ioned, too.

"Is he still with his mother?" Rosamund asked.

"Yes. He's nearly eleven, I believe. She takes him to Jenkins for
exercise. She's very fond of him, I think."

After a moment of silence Rosamund simply said, "Poor child!" and then
spoke of something else, but in those two words, said as she had said
them, Dion thought he heard a definite condemnation of Mrs. Clarke. He
began to wonder whether Rosamund, although she had not read a full, or,
so far as he knew, any account of the case in the papers, had somehow
come to know a good deal about the unwise life of Constantinople.
Friends came to see her in London; she knew several people at Westgate;
report of a _cause celebre_ floats in the air; he began to believe she
knew.

At the end of September, just before Rosamund was to return to London
for the autumn and winter, Mrs. Clarke wrote to Dion again.

"CLARIDGE'S, 28 September, 1897

"DEAR Mr. LEITH,--I'm so sorry to bother you, but I wonder whether
you can spare me a moment. It's about my boy. He seems to me to have
strained himself with his exercises. Jenkins, as you probably know, has
gone away for a fortnight's holiday, so I can't consult him. I feel a
little anxious. You're an athlete, I know, and could set me right in a
moment if I'm making a fuss about nothing. The strain seems to be in the
right hip. Is that possible?--Yours sincerely,

"CYNTHIA CLARKE"

Dion didn't know how to refuse this appeal, so he fixed an hour, went
to Claridge's, and had an interview with Mrs. Clarke and her son,
Jimmy Clarke. When he went up to her sitting-room he felt rather
uncomfortable. He was thinking of her invitation to dinner, and to call
again, of his lack of response. She must certainly be thinking of
them, too. But when he was with her his discomfort died away before her
completely natural and oddly impersonal manner. Dinners, visits, seemed
far away from her thoughts. She was apparently concentrated on her boy,
and seemed to be thinking of him, not at all of Dion. Had Dion been a
vain man he might have been vexed by her indifference; as he was not
vain, he felt relieved, and so almost grateful to her. Jimmy,
too, helped to make things go easily. The young rascal, a sturdy,
good-looking boy, with dark eyes brimming over with mischief, took
tremendously to Dion at first sight.

"I say," he remarked, "you must be jolly strong! May I?"

He felt Dion's biceps, and added, with a sudden profound gravity: