He paused to raise his glass, spilling the wine generously. "I didn't know what to do. I couldn't go about asking every Tom, Dick and Harry whether my daughter—When I got away from the office to-night, I went round to her house to see if I could find out anything from Oakleigh or George—I could talk to them fairly freely.... I remember my wife told me, I forget when it was, that Sonia was away and that George had moved in there to look after his uncle; neither of us ever dreamed then.... They were both out, so I thought I'd come and bother you. I knew you were pretty intimate with them. I—quite frankly I want you to tell me if what that woman said was true."
I did not find it easy to face Dainton's troubled, boyish eyes.
"I'm afraid it is," I said. "She's left O'Rane, she did go off with another man. I'm sorry to say that your luncheon-party wasn't the only place where it was being discussed, and several people have told me that the petition's actually been filed."
Dainton picked up a pair of nut-crackers and twisted them nervously open and shut.
"This will kill Catherine," he muttered. "We've both of us always been so proud of her, she was always so wonderful, even when she was a little child.... Stornaway, is this true? Is there no doubt of any kind? You don't know what she is to us!" he cried fiercely, as though I had been responsible for the shipwreck of their pride.
"There seems to be no doubt at all."
"I wonder if I may have another glass of wine," he said absently. "I'm afraid I've spilt most of this."
We must have sat for another hour in the deserted Coffee-Room, now silent as Dainton yielded inch by reluctant inch to the slow penetration of inevitable truth, now discussing explanations and canvassing expedients for retrieving a lost position. Beyond giving Grayle's name and mentioning that I had been present when an attempt was made to obviate divorce proceedings, I volunteered no details and did my best to give patient hearing to schemes which the rest of us had either rejected already or refused to consider. He would force Sonia to return to her husband, force O'Rane to take her back, force Grayle to give her up....
"There's no kind of force you can use," I had to tell him. "We've tried argument and entreaty, and that's failed."
"Her mother can make her!"