"And has anybody asked Miss Prestwick what she would sell?"
His mother looked at him for a long moment. "You sound," she said, "exactly like Edmund."
He went to the door, and stopped with his hand on it.
"I will not marry Miss Prestwick," he said. "Not like this. And I will not let Lisle's name lie where you left it. I do not know yet what I shall do. But I will not pretend I did not see the book."
"Then you will pull down everything I have built."
"Perhaps," said Julian. "Or perhaps I will find out whether it can stand on its own."
He went out. Behind him, under the portrait of the late Duke, the Dowager Duchess of Hartsmere sat alone for a long time without moving, and then reached out, very slowly, and pinched out the candles one by one.
VI.
By Friday, London had decided what had happened at Lady Wexcombe's ball, and none of it was true.
Mrs. Fairleigh brought the reports home from the circulating library like a cat bringing in sparrows. The Duke of Hartsmere had waltzed with a nobody in a made-over gown. The nobody was a governess. The nobody was an actress. The nobody was a natural daughter of the late Duke, come to claim a portion. The Duke had called at her lodgings without a chaperone. The Dowager had cut her dead from the balcony, which everybody had seen, and had then sent her own carriage for her, which nobody could explain.
"They have not got your name yet," Mrs. Fairleigh said, unpinning her bonnet. "When they do, they will remember your father's. You must decide, my love, how much of this you mean to bear."
Honora was considering this when Miss Prestwick was announced.
She came in with only a maid, whom she left on the landing with the landlady—the two of them at once fell into a comfortable murmur—and she did not carry the feather fan. Without it, in a walking dress of plain dove-grey, she looked older and a good deal more thoughtful.
"I ought not to be here," she said, sitting down. "Mamma believes I am at Hookham's changing a novel. I have changed it. It is in the carriage." She took a breath. "I came to say I am sorry. For running away on Tuesday night like a goose and leaving you standing there. And for all the years at Miss Tuttle's that I thought you were proud, when you were only poor. I was fourteen. I did not know the difference. I think I do now."
Honora, who had been braced for anything but kindness, found she had to look at the fire for a moment.
"You owe me nothing, Miss Prestwick."