turned away, looking vaguely round her. Meredith approached.

"Comfort yourself," he said, very gently, pressing her hand in both of
his. "It has been a great shock, but when you get there he'll be
all right."

"Jacob?"

Her expression, the piteous note in her voice, awoke in him an answering
sense of pain. He wondered how it might be between the husband and wife.
Yet it was borne in upon him, as upon Lady Henry, that her marriage,
however interpreted, had brought with it profound and intimate
transformation. A different woman stood before him. And when, after a
few more words, the Duchess swept down upon them, insisting that Julie
must rest awhile, Meredith stood looking after the retreating figures,
filled with the old, bitter sense of human separateness, and the
fragmentariness of all human affections. Then he made his farewells to
the Duke and Lady Henry, and slipped away. He had turned a page in the
book of life; and as he walked through Grosvenor Square he applied his
mind resolutely to one of the political "causes" with which, as a
powerful and fighting journalist, he was at that moment occupied.

Lady Henry, too, watched Julie's exit from the room.

"So now she supposes herself in love with Jacob?" she thought, with
amusement, as she resumed her seat.

"What if Delafield refuses to be made a duke?" said Sir Wilfrid, in her
ear.

"It would be a situation new to the Constitution," said Lady Henry,
composedly. "I advise you, however, to wait till it occurs."

* * * * *

The northern express rushed onward through the night. Rugby, Stafford,
Crewe had been left behind. The Yorkshire valleys and moors began to
show themselves in pale ridges and folds under the moon. Julie, wakeful
in her corner opposite the little, sleeping Duchess, was conscious of an
interminable rush of images through a brain that longed for a few
unconscious and forgetful moments. She thought of the deferential
station-master at Euston; of the fuss attending their arrival on the
platform; of the arrangements made for stopping the express at the
Yorkshire Station, where they were to alight.

Faircourt? Was it the great Early-Georgian house of which she had heard
Jacob speak--the vast pile, half barrack, half palace, in which,
according to him, no human being could be either happy or at home?

And this was now his--and hers? Again the whirl of thoughts swept and
danced round her.

A wild, hill country.