France’s convalescence was very slow. His superb physique had fought death victoriously, as, so far, it had saved him from the consequences of dissipation, but only youth could have given him a swift recovery. It was September before he was able to move to Bosquith. After the stifling London summer, Julia needed a change as much as he did. The duke, as soon as his heir was able to sit up, had taken a run over to Kissengen, but Julia had spent the greater part of every day in the sick-room, reading the sporting papers and light novels to her husband, or amusing him as best she could. France would barely let her out of his sight. His shrewd cunning brain recovered its strength while his body was still helpless, and he conceived that now was his opportunity to make this inexperienced child believe in a romantic devotion, and to win her love in return. He permitted her to take a daily walk or drive with one of the nurses, making much of his sacrifice, and was so touchingly happy to see her after these brief separations that Julia almost wept, and gave him her hand to hold, while she made the most of every trifle her observing eyes had taken note of during her respite.

He no longer repelled her; not only did his helplessness appeal to her deep womanly instincts, but she was become so accustomed to his touch that she was quite indifferent to it: she bathed his head with cologne several times a day, kissed him obediently when she came and went, and even gave him her shoulder as a pillow when he fretfully declared that his head could rest on nothing else. It was a young and excessively thin shoulder, and, as a matter of fact, France would have preferred feathers, but the profoundly calculating mind, even when the body is weak, disdains trifles.

As soon as he was pronounced well enough to travel, the wary duke returned and accompanied his charges to Bosquith. This great estate, some fifteen thousand acres, which included moors and grouse, as well as many farms with turnip fields, was the duke’s favorite property, not only because of the shootings, but because the air of the North Sea was the best tonic he knew. It was for this reason that he had chosen Bosquith for the last stage of his nephew’s convalescence, rather than one of his country houses nearer to London. But he had hesitated, nevertheless. Bosquith adjoined the Yorkshire estate of Bridgit Herbert’s paternal grandfather, and he knew of his new relative’s affection for a young woman of whom he had never approved since he had seen her riding astride over the moors with her brothers, pretending to be an American Indian. He had seen her occasionally since her marriage, and, no mean student of physiognomy, had labelled her dangerous, one of those women that set their nonsensical opinions above man’s and call themselves advanced. He had no intention that the intimacy should continue, nor that Julia should see aught of Nigel Herbert, whose devotion she had artlessly revealed. As for Ishbel, who visited Bridgit every year, he would not have her in the house, as he could not admit her and shut the door in her husband’s face. Somebody must take a stand, and the duke, although he might not be able to impose himself on his generation, was not only intensely loyal to his class but alive to its dangers. No snob, Julia’s lack of title and fortune did not annoy him in the least. “No one can be more than gentleman or lady,” he was wont to say magnanimously, “and I have known more than one titled bounder of historic descent. But when it comes to the James William Joneses, well, thank heaven! at least they don’t belong to us, and we are not bound to countenance them for the sake of their fathers; we cannot drag them up, and they will end by pulling us down; in other words they will vulgarize the British aristocracy until the masses lose their pride in us; and then where will we be? Democracy, Socialism, threaten us as it is. Our middle and lower classes at home, and our too independent colonies afar, must be made to retain their loyalty, at all costs.”

Julia thought these sentiments sound, but made up her mind privately that she would never drop Ishbel or Bridgit, although she had been given to understand that the duke deeply regretted the proximity of Bosquith to the happy hunting grounds of Mrs. Herbert, and would not permit her to visit them. Her rapidly awakening intellect was seeking for partnership in her still fluid character, and although books could not develop the last, inheritances from a line of men, and at least one woman, who had always thought and acted for themselves, however mistakenly, were stirring. She had been too managed and surrounded to find herself as yet, but she had begun to suspect that the ego has a life of its own and certain inalienable rights.

The journey north sent France to bed again for three days, and for a fortnight he was wheeled about the park; then he began to hobble feebly, first on the arm of his nurse or wife, then with the aid of a stick. Julia accepted him as one of the facts of existence, regarded him proprietorally, took an immense interest in his progress toward recovery, and forgot him when she could in the library or in long walks over the moors. The castle was romantically situated on a cliff overhanging the North Sea, and in appearance, as in surroundings, was all that Julia could ask. It was very brown, two-thirds of it was in ruins, and the other third included a feudal hall, two towers, and walls four feet thick. The windows, however, had been enlarged, hot-water pipes had been put in, and no modern house was more sanitary. The duke, despite a pardonable pride in his ancestry, and an unmitigated conservatism in politics, was strictly up to date where his health and comfort were concerned. Born an invalid, he had lived longer than many of his burly ancestors, owing to a thin temperament and an early and avid interest in hygiene.

