But the confusion in his mind had somehow to be mastered, and he made an effort.
“I shall be glad if my wife is able to be of any assistance to you, Miss Le Breton,” he said, coldly; “but it would not be honest if I were to conceal my opinion—so far as I have been able to form it—that Lady Henry has great and just cause of complaint.”
“You are quite right—quite right,” said Julie, almost with eagerness. “She has, indeed.”
The Duke was taken by surprise. Imperious as he was, and stiffened by a good many of those petty prides which the spoiled children of the world escape so hardly, he found himself hesitating—groping for his words.
The Duchess meanwhile drew Julie impulsively towards a chair.
“Do sit down. You look so tired.”
But Julie’s gaze was still bent upon the Duke. She restrained her friend’s eager hand, and the Duke collected himself. He brought a chair, and Julie seated herself.
“I am deeply, deeply distressed about Lady Henry,” she said, in a low voice, by which the Duke felt himself most unwillingly penetrated. “I don’t—oh no, indeed, I don’t defend last night. Only—my position has been very difficult lately. I wanted very much to see the Duchess—and—it was natural—wasn’t it?—that the old friends should like to be personally informed about Lady Henry’s illness? But, of course, they stayed too long; it was my fault—I ought to have prevented it.”
She paused. This stern-looking man, who stood with his back to the mantelpiece regarding her, Philistine though he was, had yet a straight, disinterested air, from which she shrank a little. Honestly, she would have liked to tell him the truth. But how could she? She did her best, and her account certainly was no more untrue than scores of narratives of social incident which issue every day from lips the most respected and the most veracious. As for the Duchess, she thought it the height of candor and generosity. The only thing she could have wished, perhaps, in her inmost heart, was that she had not found Julie alone with Harry Warkworth. But her loyal lips would have suffered torments rather than accuse or betray her friend.
The Duke meanwhile went through various phases of opinion as Julie laid her story before him. Perhaps he was chiefly affected by the tone of quiet independence—as from equal to equal—in which she addressed him. His wife’s cousin by marriage; the granddaughter of an old and intimate friend of his own family; the daughter of a man known at one time throughout Europe, and himself amply well born—all these facts, warm, living, and still efficacious, stood, as it were, behind this manner of hers, prompting and endorsing it. But, good Heavens! was illegitimacy to be as legitimacy?—to carry with it no stains and penalties? Was vice to be virtue, or as good? The Duke rebelled.
“It is a most unfortunate affair, of that there can be no doubt,” he said, after a moment’s silence, when Julie had brought her story to an end; and then, more sternly, “I shall certainly apologize for my wife’s share in it.”
“Lady Henry won’t be angry with the Duchess long,” said Julie Le Breton. “As for me”—her voice sank—“my letter this morning was returned to me unopened.”
There was an uncomfortable pause; then Julie resumed, in another tone:
“But what I am now chiefly anxious to discuss is, how can we save Lady Henry from any further pain or annoyance? She once said to me in a fit of anger that if I left her in consequence of a quarrel, and any of her old friends sided with me, she would never see them again.”
“I know,” said the Duke, sharply. “Her salon will break up. She already foresees it.”
“But why?—why?” cried Julie, in a most becoming distress. “Somehow, we must prevent it. Unfortunately I must live in London. I have the offer of work here—journalist’s work which cannot be done in the country or abroad. But I would do all I could to shield Lady Henry.”
“What about Mr. Montresor?” said the Duke, abruptly. Montresor had been the well-known Châteaubriand to Lady Henry’s Madame Récamier for more than a generation.
Julie turned to him with eagerness.
“Mr. Montresor wrote to me early this morning. The letter reached me at breakfast. In Mrs. Montresor’s name and his own, he asked me to stay with them till my plans developed. He—he was kind enough to say he felt himself partly responsible for last night.”
“And you replied?” The Duke eyed her keenly.
Julie sighed and looked down.
“I begged him not to think any more of me in the matter, but to write at once to Lady Henry. I hope he has done so.”
“And so you refused—excuse these questions—Mrs. Montresor’s invitation?”
The working of the Duke’s mind was revealed in his drawn and puzzled brows.
“Certainly.” The speaker looked at him with surprise. “Lady Henry would never have forgiven that. It could not be thought of. Lord Lackington also”—but her voice wavered.
“Yes?” said the Duchess, eagerly, throwing herself on a stool at Julie’s feet and looking up into her face.
“He, too, has written to me. He wants to help me. But—I can’t let him.”
The words ended in a whisper. She leaned back in her chair, and put her handkerchief to her eyes. It was very quietly done, and very touching. The Duchess threw a lightning glance at her husband; and then, possessing herself of one of Julie’s hands, she kissed it and murmured over it.
“Was there ever such a situation?” thought the Duke, much shaken. “And she has already, if Evelyn is to be believed,
