“I suppose Lady Henry would reply that there are still a few houses in London which do not belong to her kinsman, the Duke of Crowborough.”

“Not perhaps to be had for the lending, and ready to step into at a day’s notice,” said Lord Lackington, with his queer smile, like the play of sharp sunbeams through a mist.  “That’s the worst of our class.  The margin between us and calamity is too wide.  We risk too little.  Nobody goes to the workhouse.”

Sir Wilfrid looked at him curiously.  “Do I catch your meaning?” he said, dropping his voice; “is it that if there had been no Duchess, and no Heribert Street, Miss Le Breton would have managed to put up with Lady Henry?”

Lord Lackington smiled again.  “I think it probable....  As it is, however, we are all the gainers.  We shall now see Miss Julie at her ease and ours.”

“You have been for some time acquainted with Miss Le Breton?”

“Oh, some time.  I don’t exactly remember.  Lady Henry, of course, is an old friend of mine, as she is of yours.  Sometimes she is rude to me.  Then I stay away.  But I always go back.  She and I can discuss things and people that nobody else recollects—­no, as far as that’s concerned, you’re not in it, Bury.  Only this winter, somehow, I have often gone round to see Lady Henry, and have found Miss Le Breton instead so attractive—­”

“Precisely,” said Sir Wilfrid, laughing; “the whole case in a nutshell.”

“What puzzles me,” continued his companion, in a musing voice, “is how she can be so English as she is—­with her foreign bringing up.  She has a most extraordinary instinct for people—­people in London—­and their relations.  I have never known her make a mistake.  Yet it is only five years since she began to come to England at all; and she has lived but three with Lady Henry.  It was clear, I thought, that neither she nor Lady Henry wished to be questioned.  But, do you, for instance—­I have no doubt Lady Henry tells you more than she tells me—­do you know anything of Mademoiselle Julie’s antecedents?”

Sir Wilfrid started.  Through his mind ran the same reflection as that to which the Duke had given expression in the morning—­“she ought to reveal herself!” Julie Le Breton had no right to leave this old man in his ignorance, while those surrounding him were in the secret.  Thereby she made a spectacle of her mother’s father—­made herself and him the sport of curious eyes.  For who could help watching them—­every movement, every word?  There was a kind of indelicacy in it.

His reply was rather hesitating.  “Yes, I happen to know something.  But I feel sure Miss Le Breton would prefer to tell you herself.  Ask her.  While she was with Lady Henry there were reasons for silence—­”

“But, of course, I’ll ask her,” said his companion, eagerly, “if you suppose that I may.  A more hungry curiosity was never raised in a human breast than in mine with regard to this dear lady.  So charming, handsome, and well bred—­and so forlorn!  That’s the paradox of it.  The personality presupposes a milieu—­else how produce it?  And there is no milieu, save this little circle she has made for herself through Lady Henry....  Ah, and you think I may ask her?  I will—­that’s flat—­I will!”