“She’s a woman in a thousand,” he had said.  “Tell her I thought so till the last.  Tell her if she had been free I should have begged her to marry me.”

And he had added, after a pause: 

“Not that she’d ever have done it.  I’m pretty sure of that.”

When Dion had finished, still standing by the fire, Mrs. Clarke said: 

“Thank you for remembering it all.  It shows your good heart.”

“Oh—­please!”

Why didn’t she think about Brayfield?

She turned round and fixed her distressed eyes on him.

“Which is best, to be charitable or to be truthful?” she said, without any vibration of excitement. “De Mortuis—­it’s a kindly saying.  A true Turk, one of the old Osmanlis, might have said it.  If you hadn’t brought me that letter and the message I should probably never have mentioned Brayfield to you again.  But as it is I am going to be truthful.  I can say honestly peace to Brayfield’s ashes.  His death was worthy.  Courage he evidently had.  But you mustn’t think that because he liked me I ever liked him.  Don’t make a mistake.  I’m not a nervous suspicious fool of a woman anxiously defending, or trying to defend, her honor—­not attacked, by the way.  If Lord Brayfield had ever been anything to me I should just be quiet, say nothing.  But I didn’t like him.  If I had liked him I shouldn’t have burnt his letter.  And now”—­to Dion’s great astonishment she made slowly the sign of the Cross—­“requiescat in pace.”

After a long pause she added: 

“Now come and see the other room.  I’ll give you Turkish coffee there.”

CHAPTER VIII

It had been understood between Rosamund and Dion that he should spend that night in London.  He had several things to see to after his long absence, had to visit his tailor, the dentist, the bootmaker, to look out some things in Little Market Street, to have an interview with his banker, et cetera.  He would go back to Welsley on the following afternoon.  In the evening of that day he dined in De Lorne Gardens with Beatrice and Guy Daventry and his mother, and again, as in Knightsbridge, something was said about the Welsley question.  Dion gathered that Rosamund’s devotion to Welsley was no secret in “the family.”  The speedy return to Little Market Street was assumed; nevertheless he was certain that his mother, his sister-in-law, and Guy were secretly wondering how Rosamund would be able to endure the departure from Welsley.  Beatrice had welcomed him back very quietly, but he had felt more definitely than ever before the strong sympathy which existed between them.

“I quite love Beatrice,” he said to his mother in the jobbed brougham with the high stepping, but slow moving, horse which conveyed them to Queen Anne’s Mansions after the dinner.

“She is worth it,” said Mrs. Leith.  “Beatrice says very little, but she means very much.”