“Well, upon my word,” he said, as he resumed his march up and down—“upon my word!” Then, as he stood still before her, “You say she is Marriott Dalrymple’s daughter?”
“And Lord Lackington’s granddaughter,” said the Duchess, panting a little from her exertions. “And, oh, what a blind bat you were not to see it at once—from the likeness!”
“As if one had any right to infer such a thing from a likeness!” said the Duke, angrily. “Really, Evelyn, your talk is most—most unbecoming. It seems to me that Mademoiselle Le Breton has already done you harm. All that you have told me, supposing it to be true—oh, of course, I know you believe it to be true—only makes me”—he stiffened his back—“the more determined to break off the connection between her and you. A woman of such antecedents is not a fit companion for my wife, independently of the fact that she seems to be, in herself, an intriguing and dangerous character.”
“How could she help her antecedents?” cried the Duchess.
“I didn’t say she could help them. But if they are what you say, she ought—well, she ought to be all the more careful to live in a modest and retired way, instead of, as I understand, making herself the rival of Lady Henry. I never heard anything so preposterous—so—so indecent! She shows no proper sense, and, as for you, I deeply regret you should have been brought into any contact with such a disgraceful story.”
“Freddie!” The Duchess went into a helpless, half-hysterical fit of laughter.
But the Duke merely expanded, as it seemed, still further—to his utmost height and bulk. “Oh, dear,” thought the Duchess, in despair, “now he is going to be like his mother!” Her strictly Evangelical mother-in-law, with whom the Duke had made his bachelor home for many years, had been the scourge of her early married life; and though for Freddie’s sake she had shed a few tears over her death, eighteen months before this date, the tears—as indeed the Duke had thought at the time—had been only too quickly dried.
There could be no question about it, the Duke was painfully like his mother as he replied:
“I fear that your education, Evelyn, has led you to take such things far more lightly than you ought. I am old-fashioned. Illegitimacy with me does carry a stigma, and the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. At any rate, we who occupy a prominent social place have no right to do anything which may lead others to think lightly of God’s law. I am sorry to speak plainly, Evelyn. I dare say you don’t like these sentiments, but you know, at least, that I am quite honest in expressing them.”
The Duke turned to her, not without dignity. He was and had been from his boyhood a person of irreproachable morals—earnest and religious according to his lights, a good son, husband, and father. His wife looked at him with mingled feelings.
“Well, all I know is,” she said, passionately beating her little foot on the carpet before her, “that, by all accounts, the only thing to do with Colonel Delaney was to run away from him.”
The Duke shrugged his shoulders.
“You don’t expect me to be much moved by a remark of that kind? As to this lady, your story does not affect me in her favor in the smallest degree. She has had her education; Lord Lackington gives her one hundred pounds a year; if she is a self-respecting woman she will look after herself. I don’t want to have her here, and I beg you won’t invite her. A couple of nights, perhaps—I don’t mind that—but not for longer.”
“Oh, as to that, you may be very sure she won’t stay here unless you’re very particularly nice to her. There’ll be plenty of people glad—enchanted—to have her! I don’t care about that, but what I do want is”—the Duchess looked up with calm audacity—“that you should find her a house.”
The Duke paused in his walk and surveyed his wife with amazement.
“Evelyn, are you quite mad?”
“Not in the least. You have more houses than you know what to do with, and a great deal more money than anybody in the world ought to have. If they ever do set up the guillotine at Hyde Park Corner, we shall be among the first—we ought to be!”
“What is the good of talking nonsense like this, Evelyn?” said the Duke, once more consulting his watch. “Let’s go back to the subject of my letter to Lady Henry.”
“It’s most excellent sense!” cried the Duchess, springing up. “You have more houses than you know what to do with; and you have one house in particular—that little place at the back of Cureton Street where Cousin Mary Leicester lived so long—which is in your hands still, I know, for you told me so last week—which is vacant and furnished—Cousin Mary left you the furniture, as if we hadn’t got enough!—and it would be the very thing for Julie, if only you’d lend it to her till she can turn round.”
The Duchess was now standing up, confronting her lord, her hands grasping the chair behind her, her small form alive with eagerness and the feminine determination to get her own way, by fair means or foul.
“Cureton Street!” said the Duke, almost at the end of his tether. “And how do you propose that this young woman is to live—in Cureton Street, or anywhere else?”
“She means to write,” said the Duchess, shortly. “Dr. Meredith has promised her work.”
“Sheer lunacy! In six months time you’d have to step in and pay all her bills.”
“I should like to see anybody dare to propose to Julie to pay her bills!” cried the Duchess, with scorn. “You see, the great pity is, Freddie, that you don’t know anything at all about her. But that house—wasn’t it made out of a stable? It
