"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 à travers la réalité!'"
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--"