Did they ever entirely lose their under-look of distress?

CHAPTER IX

That evening Dion told Rosamund what Mrs. Clarke had said when he parted from her at Claridge’s.

“I promised her I’d find out which it was,” he added.  “Do you remember what was said?”

After a minute of silence, during which Rosamund seemed to be considering something, she answered: 

“Yes, I do.”

“Which was it?”

“Neither, Dion.  Mrs. Clarke has made a mistake.  She certainly spoke of some Turkish songs for me, but there was never any question of fixing a day for us to try them over together.”

“She thinks there was.”

“It’s difficult to remember exactly what is said, or not said, in the midst of a crowd.”

“But you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’d rather not try them over?”

“After what you’ve told me about Constantinople I expect I should be quite out of sympathy with Turkish music,” she answered, lightly and smiling.  “Let us be true to our Greek ideal.”

She seemed to be in fun, but he detected firmness of purpose behind the fun.

“What shall I say to Mrs. Clarke?” he asked.

“I should just leave it.  Perhaps she’ll forget all about it.”

Dion was quite sure that wouldn’t happen, but he left it.  Rosamund had determined not to allow Mrs. Clarke to be friends with her.  He wished very much it were otherwise, not because he really cared for Mrs. Clarke, but because he liked her and Jimmy, and because he hated the idea of hurting the feelings of a woman in Mrs. Clarke’s rather unusual situation.  He might, of course, have put his point of view plainly to Rosamund at once.  Out of delicacy he did not do this.  His great love for Rosamund made him instinctively very delicate in all his dealings with her; it told him that Rosamund did not wish to discuss her reasons for desiring to avoid Mrs. Clarke.  She had had them, he believed, before Mrs. Clarke and she had met.  That meeting evidently had not lessened their force.  He supposed, therefore, that she had disliked Mrs. Clarke.  He wondered why, and tried to consider Mrs. Clarke anew.  She was certainly not a disagreeable woman.  She was very intelligent, thoroughbred, beautiful in a peculiar way,—­even Rosamund thought that,—­ready to make herself pleasant, quite free from feminine malice, absolutely natural, interested in all the really interesting things.  Beattie liked her; Daventry rejoiced in her; Mrs. Chetwinde was her intimate friend; Esme Darlington had even made sacrifices for her; Bruce Evelin——­

There Dion’s thought was held up, like a stream that encounters a barrier.  What did Bruce Evelin think of Mrs. Clarke?  He had not gone to the trial.  But since he had retired from practise at the Bar he had never gone into court.  Dion had often heard him say he had had enough of the Law Courts.  There was no reason why he should have been drawn to them for Mrs. Clarke’s sake, or even for Daventry’s.  But what did he think of Mrs. Clarke?  Dion resolved to tell him of the rather awkward situation which had come about through his own intimacy—­it really amounted to that—­with Mrs. Clarke, and Rosamund’s evident resolve to have nothing to do with her.