Honora sat down. There seemed nothing else to do. She remembered him perfectly now, and she realized that the nimble-witted clerk had meant to send her to a gentleman.
“I thought,” she faltered, “I thought I was coming to a—a stranger. They gave me your address at the hotel—when I asked for a lawyer.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Mr. Wentworth, delicately, “perhaps you would prefer to go to some one else. I can give you any number of addresses, if you like.”
She looked up at him gratefully. He seemed very human and understanding,—very honourable. He belonged to her generation, after all, and she feared an older man.
“If you will be kind enough to listen to me, I think I will stay here. It is only a matter of—of knowledge of the law.” She looked at him again, and the pathos of her smile went straight to his heart. For Mr. Wentworth possessed that organ, although he did not wear it on his sleeve.
He crossed the room, closed the door, and sat down beside her.
“Anything I can do,” he said.
She glanced at him once more, helplessly.
“I do not know how to tell you,” she began. “It all seems so dreadful.” She paused, but he had the lawyer's gift of silence—of sympathetic silence. “I want to get a divorce from my husband.”
If Mr. Wentworth was surprised, he concealed it admirably. His attitude of sympathy did not change, but he managed to ask her, in a business-like tone which she welcomed:—“On what grounds?”