always in a ferment, that it was utterly useless to wish for peace, or to try to bring about peace, that destinies could only be worked out to their appointed ends in darkness and in fury.  She even forgot her own years of happiness for a little while and saw herself as a woman always anxious, doubtful, and envisaging untoward things.  When a knock came on the door she started and got up quickly from her chair.  Her heart was beating fast.  How ridiculous!

“Come in!” she said.

A waiter opened the door and showed in Rosamund

CHAPTER XI

Lady Ingleton looked swiftly at the woman coming in at the doorway clad in the severe, voluminous, black gown and cloak, and black and white headgear, which marked out the members of the Sisterhood of St. Mary’s.  Her first thought was “What a cold face!” It was succeeded immediately by the thought, “But beautiful even in its coldness.”  She met Rosamund near the door, took her hand, and said: 

“I am glad you were able to come.  I wanted very much to meet you.  I came here really with the faint hope of seeing you.  Let me take your umbrella.  What a day it is!  Did you walk?”

“I came most of the way by tram.  Thank you,” said Rosamund, in a contralto voice which sounded inflexible.

Lady Ingleton went to “stand” the umbrella in a corner.  In doing this she turned away from her visitor for a moment.  She felt more embarrassed, more “at a loss” than she had ever felt before; she even felt guilty, though she had done no wrong and was anxious only to do right.  Her sense of guilt, she believed, was caused by the fact that in her heart she condemned her visitor, and by the additional, more unpleasant fact that she knew Rosamund was aware of her condemnation.

“It’s hateful—­so much knowledge between two women who are strangers to each other!” she thought, as she turned round.

“Do sit down by the fire,” she said to Rosamund, who was standing near the writing-table immediately under a large engraving of “Wedded.”

She wished ardently that Rosamund wore the ordinary clothes of a well-dressed woman of the world.  The religious panoply of the “sister’s” attire, with its suggestion of a community apart, got on her nerves, and seemed to make things more difficult.

Rosamund went to a chair and sat down.  She still looked very cold, but she succeeded in looking serene, and her eyes, unworldly and pure, did not fall before Lady Ingleton’s.

Lady Ingleton sat down near her and immediately realized that she had placed herself exactly opposite to “Wedded.”  She turned her eyes away from the large nude arms of the bending man and met Rosamund’s gaze fixed steadily upon her.  That gaze told her not to delay, but to go straight to the tragic business which had brought her to Liverpool.

“You know of course that my husband is Ambassador at Constantinople,” she began.