The victor turned to the schoolmaster.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said, “for presuming to take your part, but a gentleman is helpless with a vulgar woman.”
“I thank you, madam. I hope the sharpness of your rebuke——but indeed the poor woman can hardly help her rudeness, for she is very worldly, and believes herself very pious. It is the old story— hard for the rich.”
Clementina was struck.
“I too am rich and worldly,” she said. “But I know that I am not pious, and if you would but satisfy me that religion is common sense, I would try to be religious with all my heart and soul.”
“I willingly undertake the task. But let us know each other a little first. And lest I should afterwards seem to have taken an advantage of you, I hope you have no wish to be nameless to me, for my friend Malcolm MacPhail had so described you that I recognized your ladyship at once.”
Clementina said that, on the contrary, she had given her name to the woman who opened the door.
“It is because of what Malcolm said of you that I ventured to come to you,” she added.
“Have you seen Malcolm lately?” he asked, his brow clouding a little. “It is more than a week since he has been to me.”
Thereupon, with embarrassment, such as she would never have felt except in the presence of pure simplicity, she told of his disappearance with his mistress.