dale sighed. The young doctor looked at him interrogatively.

"He is thinking of his old friends," said the son. "That was the Queen's
ball, I imagine, of '42. I have often heard him describe my
mother's dress."

But while he was speaking the fitful energy died away. The old man
ceased to talk; his eyelids fell. But the smile still lingered about his
mouth, and as he settled himself on his pillows, like one who rests, the
spectators were struck by the urbane and distinguished beauty of his
aspect. The purple flush had died again into mortal pallor. Illness had
masked or refined the weakness of mouth and chin; the beautiful head and
countenance, with their characteristic notes of youth, impetuosity, a
kind of gay detachment, had never been more beautiful.

The young doctor looked stealthily from the recumbent figure to the tall
and slender woman standing absorbed and grief-stricken beside the bed.
The likeness was as evident to him as it had been, in the winter, to Sir
Wilfrid Bury.

* * * * *

As he was escorting her down-stairs, Lord Uredale said to his companion,
"Foster thinks he may still live twenty-four hours."

"If he asks for me again," said Julie, now shrouded once more behind a
thick, black veil, "you will send?"

He gravely assented.

"It is a great pity," he said, with a certain stiffness--did it
unconsciously mark the difference between her and his legitimate
kindred?--"that my sister Lady Blanche and her daughter cannot be
with us."

"They are in Italy?"

"At Florence. My niece has had an attack of diphtheria. She could
neither travel nor could her mother leave her."

Then pausing in the hall, he added in a low voice, and with some
embarrassment:

"My father has told you, I believe, of the addition he has made to his
will?"

Julie drew back.

"I neither asked for it nor desired it," she said, in her coldest and
clearest voice.

"That I quite understand," said Lord Uredale. "But--you cannot hurt him
by refusing."

She hesitated.

"No. But afterwards--I must be free to follow my own judgment."

"We cannot take what does not belong to us," he said, with some
sharpness. "My brother and I are named as your trustees. Believe me, we
will do our best."

Meanwhile the younger brother had come out of the library to bid her
farewell. She felt that she was under critical observation, though both
pairs of gray eyes refrained from any appearance of scrutiny. Her