The four months that followed were by no means the unhappiest of Julia’s life, much as she resented being torn from her friends and the bewildering delights of London. The duke, a noble if inconspicuous pillar of the good old school, stood out for wifely duty in appearance if not in fact: the nurses barely permitted Julia to cross the threshold of the sick-chamber. But although she was of no possible use, and time hung heavy on her hands, none of her friends was permitted to call on her, and the duke himself took her for a constitutional at eight in the morning and nine in the evening. Julia’s complete indifference to her husband had caused him grave uneasiness, even before the stricken bridegroom’s return, and he embraced this opportunity to keep the child under his personal surveillance and do what he could to give a serious turn to a “female brain of eighteen.”

Julia, prompted by Ishbel, asked to have a telephone put in her room, but the request was courteously refused, and the two loyal friends were forced to content themselves with frequent notes. After Goodwood, Bridgit went to Yorkshire and Ishbel to Homburg, but Nigel remained in town, although all three were cheerfully persuaded that France would die and life be happy ever after. Nigel regained his fresh good looks and spirits, endured the hot deserted city without a murmur, and although he naturally refrained from writing to the coveted wife of a dying man, felt a certain exaltation in watching over her from afar. It was during this period that he conceived the idea of writing a novel of the slums (the unknown appealing to his adventurous imagination), and took long rambles in unsavory precincts that were productive of more results than one.

Meanwhile Julia, brought up in submission to a far stronger will than the duke’s, had ceased to rebel, and taken to heart the parting admonition of her aunt (that lady had gone with Mrs. Macmanus to Marienbad to renew her complexion) to learn all the duke was willing to teach her, and to read the novels that celebrated London society, past and present. Mrs. Winstone, too, believed that France must die, but, perceiving that her niece had a charm of her own in addition to the magnetism of youth, had another match in mind for her.

So Julia drank in the long discourses upon the abominable Gladstone and all his policies, the iniquity of the Harcourt Budget, obediently rejoiced at the failure of the second Home Rule Bill, became intimately acquainted with the other notable figures in British politics: Lord Salisbury (the duke’s idol), Lord Rosebery (the present Prime Minister), fated, in the duke’s not always erring judgment, to follow close upon the heels of Gladstone into political seclusion, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, Sir William Vernon Harcourt, Mr. Balfour, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, George Curzon, Lord Lansdowne, Mr. Goschen (the speaker), the Duke of Devonshire (Hartington), Mr. Morley, and Mr. Bryce. The treaty with Japan was a fruitful subject of discourse; and when the war broke out between that new military power and China, Julia, who was growing nervous, gratified the duke by sharing his excitement. In her lonely hours she read promiscuously and thought a good deal.

She rarely flung a thought to poor Nigel, for when the big helpless form of her husband had been taken from the ambulance and carried past her up the broad stairs, the natural tenderness and pity in her nature had stirred, and something of what she felt for little Fanny had gone out to him. She would have nursed him, had she been permitted; she inquired for him many times a day, and sincerely hoped that he would recover. She had not the faintest notion of loving him, but she would be a good wife, and, no doubt, be happy. Ishbel did not love her husband and was happy, and so, apparently, were a good many more that flitted through her aunt’s drawing-room with a temporary admirer in tow. Julia’s future plans included no infants-in-waiting; she should become one of those great political women the planets, according to her mother’s letters, had ordered her to be; how could she doubt this destiny when every circumstance was conspiring to fulfil it? So, between the sense of an inexorable fate, the serious atmosphere of her new surroundings, and the desperate struggle of her husband ............