“But I must!” cried the Duchess. “Just think, there is my big bazaar on the 16th. You don’t know how clever Julie is at such things. I want to make her recite—her French is too beautiful! And then she has such inventiveness, such a head! Everything goes if she takes it in hand. But if I say anything to Aunt Flora, she’ll put a spoke in all our wheels. She’ll hate the thought of anything in which Julie is successful and conspicuous. Of course she will!”
“All the same, Evelyn,” said Delafield, uncomfortable apparently for the second time, “I really think it would be best to let Lady Henry know.”
“Well, then, we may as well give it up,” said the Duchess, pettishly, turning aside.
Delafield, who was still pacing the carpet, suddenly raised his hand in a gesture of warning. Mademoiselle Le Breton was crossing the outer drawing-room.
“Julie, come here!” cried the Duchess, springing up and running towards her. “Jacob is making himself so disagreeable. He thinks we ought to tell Lady Henry about the 16th.”
The speaker put her arm through Julie Le Breton’s, looking up at her with a frowning brow. The contrast between her restless prettiness, the profusion of her dress and hair, and Julie’s dark, lissome strength, gowned and gloved in neat, close black, was marked enough.
As the Duchess spoke, Julie looked smiling at Jacob Delafield.
“I am in your hands,” she said, gently. “Of course I don’t want to keep anything from Lady Henry. Please decide for me.”
Sir Wilfrid’s mouth showed a satirical line. He turned aside and began to play with a copy of the Spectator.
“Julie,” said the Duchess, hesitating, “I hope you won’t mind, but we have been discussing things a little with Sir Wilfrid. I felt sure Aunt Flora had been talking to him.”
“Of course,” said Julie, “I knew she would.” She looked towards Sir Wilfrid, slightly drawing herself up. Her manner was quiet, but all her movements were somehow charged with a peculiar and interesting significance. The force of the character made itself felt through all disguises.
In spite of himself, Sir Wilfrid began to murmur apologetic things.
“It was natural, mademoiselle, that Lady Henry should confide in me. She has perhaps told you that for many years I have been one of the trustees of her property. That has led to her consulting me on a good many matters. And evidently, from what she says and what the Duchess says, nothing could be of more importance to her happiness, now, in her helpless state, than her relations to you.”
He spoke with a serious kindness in which the tinge of mocking habitual to his sleek and well-groomed visage was wholly lost. Julie Le Breton met him with dignity.
“Yes, they are important. But, I fear they cannot go on as they are.”
There was a pause. Then Sir Wilfrid approached her:
“I hear you are returning to Bruton Street immediately. Might I be your escort?”
“Certainly.”
The Duchess, a little sobered by the turn events had taken and the darkened prospects of her bazaar, protested in vain against this sudden departure. Julie resumed her furs, which, as Sir Wilfrid, who was curious in such things; happened to notice, were of great beauty, and made her farewells. Did her hand linger in Jacob Delafield’s? Did the look with which that young man received it express more than the steadfast support which justice offers to the oppressed? Sir Wilfrid could not be sure.
As they stepped out into the frosty, lamp-lit dark of Grosvenor Square, Julie Le Breton turned to her companion.
“You knew my mother and father,” she said, abruptly. “I remember your coming.”
What was in her voice, her rich, beautiful voice? Sir Wilfrid only knew that while perfectly steady, it seemed to bring emotion near, to make all the aspects of things dramatic.
“Yes, yes,” he replied, in some confusion. “I knew her well, from the time when she was a girl in the schoolroom. Poor Lady Rose!”
The figure beside him stood still.
“Then if you were my mother’s friend,” she said, huskily, “you will hear patiently what I have to say, even though you are Lady Henry’s trustee.”
“Indeed I will!” cried Sir Wilfrid, and they walked on.
IV
“But, first of all,” said Mademoiselle Le Breton, looking in some annoyance at the brace of terriers circling and barking round them, “we must take the dogs home, otherwise no talk will be possible.”
“You have no more business to do?”
His companion smiled.
“Everything Lady Henry wants is here,” she said, pointing to the bag upon her arm which had been handed to her, as Sir Wilfrid remembered, after some whispered conversation, in the hall of Crowborough House by an elegantly dressed woman, who was no doubt the Duchess’s maid.
“Allow me to carry it for you.”
“Many thanks,” said Mademoiselle Le Breton, firmly retaining it, “but those are not the things I mind.”
They walked on quickly to Bruton Street. The dogs made conversation impossible. If they were on the chain it was one long battle between them and their leader. If they were let loose, it seemed to Sir Wilfrid that they ranged every area on the march, and attacked all elderly gentlemen and most errand-boys.
“Do you always take them out?” he asked, when both he and his companion were crimson and out of breath.
“Always.”
“Do you like dogs?”
“I used to. Perhaps some day I shall again.”
“As for me, I wish they had but one neck!” said Sir Wilfrid, who had but just succeeded in dragging Max, the bigger of the two, out of the interior of a pastrycook’s handcart which had been rashly left with doors open for a few minutes in the street, while its responsible guardian was gossiping in an adjacent kitchen. Mademoiselle Julie meanwhile was wrestling with Nero, the younger, who had dived to the very heart of a
