come in, Jack--and the Duchess, too."

Lord Uredale went back to the door. Two figures came noiselessly into
the room, the Duchess in front, with Julie's hand in hers.

Lord Lackington was propped up in bed, and breathing fast. But he smiled
as they approached him.

"This is good-bye, dear Duchess," he said, in a whisper, as she bent
over him. Then, with a spark of his old gayety in the eyes, "I should be
a cur to grumble. Life has been very agreeable. Ah, Julie!"

Julie dropped gently on her knees beside him and laid her cheek against
his arm. At the mention of her name the old man's face had clouded as
though the thoughts she called up had suddenly rebuked his words to the
Duchess. He feebly moved his hands towards hers, and there was silence
in the room for a few moments.

"Uredale!"

"Yes, father."

"This is Rose's daughter."

His eyes lifted themselves to those of his son.

"I know, father. If Miss Le Breton will allow us, we will do what we can
to be of service to her."

Bill Chantrey, the younger brother, gravely nodded assent. They were
both men of middle age, the younger over forty. They did not resemble
their father, nor was there any trace in either of them of his wayward
fascination. They were a pair of well-set-up, well-bred Englishmen,
surprised at nothing, and quite incapable of showing any emotion in
public; yet just and kindly men. As Julie entered the house they had
both solemnly shaken hands with her, in a manner which showed at once
their determination, as far as they were concerned, to avoid anything
sentimental or in the nature of a scene, and their readiness to do what
could be rightly demanded of them.

Julie hardly listened to Lord Uredale's little speech. She had eyes and
ears only for her grandfather. As she knelt beside him, her face bowed
upon his hand, the ice within her was breaking up, that dumb and
straitening anguish in which she had lived since that moment at the Nord
Station in which she had grasped the meaning and the implications of
Delafield's hurried words. Was everything to be swept away from her at
once--her lover, and now this dear old man, to whom her heart, crushed
and bleeding as it was, yearned with all its strength?

Lord Lackington supposed that she was weeping.

"Don't grieve, my dear," he murmured. "It must come to an end some
time--'_cette charmante promenade a travers la realite_!'"

And he smiled at her, agreeably vain to the last of that French acc