Julie was standing near the window as he came in.  As she turned and saw him there, a flood of tenderness and compunction swept over her.  He was going away.  What if she never saw him again?

She shuddered and came forward rapidly, eagerly.  He read the meaning of her movement, her face; and, wringing her hands with a violence that hurt her, he drew a long breath of relief.

“Why—­why”—­he said, under his breath—­“have you made me so unhappy?”

The blood leaped in her veins.  These, indeed, were new words in a new tone.

“Don’t let us reproach each other,” she said.  “There is so much to say.  Sit down.”

To-day there were no beguiling spring airs.  The fire burned merrily in the grate; the windows were closed.

A scent of narcissus—­the Duchess had filled the tables with flowers—­floated in the room.  Amid its old-fashioned and distinguished bareness—­tempered by flowers, and a litter of foreign books—­Julie seemed at last to have found her proper frame.  In her severe black dress, opening on a delicate vest of white, she had a muselike grace; and the wreath made by her superb black hair round the fine intelligence of her brow had never been more striking.  Her slender hands busied themselves with Cousin Mary Leicester’s tea-things; and every movement had in Warkworth’s eyes a charm to which he had never yet been sensible, in this manner, to this degree.

“Am I really to say no more of yesterday?” he said, looking at her nervously.

Her flush, her gesture, appealed to him.

“Do you know what I had before me—­that day—­when you came in?” she said, softly.

“No.  I cannot guess.  Ah, you said something about Lord Lackington?”

She hesitated.  Then her color deepened.

“You don’t know my story.  You suppose, don’t you, that I am a Belgian with English connections, whom Lady Henry met by chance?  Isn’t that how you explain me?”

Warkworth had pushed aside his cup.

“I thought—­”

He paused in embarrassment, but there was a sparkle of astonished expectancy in his eyes.

“My mother”—­she looked away into the blaze of the fire, and her voice choked a little—­“my mother was Lord Lackington’s daughter.”

“Lord Lackington’s daughter?” echoed Warkworth, in stupefaction.  A rush of ideas and inferences sped through his mind.  He thought of Lady Blanche—­things heard in India—­and while he stared at her in an agitated silence the truth leaped to light.

“Not—­not Lady Rose Delaney?” he said, bending forward to her.

She nodded.

“My father was Marriott Dalrymple.  You will have heard of him.  I should be Julie Dalrymple, but—­they could never marry—­because of Colonel Delaney.”

Her face was still turned away.