“Oh, as to that, for an old friend—­h’m, ha!”

His voice failed in his beard.  He drew forth a beautiful Indian handkerchief—­a gift from his devoted friend the Viceroy of India—­and passed it over a face which looked unusually old.

Mrs. Chetwinde said: 

“I expected you to win, Cynthia.  It was stupid of the jury to be so slow in arriving at the inevitable verdict.  But stupid people are as lethargic as silly ones are swift.  How shall we get to the carriage?  We can’t go out by the public exit.  I hear the crowd is quite enormous, and won’t move.  We must try a side door, if there is one.”

Then Dion held Mrs. Clarke’s hand, and looked down at her haggard but still self-possessed face.  It astonished him to find that she preserved her earnestly observant expression.

“I’m very glad,” was all he found to say.

“Thank you,” she replied, in a voice perhaps slightly more husky than usual.  “I mean to stay on in London for some time.  I’ve got lots of things to settle”—­she paused—­“before I go back to Constantinople.”

“But are you really going back?”

“Of course—­eventually.”

Her voice, nearly drowned by the noise of people departing from the court, sounded to him implacable.

“You heard the hope of the Court that my husband and I would come together again?  Of course we never shall.  But I’m sure I shall get hold of Jimmy.  I know my husband won’t keep him from me.”  She stared at his shoulders.  “I want you to help me with Jimmy’s physical education—­I mean by getting him to that instructor you spoke of.”

“To be sure—­Jenkins,” he said, marveling at her.

“Jenkins—­exactly.  And I hope it will be possible for your wife and me to meet soon, now there’s nothing against it owing to the verdict.”

“Thank you.”

“Do tell her, and see if we can arrange it.”

Dumeny at this moment passed close to them with his friend on his way out of court.  His eyes rested on Mrs. Clarke, and a faint smile went over his face as he slightly raised his hat.

“Good-by,” said Mrs. Clarke to Dion.

And she turned to Sir John Addington.

Dion made his way slowly out into the night, thinking of the unwise life and of the smile on the lips of Dumeny.

CHAPTER VI

That summer saw, among other events of moment, the marriage of Beatrice and Daventry, the definite establishment of Robin as a power in his world, and the beginning of one of those noiseless contests which seem peculiar to women, and which are seldom, if ever, fully comprehended in all their bearings by men.

Beatrice, as she wished it, had a very quiet, indeed quite a hole-and-corner wedding in a Kensington church, of which nobody had ever heard till she was married in it, to the great surprise of its vicar, its verger, and the decent widow woman who swept its pews for a moderate wage.  For their honeymoon she and Daventry disappeared to the Garden of France to make a leisurely tour through the Chateaux country.