"Certainly. Will you give your orders?"
She gave them, and then, turning again to the Duke, she covered her eyes with her hands a moment.
"What does it all mean?" she said, faltering. "It seems as though we were all mad."
"You understand, of course, that Jacob succeeds?" said the Duke, not without coldness; and he stood still an instant, gazing at this woman, who must now, he supposed, feel herself at the very summit of her ambitions.
Julie drew a long breath. Then she perceived Lady Henry. Instantly, impetuously, she crossed the room. But as she reached that composed and formidable figure, the old timidity, the old fear, seized her. She paused abruptly, but she held out her hand.
Lady Henry took it. The two women stood regarding each other, while the other persons in the room instinctively turned away from their meeting. Lady Henry's first look was one of curiosity. Then, before the indefinable, ennobling change in Julie's face, now full of the pale agitation of memory, the eyes of the older woman wavered and dropped. But she soon recovered herself.
"We meet again under very strange circumstances," she said, quietly; "though I have long foreseen them. As for our former experience, we were in a false relation, and it made fools of us both. You and Jacob are now the heads of the family. And if you like to make friends with me on this new footing, I am ready. As to my behavior, I think it was natural; but if it rankles in your mind, I apologize."
The personal pride of the owner, curbed in its turn by the pride of tradition and family, spoke strangely from these words. Julie stood trembling, her chest heaving.
"I, too, regret--and apologize," she said, in a low voice.
"Then we begin again. But now you must let Evelyn take you to rest for an hour or two. I am sorry you have this hurried journey to-night."