"Miss Le Breton!" She turned abruptly. In the white glare of the electric lights she did not at first recognize the man who had spoken to her. Then she drew back. Her heart beat wildly. For she had distinguished the face of Jacob Delafield. He came forward to meet her as she passed the barrier at the end of the platform, his aspect full of what seemed to her an extraordinary animation, significance, as though she were expected. "Miss Le Breton! What an astonishing, what a fortunate meeting! I have a message for you from Evelyn." "From Evelyn?" She echoed the words mechanically as she shook hands. "Wait a moment," he said, leading her aside towards the waiting-room, while the crowd that was going to the _douane_ passed them by. Then he turned to Julie's porter. "Attendez un instant." The man sulkily shook his head, dropped Julie's bag at their feet, and hurried off in search of a more lucrative job. "I am going back to-night," added Delafield, hurriedly. "How strange that I should have met you, for I have very sad news for you! Lord Lackington had an attack this morning, from which he cannot recover. The doctors give him perhaps forty-eight hours. He has asked for you--urgently. The Duchess tells me so in a long telegram I had from her to-day. But she supposed you to be in Bruges. She has wired there. You will go back, will you not?" "Go back?" said Julie, staring at him helplessly. "Go back to-night?" "The evening train starts in little more than an hour. You would be just in time, I think, to see the old man alive." She still looked at him in bewilderment, at the blue eyes under the heavily moulded brows, and the mouth with its imperative, and yet eager--or tremulous?--expression. She perceived that he hung upon her answer. She drew her hand piteously across her eyes as though to shut out the crowds, the station, and the urgency of this personality beside her. Despair was in her heart. How to consent? How to refuse? "But my friends," she stammered--"the friends with whom I was going to stay--they will be alarmed." "Could you not telegraph to them? They would understand, surely. The office is close by." She let herself be hurried along, not knowing what to do. Delafield walked beside her. If she had been able to observe him, she must have been struck afresh by the pale intensity, the controlled agitation of his face. "Is it really so serious?" she asked, pausing a moment, as though in resistance. "It is the end. Of that there can be no question. You have touched his heart very deeply. He longs to see her, Evelyn says. And his daughter and granddaughter are still abroad--Miss Moffatt, indeed, is ill at Florence with a touch of diphtheria. He is alone with his two sons. You will go?" Even in her confusion, the strangeness of it all was borne in upon her--his insistence, the extraordinary chance of their meeting, his grave, commanding manner. "How could you know I was here?" she said, in bewilderment.