“Why did you come to-day?”
“Well, I——” He hesitated. “I promised Mr. Daventry to come to-day.”
“That was it!” said Mrs. Clarke, and she looked out of the window.
Dion felt rather uncomfortable as he spoke to Mrs. Chetwinde and left further conversation with Mrs. Clarke to Daventry; but when they were all in a quiet corner of the tearoom at Claridge’s, a tea-table before them and a band playing softly at a distance, he was more at his ease. The composure of Mrs. Clarke perhaps conveyed itself to him. She spoke of the case quite naturally, as a guilty woman surely could not possibly have spoken of it—showing no venom, making no attack upon her accusers.
“It’s all a mistake,” she said, “arising out of stupidity, out of the most widespread and, perhaps, the most pitiable and dangerous lack in human nature.”
“And what’s that?” asked Daventry, rather eagerly.
“I expect you know.”
He shook his head.
“Don’t you?” she asked of Dion, spreading thinly some butter over a piece of dry toast.
“I’m afraid I don’t.”