“Of his great wretchedness, of his broken life—­I suppose I—­I should have trusted to my instinct what to do when I saw her.”

“Ah!”

“But I can leave it to you,” she said, but still with a faint note of hesitation, of doubt.  “You know her.”

“Yes, I know her.”

He paused.  Then, with an almost obstinate firmness, a sort of pressure, he added, “Have I your permission—­I may not do it—­to tell Mrs. Leith that her husband has been unfaithful to her with some one in Constantinople?”

Lady Ingleton slightly reddened; she looked down and hesitated.

“It may be necessary if your purpose in coming here is to be achieved,” said Father Robertson, still with pressure.

“You may do whatever you think best,” she said, with a sigh.

He got up to go.

“Would you mind very much staying on here for two or three days, even for a week, if necessary?”

“No, no.”

He smiled.

“A whole week of Liverpool!” he said.

“How many years have you been here?”

“A good many.  I’m almost losing count.”

When he was gone Lady Ingleton sat for a long while before the fire.

The sad influence of the blackness of rainy Liverpool had lifted from her.  Her impulse had received a welcome which had warmed her.

“I love that man,” she thought.  “Carey would love him too.”

He had said very little, and how loyal he had been in his silence, how loyal to the woman she had attacked.  In words he had not defended her, but somehow he had conveyed to Lady Ingleton a sense of his protective love and immense pity for the woman who had been bereft of her child.  How he had conveyed this she could not have said.  But as she sat there before the fire she was aware that, since Father Robertson’s visit, she felt differently about Dion Leith’s wife.  Mysteriously she began to feel the sorrow of the woman as well as, and side by side with, the sorrow of the man.

“If it had been my child?” she thought.  “If my husband had done it?”

CHAPTER X

[Page missing in original book.]

Since the death of Robin and Rosamund’s arrival in Liverpool, Father Robertson had made acquaintance with her sister and with the mother of Dion.  And both these women had condemned Rosamund for what she had done, and had begged him to try to bring about a change in her heart.  Both of them, too, had dwelt upon the exceptional quality of Dion’s love for his wife.  Mrs. Leith had been unable to conceal the bitterness of her feeling against Rosamund.  The mother in her way, was outraged.  Beatrice Daventry had shown no bitterness.  She loved and understood her sister too well to rage against her for anything that she did or left undone.  But this very love of her sister, so clearly shown, had made her condemnation of Rosamund’s action the more impressive.  And her pity for Dion was supreme.