Again Giulia nodded.
“Did he see her?”
She shook her head.
“She did not vish it. I said she vas not here. It vas a lie, and I do not like lies; but she vould have it so; and he go away. She look from the vindow, and vatch till he pass the corner, and then she go away also.”
Starr stood musing for a space, and, master of his emotions though he was, Giulia’s keen old eyes detected a certain expression of relief on his face.
He was inwardly reproaching himself also for part at least of the suspicion that had assailed him the instant he learnt that Carling had been there. He thought he knew Roger Carling as thoroughly as one man can know another, believed him to be the soul of honour and rectitude. But he also knew that in every human being there are depths that none other can plumb; and, remembering the circumstances, the thought had occurred involuntarily that some shameful secret might be the cause and explanation of the mysterious tragedy.
It was such an obvious solution. Lady Rawson, young, beautiful, extraordinarily attractive, married to a man almost old enough to be her grandfather and meeting every day one of her own age, handsome and debonair as was Carling. Dangerous conditions enough, human nature being what it is! And Carling would not be the first man to be fascinated and entangled by an unscrupulous woman, even while he loved another woman—as Roger loved Grace—with all the strength of his better nature.
But that idea might be dismissed, so far as Carling was concerned as a principal in the matter anyhow. Lady Rawson had not come here to meet him, had not expected or wished to see him when he followed her there.
Yet if Lady Rawson did not come here to meet Carling, whom did she come to see—whom did she wait for all those hours? Not old Cacciola, certainly, for she learnt at once that he was out for the day. He turned to Giulia and put the question point blank.