into the room that my heart did not leap. I never slept but you were in my dreams. I loathed London when you were out of it. It was paradise when you were there."

Straining back from him as he still held her hands, her whole face and form shook with the energy of her confession. Her wonderful hair, loosened from the thin gold bands in which it had been confined during the evening, fell in a glossy confusion about her brow and slender neck; its black masses, the melting brilliance of the eyes, the tragic freedom of the attitude gave both to form and face a wild and poignant beauty.

Warkworth, beside her, was conscious first of amazement, then of a kind of repulsion—a kind of fear—till all else was lost in a hurry of joy and gratitude.

The tears stood on his cheek. "Julie, you shame me—you trample me into the earth!"

He tried to gather her in his arms, but she resisted, Caresses were not what those eyes demanded—eyes feverishly bright with the memory of her own past dreams, Presently, indeed, she withdrew herself from him. She rose and closed the window; she put the lamp in another place; she brought her rebellious hair into order.

"We must not be so mad," she said, with a quivering smile, as she again seated herself, but at some distance from him. "You see, for me the great question is "—her voice became low and rapid—"What am I going to do with the future? For you it is all plain. We part to-night. You have your career, your marriage. I withdraw from your life—absolutely. But for me—"

She paused. It was the manner of one trying to see her way in the dark.

"Your social gifts," said Warkworth, in agitation, "your friends, Julie—these will occupy your mind. Then, of course, you will, you must marry! Oh, you'll soon forget me, Julie! I pray you may!"

"My social gifts?" she repeated, disregarding the rest of his speech. "I have told you already they have broken down. Society sides with Lady Henry. I am to be made to know my place—I do know it!"

"The Duchess will fight for you."

She laughed.

"The Duke won't let her—nor shall I."

"You'll marry," he repeated, with emotion. "You'll find some one worthy of you—some one who will give you the great position for which you were born."

"I could have it at any moment," she said, looking him quietly in the eyes.

Warkworth drew back, conscious of a disagreeable shock. He had been talking in generalities, giving away the future with that fluent prodigality, that easy prophecy which costs so little. What did she mean?

"Delafield?" he cried.

And he waited for her reply—which lingered—in a tense and growing eagerness. The notion had crossed his mind once or twice during the winter, only to be dismissed as ridiculous. Then, on the occasion of their first quarrel, when Julie had snubbed him in Delafield's presence and to Delafield's advantage, he had been conscious of a momentary alarm. But Julie, who on that one and only occasion had paraded her intimacy with Delafield, thenceforward said not a word of him, and Warkworth's jealousy had died for lack of fuel. In relation to Julie, Delafield had been surely the mere shadow and agent of his little cousin the Duchess—a friendly, knight-errant sort of person, with a liking for the distressed. What! the heir-presumptive of Chudleigh Abbey, and one of the most famous of English dukedoms, when even he, the struggling, penurious officer, would never have dreamed of such a match?

Julie, meanwhile, heard only jealousy in his exclamation, and it caressed her ear, her heart. She was tempted once more, woman-like, to dwell upon the other lover, and again something compelling and delicate in her feeling towards Delafield forbade.

"No, you mustn't make me tell you any more," she said, putting the name aside with a proud gesture. "It would be poor and mean. But it's true. I have only to put out my hand for what you call 'a great position,' I have refused to put it out. Sometimes, of course, it has dazzled me. To-night it seems to me—dust and ashes. No; when we two have said good-bye, I shall begin life again. And this time I shall live it in my own way, for my own ends. I'm very tired. Henceforth 'I'll walk where my own nature would be leading—it vexes me to choose another guide.'"

And as she spoke the words of one of the chainless souls of history, in a voice passionately full and rich, she sprang to her feet, and, drawing her slender form to its full height, she locked her hands behind her, and began to pace the room with a wild, free step.

Every nerve in Warkworth's frame was tingling. He was carried out of himself, first by the rebellion of her look and manner, then by this fact, so new, so astounding, which her very evasion had confirmed. During her whole contest with Lady Henry, and now, in her present ambiguous position, she had Delafield, and through Delafield the English great world, in the hollow of her hand? This nameless woman—no longer in her first youth. And she had refused? He watched her in a speechless wonder and incredulity.

The thought leaped. "And this sublime folly—this madness—was for me?"

It stirred and intoxicated him. Yet she was not thereby raised in his eyes. Nay, the contrary. With the passion which was rapidly mounting in his veins there mingled—poor Julie!—a curious diminution of respect.

"Julie!" He held out his hand to her peremptorily. "Come to me again. You are so wonderful to-night, in that white dress—like a wild muse. I shall always see you so. Come!"

She obeyed, and gave him her hands, standing beside his chair. But her face was still absorbed.

"To be free," she said, under her breath—"free, like my parents, from all these petty struggles and conventions!"

Then she felt his kisses on her hands, and her expression changed.

"How we cheat ourselves with words!" she whispered, trembling, and, withdrawing one hand, she smoothed back the light-brown curls from his brow with that protecting tenderness which had always entered into her love for him. "To-night we are here—together—this one last night! And to-morrow, at this time, you'll be in Paris; perhaps you'll be looking out at the lights—and the crowds on the Boulevard—and the chestnut-trees. They'll just be in their first leaf—I know so well!—and the little thin leaves will be shining so green under the lamps—and I shall be here—and it will be all over and done with—forever. What will it matter whether I am free or not free? I shall be alone! That's all a woman knows."

Her voice died away. Warkworth rose. He put his arms round her, and she did not resist.

"Julie," he said in her ear, "why should you be alone?"

A silence fell between them.

"I—I don't understand," she said, at last.

"Julie, listen! I shall be three days in Paris, but my business can be perfectly done in one. What if you met me there after to-morrow? What harm would it be? We are not babes, we two. We understand life. And who would have any right to blame or to meddle? Julie, I know a little inn in the valley of the Bievre, quite near Paris, but all wood and field. No English tourists ever go there. Sometimes an artist or two—but this is not the time of year. Julie, why shouldn't we spend our last two days there—together—away from all the world, before we say good-bye? You've been afraid here of prying people—of the Duchess even—of Madame Bornier—how she scowls at me sometimes! Why shouldn't we sweep all that away—and be happy! Nobody should ever—nobody could ever know." His voice dropped, became still more hurried and soft. "We might go as brother and sister—that would be quite simple. You are practically French. I speak French well. Who is to have an idea, a suspicion of our identity? The spring there is mild and warm. The Bois de Verrieres close by is full of flowers. When my father was alive, and I was a child, we went once, to economize, for a year, to a village a mile or two away. But I knew this place quite well. A lovely, green, quiet spot! With your poetical ideas, Julie, you would delight in it. Two days—wandering in the woods—together! Then I put you into the train for Brussels, and I go my way. But to all eternity, Julie, those days will have been ours!"

At the first words, almost, Julie had disengaged herself. Pushing him from her with both hands, she listened to him in a dumb amazement. The color first deserted her face, then returned in a flood.

"So you despise me?" she said, catching her breath.

"No. I adore you."

She fell upon a chair and hid her eyes. He first knelt beside her, arguing and soothing; then he paced up and down before her, talking very fast and low, defending and developing the scheme, till it stood before them complete and tempting in all its details.

Julie did not look up, nor did she speak. At last, Warkworth, full of tears, and stifled with his own emotions, threw open the window again in a craving for air and coolness. A scent of fresh leaves and moistened earth floated up from the shrubbery beneath the window. The scent, the branching trees, the wide, mild spaces of air brought relief. He leaned out, bathing his brow in the night. A tumult of voices seemed to be echoing through his mind, dominated by one which held the rest defiantly in check.

