Then, amid the lights and shadows of the Duchess’s drawing-room, Jacob Delafield rose and came towards her.  Her exaltation dropped in a moment.  Some testing, penetrating influence seemed to breathe from this man, which filled her with a moral discomfort, a curious restlessness.  Did he guess the nature of her feeling for Warkworth?  Was he acquainted with the efforts she had been making for the young soldier?  She could not be sure; he had never given her the smallest sign.  Yet she divined that few things escaped him where the persons who touched his feelings were concerned.  And Evelyn—­the dear chatterbox—­certainly suspected.

“How tired you are!” he said to her, gently.  “What a day it has been for you!  Evelyn is writing letters.  Let me bring you the papers—­and please don’t talk.”

She submitted to a sofa, to an adjusted light, to the papers on her knee.  Then Delafield withdrew and took up a book.

She could not rest, however; visions of the morrow and of Warkworth’s triumphant looks kept flashing through her.  Yet all the while Delafield’s presence haunted her—­she could not forget him, and presently she addressed him.

“Mr. Delafield!”

He heard the low voice and came.

“I have never thanked you for your goodness last night.  I do thank you now—­most earnestly.”

“You needn’t.  You know very well what I would do to serve you if I could.”

“Even when you think me in the wrong?” said Julie, with a little, hysterical laugh.

Her conscience smote her.  Why provoke this intimate talk—­wantonly—­with the man she had made suffer?  Yet her restlessness, which was partly nervous fatigue, drove her on.

Delafield flushed at her words.

“How have I given you cause to say that?”

“Oh, you are very transparent.  One sees that you are always troubling yourself about the right and wrong of things.”

“All very well for one’s self,” said Delafield, trying to laugh.  “I hope I don’t seem to you to be setting up as a judge of other people’s right and wrong?”

“Yes, yes, you do!” she said, passionately.  Then, as he winced, “No, I don’t mean that.  But you do judge—­it is in your nature—­and other people feel it.”

“I didn’t know I was such a prig,” said Delafield, humbly.  “It is true I am always puzzling over things.”

Julie was silent.  She was indeed secretly convinced that he no more approved the escapade of the night before than did Sir Wilfrid Bury.  Through the whole evening she had been conscious of a watchful anxiety and resistance on his part.  Yet he had stood by her to the end—­so warmly, so faithfully.

He sat down beside her, and Julie felt a fresh pang of remorse, perhaps of alarm.  Why had she called him to her?  What had they to do with each other?  But he soon reassured her.  He began to talk of Meredith, and the work before her—­the important and glorious work, as he naively termed it, of the writer.