Dion looked at the gray coming of the new day.

CHAPTER IX

Liverpool has a capacity for looking black which is perhaps, only surpassed by Manchester’s, and it looked its blackest on a day at the end of March in the following year, as the afternoon express from London roared into the Lime Street Station.  The rain was coming down; it was small rain, and it descended with a sort of puny determination; it was sad rain without any dash, any boldness; it had affinities with the mists which sweep over stretches of moorland, but its power of saturation was remarkable.  It soaked Liverpool.  It issued out of blackness and seemed to carry a blackness with it which descended into the very soul of the city and lay coiled there like a snake.

Lady Ingleton was very sensitive to her surroundings, and as she lifted the rug from her knees, and put away the book she had been reading, she shivered.  A deep melancholy floated over her and enveloped her.  She thought, “Why did I come upon this adventure?  What is it all to do with me?” But then the face of a man rose up before her, lean, brown, wrinkled, ravaged, with an expression upon it that for a long time had haunted her, throwing a shadow upon her happiness.  And she felt that she had done right to come.  Impulse, perhaps, had driven her; sentiment rather than reason had been her guide.  Nevertheless, she did not regret her journey.  Even if nothing good came of it she would not regret it.  She would have tried for once at some small expense to herself to do a worthy action.  She would for once have put all selfishness behind her.

A white-faced porter, looking anxious and damp, appeared at the door of the corridor.  Lady Ingleton’s French maid arrived from the second class with Turkish Jane on her arm.

“Oh, Miladi, how black it is here!” she exclaimed, twisting her pointed little nose.  “The black it reaches the heart.”

That was exactly what Lady Ingleton was thinking, but she said, in a voice less lazy than usual.

“There’s a capital hotel, Annette.  We shall be very comfortable.”

“Shall we stay here long, Miladi?”

“No; but I don’t know how long yet.  Is Jane all right?”

“She has been looking out of the window, Miladi, the whole way.  She is in ecstasy.  Dogs have no judgment, Miladi.”

When Lady Ingleton was in her sitting-room at the Adelphi Hotel, and had had the fire lighted and tea brought up, she asked to see the manager for a moment.  He came almost immediately, a small man, very smart, very trim, self-possessed as a attache.

“I hope you are quite comfortable, my lady,” he said, in a thin voice which held no note of doubt.  “Can I do anything for you?”

“I wanted to ask you if you knew the address of some one I wish to send a note to—­Mr. Robertson.  He’s a clergyman who—­”

“Do you mean Father Robertson, of Holy Cross, Manxby Street, my lady?”