"Is she a mere girl, to be 'led astray'? A moment of happiness—what harm?—for either of us?"

Then he returned to Julie.

"Julie!" He touched her shoulder, trembling. Had she banished him forever? It seemed to him that in these minutes he had passed through an infinity of experience. Was he not the nobler, the more truly man? Let the moralists talk.

"Julie!" he repeated, in an anguish.

She raised her head, and he saw that she had been crying. But there was in her face a light, a wildness, a yearning that reassured him. She put her arm round him and pressed her cheek to his. He divined that she, too, had lived and felt a thousand hours in one. With a glow of ecstatic joy he began to talk to her again, her head resting on his shoulder, her slender hands crushed in his.

And Julie, meanwhile, was saying to herself, "Either I go to him, as he asks, or in a few minutes I must send him away—forever."

And then as she clung to him, so warm and near, her strength failed her. Nothing in the world mattered to her at that moment but this handsome, curly head bowed upon her own, this voice that called her all the names of love, this transformation of the man's earlier prudence, or ambition, or duplicity, into this eager tenderness, this anguish in separation....

"Listen, dear!" He whispered to her. "All my business can be got through the day before you come. I have two men to see. A day will be ample. I dine at the Embassy to-morrow night—that is arranged; the day after I lunch with the Military Secretary; then—a thousand regrets, but I must hurry on to meet some friends in Italy. So I turn my back on Paris, and for two days I belong to Julie—and she to me. Say yes, Julie—my Julie!"

He bent over her, his hands framing her face.

"Say yes," he urged, "and put off for both of us that word—alone!"

His low voice sank into her heart. He waited, till his strained sense caught the murmured words which conveyed to him the madness and the astonishment of victory.

* * * * *

Leonie had shut up the house, in a grim silence, and had taken her way up-stairs to bed.

Julie, too, was in her room. She sat on the edge of her bed, her head drooped, her hands clasped before her absently, like Hope still listening for the last sounds of the harp of life. The candle beside her showed her, in the big mirror opposite, her grace, the white confusion of her dress.

She had expected reaction, but it did not come. She was still borne on a warm tide of will and energy. All that she was about to do seemed to her still perfectly natural and right. Petty scruples, conventional hesitations, the refusal of life's great moments—these are what are wrong, these are what disgrace!

Romance beckoned to her, and many a secret tendency towards the lawless paths of conduct, infused into her by the associations and affections of her childhood. The horror naturalis which protects the great majority of women from the wilder ways of passion was in her weakened or dormant. She was the illegitimate child of a mother who had defied law for love, and of that fact she had been conscious all her life.

A sharp contempt, indeed, arose within her for the interpretation that the common mind would be sure to place upon her action.

"What matter! I am my own mistress—responsible to no one. I choose for myself—I dare for myself!"

And when at last she rose, first loosening and then twisting the black masses of her hair, it seemed to her that the form in the glass was that of another woman, treading another earth. She trampled cowardice under foot; she freed herself from—"was uns alle baendigt, das Gemeine!"

Then as she stood before the oval mirror in a classical frame, which adorned the mantel-piece of what had once been Lady Mary Leicester's room, her eye was vaguely caught by the little family pictures and texts which hung on either side of it. Lady Mary and her sister as children, their plain faces emerging timidly from their white, high-waisted frocks; Lady 'Mary's mother, an old lady in a white coif and kerchief, wearing a look austerely kind; on the other side a clergyman, perhaps the brother of the old lady, with a similar type of face, though gentler—a face nourished on the Christian Year; and above and below them two or three card-board texts, carefully illuminated by Lady Mary Leicester herself:

"Thou, Lord, knowest my down-sitting and my uprising."

"Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."

"Fear not, little flock. It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."

* * * * *

Julie observed these fragments, absently at first, then with repulsion. This Anglican pietism, so well fed, so narrowly sheltered, which measured the universe with its foot-rule, seemed to her quasi-Catholic eye merely fatuous and hypocritical. It is not by such forces, she thought, that the true world of men and women is governed.

As she turned away she noticed two little Catholic pictures, such as she had been accustomed in her convent days to carry in her books of devotion, carefully propped up beneath the texts.

"Ah, Therese!" she said to herself, with a sudden feeling of pain. "Is the child asleep?"

She listened. A little cough sounded from the neighboring room. Julie crossed the landing.

"Therese! tu ne dors pas encore?"

A voice said, softly, in the darkness, "Je t'attendais, mademoiselle."

Julie went to the child's bed, put down her candle, and stooped to kiss her.

The child's thin hand caressed her cheek.

"Ah, it will be good—to be in Bruges—with mademoiselle."

Julie drew herself away.

"I sha'n't be there to-morrow, dear."

"Not there! Oh, mademoiselle!"

The child's voice was pitiful.

"I shall join you there. But I find I must go to Paris first. I—I have some business there."

"But maman said—"

"Yes, I have only just made up my mind. I shall tell maman to-morrow morning,"

"You go alone, mademoiselle?"

"Why not, dear goose?"

"Vous etes fatiguee. I would like to come with you, and carry your cloak and the umbrellas."

"You, indeed!" said Julie. "It would end, wouldn't it, in my carrying you—besides the cloak and the umbrellas?"

Then she knelt down beside the child and took her in her arms.

"Do you love me, Therese?"

The child drew a long breath. With her little, twisted hands she stroked the beautiful hair so close to her.

"Do you, Therese?"

A kiss fell on Julie's cheek.

"Ce soir, j'ai beaucoup prie la Sainte Vierge pour vous!" she said, in a timid and hurried whisper.

Julie made no immediate reply. She rose from her knees, her hand still clasped in that of the crippled girl.

"Did you put those pictures on my mantel-piece, Therese?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

The child hesitated.

"It does one good to look at them—n'est-ce pas?—when one is sad?"

"Why do you suppose I am sad?"

Therese was silent a moment; then she flung her little skeleton arms round Julie, and Julie felt her crying.

"Well, I won't be sad any more," said Julie, comforting her. "When we're all in Bruges together, you'll see."

And smiling at the child, she tucked her into her white bed and left her.

Then from this exquisite and innocent affection she passed back into the tumult of her own thoughts and plans. Through the restless night her parents were often in her mind. She was the child of revolt, and as she thought of the meeting before her she seemed to be but entering upon a heritage inevitable from the beginning. A sense of enfranchisement, of passionate enlargement, upheld her, as of a life coming to its fruit.

* * * * *

"Creil!"

A flashing vision of a station and its lights, and the Paris train rushed on through cold showers of sleet and driving wind, a return of winter in the heart of spring.

On they sped through the half-hour which still divided them from the Gare du Nord. Julie, in her thick veil, sat motionless in her corner. She was not conscious of any particular agitation. Her mind was strained not to forget any of Warkworth's directions. She was to drive across immediately to the Gare de Sceaux, in the Place Denfert-Rochereau, where he would meet her. They were to dine at an obscure inn near the station, and go down by the last train to the little town in the wooded valley of the Bievre, where they were to stay.

She had her luggage with her in the carriage. There would be no custom-house delays.

Ah, the lights of Paris beginning! She peered into the rain, conscious of a sort of home-coming joy. She loved the French world and the French sights and sounds—these tall, dingy houses of the banlieue, the dregs of a great architecture; the advertisements; the look of the streets.

The train slackened into the Nord Station. The blue-frocked porters crowded into the carriages.

"C'est tout, madame? Vous n'avez pas de grands bagages?"

"No, nothing. Find me a cab at once."

