“If she by her evil influence over him has saved him from danger,” her thought ran, “then I am grateful to her for coming into his life.”
And so she put behind her her jealousy of the woman who for the present dominated Lawless’ life.
Later in the morning Mrs Lawless ordered the car and drove into Cape Town to call on her friend.
She found Mrs Smythe reclining on a cane lounge on the stoep, a book beside her, which she was not reading, and the morning paper open at the page with the gruesome headline lying in her lap. She looked round as Zoë Lawless mounted the steps, and seeing who it was, got up and went to meet her.
“Oh! how good of you to come,” she said. “I have been thinking of you... Zoë, isn’t it awful? ... I can’t believe it. I can scarcely realise it yet.”
Tears rose in her eyes, already spoiled with futile weeping for a man so little worthy of her grief. She dabbed at them ineffectually with a wet handkerchief, and added with unconscious absurdity:
“Karl couldn’t have done it... He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Mrs Lawless put her hands upon her shoulders, and bending from her superior height, kissed the tremulous mouth.
“Poor Kate!” she said, and led her gently back to her seat.
“I feel,” said Mrs Smythe plaintively, “as though he were dead already... as though he, and not the other man, had met with a violent end. Oh! surely he will be able to explain... They were two to one... What could they have wanted with him? And why were they armed? Men who are peaceable citizens don’t carry firearms. Karl must have distrusted them to take a revolver with him... And yet, Colonel Grey—”