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And as she spoke the words of one of the chainless souls of history, in a voice passionately full and rich, she sprang to her feet, and, drawing her slender form to its full height, she locked her hands behind her, and began to pace the room with a wild, free step. Every nerve in Warkworth's frame was tingling.
"What a day it has been for you! Evelyn is writing letters. Let me bring you the papers and please don't talk." She submitted to a sofa, to an adjusted light, to the papers on her knee. Then Delafield withdrew and took up a book. She could not rest, however; visions of the morrow and of Warkworth's triumphant looks kept flashing through her.
Julie, in her thick veil, sat motionless in her corner. She was not conscious of any particular agitation. Her mind was strained not to forget any of Warkworth's directions. She was to drive across immediately to the Gare de Sceaux, in the Place Denfert-Rochereau, where he would meet her.
"How did you ever bear the Bruton Street life?" he said, presently, in a low voice of wonder. "Lady Henry knew?" "Oh yes!" "And the Duchess?" "Yes. She is a connection of my mother's." Warkworth's mind went back to the Moffatts. A flush spread slowly over the face of the young officer. It was indeed an extraordinary imbroglio in which he found himself.
Was she oppressed by this stirring of old sorrows? haunted afresh by her parents' fate? Ah! Lord Lackington had no sooner left her than she sank motionless into her chair, and, with the tears excited by the memories of her mother still in her eyes, she gave herself up to a desperate and sombre brooding, of which Warkworth's visit of the afternoon was, in truth, the sole cause, the sole subject.
Potentially he felt himself the great man's equal; the gates of life seemed to be opening before him. And with the rise of fortune came a rush of magnanimous resolution. No more shady episodes; no more mean devices; no more gambling, and no more debt. Major Warkworth's sheet was clean, and it should remain so. A man of his prospects must run straight. He felt himself at peace with all the world.
"I think I came for conversation," was Warkworth's laughing reply, as he looked first at his hostess and then at the circle. "Then I fear you won't get it," said Lady Henry, throwing herself back in her chair. "Mr. Montresor can do nothing but quarrel and contradict." Montresor lifted his hands in wonder. "Had I been Æsop," he said, slyly, "I would have added another touch to a certain tale.
Warkworth's letters, Julie's company those seemed to be all she desired.
Upon the darkness outside there rose a face, so sharply drawn, so life-like, that it printed itself forever upon the quivering tissues of the brain. It was Warkworth's face, not as she had seen it last, but in some strange extremity of physical ill drawn, haggard, in a cold sweat the eyes glazed, the hair matted, the parched lips open as though they cried for help. She stood gazing.
When Warkworth's attentions, pushed with an ardor which would have driven any prudent mother to an instant departure from India, had made a timid and charming child of eighteen the talk of Simla, Lady Blanche, excited and dishevelled was it her personal untidiness which accounted for the other epithet of "quaint," which had floated to the Duchess's ear, and been by her reported to Julie? refused to break her daughter's heart.
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