Sir Wilfrid could not think of it without a touch of excitement.
“Was she reminding me of Gherardtsloo?” he said to himself. “Upon my word, I must find some means of conversation with her, in spite of Lady Henry.”
He walked towards Bond Street, pondering the situation of the two women—the impotent jealousy and rancor with which Lady Henry was devoured, the domestic slavery contrasted with the social power of Mademoiselle Le Breton. Through the obscurity and difficulty of circumstance, how marked was the conscience of race in her, and, as he also thought, of high intelligence! The old man was deeply interested. He felt a certain indulgent pity for his lifelong friend Lady Henry; but he could not get Mademoiselle Julie out of his head.
“Why on earth does she stay where she is?”
He had asked the same question of Lady Henry, who had contemptuously replied:
“Because she likes the fleshpots, and won’t give them up. No doubt she doesn’t find my manners agreeable; but she knows very well that she wouldn’t get the chances she gets in my house anywhere else. I give her a foothold. She’ll not risk it for a few sour speeches on my part. I may say what I like to her—and I intend to say what I like! Besides, you watch her, and see whether she’s made for poverty. She takes to luxury as a fish to water. What would she be if she left me? A little visiting teacher, perhaps, in a Bloomsbury lodging. That’s not her line at all.”
“But somebody else might employ her as you do?” Sir Wilfrid had suggested.
“You forget I should be asked for a character,” said Lady Henry. “Oh, I admit there are possibilities—on her side. That silly goose, Evelyn Crowborough, would have taken her in, but I had a few words with Crowborough, and he put his foot down. He told his wife he didn’t want an intriguing foreigner to live with them. No; for the present we are chained to each other. I can’t get rid of her, and she doesn’t want to get rid of me. Of course, things might become intolerable for either of us. But at present self-interest on both sides keeps us going. Oh, don’t tell me the thing is odious! I know it. Every day she stays in the house I become a more abominable old woman.”
A more exacting one, certainly. Sir Wilfrid thought with pity and amusement of the commissions with which Mademoiselle Julie had been loaded. “She earns her money, anyway,” he thought. “Those things will take her a hard afternoon’s work. But, bless my soul!”—he paused in his walk—“what about that engagement to Duchess Evelyn that I heard her make? Not a word, by-the-way, to Lady Henry about it! Oh, this is amusing!”
He went meditatively on his way, and presently turned into his club to write some letters. But at five o’clock he emerged, and told a hansom to drive him to Grosvenor Square. He alighted at the great redbrick mansion of the Crowboroughs, and asked for the Duchess. The magnificent person presiding over the hall, an old family retainer, remembered him, and made no difficulty about admitting him.
“Anybody with her grace?” he inquired, as the man handed him over to the footman who was to usher him upstairs.
“Only Miss Le Breton and Mr. Delafield, Sir Wilfrid. Her grace told me to say ‘not at home’ this afternoon, but I am sure, sir, she will see you.”
Sir Wilfrid smiled.
As he entered the outer drawing-room, the Duchess and the group surrounding her did not immediately perceive the footman nor himself, and he had a few moments in which to take in a charming scene.
A baby girl in a white satin gown down to her heels, and a white satin cap, lace-edged and tied under her chin, was holding out her tiny skirt with one hand and dancing before the Duchess and Miss Le Breton, who was at the piano. The child’s other hand held up a morsel of biscuit wherewith she directed the movements of her partner, a small black spitz, of a slim and silky elegance, who, straining on his hind legs, his eager attention fixed upon the biscuit, followed every movement of his small mistress; while she, her large blue eyes now solemn, now triumphant, her fair hair escaping from her cap in fluttering curls, her dainty feet pointed, her dimpled arm upraised, repeated in living grace the picture of her great-great-grandmother which hung on the wall in front of her, a masterpiece from Reynolds’s happiest hours.
Behind Mademoiselle Le Breton stood Jacob Delafield; while the Duchess, in a low chair beside them, beat time gayly to the gavotte that Mademoiselle Julie was playing and laughed encouragement and applause to the child in front of her. She herself, with her cloud of fair hair, the delicate pink and white of her skin, the laughing lips and small white hands that rose and fell with the baby steps, seemed little more than a child. Her pale blue dress, for which she had just exchanged her winter walking-costume, fell round her in sweeping folds of lace and silk—a French fairy dressed by Wörth, she was possessed by a wild gayety, and her silvery laugh held the room.
Beside her,
