"Yes." Anstice related the particulars of the meeting between them, and repeated, so far as he could remember it, the substance of the subsequent conversation in the club. "So you see, Sir Richard, Major Carstairs is not only ready, but longing, to be convinced of his wife's innocence in the matter."
"Good! That's capital!" Sir Richard beamed. "If once Chloe can be led to understand that her husband will believe in her one day she will be ready to help us to prove her innocence. You know I have sometimes thought that if she had taken up a rather more human, more feminine attitude, had relinquished the pride which forbade her to protest loudly against the injustice which was done her, she might have been better off in the end. It is very hard fighting for a woman who won't fight for herself; and that idea of hers that if her own personal character were not enough to prove her blameless of so vile a charge nothing else was worth trying—well, it was the attitude of conscious innocence, no doubt, but it was certainly above the heads of a conscientious, but particularly unintelligent jury!"
He put down the stump of his cigar, which unlike Anstice he had smoked to the end, and looked at the other man with a kindly eye.
"Look here, Anstice, why shouldn't we go—you and I—to visit Mrs. Carstairs now?"
"Now?" Anstice was somewhat taken aback at the proposal.
"Yes. Why not? There's no time like the present. It is barely six o'clock, and she will certainly be at home."
"But—won't she be at church?" Anstice felt suddenly unwilling to go into the matter with the mistress of Cherry Orchard.
"Not she! Don't you know Chloe only goes to church once in a blue moon?" Sir Richard laughed breezily. "I don't blame her—I expect she feels she owes Providence a grudge—but anyway she will be at home to-night. And—another inducement—Tochatti will almost certainly be at her church. Those Catholics are a queer lot," said Sir Richard, who was a Protestant of the old school. "They will cheat you and lie to you—aye, and half murder you, on a Saturday night—and turn up at Mass without fail on Sunday morning!"
"Yes, I know Tochatti does go to the Roman Catholic chapel at night," owned Anstice rather reluctantly. "Well, sir, if you really think the moment is propitious let us go by all means. After all, it is just possible Mrs. Carstairs may have had suspicions of Tochatti herself."
"Yes. I remember Iris often used to say she distrusted the woman—don't know why. I never paid much attention to her caprices," said Sir Richard with a smile; and Anstice made haste to seize the opportunity thus offered.