“Now look back.  That’s Jacob’s Duke, and his poor, poor boy!”

Julie threw a hurried glance towards the two figures; but that glance impressed forever upon her memory a most tragic sight.

A man of middle height, sallow, and careworn, with jet-black hair and beard, supported a sickly lad, apparently about seventeen, who clung to his arm and coughed at intervals.  The father moved as though in a dream.  He looked at the pictures with unseeing, lustreless eyes, except when the boy asked him a question.  Then he would smile, stoop his head and answer, only to resume again immediately his melancholy passivity.  The boy, meanwhile, his lips gently parted over his white teeth, his blue eyes wide open and intent upon the pictures, his emaciated cheeks deeply flushed, wore an aspect of patient suffering, of docile dependence, peculiarly touching.

It was evident the father and son thought of none but each other.  From time to time the man would make the boy rest on one of the seats in the middle of the room, and the boy would look up and chatter to his companion standing before him.  Then again they would resume their walk, the boy leaning on his father.  Clearly the poor lad was marked for death; clearly, also, he was the desire of his father’s heart.

“The possessor, and the heir, of perhaps the finest houses and the most magnificent estates in England,” said Lord Lackington, with a shrug of pity.  “And Chudleigh would gladly give them all to keep that boy alive.”

Julie turned away.  Strange thoughts had been passing and repassing through her brain.

Then, with angry loathing, she flung her thoughts from her.  What did the Chudleigh inheritance matter to her?  That night she said good-bye to the man she loved.  These three miserable, burning weeks were done.  Her heart, her life, would go with Warkworth to Africa and the desert.  If at the beginning of this period of passion—­so short in prospect, and, to look back upon, an eternity—­she had ever supposed that power or wealth could make her amends for the loss of her lover, she was in no mood to calculate such compensations to-day.  Parting was too near, the anguish in her veins too sharp.

“Jacob takes them to Paris to-morrow,” said the Duchess to Lord Lackington.  “The Duke has heard of some new doctor.”

* * * * *

An hour or two later, Sir Wilfrid Bury, in the smoking-room of his club, took out a letter which he had that morning received from Lady Henry Delafield and gave it a second reading.

“So I hear that mademoiselle’s social prospects are not, after all, so triumphant as both she and I imagined.  I gave the world credit for more fools than it seems actually to possess; and she—­well, I own I am a little puzzled.  Has she taken leave of her senses?  I am told that she is constantly seen with this man; that in spite of all denials there can be no doubt of his engagement to the Moffatt girl; and that