agine she will regret it;" he said, dryly.

She made no reply. He mentally accused himself for a brute, and then
shook off the charge. Surely a few pin-pricks were her desert! That she
should defend her own secrets was, as Delafield had said, legitimate
enough. But when a man offers you his services, you should not befool
him beyond a certain point.

She must be aware of what he was thinking. He glanced at her curiously;
at the stately dress gleaming with jet, which no longer affected
anything of the girl; at the fine but old-fashioned necklace of pearls
and diamonds--no doubt her mother's--which clasped her singularly
slender throat. At any rate, she showed nothing. She began to talk again
of the Delafield miniatures, using her fan the while with graceful
deliberation; and presently they found the Duchess.

"Is she an adventuress, or is she not?" thought Bury, as his hansom
carried him away from Rutland Gate. "If she marries Jacob, it will be a
queer business."

VIII

Meanwhile the Duchess had dropped Julie Le Breton at Lady Henry's door.
Julie groped her way up-stairs through the sleeping house. She found her
room in darkness, and she turned on no light. There was still a last
glimmer of fire, and she sank down by it, her long arms clasped round
her knees, her head thrown back as though she listened still to words
in her ears.

"Oh, such a child! Such a dear, simple-minded child! Report engaged her
to at least ten different people at Simla. She had a crowd of cavaliers
there--I was one of them. The whole place adored her. She is a very rare
little creature, but well looked after, I can tell you--a long array of
guardians in the background."

How was it possible not to trust that aspect and that smile? Her mind
travelled back to the autumn days when she had seen them first; reviewed
the steps, so little noticed at first, so rapid lately and full of fate,
by which she had come into this bondage wherein she stood. She saw the
first appearance of the young soldier in Lady Henry's drawing-room; her
first conversation with him; and all the subtle development of that
singular relation between them, into which so many elements had entered.
The flattering sense of social power implied both in the homage of this
young and successful man, and in the very services that she, on her
side, was able to render him; impulsive gratitude for that homage, at a
time when her very soul was smarting under Lady Henry's contemptuou