But at last the door opened and Julie Le Breton’s light step approached.
“May I read to you?” she said, gently.
Lady Henry coldly commanded the Observer and her knitting.
She had no sooner, however, begun to knit than her very acute sense of touch noticed something wrong with the wool she was using.
“This is not the wool I ordered,” she said, fingering it carefully. “You remember, I gave you a message about it on Thursday? What did they say about it at Winton’s?”
Julie laid down the newspaper and looked in perplexity at the ball of wool.
“I remember you gave me a message,” she faltered.
“Well, what did they say?”
“I suppose that was all they had.”
Something in the tone struck Lady Henry’s quick ears. She raised a suspicious face.
“Did you ever go to Winton’s at all?” she said, quickly.
“I am so sorry. The Duchess’s maid was going there,” said Julie, hurriedly, “and she went for me. I thought I had given her your message most carefully.”
“Hm,” said Lady Henry, slowly. “So you didn’t go to Winton’s. May I ask whether you went to Shaw’s, or to Beatson’s, or the Stores, or any of the other places for which I gave you commissions?” Her voice cut like a knife.
Julie hesitated. She had grown very white. Suddenly her face settled and steadied.
“No,” she said, calmly. “I meant to have done all your commissions. But I was persuaded by Evelyn to spend a couple of hours with her, and her maid undertook them.”
Lady Henry flushed deeply.
“So, mademoiselle, unknown to me, you spent two hours of my time amusing yourself at Crowborough House. May I ask what you were doing there?”
“I was trying to help the Duchess in her plans for the bazaar.”
“Indeed? Was anyone else there? Answer me, mademoiselle.”
Julie hesitated again, and again spoke with a kind of passionate composure.
“Yes. Mr. Delafield was there.”
“So I supposed. Allow me to assure you, mademoiselle”—Lady Henry rose from her seat, leaning on her stick; surely no old face was ever more formidable, more withering—“that whatever ambitions you may cherish, Jacob Delafield is not altogether the simpleton you imagine. I know him better than you. He will take some time before he really makes up his mind to marry a woman of your disposition—and your history.”
Julie Le Breton also rose.
“I am afraid, Lady Henry, that here, too, you are in the dark,” she said, quietly, though her thin arm shook against her dress. “I shall not marry Mr. Delafield. But it is because—I have refused him twice.”
Lady Henry gasped. She fell back into her chair, staring at her companion.
“You have—refused him?”
“A month ago, and last year. It is horrid of me to say a word. But you forced me.”
Julie was now leaning, to support herself, on the back of an old French chair. Feeling and excitement had blanched her no less than Lady Henry, but her fine head and delicate form breathed a will so proud, a dignity so passionate, that Lady Henry shrank before her.
“Why did you refuse him?”
Julie shrugged her shoulders.
“That, I think, is my affair. But if—I had loved him—I should not have consulted your scruples, Lady Henry.”
“That’s frank,” said Lady Henry. “I like that better than anything you’ve said yet. You are aware that he may inherit the dukedom of Chudleigh?”
“I have several times heard you say so,” said the other, coldly.
Lady Henry looked at her long and keenly. Various things that Wilfrid Bury had said recurred to her. She thought of Captain Warkworth. She wondered.
Suddenly she held out her hand.
“I dare say you won’t take it, mademoiselle. I suppose I’ve been insulting you. But—you have been playing tricks with me. In a good many ways, we’re quits. Still, I confess, I admire you a good deal. Anyway, I offer you my hand. I apologize for my recent remarks. Shall we bury the hatchet, and try and go on as before?”
Julie Le Breton turned slowly and took the hand—without unction.
“I make you angry,” she said, and her voice trembled, “without knowing how or why.”
Lady Henry gulped.
“Oh, it mayn’t answer,” she said, as their hands dropped. “But we may as well have one more trial. And, mademoiselle, I shall be delighted that you should assist the Duchess with her bazaar.”
Julie shook her head.
“I don’t think I have any heart for it,” she said, sadly; and then, as Lady Henry sat silent, she approached.
“You look very tired. Shall I send your maid?”
That melancholy and beautiful voice laid a strange spell on Lady Henry. Her companion appeared to her, for a moment, in a new light—as a personage of drama or romance. But she shook off the spell.
“At once, please. Another day like this would put an end to me.”
VII
Julie Le Breton was sitting alone in her own small sitting-room. It was the morning of the Tuesday following her Sunday scene with Lady Henry, and she was busy with various household affairs. A small hamper of flowers, newly arrived from Lady Henry’s Surrey garden, and not yet unpacked, was standing open on the table, with various empty flower-glasses beside it. Julie was, at the moment, occupied with the “Stores order” for the month, and Lady Henry’s cook-housekeeper had but just left the room after delivering an urgent statement on the need for “relining” a large number of Lady Henry’s copper saucepans.
The room was plain and threadbare. It had been the schoolroom of various generations of Delafields in the past. But for an observant eye it contained a good many objects which threw light upon its present occupant’s character and history. In a small bookcase beside the fire were a number of volumes in French bindings. They represented either the French classics—Racine, Bossuet, Châteaubriand, Lamartine—which had formed the study of Julie’s convent days, or those other books—George Sand, Victor Hugo, Alfred de
