s to-morrow morning, as soon as you can get away. She
told me to say that--Hutton gave me a little note from her. Your home
must be with her till we can all settle what is best. You know very well
you have devoted friends. But now good-night. Try to sleep. Evelyn and I
will do all we can with Lady Henry."

Julie drew herself out of his hold. "Tell Evelyn I will come to see her,
at any rate, as soon as I can put my things together. Good-night."

And she, too, dragged herself up-stairs sobbing, starting at every
shadow. All her nerve and daring were gone. The thought that she must
spend yet another night under the roof of this old woman who hated her
filled her with terror. When she reached her room she locked her door
and wept for hours in a forlorn and aching misery.

X

The Duchess was in her morning-room. On the rug, in marked and, as it
seemed to her plaintive eyes, brutal contrast with the endless
photographs of her babies and women friends which crowded her
mantel-piece, stood the Duke, much out of temper. He was a powerfully
built man, some twenty years older than his wife, with a dark
complexion, enlivened by ruddy cheeks and prominent, red lips. His eyes
were of a cold, clear gray; his hair very black, thick, and wiry. An
extremely vigorous person, more than adequately aware of his own
importance, tanned and seasoned by the life of his class, by the
yachting, hunting, and shooting in which his own existence was largely
spent, slow in perception, and of a sulky temper--so one might have read
him at first sight. But these impressions only took you a certain way in
judging the character of the Duchess's husband.

As to the sulkiness, there could be no question on this particular
morning--though, indeed, his ill-humor deserved a more positive and
energetic name.

"You have got yourself and me," he was declaring, "into a most
disagreeable and unnecessary scrape. This letter of Lady Henry's"--he
held it up--"is one of the most annoying that I have received for many a
day. Lady Henry seems to me perfectly justified. You _have_ been
behaving in a quite unwarrantable way. And now you tell me that this
woman, who is the cause of it all, of whose conduct I thoroughly and
entirely disapprove, is coming to stay here, in my house, whether I like
it or not, and you expect me to be civil to her. If you persist, I shall
go down to Brackmoor till she is pleased to depart. I won't countenance
the thing at all, and, what