"We can't do anything, Evelyn, and we've no right whatever to talk of alarm, or anxiety--to talk of it, mind! It's--it's disloyal. Forgive me," he added, hastily, "I know you don't gossip. But it fills me with rage that other people should be doing it."
The brusquerie of his manner disconcerted the little lady beside him. She recovered herself, however, and said, with a touch of sarcasm, tempered by a rather trembling lip:
"Your rage won't prevent their gossiping, Mr. Jacob, I thought, perhaps, your friendship might have done something to stop it--to--to influence Julie," she added, uncertainly.
"My friendship, as you call it, is of no use whatever," he said, obstinately. "Warkworth will go away, and if you and others do their best to protect Miss Le Breton, talk will soon die out. Behave as if you had never heard the man's name before--stare the people down. Why, good Heavens! you have a thousand arts! But, of course, if the little flame is to be blown into a blaze by a score of so-called friends--"
He shrugged his shoulders.
The Duchess did not take his rebukes kindly, not having, in truth, deserved them.
"You are rude and unkind, Jacob," she said, almost with the tears in her eyes. "And you don't understand--it is because I myself am so anxious--"
"For that reason, play the part with all your might," he said, unyieldingly. "Really, even you and I oughtn't to talk of it any more. But there is one thing I want very much to know about Miss Le Breton."
He bent towards her, smiling, though in truth he was disgusted with himself, vexed with her, and out of tune with all the world.
The Duchess made a little face.