"Montresor?" said the Duchess.
Lord Lackington nodded. That afternoon he proposed to strew the floor of the House of Lords with the débris of Montresor's farcical reforms.
Suddenly he pulled himself up.
"Duchess, look round you, at those two in the doorway. Isn't it--by George, it is!--Chudleigh and his boy!"
"Yes--yes, it is," said the Duchess, in some excitement. "Don't recognize them. Don't speak to him. Jacob implored me not."
And she hurried her companions along till they were well out of the track of the new-comers; then on the threshold of another room she paused, and, touching Julie on the arm, said, in a whisper:
"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.