"Evelyn!"
"Well, you see, Julie isn't, at all," she added, hastily.
"You need not have troubled yourself to tell me that," was the Duke's indignant reply.
After a fortnight at Camaldoli and Vallombrosa the Delafields turned towards Switzerland. Julie, who was a lover of Rousseau and Obermann, had been also busy with the letters of Byron. She wished to see with her own eyes St. Gingolphe and Chillon, Bevay and Glion.
So one day at the end of May they found themselves at Montreux. But Montreux was already hot and crowded, and Julie's eyes turned in longing to the heights. They found an old inn at Charnex, whereof the garden commanded the whole head of the lake, and there they settled themselves for a fortnight, till business, in fact, should recall Delafield to England. The Duke of Chudleigh had shown all possible kindness and cordiality with regard to the marriage, and the letter in which he welcomed his cousin's new wife had both touched Julie's feelings and satisfied her pride. "You are marrying one of the best of men," wrote this melancholy father of a dying son. "My boy and I owe him more than can be written. I can only tell you that for those he loves he grudges nothing--no labor, no sacrifice of himself. There are no half-measures in his affections. He has spent himself too long on sick and sorry creatures like ourselves. It is time he had a little happiness on his own account. You will give it him, and Mervyn and I will be most grateful to you. If joy and health can never be ours, I am not yet so vile as to grudge them to others. God bless you! Jacob will tell you that my house is not a gay one; but if you and he will sometimes visit it, you will do something to lighten its gloom."
Julie wondered, as she wrote her very graceful reply, how much the Duke might know about herself. Jacob had told his cousin, as she knew, the story of her parentage and of Lord Lackington's recognition of his granddaughter. But as soon as the marriage was announced it was not likely that Lady Henry had been able to hold her tongue.
A good many interesting tales of his cousin's bride had, indeed, reached the melancholy Duke. Lady Henry had done all that she conceived it her duty to do, filling many pages of note-paper with what the Duke regarded as most unnecessary information.
At any rate, he had brushed it all aside with the impatience of one for whom nothing on earth had now any savor or value beyond one or two indispensable affections. "What's good enough for Jacob is good for me," he wrote to Lady Henry, "and if I may offer you some advice, it is that you should not quarrel with Jacob about a matter so vital as his marriage. Into the rights and wrongs of the story you tell me, I really cannot enter; but rather than break with Jacob I would welcome anybody he chose to present to me. And in this case I understand the lady is very clever, distinguished, and of good blood on both sides. Have you had no trouble in your life, my dear Flora, that you can make quarrels with a light heart? If so, I envy you; but I have neither the energy nor the good spirits wherewith to imitate you."
Julie, of course, knew nothing of this correspondence, though from the Duke's letters to Jacob she divined that something of the kind had taken place. But it was made quite plain to her that she was to be spared all the friction and all the difficulty which may often attend the entrance of a person like herself within the circle of a rich and important family like the Delafields. With Lady Henry, indeed, the fight had still to be fought. But Jacob's mother, influenced on one side by her son and on the other by the head of the family, accepted her daughter-in-law with the facile kindliness and good temper that were natural to her; while his sister, the fair-haired and admirable Susan, owed her brother too much and loved him too well to be other than friendly to his wife.