Delafield frowned uncomfortably.
“Why? Hadn’t you better leave her alone?”
“Oh, of course, I know you think me a chatterbox. I don’t care. You must let me tell you some fresh news about her. It isn’t gossip, and you and I are her best friends. Oh, Freddie’s so disagreeable about her. Jacob, you’ve got to help and advise a little. Now, do listen. It’s your duty—your downright catechism duty.”
And she poured into his reluctant ear the tale which Miss Emily Lawrence nearly a fortnight before had confided to her.
“Of course,” she wound up, “you’ll say it’s only what we knew or guessed long ago. But you see, Jacob, we didn’t know. It might have been just gossip. And then, besides”—she frowned and dropped her voice till it was only just audible—“this horrid man hadn’t made our Julie so—so conspicuous, and Lady Henry hadn’t turned out such a toad—and, altogether, Jacob, I’m dreadfully worried.”
“Don’t be,” said Jacob, dryly.
“And what a creature!” cried the Duchess, unheeding. “They say that poor Moffatt child will soon have fretted herself ill, if the guardians don’t give way about the two years.”
“What two years?”
“The two years that she must wait—till she is twenty-one. Oh, Jacob, you know that!” exclaimed the Duchess, impatient with him. “I’ve told you scores of times.”
“I’m not in the least interested in Miss Moffatt’s affairs.”
“But you ought to be, for they concern Julie,” cried the Duchess. “Can’t you imagine what kind of things people are saying? Lady Henry has spread it about that it was all to see him she bribed the Bruton Street servants to let her give the Wednesday party as usual—that she had been flirting with him abominably for months, and using Lady Henry’s name in the most impertinent ways. And now, suddenly, everybody seems to know something about this Indian engagement. You may imagine it doesn’t look very well for our poor Julie. The other night at Chatton House I was furious. I made Julie go. I wanted her to show herself, and keep up her friends. Well, it was horrid! One or two old frights, who used to be only too thankful to Julie for reminding Lady Henry to invite them, put their noses in the air and behaved odiously. And even some of the nicer ones seemed changed—I could see Julie felt it.”
“Nothing of all that will do her any real harm,” said Jacob, rather contemptuously.
“Well, no. I know, of course, that her real friends will never forsake her—never, never! But, Jacob”—the Duchess hesitated, her charming little face furrowed with thought—“if only so much of it weren’t true. She herself—”
“Please, Evelyn,” said Delafield, with decision, “don’t tell me anything she may have said to you.”
The Duchess flushed.
“I shouldn’t have betrayed any confidence,” she said, proudly. “And I must consult with someone who cares about her. Dr. Meredith lunched with me today, and he said a few words to me afterwards. He’s quite anxious, too—and unhappy. Captain Warkworth’s always there—always! Even I have been hardly able to see her the last few days. Last Sunday they took the little lame child and went into the country for the whole day—”
“Well, what is there to object to in that?” cried Jacob.
“I didn’t say there was anything to object to,” said the Duchess, looking at him with eyes half angry, half perplexed. “Only it’s so unlike her. She had promised to be at home that afternoon for several old friends, and they found her flown, without a word. And think how sweet Julie is always about such things—what delicious notes she writes, how she hates to put anybody out or disappoint them! And now, not a word of excuse to anybody. And she looks so ill—so white, so fixed—like a person in a dream which she can’t shake off. I’m just miserable about her. And I hate, hate that man—engaged to her own cousin all the time!” cried the little Duchess, under her breath, as she passionately tore some violets at her waist to pieces and flung them out of the carriage. Then she turned to Jacob.
“But, of course, if you don’t care twopence about all this, Jacob, it’s no good talking to you!”
Her taunt fell quite unnoticed. Jacob turned to her with smiling composure.
“You have forgotten, my dear Evelyn, all this time, that Warkworth goes away—to mid-Africa—in little more than two weeks.”
“I wish it was two minutes,” said the Duchess, fuming.
Delafield made no reply for a while. He seemed to be studying the effect of a pale shaft of sunlight which had just come stealing down through layers of thin gray cloud to dance upon the Serpentine. Presently, as they left the Serpentine behind them, he turned to his companion with more apparent sympathy.
“We can’t do anything, Evelyn, and we’ve no right whatever to talk of alarm, or anxiety—to talk of it, mind! It’s—it’s disloyal. Forgive me,” he added, hastily, “I know you don’t gossip. But it fills me with rage that other people should be doing it.”
The brusquerie of his manner disconcerted the little lady beside him. She recovered herself, however, and said, with a touch of sarcasm, tempered by a rather trembling lip:
“Your rage won’t prevent their gossiping, Mr. Jacob, I thought, perhaps, your friendship might have done something to stop it—to—to influence Julie,” she added, uncertainly.
“My friendship, as you call it, is of no use whatever,” he said, obstinately. “Warkworth will go away, and if you and others do their best to protect Miss Le Breton, talk will soon die out. Behave as if you had never heard the man’s name before—stare the people down. Why, good Heavens! you have a thousand arts! But, of course, if the little flame is to be blown into a blaze by a score of so-called friends—”
He shrugged his shoulders.
The Duchess did not take his rebukes kindly, not having, in truth, deserved them.
“You are rude and unkind, Jacob,” she said, almost with the tears in her eyes. “And you don’t understand—it is because I myself am so anxious—”
“For that