He had a second reason for bringing Harold to Bosquith. The neighboring borough was much under his influence, and he proposed that his relative should stand for it at the next general election. At the last it had succumbed to the personal manipulation of Gladstone, who had taken a lively pleasure in routing the duke; but it was conservative by habit, and not a measure of either Gladstone’s government or that of his successor had met with its approval. It was in just the frame of mind to be nursed by a genial and tactful duke. France fell in with these plans, and, when able to meet the local leaders, laid aside his almost unbearable haughtiness of manner, and assumed a bluff sailorlike heartiness which impressed them deeply.

Julia quickly revived in the bracing air of sea and moor, and as France rose late and retired early, besides sleeping a good deal during the day, and as she had acquired a certain skill in dodging the duke,—who, moreover, took his local duties very seriously,—she felt happy and free once more. The library was well furnished, the moors were purple, her bedroom was in an ancient tower, and the sea boomed under her window. She wrote long letters to her grimly triumphant mother, and, now and again, to Bridgit and Ishbel. The former, accompanied by her husband and Nigel, rode over to see her, but she was obliged to receive them in the chilling presence of her husband and the duke, and when the brief visit came to an end, was put on her honor not to leave the estate.

“As soon as Harold is quite recovered,” said the duke, “we will both drive over with you, for I am far from counselling you to be rude to any one. Only, while your husband is ill, it would be highly indecorous for you to be associating with young people; and for the matter of that, the more mature minds with which you associate during the next few years, the better—for us all, my dear, for us all.”

But Julia, at this period, was quite independent of people. Her newly awakened intellect was clamoring for books and more books. Politics, the planets, the “brilliant future,” friends, were alike forgotten. Nothing mattered but the lore that scholars and worldlings had gathered, that ravening maw in her mind. Perhaps this early ingenuous stage of the mind’s development is its happiest; it is uncritical, having no standards of life and personal research for comparison, it swamps the real ego, while mightily tickling the false, it obliterates mere life, no matter how unsatisfactory, and above all it is saturated with the essence of novelty, the subtlest spring of all passion. Julia, barely educated, found in histories, biographies, memoirs, travels, even in works of science beyond her full comprehension, a wonderland of which she had never dreamed, much as she had longed for books on Nevis. That had been merely a case of inherited brain cells calling for furniture; embarked upon her adventure, these cells were crammed so rapidly that her ancestors slept in peace, and Julia felt herself an isolated and completely happy intellect.

Nevertheless, she was young.

One night, shortly after her husband, now able to grace the evening board, had gone to his room, and the duke was closeted with the conservative agent, she went to her own room, opened the window, and hung out over the sea. The moon, whose malicious alertness Captain Dundas had deplored, was at the full and flooded a scene as beautiful in its way as the tropics. The great expanse of water was almost still, and a broad path of silver seemed firm enough to walk on straight away to the continent of Europe and its untasted delights. Just round the corner was the rose garden, which covered the filled-in moat on the south side of the castle and several hundred yards beyond. The roses were not very good ones, being somewhat rusted by the salt-sea spray, but, like the pleasaunce on another side of the castle, were a part of the more modern traditions of Bosquith; and the duke, although entirely indifferent to Nature when she ceased to be useful and amused herself with being merely beautiful, was a stickler for tradition; the roses were never neglected without, although never brought within; pollen inflamed his mucous membranes.

The blossoms had gone with the summer, but Julia was fancying herself inhaling their perfumes when she became aware that the figure of a man had detached itself from the tangle. She watched him idly, supposing him to be one of the grooms, and wondering if his sweetheart would follow. But the man was alone, and in a moment he bent down, picked up a handful of loose stones, and leaned back as if to fling them upward from the narrow ledge. Simultaneously Julia and Nigel Herbert recognized each other.

“What—what—do you want?” gasped Julia, in a loud whisper.

“You,” said Nigel, grimly. “Come down here.”

“Impossible!” thrilling wildly, however.

“If you don’t, I’ll break in. I’ve prowled round here for three nights, and know the place by heart. The leads?—”

“For heaven’s sake, go away!”

“Will you come down? I’m spraining the back of my neck, and may slip off this narrow shelf any minute. Do you want to see my mangled remains at the foot of the cliff?”

“No. No. But?—”

“Come down. I must have a talk with you—have this thing out or go mad. It’s little to ask!”

Julia glanced behind her at the circular room hung with arras (to keep out draughts and conceal the hot-water pipes), and furnished with a big Gothic bed and hard upright chairs—and thrilled again. She was not the least in love with Nigel, but she suddenly realized that she was nearly nineteen and romance had never entered her life. After all, was l............