He replied, with the flash of his sardonic smile: "Yes, extremely gratifying! It is wonderful what a slash across the brow can do for one. You will be happy to hear, ma'am, that my wife will remain in my grandparents' charge until such time as she may follow me to Paris. May I now see Audley?"
She looked doubtful. He saw it, and said rather harshly: "Oblige me in this, if you please! What I have to ask him will not take me long."
"To ask him?" she repeated.
"Yes, ma'am, to ask him! Audley saw my brother die, and I want to know where in that charnel-house to search for his body!"
She put out her hand impulsively. "Ah, poor boy! Of course you shall see him! Worth will take you up at once."
"Thank you," he said with a slight bow, and limped to the door, and opened it for Worth to lead the way out.
Judith was left to her own melancholy reflections, but these were interrupted in a very few minutes by yet another knock on the street door. She paid little heed, expecting merely to have a card brought in to her with kind enquiries after the state of Colonel Audley's health, but to her astonishment the butler very soon opened the door into the salon and announced the Duke of Wellington.
She started up immediately. The Duke came in, dressed in plain clothes, and shook hands, saying: "How do you do? I have come to see poor Audley. How does he go on?"
She was quite overpowered. She had never imagined that in the midst of the work in which he must be immersed he could find time to visit the Colonel. She had even doubted his sparing as much as a thought for his aide-de-camp. She could only say in a moved voice: "How kind this is in you! We think him a little better. He will be so happy to receive a visit from you!"
"Better, is he? That's right! Poor fellow, they tell me he has had to lose his arm."