It was characteristic of her that, instead, she glanced at her watch and said:
“I can only stay another twenty minutes, and we shall probably not meet again. Are you going to Scotland tonight?”
“Indeed I am. Fred is there now, at his mother’s, telling her all sorts of horrible things about me, I suppose. They’ve both written to me.”
“What is your husband going to do?”
“I don’t know.” She began to cry again. “His mother, for once in her life, wants to patch things up between us. She’s one of your religious people, and she thinks divorce is awful.”
“I don’t know whether a divorce is still possible, now that David——”
Mrs. Carey broke into a sort of howl that, in its reminiscence of a beaten animal, made Flora feel sick.
“That’s just it—Fred is a beast! He thinks there were other people—other men—as well.”
“Oh,” said Flora, and shuddered violently.
“You’ve been rather a dear, so I don’t mind telling you that your brother is out of it now, whatever happened. Oh, I don’t know what’ll happen. I never cared for anybody like I did for David—never. I was ready to go through anything for him, and we could have started fresh somewhere, and no one would have thought anything of it. People aren’t so narrow-minded as they used to be. He’s the only man I’ve ever loved!”