There was a great crowd outside. She hurried on as quickly as she could, revolving what was to be said if any acquaintance were to accost her. By great good luck, and by travelling second class both in the train and on the boat, she had avoided meeting anybody she knew. But the Nord Station was crowded with English people, and she pushed her way through in a nervous terror.

"Miss Le Breton!"

She turned abruptly. In the white glare of the electric lights she did not at first recognize the man who had spoken to her. Then she drew back. Her heart beat wildly. For she had distinguished the face of Jacob Delafield.

He came forward to meet her as she passed the barrier at the end of the platform, his aspect full of what seemed to her an extraordinary animation, significance, as though she were expected.

"Miss Le Breton! What an astonishing, what a fortunate meeting! I have a message for you from Evelyn."

"From Evelyn?" She echoed the words mechanically as she shook hands.

"Wait a moment," he said, leading her aside towards the waiting-room, while the crowd that was going to the douane passed them by. Then he turned to Julie's porter.

"Attendez un instant."

The man sulkily shook his head, dropped Julie's bag at their feet, and hurried off in search of a more lucrative job.

"I am going back to-night," added Delafield, hurriedly. "How strange that I should have met you, for I have very sad news for you! Lord Lackington had an attack this morning, from which he cannot recover. The doctors give him perhaps forty-eight hours. He has asked for you—urgently. The Duchess tells me so in a long telegram I had from her to-day. But she supposed you to be in Bruges. She has wired there. You will go back, will you not?"

"Go back?" said Julie, staring at him helplessly. "Go back to-night?"

"The evening train starts in little more than an hour. You would be just in time, I think, to see the old man alive."

She still looked at him in bewilderment, at the blue eyes under the heavily moulded brows, and the mouth with its imperative, and yet eager—or tremulous?—expression. She perceived that he hung upon her answer.

She drew her hand piteously across her eyes as though to shut out the crowds, the station, and the urgency of this personality beside her. Despair was in her heart. How to consent? How to refuse?

"But my friends," she stammered—"the friends with whom I was going to stay—they will be alarmed."

"Could you not telegraph to them? They would understand, surely. The office is close by."

She let herself be hurried along, not knowing what to do. Delafield walked beside her. If she had been able to observe him, she must have been struck afresh by the pale intensity, the controlled agitation of his face.

"Is it really so serious?" she asked, pausing a moment, as though in resistance.

"It is the end. Of that there can be no question. You have touched his heart very deeply. He longs to see her, Evelyn says. And his daughter and granddaughter are still abroad—Miss Moffatt, indeed, is ill at Florence with a touch of diphtheria. He is alone with his two sons. You will go?"

Even in her confusion, the strangeness of it all was borne in upon her—his insistence, the extraordinary chance of their meeting, his grave, commanding manner.

"How could you know I was here?" she said, in bewilderment.

"I didn't know," he said, slowly. "But, thank God, I have met you. I dread to think of your fatigue, but you will be glad just to see him again—just to give him his last wish—won't you?" he said, pleadingly. "Here is the telegraph-office. Shall I do it for you?"

"No, thank you. I—I must think how to word it. Please wait."

She went in alone. As she took the pencil into her hands a low groan burst from her lips. The man writing in the next compartment turned round in astonishment. She controlled herself and began to write. There was no escape. She must submit; and all was over.

She telegraphed to Warkworth, care of the Chef de Gare, at the Sceaux Station, and also to the country inn.

"Have met Mr. Delafield by chance at Nord Station. Lord Lackington dying. Must return to-night. Where shall I write? Good-bye."

When it was done she could hardly totter out of the office. Delafield made her take his arm.

"You must have some food. Then I will go and get a sleeping-car for you to Calais. There will be no crowd to-night. At Calais I will look after you if you will allow me."

"You are crossing to-night?" she said, vaguely. Her lips framed the words with difficulty.

"Yes. I came over with my cousins yesterday."

She asked nothing more. It did not occur to her to notice that he had no luggage, no bag, no rug, none of the paraphernalia of travel. In her despairing fatigue and misery she let him guide her as he would.

He made her take some soup, then some coffee, all that she could make herself swallow. There was a dismal period of waiting, during which she was hardly conscious of where she was or of what was going on round her.

Then she found herself in the sleeping-car, in a reserved compartment, alone. Once more the train moved through the night. The miles flew by—the miles that forever parted her from Warkworth.



XIX

The train was speeding through the forest country of Chantilly. A pale moon had risen, and beneath its light the straight forest roads, interminably long, stretched into the distance; the vaporous masses of young and budding trees hurried past the eye of the traveller; so, also, the white hamlets, already dark and silent; the stations with their lights and figures; the great wood-piles beside the line.

Delafield, in his second-class carriage, sat sleepless and erect. The night was bitterly cold. He wore the light overcoat in which he had left the Hotel du Rhin that afternoon for a stroll before dinner, and had no other wrap or covering. But he felt nothing, was conscious of nothing but the rushing current of his own thoughts.

The events of the two preceding days, the meaning of them, the significance of his own action and its consequences—it was with these materials that his mind dealt perpetually, combining, interpreting, deducing, now in one way, now in another. His mood contained both excitement and dread. But with a main temper of calmness, courage, invincible determination, these elements did not at all interfere.

The day before, he had left London with his cousins, the Duke of Chudleigh, and young Lord Elmira, the invalid boy. They were bound to Paris to consult a new doctor, and Jacob had offered to convey them there. In spite of all the apparatus of servants and couriers with which they were surrounded, they always seemed to him, on their journeys, a singularly lonely and hapless pair, and he knew that they leaned upon him and prized his company.

On the way to Paris, at the Calais buffet, he had noticed Henry Warkworth, and had given him a passing nod. It had been understood the night before in Heribert Street that they would both be crossing on the morrow.

On the following day—the day of Julie's journey—Delafield, who was anxiously awaiting the return of his two companions from their interview with the great physician they were consulting, was strolling up the Rue de la Paix, just before luncheon, when, outside the Hotel Mirabeau, he ran into a man whom he immediately perceived to be Warkworth.

Politeness involved the exchange of a few sentences, although a secret antagonism between the two men had revealed itself from the first day of their meeting in Lady Henry's drawing-room. Each word of their short conversation rang clearly through Delafield's memory.

"You are at the 'Rhin'?" said Warkworth.

"Yes, for a couple more days. Shall we meet at the Embassy to-morrow?"

"No. I dined there last night. My business here is done. I start for Rome to-night."

"Lucky man. They have put on a new fast train, haven't they?"

"Yes. You leave the Gare de Lyon at 7.15, and you are at Rome the second morning, in good time."

"Magnificent! Why don't we all rush south? Well, good-bye again, and good luck."

They touched hands perfunctorily and parted.

This happened about mid-day. While Delafield and his cousins were lunching, a telegram from the Duchess of Crowborough was handed to Jacob. He had wired to her early in the morning to ask for the address in Paris of an old friend of his, who was also a cousin of hers. The telegram contained:

"Thirty-six Avenue Friedland. Lord Lackington heart-attack this morning. Dying. Has asked urgently for Julie. Blanche Moffatt detained Florence by daughter's illness. All circumstances most sad. Woman Heribert Street gave me Bruges address. Have wired Julie there."

The message set vibrating in Delafield's mind the tender memory which already existed there of his last talk with Julie, of her strange dependence and gentleness, her haunting and pleading personality. He hoped with all his heart she might reach the old man in time, that his two sons, Uredale and William, would treat her kindly, and that it would be found when the end came that he had made due provision for her as his granddaughter.

