Sir Wilfrid started. Through his mind ran the same reflection as that to which the Duke had given expression in the morning—“she ought to reveal herself!” Julie Le Breton had no right to leave this old man in his ignorance, while those surrounding him were in the secret. Thereby she made a spectacle of her mother’s father—made herself and him the sport of curious eyes. For who could help watching them—every movement, every word? There was a kind of indelicacy in it.
His reply was rather hesitating. “Yes, I happen to know something. But I feel sure Miss Le Breton would prefer to tell you herself. Ask her. While she was with Lady Henry there were reasons for silence—”
“But, of course, I’ll ask her,” said his companion, eagerly, “if you suppose that I may. A more hungry curiosity was never raised in a human breast than in mine with regard to this dear lady. So charming, handsome, and well bred—and so forlorn! That’s the paradox of it. The personality presupposes a milieu—else how produce it? And there is no milieu, save this little circle she has made for herself through Lady Henry. … Ah, and you think I may ask her? I will—that’s flat—I will!”
And the old man gleefully rubbed his hands, face and form full of the vivacity of his imperishable youth.
“Choose your time and place,” said Sir Wilfrid, hastily. “There are very sad and tragic circumstances—”
Lord Lackington looked at him and nodded gayly, as much as to say, “You distrust me with the sex? Me, who have had the whip-hand of them since my cradle!”
Suddenly the Duchess interrupted. “Sir Wilfrid, you have seen Lady Henry; which did she mind most—the coming-in or the coffee?”
Bury returned, smiling, to the tea-table.
“The coming-in would have been nothing if it had led quickly to the going-out. It was the coffee that ruined you.”
“I see,” said the Duchess, pouting—“it meant that it was possible for us to enjoy ourselves without Lady Henry. That was the offence.”
“Precisely. It showed that you were enjoying yourselves. Otherwise there would have been no lingering, and no coffee.”
“I never knew coffee so fatal before,” sighed the Duchess. “And now”—it was evident that she shrank from the answer to her own question—“she is really irreconcilable?”
“Absolutely. Let me beg you to take it for granted.”
“She won’t see any of us—not me?”
Sir Wilfrid hesitated.
“Make the Duke your ambassador.”
The Duchess laughed, and flushed a little.
“And Mr. Montresor?”
“Ah,” said Sir Wilfrid in another tone, “that’s not to be lightly spoken of.”
“You don’t mean—”
“How many years has that lasted?” said Sir Wilfrid, meditatively.
“Thirty, I think—if not more. It was Lady Henry who told him of his son’s death, when his wife daren’t do it.”
There was a silence. Montresor had lost his only son, a subaltern in the Lancers, in the action of Alumbagh, on the way to the relief of Lucknow.
Then the Duchess broke out:
“I know that you think in your heart of hearts that Julie has been in fault, and that we have all behaved abominably!”
“My dear lady,” said Sir Wilfrid, after a moment, “in Persia we believe in fate; I have brought the trick home.”
“Yes, yes, that’s it!” exclaimed Lord Lackington—“that’s it! When Lady Henry wanted a companion—and fate brought her Miss Le Breton—”
“Last night’s coffee was already drunk,” put in Sir Wilfrid.
Meredith’s voice, raised and a trifle harsh, made itself heard.
“Why you should dignify an ugly jealousy by fine words I don’t know. For some women—women like our old friend—gratitude is hard. That is the moral of this tale.”
“The only one?” said Sir Wilfrid, not without a mocking twist of the lip.
“The only one that matters. Lady Henry had found, or might have found, a daughter—”
“I understand she bargained for a companion.”
“Very well. Then she stands upon her foolish rights, and loses both daughter and companion. At seventy, life doesn’t forgive you a blunder of that kind.”
Sir Wilfrid silently shook his head. Meredith threw back his blanched mane of hair, his deep eyes kindling under the implied contradiction.
“I am an old comrade of Lady Henry’s,” he said, quickly. “My record, you’ll find, comes next to yours, Bury. But if Lady Henry is determined to make a quarrel of this, she must make it. I regret nothing.”
“What madness has seized upon all these people?” thought Bury, as he withdrew from the discussion. The fire, the unwonted fire, in Meredith’s speech and aspect, amazed him. From the corner to which he had retreated he studied the face of the journalist. It was a face subtly and strongly lined by much living—of the intellectual, however, rather than the physical sort; breathing now a studious dignity, the effect of the broad sweep of brow under the high-peaked lines of grizzled hair, and now broken, tempestuous, scornful, changing with the pliancy of an actor. The head was sunk a little in the shoulders, as though dragged back by its own weight. The form which it commanded had the movements of a man no less accustomed to rule in his own sphere than Montresor himself.
To Sir Wilfrid the famous editor was still personally mysterious, after many years of intermittent acquaintance. He was apparently unmarried; or was there perhaps a wife, picked up in a previous state of existence, and hidden away with her offspring at Clapham or Hornsey or Peckham? Bury could remember, years before, a dowdy old sister, to whom Lady Henry had been on occasion formally polite. Otherwise, nothing. What were the great man’s origins and antecedents—his family, school, university? Sir Wilfrid did not know; he did not believe that anyone knew. An amazing mastery of the German, and, it was said,
