touch of his natural irascibility, "Who else has been
in the secret?"

"Four people, at most--the Duchess, first of all. I couldn't help it,"
she pleaded. "I was so unhappy with Lady Henry."

"You should have come to me. It was my right."

"But"--she dropped her head--"you had made it a condition that I should
not trouble you."

He was silenced; and once more he leaned against the mantel-piece and
hid his face from her, till, by a secret impulse, both moved. She rose
and approached him; he laid his hands on her arms. With his persistent
instinct for the lovely or romantic he perceived, with sudden pleasure,
the grave, poetic beauty of her face and delicate form. Emotion had
softened away all that was harsh; a quivering charm hovered over the
features. With a strange pride, and a sense of mystery, he recognized
his daughter and his race.

"For my Rose's child," he said, gently, and, stooping, he kissed her on
the brow. She broke out into weeping, leaning against his shoulder,
while the old man comforted and soothed her.

XV

After the long conversation between herself and Lord Lackington which
followed on the momentous confession of her identity, Julie spent a
restless and weary evening, which passed into a restless and weary
night. Was she oppressed by this stirring of old sorrows?--haunted
afresh by her parents' fate?

Ah! Lord Lackington had no sooner left her than she sank motionless into
her chair, and, with the tears excited by the memories of her mother
still in her eyes, she gave herself up to a desperate and sombre
brooding, of which Warkworth's visit of the afternoon was, in truth, the
sole cause, the sole subject.

Why had she received him so? She had gone too far--much too far. But,
somehow, she had not been able to bear it--that buoyant, confident air,
that certainty of his welcome. No! She would show him that she was _not_
his chattel, to be taken or left on his own terms. The, careless
good-humor of his blue eyes was too much, after those days she had
passed through.

He, apparently, to judge from his letters to her from the Isle of Wight,
had been conscious of no crisis whatever. Yet he must have seen from the
little Duchess's manner, as she bade farewell to him that night at
Crowborough House, that something was wrong. He must have realized that
Miss Lawrence was an intimate friend of the Moffatts, and that--Or was
he really so foolish as to suppose that his quasi-engagement to this
lit