Lord Lackington was propped up in bed, and breathing fast.  But he smiled as they approached him.

“This is good-bye, dear Duchess,” he said, in a whisper, as she bent over him.  Then, with a spark of his old gayety in the eyes, “I should be a cur to grumble.  Life has been very agreeable.  Ah, Julie!”

Julie dropped gently on her knees beside him and laid her cheek against his arm.  At the mention of her name the old man’s face had clouded as though the thoughts she called up had suddenly rebuked his words to the Duchess.  He feebly moved his hands towards hers, and there was silence in the room for a few moments.

“Uredale!”

“Yes, father.”

“This is Rose’s daughter.”

His eyes lifted themselves to those of his son.

“I know, father.  If Miss Le Breton will allow us, we will do what we can to be of service to her.”

Bill Chantrey, the younger brother, gravely nodded assent.  They were both men of middle age, the younger over forty.  They did not resemble their father, nor was there any trace in either of them of his wayward fascination.  They were a pair of well-set-up, well-bred Englishmen, surprised at nothing, and quite incapable of showing any emotion in public; yet just and kindly men.  As Julie entered the house they had both solemnly shaken hands with her, in a manner which showed at once their determination, as far as they were concerned, to avoid anything sentimental or in the nature of a scene, and their readiness to do what could be rightly demanded of them.

Julie hardly listened to Lord Uredale’s little speech.  She had eyes and ears only for her grandfather.  As she knelt beside him, her face bowed upon his hand, the ice within her was breaking up, that dumb and straitening anguish in which she had lived since that moment at the Nord Station in which she had grasped the meaning and the implications of Delafield’s hurried words.  Was everything to be swept away from her at once—­her lover, and now this dear old man, to whom her heart, crushed and bleeding as it was, yearned with all its strength?

Lord Lackington supposed that she was weeping.

“Don’t grieve, my dear,” he murmured.  “It must come to an end some time—­’cette charmante promenade a travers la realite!’”

And he smiled at her, agreeably vain to the last of that French accent and that French memory which—­so his look implied—­they two could appreciate, each in the other.  Then he turned to the Duchess.

“Duchess, you knew this secret before me.  But I forgive you, and thank you.  You have been very good to Rose’s child.  Julie has told me—­and—­I have observed—­”

“Oh, dear Lord Lackington!” Evelyn bent over him.  “Trust her to me,” she said, with a lovely yearning to comfort and cheer him breathing from her little face.

He smiled.

“To you—­and—­”

He did not finish the sentence.