But he had small leisure to give to thoughts of this kind. The physician's report in the morning had not been encouraging, and his two travelling companions demanded all the sympathy and support he could give them. He went out with them in the afternoon to the Hotel de la Terrasse at St. Germain. The Duke, a nervous hypochondriac, could not sleep in the noise of Paris, and was accustomed to a certain apartment in this well-known hotel, which was often reserved for him. Jacob left them about six o'clock to return to Paris. He was to meet one of the Embassy attaches—an old Oxford friend—at the Cafe Gaillard for dinner. He dressed at the "Rhin," put on an overcoat, and set out to walk to the Rue Gaillard about half-past seven. As he approached the "Mirabeau," he saw a cab with luggage standing at the door. A man came out with the hotel concierge. To his astonishment, Delafield recognized Warkworth.

The young officer seemed in a hurry and out of temper. At any rate, he jumped into the cab without taking any notice of the two sommeliers and the concierge who stood round expectant of francs, and when the concierge in his stiffest manner asked where the man was to drive, Warkworth put his head out of the window and said, hastily, to the cocher:

"D'abord, a la Gare de Sceaux! Puis, je vous dirai. Mais depechez-vous!"

The cab rolled away, and Delafield walked on.

Half-past seven, striking from all the Paris towers! And Warkworth's intention in the morning was to leave the Gare de Lyon at 7.15. But it seemed he was now bound, at 7.30, for the Gare de Sceaux, from which point of departure it was clear that no reasonable man would think of starting for the Eternal City.

"D'abord, a la Gare de Sceaux!"

Then he was not catching a train?—at any rate, immediately. He had some other business first, and was perhaps going to the station to deposit his luggage?

Suddenly a thought, a suspicion, flashed through Delafield's mind, which set his heart thumping in his breast. In after days he was often puzzled to account for its origin, still more for the extraordinary force with which it at once took possession of all his energies. In his more mystical moments of later life he rose to the secret belief that God had spoken to him.

At any rate, he at once hailed a cab, and, thinking no more of his dinner engagement, he drove post-haste to the Nord Station. In those days the Calais train arrived at eight. He reached the station a few minutes before it appeared. When at last it drew up, amid the crowd on the platform it took him only a few seconds to distinguish the dark and elegant head of Julie Le Breton.

A pang shot through him that pierced to the very centre of life. He was conscious of a prayer for help and a clear mind. But on his way to the station he had rapidly thought out a plan on which to act should this mad notion in his brain turn out to have any support in reality.

It had so much support that Julie Le Breton was there—in Paris—and not at Bruges, as she had led the Duchess to suppose. And when she turned her startled face upon him, his wild fancy became, for himself, a certainty.

* * * * *

"Amiens! Cinq minutes d'arret."

Delafield got out and walked up and down the platform. He passed the closed and darkened windows of the sleeping-car; and it seemed to his abnormally quickened sense that he was beside her, bending over her, and that he said to her:

"Courage! You are saved! Let us thank God!"

A boy from the refreshment-room came along, wheeling a barrow on which were tea and coffee.

Delafield eagerly drank a cup of tea and put his hand into his pocket to pay for it. He found there three francs and his ticket. After paying for the tea he examined his purse. That contained an English half-crown.

So he had had with him just enough to get his own second-class ticket, her first-class, and a sleeping-car. That was good fortune, seeing that the bulk of his money, with his return ticket, was reposing in his dressing-case at the Hotel du Rhin.

"En voiture! En voiture, s'il vous plait!"

He settled himself once more in his corner, and the train rushed on. This time it was the strange hour at the Gare du Nord which he lived through again, her white face opposite to him in the refreshment-room, the bewilderment and misery she had been so little able to conceal, her spasmodic attempts at conversation, a few vague words about Lord Lackington or the Duchess, and then pauses, when her great eyes, haggard and weary, stared into vacancy, and he knew well enough that her thoughts were with Warkworth, and that she was in fierce rebellion against his presence there, and this action into which he had forced her.

As for him, he perfectly understood the dilemma in which she stood. Either she must accept the duty of returning to the death-bed of the old man, her mother's father, or she must confess her appointment with Warkworth.

Yet—suppose he had been mistaken? Well, the telegram from the Duchess covered his whole action. Lord Lackington was dying; and apart from all question of feeling, Julie Le Breton's friends must naturally desire that he should see her, acknowledge her before his two sons, and, with their consent, provide for her before his death.

But, ah, he had not been mistaken! He remembered her hurried refusal when he had asked her if he should telegraph for her to her Paris "friends"—how, in a sudden shame, he had turned away that he might not see the beloved false face as she spoke, might not seem to watch or suspect her.

He had just had time to send off a messenger, first to his friend at the Cafe Gaillard, and then to the Hotel du Rhin, before escorting her to the sleeping-car.

Ah, how piteous had been that dull bewilderment with which she had turned to him!

"But—my ticket?"

"Here they are. Oh, never mind—we will settle in town. Try to sleep. You must be very tired."

And then it seemed to him that her lips trembled, like those of a miserable child; and surely, surely, she must hear that mad beating of his pulse!

Boulogne was gone in a flash. Here was the Somme, stretched in a pale silver flood beneath the moon—a land of dunes and stunted pines, of wide sea-marshes, over which came the roar of the Channel. Then again the sea was left behind, and the rich Picard country rolled away to right and left. Lights here and there, in cottage or villa—the lights, perhaps, of birth or death—companions of hope or despair.

Calais!

The train moved slowly up to the boat-side. Delafield jumped out. The sleeping-car was yielding up its passengers. He soon made out the small black hat and veil, the slender form in the dark travelling-dress.

Was she fainting? For she seemed to him to waver as he approached her, and the porter who had taken her rugs and bag was looking at her in astonishment. In an instant he had drawn her arm within his, and was supporting her as he best could,

"The car was very hot, and I am so tired. I only want some air."

They reached the deck.

"You will go down-stairs?"

"No, no—some air!" she murmured, and he saw that she could hardly keep her feet.

But in a few moments they had reached the shelter on the upper deck usually so well filled with chairs and passengers on a day crossing. Now it was entirely deserted. The boat was not full, the night was cold and stormy, and the stream of passengers had poured down into the shelter of the lower deck.

Julie sank into a chair. Delafield hurriedly loosened the shawl she carried with her from its attendant bag and umbrella, and wrapped it round her.

"It will be a rough crossing," he said, in her ear. "Can you stand it on deck?"

"I am a good sailor. Let me stay here."

Her eyes closed. He stooped over her in an anguish. One of the boat officials approached him.

"Madame ferait mieux de descendre, monsieur. La traversee ne sera pas bonne."

Delafield explained that the lady must have air, and was a good sailor. Then he pressed into the man's hand his three francs, and sent him for brandy and an extra covering of some kind. The man went unwillingly.

During the whole bustle of departure, Delafield saw nothing but Julie's helpless and motionless form; he heard nothing but the faint words by which, once or twice, she tried to convey to him that she was not unconscious.

The brandy came. The man who brought it again objected to Julie's presence on deck. Delafield took no heed. He was absorbed in making Julie swallow some of the brandy.

At last they were off. The vessel glided slowly out of the old harbor, and they were immediately in rough water.

Delafield was roused by a peremptory voice at his elbow.

"This lady ought not to stay here, sir. There is plenty of room in the ladies' cabin."

Delafield looked up and recognized the captain of the boat, the same man who, thirty-six hours before, had shown special civilities to the Duke of Chudleigh and his party.

"Ah, you are Captain Whittaker," he said.

The shrewd, stout man who had accosted him raised his eyebrows in astonishment.

