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 H?tel du Rhin that afternoon for a stroll before dinner, and had no other wrap or covering. But he felt nothing, was conscious of nothing but the rushing current of his own thoughts.

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 H?tel 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 H?tel de la Terrasse at St. Germain. The Duke, a nervous hypochondriac, could not sleep in the noise of Paris, and was accustomed to a certain apartment in this well-known hotel, which was often reserved for him. Jacob left them about six o\'clock to return to Paris. He was to meet one of the Embassy attachés--an old Oxford friend--at the Café Gaillard for dinner. He dressed at the "Rhin," put on an overcoat, and set out to walk to the Rue Gaillard about half-past seven. As he approached the "Mirabeau," he saw a cab with luggage standing at the door. A man came out with the hotel concierge. To his astonishment, Delafield recognized Warkworth.

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

"D\'abord, à la Gare de Sceaux! Puis, je vous dirai. Mais dépêchez-vous!"

The cab rolled away, and Delafield walked on.

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

"D\'abord, à la Gare de Sceaux!"

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

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

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

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

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

"Amiens! Cinq minutes d\'arrêt."

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

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

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

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

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

"En voiture! En voiture, s\'il vous pla?t!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But--my ticket?"

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

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

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

Calais!

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

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

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

They reached the deck.

"You will go down-stairs?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Delafield was roused by a peremptory voice at his elbow.

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

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

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

The shrewd, stout man who had accosted him............