He had visited the poor in great hospitals where every detail testified to the beneficence of the rich; yet he knew that the comfort and cleanliness of the hospital must needs accentuate the dirt and squalor of the slum to which the patient must return.
He sank into his armchair, with a sigh of relief, and was sorry to hear of a visitor, who had called twice that afternoon and would call again after nine o'clock.
"Did he leave his card?"
Yes, the card was there on the table.
"Mr. Claude Rutherford."
Father Cyprian had not seen Claude since the opening day of that inquest which had been so often adjourned, only to close in an open verdict, and a mystery still unsolved. He had not seen Claude; but he had seen Mrs. Rutherford more than once in that quiet month when life in West End London seems to come to a stand-still. She had talked about her son as she talked only to him, opening her heart to the friend who knew all its secrets, the best and the worst of her. Hitherto she had never failed to find him interested and sympathetic; but in those recent interviews it had seemed to her as if the close friend of long years had changed; as if he was talking to her from a distance; as if some mysterious barrier had arisen between them.
She had told him of that conversation with her son, in which he had promised to confide in this old and trusted friend. That had happened more than a month ago, and the confidence had not yet come. Perhaps it was coming to-night.
"I will see Mr. Rutherford at whatever time he calls," Father Cyprian told his servant.
His dinner was short and temperate, but not ill-cooked or ill-served. He drank barley water, but the jug that held it was of old cut-glass, picked up at a broker's shop in a back street for seven shillings, and worth as many pounds. His silver was old family plate, his napery of the finest.
It was past nine when Claude Rutherford appeared, and the first thing Father Cyprian observed was that he was physically exhausted. He dropped into a chair with a long sigh of fatigue, and it was three or four minutes before he was able to speak.