It had so much support that Julie Le Breton was there--in Paris--and not at Bruges, as she had led the Duchess to suppose. And when she turned her startled face upon him, his wild fancy became, for himself, a certainty. * * * * * "Amiens! Cinq minutes d'arrêt." Delafield got out and walked up and down the platform. He passed the closed and darkened windows of the sleeping-car; and it seemed to his abnormally quickened sense that he was beside her, bending over her, and that he said to her: "Courage! You are saved! Let us thank God!" A boy from the refreshment-room came along, wheeling a barrow on which were tea and coffee. Delafield eagerly drank a cup of tea and put his hand into his pocket to pay for it. He found there three francs and his ticket. After paying for the tea he examined his purse. That contained an English half-crown. So he had had with him just enough to get his own second-class ticket, her first-class, and a sleeping-car. That was good fortune, seeing that the bulk of his money, with his return ticket, was reposing in his dressing-case at the Hôtel du Rhin. "En voiture! En voiture, s'il vous plaît!" He settled himself once more in his corner, and the train rushed on. This time it was the strange hour at the Gare du Nord which he lived through again, her white face opposite to him in the refreshment-room, the bewilderment and misery she had been so little able to conceal, her spasmodic attempts at conversation, a few vague words about Lord Lackington or the Duchess, and then pauses, when her great eyes, haggard and weary, stared into vacancy, and he knew well enough that her thoughts were with Warkworth, and that she was in fierce rebellion against his presence there, and this action into which he had forced her. As for him, he perfectly understood the dilemma in which she stood. Either she must accept the duty of returning to the death-bed of the old man, her mother's father, or she must confess her appointment with Warkworth. Yet--suppose he had been mistaken? Well, the telegram from the Duchess covered his whole action. Lord Lackington _was_ dying; and apart from all question of feeling, Julie Le Breton's friends must naturally desire that he should see her, acknowledge her before his two sons, and, with their consent, provide for her before his death. But, ah, he had not been mistaken! He remembered her hurried refusal when he had asked her if he should telegraph for her to her Paris "friends"--how, in a sudden shame, he had turned away that he might not see the beloved false face as she spoke, might not seem to watch or suspect her. He had just had time to send off a messenger, first to his friend at the Café Gaillard, and then to the Hôtel du Rhin, before escorting her to the sleeping-car. Ah, how piteous had been that dull bewilderment with which she had turned to him! "But--my ticket?"