Mrs. Clarke did not back up her son’s frank invitation.  She only thanked Dion quietly in her husky voice, and bade him good-by with an “I know how busy you must be, and how difficult you must find it ever to pay a call.  You’ve been very good to us.”  At the door she added, “I’ve never seen Jimmy take so much to anyone as to you.”  As Dion went down the stairs something in him was gently glowing.  He was glad that young rascal had taken to him at sight.  The fact gave him confidence when he thought of Robin and the future.

It occurred to him, as he turned into the Greville Club, that Mrs. Clarke had not once mentioned Rosamund during his visit.

CHAPTER VII

When Rosamund, Robin and the nurse came back to London on the last day of September, Beatrice and Daventry were settled in their home.  They had taken a flat in De Lorne Gardens, Kensington, high up on the seventh floor of a big building, which overlooked from a distance the trees of Kensington Gardens.  Their friends soon began to call on them, and one of the first to mount up in the lift to their “hill-top,” as Daventry called their seventh floor, was Mrs. Clarke.  A few nights after her call the Daventrys dined in Little Market Street, and Daventry, whose happiness had raised him not only to the seventh-floor flat, but also to the seventh heaven, mentioned that she had been, and that they were going to dine with her at Claridge’s on the following night.  He enlarged, almost with exuberance, upon her savoir-vivre, her knowledge and taste, and said Beattie was delighted with her.  Beatrice did not deny it.  She was never exuberant, but she acknowledged that she had found Mrs. Clarke attractive and interesting.

“A lot of the clever ones are going to-morrow,” said Daventry.  He mentioned several, both women and men, among them a lady who was famed for her exclusiveness as well as for her brains.

Evidently Mrs. Chetwinde had been speaking by the book when she had said at the trial, “If she wins, she wins, and it’s all right.  If she gets the verdict, the world won’t do anything, except laugh at Beadon Clarke.”  No serious impression had apparently been left upon society by the first disagreement of the jury.  The “wild mind in the innocent body” had been accepted for what it was.  And perhaps now, chastened by a sad experience, the wild mind was on the way to becoming tame.  Dion wondered if it were so.  After dinner he was undeceived by Daventry, who told him over their cigars that Mrs. Clarke was positively going back to live in Constantinople, and had already taken a flat there, “against every one’s advice.”  Beadon Clarke had got himself transferred, and was to be sent to Madrid, so she wouldn’t run against him; but nevertheless she was making a great mistake.

“However,” Daventry concluded, “there’s something fine about her persistence; and of course a guilty woman would never dare to go back, even after an acquittal.”