nestly,
she would have liked to tell him the truth. But how could she? She did
her best, and her account certainly was no more untrue than scores of
narratives of social incident which issue every day from lips the most
respected and the most veracious. As for the Duchess, she thought it the
height of candor and generosity. The only thing she could have wished,
perhaps, in her inmost heart, was that she had _not_ found Julie alone
with Harry Warkworth. But her loyal lips would have suffered torments
rather than accuse or betray her friend.

The Duke meanwhile went through various phases of opinion as Julie laid
her story before him. Perhaps he was chiefly affected by the tone of
quiet independence--as from equal to equal--in which she addressed him.
His wife's cousin by marriage; the granddaughter of an old and intimate
friend of his own family; the daughter of a man known at one time
throughout Europe, and himself amply well born--all these facts, warm,
living, and still efficacious, stood, as it were, behind this manner of
hers, prompting and endorsing it. But, good Heavens! was illegitimacy to
be as legitimacy?--to carry with it no stains and penalties? Was vice to
be virtue, or as good? The Duke rebelled.

"It is a most unfortunate affair, of that there can be no doubt," he
said, after a moment's silence, when Julie had brought her story to an
end; and then, more sternly, "I shall certainly apologize for my wife's
share in it."

"Lady Henry won't be angry with the Duchess long," said Julie Le Breton.
"As for me"--her voice sank--"my letter this morning was returned to me
unopened."

There was an uncomfortable pause; then Julie resumed, in another tone:

"But what I am now chiefly anxious to discuss is, how can we save Lady
Henry from any further pain or annoyance? She once said to me in a fit
of anger that if I left her in consequence of a quarrel, and any of her
old friends sided with me, she would never see them again."

"I know," said the Duke, sharply. "Her salon will break up. She already
foresees it."

"But why?--why?" cried Julie, in a most becoming distress. "Somehow, we
must prevent it. Unfortunately I must live in London. I have the offer
of work here--journalist's work which cannot be done in the country or
abroad. But I would do all I could to shield Lady Henry."

"What about Mr. Montresor?" said the Duke, abruptly. Montresor had been
the well-known Chateaubriand to Lady Henry's Madame Recamier