“You came here to tell me that?” said Rosamund, lifting her head and speaking coldly and very clearly.

“I didn’t know what I was going to tell you.  At the time I am speaking of I had no thought of ever trying to see you.  That thought came to me long afterwards.”

“Why?”

“I’m a happy woman.  In my happiness I’ve learnt to respect love very much, and I’ve learnt to recognize it at a glance.  Your husband is the victim of a great love, Mrs. Leith.  I feel as if I couldn’t stand by and see him utterly destroyed by it.”

“Father Robertson tells me——­” said Rosamund.

And then she was silent.  All this time she was struggling almost furiously against pride and an intense reserve which seemed trying to suffocate every good impulse within her.  She held on to the thought of Father Robertson (she was unable to hold on to the thought of God); she strove not to hate the woman who was treading in her sanctuary, and whose steps echoed harshly and discordantly to its farthest, its holiest recesses; but she felt herself to be hardening against her will, to be congealing, turning to ice.  Nevertheless she was resolute not to leave the room in which she was without learning all that this woman had to tell her.

“Yes?” said Lady Ingleton.

And the thought went through her mind: 

“Oh, how she is hating me!”

“Father Robertson told me there was someone else.”

“Yes, there is.  Otherwise I might never have come here.  I’m partly to blame.  But I—­but I can’t possibly go into details.  You mustn’t ask me for any details, please.  Try to accept the little I can say as truth, though I’m not able to give you any proof.  You must know that women who are intelligent, and have lived long in the—­well, in the sort of world I’ve lived in, are never mistaken about certain things.  They don’t need what are called proofs.  They know certain things are happening, or not happening, without holding any proofs for or against.  Your husband has got into the wrong hands.”

“What do you mean by that?” said Rosamund steadily, even obstinately.

“In his misery and absolute loneliness he has allowed himself to be taken possession of by a woman.  She is doing him a great deal of harm.  In fact she is ruining him.”

She stopped.  Perhaps she suspected that Rosamund, in defiance of her own denial of proofs, would begin asking for them; but Rosamund said nothing.

“He is going down,” Lady Ingleton resumed.  “He has already deteriorated terribly.  I saw him recently by chance in Stamboul (he never comes to us now), and I was shocked at his appearance.  When I first met him, in spite of his bitterness and intense misery I knew at once that I was with a man of fine nature.  There was something unmistakable, the rare imprint; that’s fading from him now.  You know Father Robertson very well.  I don’t.  But the very first time I was with him I knew he was a man who was seeking the heights.  Your husband now is seeking the depths, as if he wanted to hide himself and his misery in them.  Perhaps he hasn’t found the lowest yet.  I believe there is only one human being who can prevent him from finding it.  I’m quite sure there is only one human being.  That’s why I came here.”