Delafield drew him aside a moment. After a short conversation the captain lifted his cap and departed, with a few words to the subordinate officer who had drawn his attention to the matter. Henceforward they were unmolested, and presently the officer brought a pillow and striped blanket, saying they might be useful to the lady. Julie was soon comfortably placed, lying down on the seat under the wooden shelter. Delicacy seemed to suggest that her companion should leave her to herself.

Jacob walked up and down briskly, trying to shake off the cold which benumbed him. Every now and then he paused to look at the lights on the receding French coast, at its gray phantom line sweeping southward under the stormy moon, or disappearing to the north in clouds of rain. There was a roar of waves and a dashing of spray. The boat, not a large one, was pitching heavily, and the few male passengers who had at first haunted the deck soon disappeared.

Delafield hung over the surging water in a strange exaltation, half physical, half moral. The wild salt strength and savor of the sea breathed something akin to that passionate force of will which had impelled him to the enterprise in which he stood. No mere man of the world could have dared it; most men of the world, as he was well aware, would have condemned or ridiculed it. But for one who saw life and conduct sub specie aeternitatis it had seemed natural enough.

The wind blew fierce and cold. He made his way back to Julie's side. To his surprise, she had raised herself and was sitting propped up against the corner of the seat, her veil thrown back.

"You are better?" he said, stooping to her, so as to be heard against the boom of the waves. "This rough weather does not affect you?"

She made a negative sign. He drew his camp-stool beside her. Suddenly she asked him what time it was. The haggard nobleness of her pale face amid the folds of black veil, the absent passion of the eye, thrilled to his heart. Where were her thoughts?

"Nearly four o'clock." He drew out his watch. "You see it is beginning to lighten,"

And he pointed to the sky, in which that indefinable lifting of the darkness which precedes the dawn was taking place, and to the far distances of sea, where a sort of livid clarity was beginning to absorb and vanquish that stormy play of alternate dark and moonlight which had prevailed when they left the French shore.

He had hardly spoken, when he felt that her eyes were fixed upon him.

To look at his watch, he had thrown open his long Newmarket coat, forgetting that in so doing he disclosed the evening-dress in which he had robed himself at the Hotel du Rhin for his friend's dinner at the Cafe Gaillard.

He hastily rebuttoned his coat, and turned his face seaward once more. But he heard her voice, and was obliged to come close to her that he might catch the words.

"You have given me your wraps," she said, with difficulty. "You will suffer."

"Not at all. You have your own rug, and one that the captain provided. I keep myself quite warm with moving about."

There was a pause. His mind began to fill with alarm. He was not of the men who act a part with ease; but, having got through so far, he had calculated on preserving his secret.

Flight was best, and he was just turning away when a gesture of hers arrested him. Again he stooped till their faces were near enough to let her voice reach him.

"Why are you in evening-dress?"

"I had intended to dine with a friend. There was not time to change."

"Then you did not mean to cross to-night?"

He delayed a moment, trying to collect his thoughts.

"Not when I dressed for dinner, but some sudden news decided me."

Her head fell back wearily against the support behind it. The eyes closed, and he, thinking she would perhaps sleep, was about to rise from his seat, when the pressure of her hand upon his arm detained him. He sat still and the hand was withdrawn.

There was a lessening of the roar in their ears. Under the lee of the English shore the wind was milder, the "terror-music" of the sea less triumphant. And over everything was stealing the first discriminating touch of the coming light. Her face was clear now; and Delafield, at last venturing to look at her, saw that her eyes were open again, and trembled at their expression. There was in them a wild suspicion. Secretly, steadily, he nerved himself to meet the blow that he foresaw.

"Mr. Delafield, have you told me all the truth?"

She sat up as she spoke, deadly pale but rigid. With an impatient hand she threw off the wraps which had covered her. Her face commanded an answer.

"Certainly I have told you the truth."

"Was it the whole truth? It seems—it seems to me that you were not prepared yourself for this journey—that there is some mystery—which I do not understand—which I resent!"

"But what mystery? When I saw you, I of course thought of Evelyn's telegram."

"I should like to see that telegram."

He hesitated. If he had been more skilled in the little falsehoods of every day he would simply have said that he had left it at the hotel. But he lost his chance. Nor at the moment did he clearly perceive what harm it would do to show it to her. The telegram was in his pocket, and he handed it to her.

There was a dim oil-lamp in the shelter. With difficulty she held the fluttering paper up and just divined the words. Then the wind carried it away and blew it overboard. He rose and leaned against the edge of the shelter, looking down upon her. There was in his mind a sense of something solemn approaching, round which this sudden lull of blast and wave seemed to draw a "wind-warm space," closing them in.

"Why did you come with me?" she persisted, in an agitation she could now scarcely control. "It is evident you had not meant to travel. You have no luggage, and you are in evening-dress. And I remember now—you sent two letters from the station!"

"I wished to be your escort."

Her gesture was almost one of scorn at the evasion.

"Why were you at the station at all? Evelyn had told you I was at Bruges. And—you were dining out. I—I can't understand!"

She spoke with a frowning intensity, a strange queenliness, in which was neither guilt nor confusion.

A voice spoke in Delafield's heart. "Tell her!" it said.

He bent nearer to her.

"Miss Le Breton, with what friends were you going to stay in Paris?"

She breathed quick.

"I am not a school-girl, I think, that I should be asked questions of that kind."

"But on your answer depends mine."

She looked at him in amazement. His gentle kindness had disappeared. She saw, instead, that Jacob Delafield whom her instinct had divined from the beginning behind the modest and courteous outer man, the Jacob Delafield of whom she had told the Duchess she was afraid.

But her passion swept every other thought out of its way. With dim agony and rage she began to perceive that she had been duped.

"Mr. Delafield"—she tried for calm—"I don't understand your attitude, but, so far as I do understand it, I find it intolerable. If you have deceived me—"

"I have not deceived you. Lord Lackington is dying."

"But that is not why you were at the station," she repeated, passionately. "Why did you meet the English train?"

Her eyes, clear now in the cold light, shone upon him imperiously.

Again the inner voice said: "Speak—get away from conventionalities. Speak—soul to soul!"

He sat down once more beside her. His gaze sought the ground. Then, with sharp suddenness, he looked her in the face.

"Miss Le Breton, you were going to Paris to meet Major Warkworth?"

She drew back.

"And if I was?" she said, with a wild defiance.

"I had to prevent it, that was all."

His tone was calm and resolution itself.

"Who—who gave you authority over me?"

"One may save—even by violence. You were too precious to be allowed to destroy yourself."

His look, so sad and strong, the look of a deep compassion, fastened itself upon her. He felt himself, indeed, possessed by a force not his own, that same force which in its supreme degree made of St. Francis "the great tamer of souls."

"Who asked you to be our judge? Neither I nor Major Warkworth owe you anything."

"No. But I owed you help—as a man—as your friend. The truth was somehow borne in upon me. You were risking your honor—I threw myself in the way."

Every word seemed to madden her.

"What—what could you know of the circumstances?" cried her choked, laboring voice. "It is unpardonable—an outrage! You know nothing either of him or of me."

She clasped her hands to her breast in a piteous, magnificent gesture, as though she were defending her lover and her love.

"I know that you have suffered much," he said, dropping his eyes before her, "but you would suffer infinitely more if—"

"If you had not interfered." Her veil had fallen over her face again. She flung it back in impatient despair. "Mr. Delafield, I can do without your anxieties."

"But not"—he spoke slowly—"without your own self-respect."

Julie's face trembled. She hid it in her hands.

