Lady Ingleton was an old friend of Mrs. Clarke, and was a woman wholly indifferent to the prejudices which govern ordinary persons.  She had spent the greater part of her life abroad, and looked like a weary Italian, though she was half English, a quarter Irish, and a quarter French.  She was very dark, and had large, dreamy dark eyes which knew how to look bored, a low voice which could say very sharp things at times, and a languid manner which concealed more often than it betrayed an intelligence always on the alert.

“What is it, Cynthia?” said Lady Ingleton.  “But first tell me if you like this Sine carpet.  I found it in the bazaar last Thursday, and it cost the eyes out of my head.  Carey, of course, has said for the hundredth time that I am ruining him, and bringing his red hair in sorrow to the tomb.  Even if I am, it seems to me the carpet is worth it.”

Mrs. Clarke studied the carpet for a moment with earnest attention.  She even knelt down to look closely at it, and passed her hands over it gently, while Lady Ingleton watched her with a sort of dark and still admiration.

“It’s a marvel,” she said, getting up.  “If you had let it go I should almost have despised you.”

“Please tell that to Carey when he comes to you to complain.  And now, what is it?”

“You remember several months ago the tragedy of a man called Dion Leith, who fought in the South African War, came home and almost immediately after his return killed his only son by mistake out shooting?”

“Yes.  You knew him, I think you said.  He was married to that beautiful Rosamund Everard who used to sing.  I heard her once at Tippie Chetwinde’s.  Esme Darlington was a great admirer or hers, of course pour le bon motif.”

“Dion Leith’s here.”

“In Therapia?”

“No, in a hideous little hotel in Constantinople.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think he knows.  His wife has given him up.  She was a mother, not a lover, so you can imagine her feelings about the man who killed her child.  It seems she was une mere folle.  She has left him and, according to him, has given herself to God.  He’s in a most peculiar condition.  He was a model husband, absolutely devoted and entirely irreproachable.  Even before marriage, I should think he had kept out of the way of—­things.  The athlete with ideals—­he was that, one supposes.”

“How extraordinarily attractive!” said Lady Ingleton, in a lazy and rather drawling voice.

“So he had a great deal to fasten on the woman who has cast him out.  Just now, like the coffin of Mohammed, he’s suspended.  That’s the impression I get from him.”

“Do you want to bring him down to earth?”

“All he’s known and cared for in life has failed him.  He was traveling under an assumed name even, for fear people should point him out as the man who killed his own son.  All that sort of thing is no use.  I gave his secret away deliberately to young Vane, and asked him to speak to the Ambassador.  And now I’ve come to you.  I want you to have him here once or twice and be nice to him.  Then I can see something of him, poor fellow, and do something for him.”