Only it's so
unlike her. She had promised to be at home that afternoon for several
old friends, and they found her flown, without a word. And think how
sweet Julie is always about such things--what delicious notes she
writes, how she hates to put anybody out or disappoint them! And now,
not a word of excuse to anybody. And she looks so _ill_--so white, so
fixed--like a person in a dream which she can't shake off. I'm just
miserable about her. And I hate, _hate_ that man--engaged to her own
cousin all the time!" cried the little Duchess, under her breath, as she
passionately tore some violets at her waist to pieces and flung them out
of the carriage. Then she turned to Jacob.

"But, of course, if you don't care twopence about all this, Jacob, it's
no good talking to you!"

Her taunt fell quite unnoticed. Jacob turned to her with smiling
composure.

"You have forgotten, my dear Evelyn, all this time, that Warkworth goes
away--to mid-Africa--in little more than two weeks."

"I wish it was two minutes," said the Duchess, fuming.

Delafield made no reply for a while. He seemed to be studying the effect
of a pale shaft of sunlight which had just come stealing down through
layers of thin gray cloud to dance upon the Serpentine. Presently, as
they left the Serpentine behind them, he turned to his companion with
more apparent sympathy.

"We can't do anything, Evelyn, and we've no right whatever to talk of
alarm, or anxiety--to _talk_ of it, mind! It's--it's disloyal. Forgive
me," he added, hastily, "I know you don't gossip. But it fills me with
rage that other people should be doing it."

The brusquerie of his manner disconcerted the little lady beside him.
She recovered herself, however, and said, with a touch of sarcasm,
tempered by a rather trembling lip:

"Your rage won't prevent their gossiping, Mr. Jacob, I thought, perhaps,
your _friendship_ might have done something to stop it--to--to influence
Julie," she added, uncertainly.

"My friendship, as you call it, is of no use whatever," he said,
obstinately. "Warkworth will go away, and if you and others do their
best to protect Miss Le Breton, talk will soon die out. Behave as if you
had never heard the man's name before--stare the people down. Why, good
Heavens! you have a thousand arts! But, of course, if the little flame
is to be blown into a blaze by a score of so-called friends--"

He shrugged his shoulders.

The Duchess did not take his rebukes kindly, no