Nothing of the kind.  His first letter was the letter of one sure of his correspondent, sure of his reception and of his ground; a happy and intimate certainty shone through its phrases; it was the letter, almost, of a lover whose doubts are over.

The effect of it was to raise a tempest, sharp and obscure, in Julie’s mind.  The contrast between the pose of the letter and the sly reality behind bred a sudden anguish of jealousy, concerned not so much with Warkworth as with this little, unknown creature, who, without any effort, any desert—­by the mere virtue of money and blood—­sat waiting in arrogant expectancy till what she desired should come to her.  How was it possible to feel any compunction towards her?  Julie felt none.

As to the rest of Miss Lawrence’s gossip—­that Warkworth was supposed to have “behaved badly,” to have led the pretty child to compromise herself with him at Simla in ways which Simla society regarded as inadmissible and “bad form”; that the guardians had angrily intervened, and that he was under a promise, habitually broken by the connivance of the girl’s mother, not to see or correspond with the heiress till she was twenty-one, in other words, for the next two years—­what did these things matter to her?  Had she ever supposed that Warkworth, in regard to money or his career, was influenced by any other than the ordinary worldly motives?  She knew very well that he was neither saint nor ascetic.  These details—­or accusations—­did not, properly speaking, concern her at all.  She had divined and accepted his character, in all its average human selfishness and faultiness, long ago.  She loved him passionately in spite of it—­perhaps, if the truth were known, because of it.

As for the marrying, or rather the courting, for money, that excited in her no repulsion whatever.  Julie, in her own way, was a great romantic; but owing to the economic notions of marriage, especially the whole conception of the dot, prevailing in the French or Belgian minds amid whom she had passed her later girlhood, she never dreamed for a moment of blaming Warkworth for placing money foremost in his plans of matrimony.  She resembled one of the famous amoureuses of the eighteenth century, who in writing to the man she loved but could not marry, advises him to take a wife to mend his fortunes, and proposes to him various tempting morsels—­une jeune personne, sixteen, with neither father nor mother, only a brother.  “They will give her on her marriage thirteen thousand francs a year, and the aunt will be quite content to keep her and look after her for some time.”  And if that won’t do—­“I know a man who would be only too happy to have you for a son-in-law; but his daughter is only eleven; she is an only child, however, and she will be very rich.  You know, mon ami, I desire your happiness above all things; how to procure it—­there lies the chief interest of my life.”