"If only somebody would marry her!" he thought, as he sat opposite to her at the dinner-table, on the night that she returned for the last time from school.
The thought cheered him. Juliet, he noticed for the first time, had become singularly pretty. He engaged a severe Frenchwoman of mature age as chaperon, and made spasmodic attempts to take his adopted daughter into such society as the Belgian port, where he was consul at this time, could afford.
It was not a large society; nor did eligible young men figure in it in any quantity. Those there were, were foreigners, to whom the question of a dot must be satisfactorily solved before the idea of matrimony would so much as occur to them.
Juliet had no money. Lady Byrne had left her fortune to her husband, and rash speculations on his part had reduced it to a meagre amount, which he felt no inclination to part with. Two or three years went by, and she received no proposals. Sir Arthur's hopes of seeing her provided for grew faint, and he could imagine no way out of his difficulties. He himself spent his leave in England, but he never took the girl with him on those holidays. He had no wish to be called on to explain her presence to such of his friends as might not remember his wife's whim; and, though she passed as his daughter abroad, she could not do that at home.
Juliet, for her part, was not very well content. She could hardly avoid knowing that she was looked on as an incubus, and she saw that her father, as she called him, dreaded to be questioned as to their relationship. She lived a simple life; rode and played tennis with young Belgians of her own age; read, worked, went to such dances and entertainments as were given in the little town, and did not, on the whole, waste much time puzzling over the mystery that surrounded her childhood. But when her friends asked her why she never went to England with Sir Arthur, she did not know what answer to make, and worried herself in secret about it.
Why did he not take her? Because he was ashamed of her? But why was he ashamed? Her mother--she always thought of Lady Byrne by that name--had said she was the daughter of a friend of hers. So that she must at least be the child of people of good family. Was not that enough?
She was already twenty-three when Sir Arthur married again. The lady was an American: Mrs. Clarency Butcher, a good-looking widow of about thirty-five, with three little girls, of whom the eldest was fifteen. She had not the enormous wealth which is often one of her countrywomen's most pleasing attributes, but she was moderately well off and came of a good Colonial family. Having lived for several years in England, she had grown to prefer the King's English to the President's, and had dropped, almost completely, the accent of her native country. She was extremely well educated, and talked three other languages with equal correctness, her first husband having been attached to various European legations. Altogether, she was a charming and attractive woman, and there were many who envied Sir Arthur for the second time in his life.