"Go!" she said. "Go!"

He went to the farther end of the ship and stood there motionless, looking towards the land but seeing nothing. On all sides the darkness was lifting, and in the distance there gleamed already the whiteness that was Dover. His whole being was shaken with that experience which comes so rarely to cumbered and superficial men—the intimate wrestle of one personality with another. It seemed to him he was not worthy of it.

After some little time, when only a quarter of an hour lay between the ship and Dover pier, he went back to Julie.

She was sitting perfectly still, her hands clasped in front of her, her veil drawn down.

"May I say one word to you?" he said, gently.

She did not speak.

"It is this. What I have confessed to you to-night is, of course, buried between us. It is as though it had never been said. I have given you pain. I ask your pardon from the bottom of my heart, and, at the same time"—his voice trembled—"I thank God that I had the courage to do it!"

She threw him a glance that showed her a quivering lip and the pallor of intense emotion.

"I know you think you were right," she said, in a voice dull and strained, "but henceforth we can only be enemies. You have tyrannized over me in the name of standards that you revere and I reject. I can only beg you to let my life alone for the future."

He said nothing. She rose, dizzily, to her feet. They were rapidly approaching the pier.



With the cold aloofness of one who feels it more dignified to submit than to struggle, she allowed him to assist her in landing. He put her into the Victoria train, travelling himself in another carriage.

As he walked beside her down the platform of Victoria Station, she said to him:

"I shall be obliged if you will tell Evelyn that I have returned."

"I go to her at once."

She suddenly paused, and he saw that she was looking helplessly at one of the newspaper placards of the night before. First among its items appeared: "Critical state of Lord Lackington."

He hardly knew how far she would allow him to have any further communication with her, but her pale exhaustion made it impossible not to offer to serve her.

"It would be early to go for news now," he said, gently. "It would disturb the house. But in a couple of hours from now"—the station clock pointed to 6.15—"if you will allow me, I will leave the morning bulletin at your door."

She hesitated.

"You must rest, or you will have no strength for nursing," he continued, in the same studiously guarded tone. "But if you would prefer another messenger—"

"I have none," and she raised her hand to her brow in mute, unconscious confession of an utter weakness and bewilderment.

"Then let me go," he said, softly.

It seemed to him that she was so physically weary as to be incapable either of assent or resistance. He put her into her cab, and gave the driver his directions. She looked at him uncertainly. But he did not offer his hand. From those blue eyes of his there shot out upon her one piercing glance—manly, entreating, sad. He lifted his hat and was gone.



XX

"Jacob, what brings you back so soon?" The Duchess ran into the room, a trim little figure in her morning dress of blue-and-white cloth, with her small spitz leaping beside her.

Delafield advanced.

"I came to tell you that I got your telegram yesterday, and that in the evening, by an extraordinary and fortunate chance, I met Miss Le Breton in Paris—"

"You met Julie in Paris?" echoed the Duchess, in astonishment.

"She had come to spend a couple of days with some friends there before going on to Bruges. I gave her the news of Lord Lackington's illness, and she at once turned back. She was much fatigued and distressed, and the night was stormy. I put her into the sleeping-car, and came back myself to see if I could be any assistance to her. And at Calais I was of some use. The crossing was very rough."

"Julie was in Paris?" repeated the Duchess, as though she had heard nothing else of what he had been saying.

Her eyes, so blue and large in her small, irregular face, sought those of her cousin and endeavored to read them.

"It seems to have been a rapid change of plan. And it was a great stroke of luck my meeting her."

"But how—and where?"

"Oh, there is no time for going into that," said Delafield, impatiently. "But I knew you would like to know that she was here—after your message yesterday. We arrived a little after six this morning. About nine I went for news to St. James's Square. There is a slight rally."

"Did you see Lord Uredale? Did you say anything about Julie?" asked the Duchess, eagerly.

"I merely asked at the door, and took the bulletin to Miss Le Breton. Will you see Uredale and arrange it? I gather you saw him yesterday."

"By all means," said the Duchess, musing. "Oh, it was so curious yesterday. Lord Lackington had just told them. You should have seen those two men."

"The sons?"

The Duchess nodded.

"They don't like it. They were as stiff as pokers. But they will do absolutely the right thing. They see at once that she must be provided for. And when he asked for her they told me to telegraph, if I could find out where she was. Well, of all the extraordinary chances."

She looked at him again, oddly, a spot of red on either small cheek. Delafield took no notice. He was pacing up and down, apparently in thought.

"Suppose you take her there?" he said, pausing abruptly before her.

"To St. James's Square? What did you tell her?"

"That he was a trifle better, and that you would come to her."

"Yes, it would be hard for her to go alone," said the Duchess, reflectively. She looked at her watch. "Only a little after eleven. Ring, please, Jacob."

The carriage was ordered. Meanwhile the little lady inquired eagerly after her Julie. Had she been exhausted by the double journey? Was she alone in Paris, or was Madame Bornier with her?

Jacob had understood that Madame Bornier and the little girl had gone straight to Bruges.

The Duchess looked down and then looked up.

"Did—did you come across Major Warkworth?"

"Yes, I saw him for a moment in the Rue de la Paix, He was starting for Rome."

The Duchess turned away as though ashamed of her question, and gave her orders for the carriage. Then her attention was suddenly drawn to her cousin. "How pale you look, Jacob," she said, approaching him. "Won't you have something—some wine?"

Delafield refused, declaring that all he wanted was an hour or two's sleep.

"I go back to Paris to-morrow," he said, as he prepared to take his leave. "Will you be here to-night if I look in?"

"Alack! we go to Scotland to-night! It was just a piece of luck that you found me this morning. Freddie is fuming to get away."

Delafield paused a moment. Then he abruptly shook hands and went.

"He wants news of what happens at St. James's Square," thought the Duchess, suddenly, and she ran after him to the top of the stairs. "Jacob! If you don't mind a horrid mess to-night, Freddie and I shall be dining alone—of course we must have something to eat. Somewhere about eight. Do look in. There'll be a cutlet—on a trunk—anyway."

Delafield laughed, hesitated, and finally accepted.

The Duchess went back to the drawing-room, not a little puzzled and excited.

"It's very, very odd," she said to herself. "And what is the matter with Jacob?"

* * * * *

Half an hour later she drove to the splendid house in St. James's Square where Lord Lackington lay dying.

She asked for Lord Uredale, the eldest son, and waited in the library till he came.

He was a tall, squarely built man, with fair hair already gray, and somewhat absent and impassive manners.

At sight of him the Duchess's eyes filled with tears. She hurried to him, her soft nature dissolved in sympathy.

"How is your father?"

"A trifle easier, though the doctors say there is no real improvement. But he is quite conscious—knows us all. I have just been reading him the debate."

"You told me yesterday he had asked for Miss Le Breton," said the Duchess, raising herself on tiptoe as though to bring her low tones closer to his ear. "She's here—in town, I mean. She came back from Paris last night."

Lord Uredale showed no emotion of any kind. Emotion was not in his line.

"Then my father would like to see her," he said, in a dry, ordinary voice, which jarred upon the sentimental Duchess.

"When shall I bring her?"

"He is now comfortable and resting. If you are free—"

The Duchess replied that she would go to Heribert Street at once. As Lord Uredale took her to her carriage a young man ran down the steps hastily, raised his hat, and disappeared.

Lord Uredale explained that he was the husband of the famous young beauty, Mrs. Delaray, whose portrait Lord Lackington had been engaged upon at the time of his seizure. Having been all his life a skilful artist, a man of fashion, and a harmless haunter of lovely women, Lord Lackington, as the Duchess knew, had all but completed a gallery of a hundred portraits, representing the beauty of the reign. Mrs. Delaray's would have been the hundredth in a series of which Mrs. Norton was the first.

