Mrs. Clarke glanced round; then she bent down noiselessly, picked up the packet, slipped off the elastic band and examined the letters one by one. She had never chanced to see Rosamund’s handwriting, but she felt sure she would know at once if she held in her hand the letter which might mean her own release. She did not find it; but on two envelopes she saw Beatrice’s delicate handwriting, which she knew very well. She longed to know what Beatrice had written. With a sigh she slipped the elastic band back into its place, put the packet down and went into the drawing-room.
Directly she saw Dion she was certain that he knew nothing of the change in Rosamund’s life. There was no excitement in his thin and wrinkled brown face; no expectation lit up his sunken eyes making them youthful. He looked hard, wretched and strangely old, but ruthless and forceful in a kind of shuttered and ravaged way. She thought of a ruined house with a cold strong light in the window. He was sitting when she came in, leaning forward, with his hands hanging down between his knees. When he saw her he got up slowly.
“I was near here and had nothing to do, so I came early,” he said, not apologetically, but carelessly.
He looked at her and added:
“What’s happened to you to-day?”
“Nothing. What an extraordinary question!”
“Is it? You look different. There’s a change.”
A suspicious expression made his face ugly.
“Have you met any one?”
“Of course. How can one go out in Constantinople without meeting people?”