The child sped away and closed the door behind her.

Lord Lackington adjusted his glasses and opened the book.  Two or three slips of paper with drawings upon them fluttered out and fell on the table beneath.  Suddenly there was a cry.  Julie turned round, her lips parted.

Lord Lackington walked up to her.

“Tell me what this means,” he said, peremptorily.  “How did you come by it?”

It was a volume of George Sand.  He pointed, trembling, to the name and date on the fly-leaf—­“Rose Delaney, 1842.”

“It is mine,” she said, softly, dropping her eyes.

“But how—­how, in God’s name, did you come by it?”

“My mother left it to me, with all her other few books and possessions.”

There was a pause.  Lord Lackington came closer.

“Who was your mother?” he said, huskily.

The words in answer were hardly audible.  Julie stood before him like a culprit, her beautiful head humbly bowed.

Lord Lackington dropped the book and stood bewildered.

“Rose’s child?” he said—­“Rose’s child?”

Then, approaching her, he placed his hand on her arm.

“Let me look at you,” he commanded.

Julie raised her eyes to him, and at the same time dumbly held out to him a miniature she had been keeping hidden in her hand.  It was one of the miniatures from the locked triptych.

He took it, looked from the pictured to the living face, then, turning away with a groan, he covered his face with his hands and fell again into the chair from which he had risen.

Julie hurried to him.  Her own eyes were wet with tears.  After a moment’s hesitation she knelt down beside him.

“I ought to ask your pardon for not having told you before,” she murmured.

It was some time before Lord Lackington looked up.  When at last his hands dropped, the face they uncovered was very white and old.

“So you,” he said, almost in a whisper, “are the child she wrote to me about before she died?”

Julie made a sign of assent.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“She was thirty-two when I saw her last.”

There was a silence.  Julie lifted one of his hands and kissed it.  But he took no notice.

“You know that I was going to her, that I should have reached her in time”—­the words seemed wrung from him—­“but that I was myself dangerously ill?”

“I know.  I remember it all.”

“Did she speak of me?”

“Not often.  She was very reserved, you remember.  But not long before she died—­she seemed half asleep—­I heard her say, ‘Papa!—­Blanche!’ and she smiled.”

Lord Lackington’s face contracted, and the slow tears of old age stood in his eyes.

“You are like her in some ways,” he said, brusquely, as though to cover his emotion; “but not very like her.”

“She always thought I was like you.”