Suddenly a thought of another kind occurred to her. It added to her smart that Sir Wilfrid, in their meeting at Lady Hubert’s, had spoken to her and looked at her with that slight touch of laughing contempt. There had been no insincerity in that emotion with which she had first appealed to him as her mother’s friend; she did truly value the old man’s good opinion. And yet she had told him lies.
“I can’t help it,” she said to herself, with a little shiver. The story about the biography had been the invention of a moment. It had made things easy, and it had a small foundation in the fact that Lady Henry had talked vaguely of using the letters lent her by Captain Warkworth for the elucidation—perhaps in a Nineteenth Century article—of certain passages in her husband’s Indian career.
Jacob Delafield, too. There also it was no less clear to her than to Sir Wilfrid that she had “overdone it.” It was true, then, what Lady Henry said of her—that she had an overmastering tendency to intrigue—to a perpetual tampering with the plain fact?
“Well, it is the way in which such people as I defend themselves,” she said, obstinately, repeating to herself what she had said to Sir Wilfrid Bury.
And then she set against it, proudly, that disinterestedness of which, as she vowed to herself, no one but she knew the facts. It was true, what she had said to the Duchess and to Sir Wilfrid. Plenty of people would give her money, would make her life comfortable, without the need for any daily slavery. She would not take it. Jacob Delafield would marry her, if she lifted her finger; and she would not lift it. Dr. Meredith would marry her, and she had said him nay. She hugged the thought of her own unknown and unapplauded integrity. It comforted her pride. It drew a veil over that wounding laughter which had gleamed for a moment through those long lashes of Sir Wilfrid Bury.
Last of all, as she sank into her restless sleep, came the remembrance that she was still under Lady Henry’s roof. In the silence of the night the difficulties of her situation pressed upon and tormented her. What was she to do? Whom was she to trust?
“Dixon, how is Lady Henry?”
“Much too ill to come downstairs, miss. She’s very much put out; in fact, miss (the maid lowered her voice), you hardly dare go near her. But she says herself it would be absurd to attempt it.”
“Has Hatton had any orders?”
“Yes, miss. I’ve just told him what her ladyship wishes. He’s to tell everybody that Lady Henry’s very sorry, and hoped up to the last moment to be able to come down as usual.”
“Has Lady Henry all she wants, Dixon? Have you taken her the evening papers?”
“Oh yes, miss. But if you go in to her much her ladyship says you’re disturbing her; and if you don’t go, why, of course, everybody’s neglecting her.”
“Do you think I may go and say good night to her, Dixon?”
The maid hesitated.
“I’ll ask her, miss—I’ll certainly ask her.”
The door closed, and Julie was left alone in the great drawing-room of the Bruton Street house. It had been prepared as usual for the Wednesday—evening party. The flowers were fresh; the chairs had been arranged as Lady Henry liked to have them; the parquet floors shone under the electric light; the Gainsboroughs seemed to look down from the walls with a gay and friendly expectancy.
For herself, Julie had just finished her solitary dinner, still buoyed up while she was eating it by the hope that Lady Henry would be able to come down. The bitter winds of the two previous days, however, had much aggravated her chronic rheumatism. She was certainly ill and suffering; but Julie had known her make such heroic efforts before this to keep her Wednesdays going that not till Dixon appeared with her verdict did she give up hope.
So everybody would be turned away. Julie paced the drawing-room a solitary figure amid its lights and flowers—solitary and dejected. In a couple of hours’ time all her particular friends would come to the door, and it would be shut against them. “Of course, expect me tonight,” had been the concluding words of her letter of the morning. Several people also had announced themselves for this evening whom it was extremely desirable she should see. A certain eminent colonel, professor at the Staff College, was being freely named in the papers for the Mokembe mission. Never was it more necessary for her to keep all the threads of her influence in good working order. And these Wednesday evenings offered her the occasions when she was most successful, most at her ease—especially whenever Lady Henry was not well enough to leave the comparatively limited sphere of the back drawing-room.
Moreover, the gatherings themselves ministered to a veritable craving in Julie Le Breton—the craving for society and conversation. She shared it with Lady Henry, but in her it was even more deeply rooted. Lady Henry had ten talents in the Scriptural sense—money, rank, all sorts of inherited bonds and associations. Julie Le Breton had but this one. Society was with her both an instinct and an art. With the subtlest and most intelligent ambition she had trained and improved her natural gift for it during the last few years. And now, to the excitement of society was added the excitement of a new and tyrannous feeling, for which society was henceforth a mere weapon to be used.
She fumed and fretted for a while in silence. Every now and then she would pause in front of one of the great mirrors of the room, and look at the reflection of her tall thinness and the trailing satin of her gown.
“The girl—so pretty,
