“He won’t be greedy to know,” she thought. “And so I shan’t mind telling him.”
Unlike a woman, she came at once to the point. Although she could be very evasive she could also be very direct.
“You know Mrs. Dion Leith,” she said. “My friend Tippie Chetwinde, Mrs. Willie Chetwinde, told me she was living here. She came here soon after the death of her child, I believe.”
“Yes, she did, and she has been here ever since.”
“Do you know Dion Leith, Mr. Robertson?” she asked, leaning forward in her chair by the fire, and fixing her large eyes, that looked like an Italian’s, upon him.
“No, I have never seen him. I hoped to, but the tragedy of the child occurred so soon after his return from South Africa that I never had an opportunity.”
“Forgive me for correcting you,” she said, gently but very firmly. “But it is not the tragedy of a child. It’s the tragedy of a man. I am going to talk very frankly to you. I make no apology for doing so. I am what is called”—she smiled faintly—“a woman of the world, and you, I think, are an unworldly man. Because I am of the world, and you, in spirit”—she looked at him almost deprecatingly—“are not of it, I can say what I have come here to try to say. I couldn’t say it to a man of the world, because I could never give a woman away to such a man. Tell me though, first, if you don’t mind—do you care for Mrs. Dion Leith?”
“Very much,” said Father Robertson, simply and warmly.
“Do you care for her enough to tell her the truth?”
“I never wish to tell her anything else.”