“People are getting accustomed to my temerity,” she said.  “Of course Esme Darlington is still in despair, and Lady Ermyntrude goes about spreading scandal.  But it doesn’t seem to do much harm.  She hasn’t any more influence over my husband.  He won’t hear a word against me.  Like a good dog, I suppose, he loves the hand which has beaten him.”

“You’ve got a will of iron, I believe,” said Dion.

She changed the subject.

“I don’t ask you to tell me about South Africa,” she said.  “Because you told me the whole story as soon as I came into the room.  But what are you going to do now?  Settle down in the Church’s bosom at Welsley?”

There was no sarcasm in her voice.

“Oh—­I’m going back to business in a few days.”

“You’ll run up and down, I suppose.”

“It’s too far, an hour and a half each way.  I shall have to be in London.”

He spoke rather indecisively.

“I’m taking a fortnight’s holiday, and then we shall settle down.”

“I’ve been in Welsley,” said Mrs. Clarke.  “It’s beautiful but, to me, stifling.  It has an atmosphere which would soon dry up my mind.  All the petals would curl up and go brown at the edges.  I’m glad you’re not going to live there.  But after South Africa you couldn’t.”

“I don’t know.  I find it very attractive,” he said, instinctively on the defensive because of Rosamund, who had not been attacked.  “The coziness and the peace of it are very delightful after all the—­well, of course, it was a pretty stiff life in South Africa.”

Again he looked at Brayfield’s letter.  He wanted to tell Mrs. Clarke about Brayfield, but it seemed she had no interest in the dead man.  While he was thinking this she quietly put out her hand, took the letter, got up and dropped it into the fire among the blue flames from the ship logs.

“I seldom keep letters,” she said, “unless I have to answer them.”

She turned round.

“I’ve kept yours,” she said.

“The one I—­it was awfully good of you to send me that telegram.”

“So Allah had you in His hand.”

“I don’t know why when so many much better fellows——­” He broke off, and then he plunged into the matter of Brayfield.  He could not go without telling her, though hearing, perhaps, would not interest her.

All the time he was speaking she remained standing by the fire, with her lovely little head slightly bending forward and her profile turned towards him.  The emaciation of her figure almost startled him.  She wore a black dress.  It seemed to him a very simple dress.  She could have told him that such simplicity only comes from a few very good dressmakers, and is only fully appreciated by a very few women.

Brayfield, though he was dying, had been very careful in what he had said to Dion.  In his pain he had shown that he had good blood in him.  He had not hinted even at any claim on Mrs. Clarke.  But he had spoken of a friendship which had meant very much to him, and had asked Dion, if he ever had the opportunity, to tell Mrs. Clarke that when he was dying she was the woman he was thinking about.  He had not spoken interestingly; he was not an interesting man; but he had spoken with sincerity, with genuine feeling.