as now
beginning to wonder whether her conception of her son's wife had been
a wrong one, was beginning to ask herself whether she had divined the
nature of the soul inhabiting the body which now stood up before her.

About an hour before the close of the sitting the heat in the court
became almost suffocating, and the Judge told Mrs. Clarke she might
continue her evidence sitting down. She refused this favor.

"I'm not at all tired, my lord," she said.

"She's made of iron," Mrs. Chetwinde murmured to Dion. "Though she
generally looks like a corpse. She was haggard even as a girl."

"Did you know her then?" he whispered.

"I've known her all my life."

Daventry wiped his brow with a large pocket-handkerchief, performing the
action legally. One of the jurymen, who was too fat, and had something
of the expression of a pug dog, opened his mouth and rolled slightly
in his seat. The cross-examination became with every moment more
disagreeable. Beadon Clarke never lifted his eyes from his knees. All
the women in court, except Mrs. Chetwinde and Mrs. Clarke, were looking
strangely alive and conscious. Dion had forgotten everything except
Stamboul and the life of unwisdom. Suppose Mrs. Clarke had lived the
life imputed to her by Counsel, suppose she really were a consummately
clever and astoundingly ingenious humbug, driven, as many human beings
are driven, by a dominating vice which towered over her life issuing
commands she had not the strength to resist, how had it profited her?
Had she had great rewards in it? Had she been led down strange ways
guided by fascination bearing the torch from which spring colored fires?
Good women sometimes, perhaps oftener than many people realize, look
out of the window and try to catch a glimpse of the world of the wicked
women, asking themselves, "Is it worth while? Is their time so much
better than mine? Am I missing--missing?" And they shut the window--for
fear. Far away, turning the corner of some dark alley, they have seen
the colored gleam of the torch.

Rosamund would never do that--would never even want to do that. She was
not one of the good women who love to take just a peep at evil "because
one ought to know something of the trials and difficulties of those less
fortunately circumstanced than oneself."

But, for the moment, Dion had quite forgotten his Rosamund. She was
in England, but he was in Stamboul, hearing the waters of the Bosporus
lapping at the foot of Mrs. Cla