meant very much to him, and had asked Dion, if he
ever had the opportunity, to tell Mrs. Clarke that when he was dying she
was the woman he was thinking about. He had not spoken interestingly;
he was not an interesting man; but he had spoken with sincerity, with
genuine feeling.

"She's a woman in a thousand," he had said. "Tell her I thought so till
the last. Tell her if she had been free I should have begged her to
marry me."

And he had added, after a pause:

"Not that she'd ever have done it. I'm pretty sure of that."

When Dion had finished, still standing by the fire, Mrs. Clarke said:

"Thank you for remembering it all. It shows your good heart."

"Oh--please!"

Why didn't she think about Brayfield?

She turned round and fixed her distressed eyes on him.

"Which is best, to be charitable or to be truthful?" she said, without
any vibration of excitement. "_De Mortuis_--it's a kindly saying. A true
Turk, one of the old Osmanlis, might have said it. If you hadn't brought
me that letter and the message I should probably never have mentioned
Brayfield to you again. But as it is I am going to be truthful. I can
say honestly peace to Brayfield's ashes. His death was worthy. Courage
he evidently had. But you mustn't think that because he liked me I ever
liked him. Don't make a mistake. I'm not a nervous suspicious fool of a
woman anxiously defending, or trying to defend, her honor--not attacked,
by the way. If Lord Brayfield had ever been anything to me I should
just be quiet, say nothing. But I didn't like him. If I had liked him I
shouldn't have burnt his letter. And now"--to Dion's great astonishment
she made slowly the sign of the Cross--"_requiescat in pace_."

After a long pause she added:

"Now come and see the other room. I'll give you Turkish coffee there."

CHAPTER VIII

It had been understood between Rosamund and Dion that he should spend
that night in London. He had several things to see to after his long
absence, had to visit his tailor, the dentist, the bootmaker, to look
out some things in Little Market Street, to have an interview with
his banker, et cetera. He would go back to Welsley on the following
afternoon. In the evening of that day he dined in De Lorne Gardens
with Beatrice and Guy Daventry and his mother, and again, as in
Knightsbridge, something was said about the Welsley question. Dion
gathered that Rosamund's devotion to Welsley was no secret in "the
family." The speedy ret