Julie asked herself, hurriedly: “How much does she know? What has she heard?” But aloud she gently said: “I thought you must have heard of me. Lord Uredale told me he had written—his father wished it—to Lady Blanche. Your mother and mine were sisters.”
The girl shyly withdrew her eyes.
“Yes, mother told me.”
There was a moment’s silence. The mingled fear and recklessness which had accompanied Julie’s action disappeared from her mind. In the girl’s manner there was neither jealousy nor hatred, only a young shrinking and reserve.
“May I walk with you a little?”
“Please do. Are you staying at Montreux?”
“No; we are at Charnex—and you?”
“We came up two days ago to a little pension at Brent. I wanted to be among the fields, now the narcissuses are out. If it were warm weather we should stay, but mother is afraid of the cold for me. I have been ill.”
“I heard that,” said Julie, in a voice gravely kind and winning. “That was why your mother could not come home.”
The girl’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.
“No; poor mother! I wanted her to go—we had a good nurse—but she would not leave me, though she was devoted to my grandfather. She—”
“She is always anxious about you?”
“Yes. My health has been a trouble lately, and since father died—”
“She has only you.”
They walked on a few paces in silence. Then the girl looked up eagerly.
“You saw grandfather at the last? Do tell me about it, please. My uncles write so little.”
Julie obeyed with difficulty. She had not realized how hard it would be for her to talk of Lord Lackington. But she described the old man’s gallant dying as best she could; while Aileen Moffatt listened with that manner at once timid and rich in feeling which seemed to be her characteristic.
As they neared the top of the hill where the road begins to incline towards Charnex, Julie noticed signs of fatigue in her companion.
“You have been an invalid,” she said. “You ought not to go farther. May I take you home? Would your mother dislike to see me?”
The girl paused perceptibly. “Ah, there she is!”
They had turned towards Brent, and Julie saw coming towards them, with somewhat rapid steps, a small, elderly lady, gray-haired, her features partly hidden by her country hat.
A thrill passed through Julie. This was the sister whose name her mother had mentioned in her last hour. It was as though something of her mother, something that must throw light upon that mother’s life and being, were approaching her along this Swiss road.
But the lady in question, as she neared them, looked with surprise, not unmingled with hauteur, upon her daughter and the stranger beside her.
“Aileen, why did you go so far? You promised me only to be a quarter of an hour.”
“I am not tired, mother. Mother, this is Mrs. Delafield. You remember, Uncle Uredale wrote—”
Lady Blanche Moffatt stood still. Once more a fear swept through Julie’s mind, and this time it stayed. After an evident hesitation, a hand was coldly extended.
“How do you do? I heard from my brothers of your marriage, but they said you were in Italy.”
“We have just come from there.”
“And your husband?”
“He has gone down to Montreux, but he should be home very soon now. We are only a few steps from our little inn. Would you not rest there? Miss Moffatt looks very tired.”
There was a pause. Lady Blanche was considering her daughter. Julie saw the trembling of her wide, irregular mouth, of which the lips were slightly turned outward. Finally she drew her daughter’s hand into her arm, and bent anxiously towards her, scrutinizing her face.
“Thank you. We will rest a quarter of an hour. Can we get a carriage at Charnex?”
“Yes, I think so, if you will wait a little on our balcony.”
They walked on towards Charnex. Lady Blanche began to talk resolutely of the weather, which was, indeed, atrocious. She spoke as she would have done to the merest acquaintance. There was not a word of her father; not a word, either, of her brother’s letter, or of Julie’s relationship to herself. Julie accepted the situation with perfect composure, and the three kept up some sort of a conversation till they reached the paved street of Charnex and the old inn at its lower end.
Julie guided her companions through its dark passages, till they reached an outer terrace where there were a few scattered seats, and among them a deck-chair with cushions.
“Please,” said Julie, as she kindly drew the girl towards it. Aileen smiled and yielded. Julie placed her among the cushions, then brought out a shawl, and covered her warmly from the sharp, damp air. Aileen thanked her, and lightly touched her hand. A secret sympathy seemed to have suddenly sprung up between them.
Lady Blanche sat stiffly beside her daughter, watching her face. The warm touch of friendliness in Aileen’s manner towards Mrs. Delafield seemed only to increase the distance and embarrassment of her own. Julie appeared to be quite unconscious. She ordered tea, and made no further allusion of any kind to the kindred they had in common. She and Lady Blanche talked as strangers.
Julie said to herself that she understood. She remembered the evening at Crowborough House, the spinster lady who had been the Moffatts’ friend, her own talk with Evelyn. In that way, or in some other, the current gossip about herself and Warkworth, gossip they had been too mad and miserable to take much account of, had reached Lady Blanche. Lady Blanche probably abhorred her; though, because of her marriage, there was to be an outer civility. Meanwhile no sign whatever of any angry or resentful knowledge betrayed itself in the girl’s manner. Clearly the mother had shielded her.
Julie felt the flutter of an exquisite relief. She stole many a look at Aileen, comparing the reality with that old, ugly notion her jealousy had found so welcome—of the silly or insolent little creature, possessing all that her betters desired, by the mere brute force
