CHAPTER XII

It was the month of May.  Already there had been several unusually hot days in Constantinople, and Mrs. Clarke was beginning to think about the villa at Buyukderer.  She was getting tired of Pera.  She had fulfilled her promise to Dion Leith.  She had given up going to England for Jimmy’s Christmas holidays and had spent the whole winter in Constantinople.  But now she had had enough of it for the present, indeed more than enough of it.

She was feeling weary of the everlasting diplomatic society, of the potins political and social, of the love affairs and intrigues of her acquaintances which she knew of or divined, of the familiar voices and faces.  She wanted something new; she wanted to break away.  The restlessness that was always in her, concealed beneath her pale aspect of calm, was persecuting her as the spring with its ferment drew near to the torrid summer.

The spring had got into her veins and had made her long for novelty.

One morning when Sonia came into Mrs. Clarke’s bedroom with the coffee she brought a piece of news.

“Miladi Ingleton arrived at the Embassy from England yesterday,” said Sonia, in her thick, soft voice.

The apparent recovery of Lady Ingleton’s mother had been a deception.  She had had a relapse almost immediately after Lady Ingleton’s return from Liverpool to London; an operation had been necessary, and Lady Ingleton had been obliged to stay on in England several weeks.  During this time Mrs. Clarke had had no news from her.  Till Sonia’s announcement she had not known the date fixed for her friend’s return.  She received the information with her usual inflexibility, and merely said: 

“I’ll go to see her this afternoon.”

Then she took up a newspaper which Sonia had brought in with her and began to sip the coffee.

As soon as she was dressed she sent a note to the British Embassy to ask if her friend would be in at tea-time.

Lady Ingleton drew her brows together when she read it.  She was delighted to be again in Constantinople, for she had missed Carey quite terribly, but she wished that Cynthia Clarke was anywhere else.  Ever since her visit to Liverpool she had been dreading the inevitable meeting with the friend whose secret she had betrayed.  Yet the meeting must take place.  She would be obliged some day to look once more into Cynthia Clarke’s earnest and distressed eyes.  When that happened would she hate herself very much for what she had done?  She had often wondered.  She wondered now, as she read the note written in her friend’s large upright hand, as she wrote a brief answer to say she would be in after five o’clock that day.

She was troubled by the fact that her visit to Liverpool had not yielded the result she had hoped for.  Rosamund Leith had not sought her husband.  But she had taken off the sister’s dress and had given up living in the north.