"He has been making arrangements with the husband to get it finished," said Lord Uredale; "it has been on his mind."

The Duchess shivered a little.

"He knows he won't finish it?"

"Quite well."

"And he still thinks of those things?"

"Yes—or politics," said Lord Uredale, smiling faintly. "I have written to Mr. Montresor. There are two or three points my father wants to discuss with him."

"And he is not depressed, or troubled about himself?"

"Not in the least. He will be grateful if you will bring him Miss Le Breton."

* * * * *

"Julie, my darling, are you fit to come with me?"

The Duchess held her friend in her arms, soothing and caressing her. How forlorn was the little house, under its dust-sheets, on this rainy, spring morning! And Julie, amid the dismantled drawing-room, stood spectrally white and still, listening, with scarcely a word in reply, to the affection, or the pity, or the news which the Duchess poured out upon her.

"Shall we go now? I am quite ready."

And she withdrew herself from the loving grasp which held her, and put on her hat and gloves.

"You ought to be in bed," said the Duchess. "Those night journeys are too abominable. Even Jacob looks a wreck. But what an extraordinary chance, Julie, that Jacob should have found you! How did you come across each other?"

"At the Nord Station," said Julie, as she pinned her veil before the glass over the mantel-piece.

Some instinct silenced the Duchess. She asked no more questions, and they started for St. James's Square.

"You won't mind if I don't talk?" said Julie, leaning back and closing her eyes. "I seem still to have the sea in my ears."

The Duchess looked at her tenderly, clasping her hand close, and the carriage rolled along. But just before they reached St. James's Square, Julie hastily raised the fingers which held her own and kissed them.

"Oh, Julie," said the Duchess, reproachfully, "I don't like you to do that!"

She flushed and frowned. It was she who ought to pay such acts of homage, not Julie.

* * * * *

"Father, Miss Le Breton is here."

"Let her come in, Jack—and the Duchess, too."

Lord Uredale went back to the door. Two figures came noiselessly into the room, the Duchess in front, with Julie's hand in hers.

Lord Lackington was propped up in bed, and breathing fast. But he smiled as they approached him.

"This is good-bye, dear Duchess," he said, in a whisper, as she bent over him. Then, with a spark of his old gayety in the eyes, "I should be a cur to grumble. Life has been very agreeable. Ah, Julie!"

Julie dropped gently on her knees beside him and laid her cheek against his arm. At the mention of her name the old man's face had clouded as though the thoughts she called up had suddenly rebuked his words to the Duchess. He feebly moved his hands towards hers, and there was silence in the room for a few moments.

"Uredale!"

"Yes, father."

"This is Rose's daughter."

His eyes lifted themselves to those of his son.

"I know, father. If Miss Le Breton will allow us, we will do what we can to be of service to her."

Bill Chantrey, the younger brother, gravely nodded assent. They were both men of middle age, the younger over forty. They did not resemble their father, nor was there any trace in either of them of his wayward fascination. They were a pair of well-set-up, well-bred Englishmen, surprised at nothing, and quite incapable of showing any emotion in public; yet just and kindly men. As Julie entered the house they had both solemnly shaken hands with her, in a manner which showed at once their determination, as far as they were concerned, to avoid anything sentimental or in the nature of a scene, and their readiness to do what could be rightly demanded of them.

Julie hardly listened to Lord Uredale's little speech. She had eyes and ears only for her grandfather. As she knelt beside him, her face bowed upon his hand, the ice within her was breaking up, that dumb and straitening anguish in which she had lived since that moment at the Nord Station in which she had grasped the meaning and the implications of Delafield's hurried words. Was everything to be swept away from her at once—her lover, and now this dear old man, to whom her heart, crushed and bleeding as it was, yearned with all its strength?

Lord Lackington supposed that she was weeping.

"Don't grieve, my dear," he murmured. "It must come to an end some time—'cette charmante promenade a travers la realite!'"

And he smiled at her, agreeably vain to the last of that French accent and that French memory which—so his look implied—they two could appreciate, each in the other. Then he turned to the Duchess.

"Duchess, you knew this secret before me. But I forgive you, and thank you. You have been very good to Rose's child. Julie has told me—and—I have observed—"

"Oh, dear Lord Lackington!" Evelyn bent over him. "Trust her to me," she said, with a lovely yearning to comfort and cheer him breathing from her little face.

He smiled.

"To you—and—"

He did not finish the sentence.

After a pause he made a little gesture of farewell which the Duchess understood. She kissed his hand and turned away weeping.

"Nurse—where is nurse?" said Lord Lackington.

Both the nurse and the doctor, who had withdrawn a little distance from the family group, came forward.

"Doctor, give me some strength," said the laboring voice, not without its old wilfulness of accent.

He moved his arm towards the young homoeopath, who injected strychnine. Then he looked at the nurse.

"Brandy—and—lift me."

All was done as he desired.

"Now go, please," he said to his sons. "I wish to be left with Julie."

* * * * *

For some moments, that seemed interminable to Julie, Lord Lackington lay silent. A feverish flush, a revival of life in the black eyes had followed on the administration of the two stimulants. He seemed to be gathering all his forces.

At last he laid his hand on her arm. "You shouldn't be alone," he said, abruptly.

His expression had grown anxious, even imperious. She felt a vague pang of dread as she tried to assure him that she had kind friends, and that her work would be her resource.

Lord Lackington frowned.

"That won't do," he said, almost vehemently. "You have great talents, but you are weak—you are a woman—you must marry."

Julie stared at him, whiter even than when she had entered his room—helpless to avert what she began to foresee.

"Jacob Delafield is devoted to you. You should marry him, dear—you should marry him."

The room seemed to swim around her. But his face was still plain—the purpled lips and cheeks, the urgency in the eyes, as of one pursued by an overtaking force, the magnificent brow, the crown of white hair.

She summoned all her powers and told him hurriedly that he was mistaken—entirely mistaken. Mr. Delafield had, indeed, proposed to her, but, apart from her own unwillingness, she had reason to know that his feelings towards her were now entirely changed. He neither loved her nor thought well of her.

Lord Lackington lay there, obstinate, patient, incredulous. At last he interrupted her.

"You make yourself believe these things. But they are not true. Delafield is attached to you. I know it."

He nodded to her with his masterful, affectionate look. And before she could find words again he had resumed.

"He could give you a great position. Don't despise it. We English big-wigs have a good time."

A ghostly, humorous ray shot out upon her; then he felt for her hand.

"Dear Julie, why won't you?"

"If you were to ask him," she cried, in despair, "he would tell you as I do."

And across her miserable thoughts there flashed two mingled images—Warkworth waiting, waiting for her at the Sceaux Station, and that look of agonized reproach in Delafield's haggard face as he had parted from her in the dawn of this strange, this incredible day.

And here beside her, with the tyranny of the dying, this dear babbler wandered on in broken words, with painful breath, pleading, scolding, counselling. She felt that he was exhausting himself. She begged him to let her recall nurse and doctor. He shook his head, and when he could no longer speak, he clung to her hand, his gaze solemnly, insistently, fixed upon her.

Her spirit writhed and rebelled. But she was helpless in the presence of this mortal weakness, this affection, half earthly, half beautiful, on its knees before her.

A thought struck her. Why not content him? Whatever pledges she gave would die with him. What did it matter? It was cruelty to deny him the words—the mere empty words—he asked of her.

