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

Delafield advanced.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But how--and where?"

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

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

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

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

"The sons?"

The Duchess nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Duchess looked down and then looked up.

"Did--did you come across Major Warkworth?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Delafield laughed, hesitated, and finally accepted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How is your father?"

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

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

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

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

"When shall I bring her?"

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

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

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

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

The Duchess shivered a little.

"He knows he won\'t finish it?"

"Quite well."

"And he still thinks of those things?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Father, Miss Le Breton is here."

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

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

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

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

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

"Uredale!"

"Yes, father."

"This is Rose\'s daughter."

His eyes lifted themselves to those of his son.

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

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

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

Lord Lackington supposed that she was weeping.

"Don\'t grieve, my dear," he murmured. "It must come to an end some time--\'cette charmante promenade à travers la réalité!\'"

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

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

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

He smiled.

"To you--and--"

He did not finish the sentence.

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

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

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

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

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

"Brandy--and--lift me."

All was done as he desired.

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

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

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

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

Lord Lackington frowned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

............