on the day following the drawing-room a prearranged conference was held in the “palatial home” of mr. jones in park lane. it was the hideous and abandoned house of a south african millionnaire, this home, but lady ishbel had refurnished it by degrees, and her boudoir in particular, with its pale french silks and many flowers, its empire furniture, both delicately wrought and solid, framed appropriately a soft aristocratic loveliness that almost concealed strong bones and firm lines. as she is to play so intimate a part in the development of our heroine, she may as well be described here as later. she had quantities of curly silky chestnut hair, long brown eyes with fine fringes and an expression both modest and piquant, a straight little nose with arching nostril, a gracefully cut mouth with pink lips, and a square little chin with a dimple in it. her figure was womanly, not too thin, and her capable hands were seldom idle. just now she was retrimming a hat that had arrived the day before from the milliner of the moment in paris. it may be added that her smile was the sweetest in london; and her voice was always rich and deep, with a natural vibration quite at the command of her will. charm radiated from her, and she was an outrageous flirt. in fact she looked with suspicion upon women that did not flirt, estimating them below the normal and not to be trusted in anything. men adored her, even when she laughed at them, which she often did in the most distracting manner imaginable.

mrs. herbert was standing in her favorite attitude behind a low fire-screen, her black eyes flashing, her nostrils dilating, while her young brother-in-law paced excitedly up and down the room. he was thinner than when he had fallen in love a month since, almost pallid, and his eyes had a strained look. there was no possible doubt as to what was the matter with him.

“don’t be an ass,” said mrs. herbert. “you are acting like the hero of a melodrama?—”

“i tell you something must be done!” cried the young man. “the squadron has been sighted off the azores?—”

“well, what are you going to do about it? she’s not in love with you—doesn’t care a rap?—”

“what chance have i had to make her? i never see her alone, never get a chance to talk to her for half an hour at a time. you promised to help me?—”

“mrs. winstone has never let the poor thing go for a minute. she’s overdone the business. julia’s had no time to think, goes to sleep at problem plays, and knows no more than when she arrived?—”

“if i only had the chance to teach her!” cried herbert, with flashing eyes.

“look at here,” said his sister-in-law, grasping a point of the screen with either hand; “let us have this out. if your brains are not addled, they must have conceived some sort of a plan. what is it? a liaison? an elopement? i approve of neither. i’d like to save the poor child from that man, but the frying pan’s as good as the fire?—”

“no liaison! i’d elope with her to-morrow if she’d go with me?—”

“and disgrace a great family!” said ishbel, softly.

“oh, hang the family,” cried mrs. herbert, whose mother’s blood was already working in her. “the duke’s an old pudding. lady arabella and her sisters are cracked old sign-posts; and a scandal would serve mrs. winstone right for not packing the child back on the next steamer to her sister with the whole unvarnished truth in a letter. not she, however; she wants to be aunt to a duchess. what i’m thinking of is julia. the conceit of man! what do you suppose you could give her in exchange for disgrace?—”

“love!” cried nigel. “i tell you it can make up for anything when it is strong enough.”

“yes, when it is,” said mrs. herbert, who, recovering from her own infatuation for a brainless beauty, was not in a romantic frame of mind. “but she doesn’t love you, in the first place, and in the second, no woman can live her life on love, any more than a man can. she wants children, position of some sort, the society of other women—that last is one of woman’s biggest wants, and no man ever realizes it.”

“but love must be a wonderful thing,” said ishbel, who had never experienced it. “it would almost be worth any sacrifice, especially if one had had things first, only men are always so funny in one way or another; one becomes disenchanted just in the nick of time.”

“no man lives who can make up to a woman for the loss of everything else,” said mrs. herbert, decidedly. “i mean a woman with brains, and julia has them. she doesn’t know it because she doesn’t know anything; but one day?—”

“oh, if i could be the one to train that mind—why not? why not?”

“let’s come down to business. i refuse to help you either to elope or to make love to her. i fancy you’ll have to wait until france drinks himself to death, or this country passes rational divorce laws. forget yourself and think of her.”

“very well. save her first. that is the main thing. i’ll never give her up, but i’m willing to forget myself for a bit, if i can?—”

“well, make one practical suggestion.”

ishbel put the hat aside and clasped her hands. “i have long since made up my mind to offer her shelter when she needs it,” she announced. “mrs. winstone won’t, and julia is sure to leave him.”

“she must never go to him!” herbert stormed up and down the room again.

“perhaps he’s not as bad as he’s painted,” said ishbel, who was always charitable.

“oh, you don’t know! you don’t know!”

“i do,” said the uncompromising mrs. herbert. “he’s a bad lot without the usual redeeming weakness of that easy form of good nature known as a kind heart; a sensualist without an atom of real warmth; a card sharp too clever to be caught; a periodical drinker; a vile gross creature whom only the lowest women have tolerated for years, but so blasé he is tired of them?—”

“we must tell her things!” cried ishbel. “we must make her understand!”

“you couldn’t make that baby understand anything. besides, when it came to the point, you couldn’t do it. it’s all very well to talk of enlightening girls about anything, but personally i’ve never encountered any one that had the nerve to do it. girls in our class absorb knowledge as they grow up; instincts help; but who ever told us anything? well, here is my plan, since you two appear to have none. we shall tell her that france is dangerous, that when he drinks he is quite mad and may kill her. she’s game, but there are certain female fears that always can be worked on. and repugnances. we will draw horrid pictures of what he looks like when he’s drunk?—”

“right you are!” cried herbert. “no decent girl will elect to live with a common drunkard, particularly when she doesn’t love him. and if mrs. winstone can’t be brought round, one of you will take her in?”

“if she’ll come. perhaps she would wish to go back to her mother. she hasn’t a penny of her own, and apparently has never heard of the self-supporting woman. but it might be managed somehow.”

“it must!” cried ishbel. “we will hide her alternately.”

“but to what end? france might be exasperated to the point of wishing to rid himself of her, but what ground for divorce? we travel in a circle as far as nigel is concerned.”

“i have it!” cried nigel, whose fine imagination was fired by the most stimulative of all passions. “give me the chance to make her love me, and then take her to america and get a divorce there. thank heaven i have a little something of my own, and i can earn more. we’ll stay in america until the storm blows over?—”

“american divorces are not legal in england?—”

“then i’ll stay there forever. promise. promise.”

“not bad,” said mrs. herbert. “you take her in, ishbel, and i’ll take her over. mr. jones would probably not consent to your desertion—a divorce must take time, even in the united states, and you have another sister to marry off next season?—”

“of course i’ll take her in, and we’ll begin to-morrow to frighten her.”

nigel kissed them both.

but fortune is often with the wicked. on the following morning wires flashed the news that harold france, first lieutenant of her majesty’s cruiser drake, now on its way home from south america, was down with typhoid fever. nobody save the duke expected a man of france’s habits to recover from any microbous assault, but that innocent and loyal relative gave immediate orders to convert several rooms of his town house into a hospital, engaged a staff of doctors and nurses, and peremptorily ordered julia to move over and be ready to take her place at her husband’s bedside.