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These were portions of that strange document composed through the intervals of a long night, which showed in Warkworth's mind the survival of a moral code, inherited from generations of scrupulous and God-fearing ancestors, overlaid by selfish living, and now revived under the stress, the purification partly of deepening passion, partly of a high responsibility.
"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 some one who cares about her. Dr. Meredith lunched with me to-day, and he said a few words to me afterwards. He's quite anxious, too and unhappy. Captain Warkworth's always there always!
Why was he so pale an embodied grief? Warkworth's death was not a mortal stroke for him. He came closer, and still Julie's eyes held him. Was it her fault, this this shadowed countenance, these suggestions of a dumb strain and conflict, which not even his strong youth could bear without betrayal?
But Julie, who on that one and only occasion had paraded her intimacy with Delafield, thenceforward said not a word of him, and Warkworth's jealousy had died for lack of fuel. In relation to Julie, Delafield had been surely the mere shadow and agent of his little cousin the Duchess a friendly, knight-errant sort of person, with a liking for the distressed.
Then through the door she saw a man standing in the hall and recognized Captain Warkworth's Indian servant. "I don't understand him," said the Scotchwoman, shaking her head. Julie went out to speak with him. The man had been sent to Crowborough House with instructions to inquire for Miss Le Breton and deliver his note.
Her slender hands busied themselves with Cousin Mary Leicester's tea-things; and every movement had in Warkworth's eyes a charm to which he had never yet been sensible, in this manner, to this degree. "Am I really to say no more of yesterday?" he said, looking at her nervously. Her flush, her gesture, appealed to him. "Do you know what I had before me that day when you came in?" she said, softly.
She tore off the outer envelope; beneath was a letter of which the address was feebly written in Warkworth's hand: "Mademoiselle Le Breton, 3 Heribert Street, London." She had the strength to carry her own letter to her room, to call Aileen's maid and send her with the other packet to Lady Blanche. Then she locked herself in.... Oh, the poor, crumpled page, and the labored hand-writing!
She lifted her eyes from it to look at Aileen, propped up in bed, her head thrown back against the pillow, and her little hands closed happily over Warkworth's letters; and she went straight from that vision to write to the traitor. The traitor defended and excused himself by return of post.
Innumerable memories of this kind beat on Julie's mind as she sat dreamily on her bench among the Swiss meadows. How natural that in the end they should sweep her by reaction into imaginations wholly indifferent of a drum-and-trumpet history, in the actual fighting world. ... Far, far in the African desert she followed the march of Warkworth's little troop.
Meredith, too, found a comfortable arm-chair, and presently tried to beguile the kitten from his neighbor. Julie sat erect between them, very silent, her thin, white hands on her lap, her head drooped a little, her eyes carefully restrained from meeting Warkworth's. He meanwhile leaned against the mantel-piece, irresolute.
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