erve and worship her, she would have no need for these strange
things she does--the doublings and ruses of the persecuted." Thus the
touches of falsity that repelled Wilfrid Bury were to Delafield's
passion merely the stains of rough travel on a fair garment.

But she refused him, and for another year he said no more. Then, as
things got worse and worse for her, he spoke again--ambiguously--a word
or two, thrown out to sound the waters. Her manner of silencing him on
this second occasion was not what it had been before. His suspicions
were aroused, and a few days later he divined the Warkworth affair.

When Sir Wilfrid Bury spoke to him of the young officer's relations to
Mademoiselle Le Breton, Delafield's stiff defence of Julie's
prerogatives in the matter masked the fact that he had just gone through
a week of suffering, wrestling his heart down in country lanes; a week
which had brought him to somewhat curious results.

In the first place, as with Sir Wilfrid, he stood up stoutly for her
rights. If she chose to attach herself to this man, whose business was
it to interfere? If he was worthy and loved her, Jacob himself would see
fair play, would be her friend and supporter.

But the scraps of gossip about Captain Warkworth which the Duchess--who
had disliked the man at first sight--gathered from different quarters
and confided to Jacob were often disquieting. It was said that at Simla
he had entrapped this little heiress, and her obviously foolish and
incapable mother, by devices generally held to be discreditable; and it
had taken two angry guardians to warn him off. What was the state of the
case now no one exactly knew; though it was shrewdly suspected that the
engagement was only dormant. The child was known to have been in love
with him; in two years more she would be of age; her fortune was
enormous, and Warkworth was a poor and ambitious man.

There was also an ugly tale of a civilian's wife in a hill station,
referring to a date some years back; but Delafield did not think it
necessary to believe it.

As to his origins--there again, Delafield, making cautious inquiries,
came across some unfavorable details, confided to him by a man of
Warkworth's own regiment. His father had retired from the army
immediately after the Mutiny, broken in health, and much straitened in
means. Himself belonging to a family of the poorer middle class, he had
married late, a good woman not socially his equal, and without fort