Julia slept the sleep of exhaustion that night. She awoke with a start, screaming, and cowered, before she realized that it was Mrs. Winstone who stood by her bed.

But that lady, true to her creed, pretended not to see. “It is eleven o’clock,” she said lightly. “What a sleeper you are! I am off, but Hawks has orders to take care of you. I’ll ring for your breakfast. I’ve left my addresses for the next two months in my desk. But I hope you’ll get on. Of course I could get you invited to any of the houses, but France would hear of it, and my clever fiction would be spoiled—”

“I could not visit. I shall be very well here. You are too kind.”

Mrs. Winstone thought she was, particularly as there was not the least prospect of reward. A cutlet for a cutlet. However, noblesse oblige. She bestowed a kiss on Julia and sailed out.

After her bath and breakfast Julia made a careful toilet for the first time in many weeks. Sometimes she had not brushed or even unbraided her hair for days.

She telephoned to the house in Park Lane. Mr. Jones was better and Lady Ishbel had gone to the shop. Julia left the house immediately and drove to Bond Street.

There were several people in the show-room. She went up to the boudoir which had witnessed so many gay little teas and so many confidential chats. It was an hour before Ishbel came running up the stairs and flung her arms about Julia.

“You dear thing!” she cried. “How I have worried about you. You wouldn’t answer my notes. And you look like a ghost! I was afraid—”

“You are in trouble, too. You look worn out—”

“Oh, poor Jimmy! He’s ruined, and has had a stroke. There’s tragedy for you. How he fought—and he hated to take my jewels, poor dear. I’m hunting for a little house to take him to—he clings to me; it’s pitiful. The doctor wants him to go to a nursing home, but I couldn’t! I’ll do my best. And,” with a sudden dash into her more familiar self, “all my beaux will go to South Africa; I shall have time for my invalid. That’s all there is of my story. Tell me yours.”

“I’ve come to take you at your word—you once promised to teach me how to trim hats—to help me earn my bread—”

“So! It’s come! Bridgit and I have been expecting it.”

Julia told her story, all that could be told, as briefly as possible. She was, in truth, deeply ashamed of it, and, after her aunt’s rebuff, felt no longer any yearning for sympathy. But Ishbel wept bitterly.

“How I wish we could have rescued you in the beginning, as we planned! It was criminal of us to give it up.” She dried her eyes. “There! It has done me good to cry. Literally I have had not a moment to shed a tear on my own account. Of course I’ll put you to work at once, and when I get a little house you will live with me. It will be too nice. I’ve never had half enough of you. I suppose you could tear yourself away from Mrs. Winstone. How did she receive you?”

“Oh, she’s frightfully cut up. ‘Scandal’—‘work’—I don’t know which she fears most. But I could see she was relieved to learn that Harold had kept himself inside the law.”

“She must feel as if she were the author of a book called ‘The lost duchess!’ Well, we won’t mortify her publicly for some time. Of course you must stay out of the salesroom for a while, or France would trace you. In the workroom, no one, not even Mrs. Winstone, will be any the wiser. Will you come house-hunting with me?”

A fortnight later, Ishbel, with that latent energy of which she betrayed so little in manner and appearance, had furnished a villa in St. John’s Wood, installed Mr. Jones and the servants, and turned over the house in Park Lane to the creditors. As she was obliged to keep both a valet and a nurse for Mr. Jones, there was no spare room for Julia, but there were lodgings close by, and it was arranged that she was to dine every night at the villa.

Perhaps there is no accommodation on this round globe as dreary as a London suburban lodging, but Ishbel adorned the little rooms out of her own superfluities, and Julia was so thankful to be alone and free that she would have settled down to the dingy carpet and grimy furniture without a murmur. And she had no time to mope or think. It would be long before she recovered the buoyancy of her nature, for she had told Mrs. Winstone and Ishbel little of the horrors of those three months alone with her husband. But when indignities are too odious to take to the most intimate and sympathetic ear, the only thing to do is to banish them from the memory; and this Julia did to the best of her ability.

She found a certain fascination in working with her hands, although she did not take kindly to the crowded workroom. Ishbel, who never drove any of her people when she could avoid it, made her hours as few as possible. But her seclusion was of short duration. France wrote to Mrs. Winstone, threatening her with the law, but, taking her communication literally, flung himself off to South Africa. After his departure Julia spent a part of each day in the show-room, although she continued to trim hats; her fingers proving nimble and apt, she was determined to learn the business. In the show-room she met many of her old acquaintances, and Mrs. Winstone waxed so indignant that communication between them ceased. The duke, who never found politics amusing when his party was busy exterminating mosquitoes, and who at the moment was wholly absorbed in his wife and in his prospects of an heir, remained at Bosquith for a year on end; if he thought about Julia at all, he supposed her to be at White Lodge.

Her personal life flowed on peacefully for eight months. The past faded into the limbo of nightmares. She made little more than enough to pay for her rooms and two meals, but even had she found time to miss the beautiful garments she had loved, she would have had no occasion to use them. No one entertained. All England was in mourning. Hardly a family of any size but had lost one or more of its men, particularly if the men were officers. Ishbel’s milliners and dressmakers worked all day on black, nothing but black. So constant, and always sudden, was the demand for mourning trousseaux that she and Julia often worked at night after the women, worn out, had gone home.

And those that had no men at the front to be killed were ashamed to admit it, to be out of the fashion, and swelled the demands for mourning. The Americans, resident in London, felt “out of it” in colors, and even those come on their annual pilgrimage were advised to wear black-and-white or dull gray. Ishbel and Julia laughed sometimes over their work and speculated as to the origin of other fads, but they were too busy and too tired for more than the passing jest. All England was sad enough without pretence, and worrying not only for relatives and friends at the front, but for the nation’s prestige. Julia and Ishbel, at dinner, talked of little else but the news in the evening bulletins, and often it was of a personal nature. Nigel Herbert had been among the first to volunteer, had been wounded at Vaal Kranz, recovered, and was fighting again, besides corresponding with one of the great dailies. Two of Ishbel’s admirers had died at Ladysmith, one of enteric, the other in a reckless sortie. Still another was in hospital with two bullets in him; and beyond the brief despatch which conveyed this news to the press, she had heard nothing. His going had solved a problem, but she was thankful for her work. Geoffrey Herbert had been killed at Paardeberg, and Bridgit had gone out to the Cape with hospital supplies.

Of France not a word was heard until June 12th, when his name was among the list of wounded at the battle of Diamond Hill. Two months later Julia read of his arrival in England.