e is
really irreconcilable?"

"Absolutely. Let me beg you to take it for granted."

"She won't see any of us--not me?"

Sir Wilfrid hesitated.

"Make the Duke your ambassador."

The Duchess laughed, and flushed a little.

"And Mr. Montresor?"

"Ah," said Sir Wilfrid in another tone, "that's not to be lightly spoken
of."

"You don't mean--"

"How many years has that lasted?" said Sir Wilfrid, meditatively.

"Thirty, I think--if not more. It was Lady Henry who told him of his
son's death, when his wife daren't do it."

There was a silence. Montresor had lost his only son, a subaltern in the
Lancers, in the action of Alumbagh, on the way to the relief of Lucknow.

Then the Duchess broke out:

"I know that you think in your heart of hearts that Julie has been in
fault, and that we have all behaved abominably!"

"My dear lady," said Sir Wilfrid, after a moment, "in Persia we believe
in fate; I have brought the trick home."

"Yes, yes, that's it!" exclaimed Lord Lackington--it! When Lady Henry
wanted a companion--and fate brought her Miss Le Breton--"

"Last night's coffee was already drunk," put in Sir Wilfrid.

Meredith's voice, raised and a trifle harsh, made itself heard.

"Why you should dignify an ugly jealousy by fine words I don't know. For
some women--women like our old friend--gratitude is hard. That is the
moral of this tale."

"The only one?" said Sir Wilfrid, not without a mocking twist of the
lip.

"The only one that matters. Lady Henry had found, or might have found, a
daughter--"

"I understand she bargained for a companion."

"Very well. Then she stands upon her foolish rights, and loses both
daughter and companion. At seventy, life doesn't forgive you a blunder
of that kind."

Sir Wilfrid silently shook his head. Meredith threw back his blanched
mane of hair, his deep eyes kindling under the implied contradiction.

"I am an old comrade of Lady Henry's," he said, quickly. "My record,
you'll find, comes next to yours, Bury. But if Lady Henry is determined
to make a quarrel of this, she must make it. I regret nothing."

"What madness has seized upon all these people?" thought Bury, as he
withdrew from the discussion. The fire, the unwonted fire, in Meredith's
speech and aspect, amazed him. From the corner to which he had retreated
he studied the face of the journalist. It was a face subtly and strongly
lined by much living--of the intellectual, however, rather than the
physical