“Your code is so different from ours. We think the only possible thing to do—where a friend is concerned—is to shut the eyes and the lips, and to pretend, and to keep on always pretending. We call that being honorable.”
“Poor things!” said Father Robertson.
But he pressed her hand as he said it, and there was an almost tender smile on his lips.
“But your love of truth isn’t quite dead yet,” he added, on the threshold of the door, as he let her out into the rain. “You haven’t been able to kill it. It’s an indomitable thing, thank God.”
“I wish I—why do you live always in Liverpool?” she murmured.
She put up her little silk umbrella and was gone.
There was a fire in her sitting-room on the following-morning. The day was windy and cold, for March was going out resentfully. Before the fire lay Turkish Jane on a cushion, blinking placidly at the flames. Already she had become reconciled to her new life in this unknown city. Her ecstasy of the journey had not returned, but the surprise which had succeeded to it was now merged in a stagnant calm, and she felt no objection to passing the remainder of her life in the Adelphi Hotel. She supposed that she was comfortably settled for the day when she heard her mistress call for Annette and give the most objectionable order.
“Please take Jane away, Annette,” said Lady Ingleton.
“Miladi!”
“I don’t want her here this morning. I’m expecting a visitor, and Jane might bark. I don’t wish to have a noise in the room.”