ce, when this was said in Lady Ingleton's drawing-room at
Therapia, she murmured:

"I don't think it quite amounts to that. Mr. Leith has never been a
schoolmaster."

And there she left it, with a faint smile in which there was just the
hint of an almost cynical sadness.

Since the trip to Brusa on the "Leyla" she had thought a great deal
about Dion Leith, and she was very sorry for him in a rather unusual
way. Out of her happiness with her husband she seemed to draw an
instinctive knowledge of what such a nature as Dion Leith's wanted and
of the extent of his loss. Once she said to Sir Carey, with a sort of
intensity such as she seldom showed:

"Good women do terrible things sometimes."

"Such as----?" said Sir Carey, looking at her almost with surprise in
his eyes.

"I think Mrs. Leith has done a terrible thing to her husband."

"Perhaps she loved the child too much."

"Even love can be almost abominable," said Lady Ingleton. "If we had a
child, and you had done what poor Dion Leith has done, do you think I
should have cast you out of my life?"

"But--are you a good woman?" he asked her, smiling.

"No, or you should never have bothered about me."

He touched her hand.

"When you do that," Lady Ingleton said, "I could almost cry over poor
Dion Leith."

Sir Carey bent down and kissed her with a very tender gallantry.

"You and I are secretly sentimentalists, Delia," he said. "That is why
we are so happy together."

"Why doesn't Dion Leith go to England?" she exclaimed, almost angrily.

"Perhaps England seems full of his misery. Besides, his wife is there."

"He ought to go to her. He ought to force her to see the evil she is
doing."

"Leith will never do that, I feel sure," said Sir Carey gravely. "And in
his place I don't know that I could."

Lady Ingleton looked at him with an almost sharp impatience such as she
seldom showed him.

"When a man has right on his side he ought to browbeat a woman!" she
exclaimed. "And even if he is in the wrong it's the best way to make
a woman see things through his eyes. Dion Leith is too delicate with
women."

After a moment she added:

"At any rate with some women, the first of whom is his own wife. A man
should always put up a big fight for a really big thing, and Dion Leith
hasn't done that!"

"He fought in South Africa for England."

"Ah," she said, lifting her chin, "that sort of thing is so different."

"Tell him what you think," said the Ambass