"I—I would do anything to please you!" she said, with a sudden burst of uncontrollable tears, as she laid her head down beside him on the pillow. "If he were to ask me again, of course, for your sake, I would consider it once more. Dear, dear friend, won't that satisfy you?"

Lord Lackington was silent a few moments, then he smiled.

"That's a promise?"

She raised herself and looked at him, conscious of a sick movement of terror. What was there in his mind, still so quick, fertile, ingenious, under the very shadow of death?

He waited for her answer, feebly pressing her hand.

"Yes," she said, faintly, and once more hid her face beside him.

Then, for some little time, the dying man neither stirred nor spoke. At last Julie heard:

"I used to be afraid of death—that was in middle life. Every night it was a torment. But now, for many years, I have not been afraid at all.... Byron—Lord Byron—said to me, once, he would not change anything in his life; but he would have preferred not to have lived at all. I could not say that. I have enjoyed it all—being an Englishman, and an English peer—pictures, politics, society—everything. Perhaps it wasn't fair. There are so many poor devils."

Julie pressed his hand to her lips. But in her thoughts there rose the sudden, sharp memory of her mother's death—of that bitter stoicism and abandonment in which the younger life had closed, in comparison with this peace, this complacency.

Yet it was a complacency rich in sweetness. His next words were to assure her tenderly that he had made provision for her. "Uredale and Bill—will see to it. They're good fellows. Often—they've thought me—a pretty fool. But they've been kind to me—always."

Then, after another interval, he lifted himself in bed, with more strength than she had supposed he could exert, looked at her earnestly, and asked her, in the same painful whisper, whether she believed in another life.

"Yes," said Julie. But her shrinking, perfunctory manner evidently distressed him. He resumed, with a furrowed brow:

"You ought. It is good for us to believe it."

"I must hope, at any rate, that I shall see you again—and mamma," she said, smiling on him through her tears.

"I wonder what it will be like," he replied, after a pause. His tone and look implied a freakish, a whimsical curiosity, yet full of charm. Then, motioning to her to come nearer, and speaking into her ear:

"Your poor mother, Julie, was never happy—never! There must be laws, you see—and churches—and religious customs. It's because—we're made of such wretched stuff. My wife, when she died—made me promise to continue going to church—and praying. And—without it—I should have been a bad man. Though I've had plenty of sceptical thoughts—plenty. Your poor parents rebelled—against all that. They suffered—they suffered. But you'll make up—you're a noble woman—you'll make up."

He laid his hand on her head. She offered no reply; but through the inner mind there rushed the incidents, passions, revolts of the preceding days.

But for that strange chance of Delafield's appearance in her path—a chance no more intelligible to her now, after the pondering of several feverish hours, than it had been at the moment of her first suspicion—where and what would she be now? A dishonored woman, perhaps, with a life-secret to keep; cut off, as her mother had been, from the straight-living, law-abiding world.

The touch of the old man's hand upon her hair roused in her a first recoil, a first shattering doubt of the impulse which had carried her to Paris. Since Delafield left her in the early dawn she had been pouring out a broken, passionate heart in a letter to Warkworth. No misgivings while she was writing it as to the all-sufficing legitimacy of love!

But here, in this cold neighborhood of the grave—brought back to gaze in spirit; on her mother's tragedy—she shrank, she trembled. Her proud intelligence denied the stain, and bade her hate and despise her rescuer. And, meanwhile, things also inherited and inborn, the fruit of a remoter ancestry, rising from the dimmest and deepest caverns of personality, silenced the clamor of the naturalist mind. One moment she felt herself seized with terror lest anything should break down the veil between her real self and this unsuspecting tenderness of the dying man; the next she rose in revolt against her own fear. Was she to find herself, after all, a mere weak penitent—meanly grateful to Jacob Delafield? Her heart cried out to Warkworth in a protesting anguish.

So absorbed in thought was she that she did not notice how long the silence had lasted.

"He seems to be sleeping," said a low voice beside her.

She looked up to see the doctor, with Lord Uredale. Gently releasing herself, she kissed Lord Lackington's forehead, and rose to her feet.

Suddenly the patient opened his eyes, and as he seemed to become aware of the figures beside him, he again lifted himself in bed, and a gleam most animated, most vivacious, passed over his features.

"Brougham's not asked," he said, with a little chuckle of amusement. "Isn't it a joke?"

The two men beside him looked at each other. Lord Uredale approached the bed.

"Not asked to what, father?" he said, gently.

"Why, to the Queen's fancy ball, of course," said Lord Lackington, still smiling. "Such a to-do! All the elderly sticks practising minuets for their lives!"

A voluble flow of talk followed—hardly intelligible. The words "Melbourne" and "Lady Holland" emerged—the fragment, apparently, of a dispute with the latter, in which "Allen" intervened—the names of "Palmerston" and "that dear chap, Villiers."

Lord Uredale sighed. The young doctor looked at him interrogatively.

"He is thinking of his old friends," said the son. "That was the Queen's ball, I imagine, of '42. I have often heard him describe my mother's dress."

But while he was speaking the fitful energy died away. The old man ceased to talk; his eyelids fell. But the smile still lingered about his mouth, and as he settled himself on his pillows, like one who rests, the spectators were struck by the urbane and distinguished beauty of his aspect. The purple flush had died again into mortal pallor. Illness had masked or refined the weakness of mouth and chin; the beautiful head and countenance, with their characteristic notes of youth, impetuosity, a kind of gay detachment, had never been more beautiful.

The young doctor looked stealthily from the recumbent figure to the tall and slender woman standing absorbed and grief-stricken beside the bed. The likeness was as evident to him as it had been, in the winter, to Sir Wilfrid Bury.

* * * * *

As he was escorting her down-stairs, Lord Uredale said to his companion, "Foster thinks he may still live twenty-four hours."

"If he asks for me again," said Julie, now shrouded once more behind a thick, black veil, "you will send?"

He gravely assented.

"It is a great pity," he said, with a certain stiffness—did it unconsciously mark the difference between her and his legitimate kindred?—"that my sister Lady Blanche and her daughter cannot be with us."

"They are in Italy?"

"At Florence. My niece has had an attack of diphtheria. She could neither travel nor could her mother leave her."

Then pausing in the hall, he added in a low voice, and with some embarrassment:

"My father has told you, I believe, of the addition he has made to his will?"

Julie drew back.

"I neither asked for it nor desired it," she said, in her coldest and clearest voice.

"That I quite understand," said Lord Uredale. "But—you cannot hurt him by refusing."

She hesitated.

"No. But afterwards—I must be free to follow my own judgment."

"We cannot take what does not belong to us," he said, with some sharpness. "My brother and I are named as your trustees. Believe me, we will do our best."

Meanwhile the younger brother had come out of the library to bid her farewell. She felt that she was under critical observation, though both pairs of gray eyes refrained from any appearance of scrutiny. Her pride came to her aid, and she did not shrink from the short conversation which the two brothers evidently desired. When it was over, and the brothers returned to the hall after putting her into the Duchess's carriage, the younger said to the elder:

"She can behave herself, Johnnie."

They looked at each other, with their hands in their pockets. A little nod passed between them—an augur-like acceptance of this new and irregular member of the family.

"Yes, she has excellent manners," said Uredale. "And really, after the tales Lady Henry has been spreading—that's something!"

"Oh, I always thought Lady Henry an old cat," said Bill, tranquilly. "That don't matter."

The Chantrey brothers had not been among Lady Henry's habitues. In her eyes, they were the dull sons of an agreeable father. They were humorously aware of it, and bore her little malice.