And the little creature hurried off; not so fast, however, but that she found time to leave a number of parting instructions as to the house with the Scotch caretaker, on her way to her carriage.

Julie rose and made her way down to the drawing-room again.  The Scotchwoman saw that she wanted to be alone and left her.

The windows were still open to the garden outside.  Julie examined the paths, the shrubberies, the great plane-trees; she strained her eyes towards the mansion itself.  But not much of it could be seen.  The little house at the corner had been carefully planted out.

What wealth it implied—­that space and size, in London!  Evidently the house was still shut up.  The people who owned it were now living the same cumbrous, magnificent life in the country which they would soon come up to live in the capital.  Honors, parks, money, birth—­all were theirs, as naturally as the sun rose.  Julie envied and hated the big house and all it stood for; she flung a secret defiance at this coveted and elegant Mayfair that lay around her, this heart of all that is recognized, accepted, carelessly sovereign in our “materialized” upper class.

And yet all the while she knew that it was an unreal and passing defiance.  She would not be able in truth to free herself from the ambition to live and shine in this world of the English rich and well born.  For, after all, as she told herself with rebellious passion, it was or ought to be her world.  And yet her whole being was sore from the experiences of these three years with Lady Henry—­from those, above all, of the preceding twenty-four hours.  She wove no romance about herself.  “I should have dismissed myself long ago,” she would have said, contemptuously, to any one who could have compelled the disclosure of her thoughts.  But the long and miserable struggle of her self-love with Lady Henry’s arrogance, of her gifts with her circumstances; the presence in this very world, where she had gained so marked a personal success, of two clashing estimates of herself, both of which she perfectly understood—­the one exalting her, the other merely implying the cool and secret judgment of persons who see the world as it is—­these things made a heat and poison in her blood.

She was not good enough, not desirable enough, to be the wife of the man she loved.  Here was the plain fact that stung and stung.

Jacob Delafield had thought her good enough!  She still felt the pressure of his warm, strong fingers, the touch of his kiss upon her hand.  What a paradox was she living in!  The Duchess might well ask:  why, indeed, had she refused Jacob Delafield—­that first time?  As to the second refusal, that needed no explanation, at least for herself.  When, upon that winter day, now some six weeks past, which had beheld Lady Henry more than commonly tyrannical, and her companion more than commonly weary and rebellious, Delafield’s stammered words—­as he