been at the moment of her first
suspicion--where and what would she be now? A dishonored woman, perhaps,
with a life-secret to keep; cut off, as her mother had been, from the
straight-living, law-abiding world.

The touch of the old man's hand upon her hair roused in her a first
recoil, a first shattering doubt of the impulse which had carried her to
Paris. Since Delafield left her in the early dawn she had been pouring
out a broken, passionate heart in a letter to Warkworth. No misgivings
while she was writing it as to the all-sufficing legitimacy of love!

But here, in this cold neighborhood of the grave--brought back to gaze
in spirit; on her mother's tragedy--she shrank, she trembled. Her proud
intelligence denied the stain, and bade her hate and despise her
rescuer. And, meanwhile, things also inherited and inborn, the fruit of
a remoter ancestry, rising from the dimmest and deepest caverns of
personality, silenced the clamor of the naturalist mind. One moment she
felt herself seized with terror lest anything should break down the veil
between her real self and this unsuspecting tenderness of the dying man;
the next she rose in revolt against her own fear. Was she to find
herself, after all, a mere weak penitent--meanly grateful to Jacob
Delafield? Her heart cried out to Warkworth in a protesting anguish.

So absorbed in thought was she that she did not notice how long the
silence had lasted.

"He seems to be sleeping," said a low voice beside her.

She looked up to see the doctor, with Lord Uredale. Gently releasing
herself, she kissed Lord Lackington's forehead, and rose to her feet.

Suddenly the patient opened his eyes, and as he seemed to become aware
of the figures beside him, he again lifted himself in bed, and a gleam
most animated, most vivacious, passed over his features.

"Brougham's not asked," he said, with a little chuckle of amusement.
"Isn't it a joke?"

The two men beside him looked at each other. Lord Uredale approached the
bed.

"Not asked to what, father?" he said, gently.

"Why, to the Queen's fancy ball, of course," said Lord Lackington, still
smiling. "Such a to-do! All the elderly sticks practising minuets for
their lives!"

A voluble flow of talk followed--hardly intelligible. The words
"Melbourne" and "Lady Holland" emerged--the fragment, apparently, of a
dispute with the latter, in which "Allen" intervened--the names of
"Palmerston" and "that dear chap, Villiers."

Lord Ure