“I know—­to get them work.”  And they walked round the room.  “Well, Merat, this isn’t what we are accustomed to—­this isn’t like Park Lane.”

“Mademoiselle only cares for plain things now; if she had the money she would spend it all upon her poor people.  It was a long time before I could persuade her to buy the sofa you have been sitting on just now; she has not had it above two months.”

“And all these clothes, Merat—­what are they?”

“Oh, I have forgotten to take them away.”  And Merat told him that these were clothes that Evelyn was making for her poor people—­for little boys who were going upon a school-treat, mostly poor Irish; and Owen picked up a cap from the floor, and a little crooked smile came into his face when he heard it was intended for Paddy Sullivan.

“All the same, it is better she should think about poor people than about religion.”

“Far better, Sir Owen, far better.  Sometimes I’m afraid she will bring back things upon her.  She comes back tired and sleeps; but when she spends her time in churches thinking of her sins, or what she imagines to be sins, Sir Owen, I hear her walking about her room at night, and in the morning she tells me she hasn’t slept at all.”

“What you tell me is very serious, Merat.  All the same, all the same—­ jackets and coats for Paddy Sullivan’s children.  Well, it is very touching.  There never was anybody quite so good, do you think there was, Merat?”

“That is the reason why we all love her; and you do, too, Sir Owen, though you pretend to hate goodness and to despise—­”

“No, Merat, no.  Tell mademoiselle, if she wakes, that I am coming back to see her this evening late—­the later the better, I suppose, for she is not likely to fall asleep again once she awakes.”

Merat mentioned between nine and ten o’clock, and, to distract his thoughts, Owen went to the theatre that evening, and was glad to leave it at ten, before the play was over.

“Is she awake?”

“She has been awake some time.  I think you will be able to have a little talk with her.”  And Owen stole into the room with so little noise that Evelyn did not hear him, and all the room was seen and understood before she turned:  the crucifix above the bedstead, the pious prints, engravings which they had bought in Italy—­Botticelli and Filippo Lippi.  She lay in a narrow iron bed, and all the form that he knew so well covered in a plain nightgown such as he had never seen before, but in keeping, he thought, with the rest of the room, and in conformity—­such was his impression, there was no time for thinking—­with her present opinions.  The smallness of the chest of drawers surprised him.  Where did she keep her clothes?  It might be doubted if she possessed more than two or three gowns.  Where were they hanging?  The few chairs and the dressing-table, on which he caught sight of some ivory brushes he had given her, seemed the only furniture in the room.