“I wish I—­why do you live always in Liverpool?” she murmured.

She put up her little silk umbrella and was gone.

There was a fire in her sitting-room on the following-morning.  The day was windy and cold, for March was going out resentfully.  Before the fire lay Turkish Jane on a cushion, blinking placidly at the flames.  Already she had become reconciled to her new life in this unknown city.  Her ecstasy of the journey had not returned, but the surprise which had succeeded to it was now merged in a stagnant calm, and she felt no objection to passing the remainder of her life in the Adelphi Hotel.  She supposed that she was comfortably settled for the day when she heard her mistress call for Annette and give the most objectionable order.

“Please take Jane away, Annette,” said Lady Ingleton.

“Miladi!”

“I don’t want her here this morning.  I’m expecting a visitor, and Jane might bark.  I don’t wish to have a noise in the room.”

Annette, who looked decidedly sulky, approached the cushion, bent down, and rather abruptly snatched the amazed doyenne of the Pekinese from her voluptuous reveries.

“We shall probably leave here to-morrow,” Lady Ingleton added.

Annette’s expression changed.

“We’re going back to London, Miladi?”

“I think so.  I’ll tell you this afternoon.”

She glanced at her watch.

“I don’t wish to be disturbed for an hour.  Don’t leave Jane in my bedroom.  Take her away to yours.”

“Very well, Miladi.”

Annette went out looking inquisitive, with Turkish Jane on her arm.

When she was gone Lady Ingleton took up “The Liverpool Mercury” and tried to read the news of the day.  The March wind roared outside and made the windows rattle.  She listened to it and forgot the chronicle of the passing hour.  She was a women who cared to know the big things that were happening in the big world.  She had always lived among men who were helping to make history, and she was intelligent enough to understand their efforts and to join in their discussions.  Her husband had often consulted her when he was in a tight place, and sometimes he had told her she had the brain of a man.  But she had the nerves and the heart of a woman, and at this moment public affairs and the news of the day did not interest her at all.  She was concentrated on woman’s business.  Into her hands she had taken a tangled love skein.  And she was almost frightened at what she had ventured to do.  Could she hope to be of any use, of any help, in getting it into order?  Was there any chance for the man she had last seen in Stamboul near Santa Sophia?  She almost dreaded Rosamund Leith’s arrival.  She felt nervous, strung up.  The roar of the wind added to her uneasiness.  It suggested turmoil, driven things, the angry passions of nature.  Beyond the Mersey the sea was raging.  She had a stupid feeling that nature and man were