French left the room for a moment, and returned accompanied by a fair-haired, straight-shouldered man, whom he introduced to Penrose as Captain Boyson.
Roger rose from his chair to shake hands.
"How do you do, Boyson? I've told them you know all about it." He dropped back heavily into his seat.
"I thought I might possibly put in a word," said the new-comer, glancing from Roger to his friends. "I trust I was not impertinent? But don't let me interrupt anything that was going on."
On a plea of chill, Boyson remained standing by the fire, warming his hands, looking down upon the other three. Penrose, who belonged to a military family, reminded himself, as he glanced at the American, of a recent distinguished book on Military Geography by a Captain Alfred Boyson. No doubt the same man. A capable face,—the face of the modern scientific soldier. It breathed alertness; but also some quality warmer and softer. If the general aspect had been shaped and moulded by an incessant travail of brain, the humanity of eye and mouth spoke dumbly to the humanity of others. The council gathered in the vicarage room felt itself strengthened.
Penrose resumed his questioning of Barnes, and the other two listened while the whole miserable story of the divorce, in its American aspects, unrolled. At first Roger showed a certain apathy and brevity; he might have been fulfilling a task in which he took but small interest; even the details of chicanery and corruption connected with the trial were told without heat; he said nothing bitter of his wife—avoided naming her, indeed, as much as possible.
But when the tale was done he threw back his head with sudden animation and looked at Boyson.
"Is that about the truth, Boyson? You know."
"Yes, I endorse it," said the American gravely. His face, thin and tanned, had flushed while Barnes was speaking.
"And you know what all their papers said of me—what they wished people to believe—that I wasn't fit to have charge of Beatty—that I should have done her harm?"