“Who didn’t love whom? We were talking of the Malakites.”

“My dear boy”⁠—and, as she spoke, a smile of the most complicated humour came into her strange countenance, transforming it into something almost beautiful⁠—“my dear boy, I wasn’t talking of the Malakites! I was talking of your father and Lorna Smith.”

“Mattie’s mother, eh? But why did you say⁠—oh, damn that noise!⁠—that Christie had no heart?”

Miss Gault stared at him.

“Haven’t you seen her? Didn’t you see what she was? Reading the books of that old wretch, keeping house for that old wretch? How can she look the man in the face, I should like to know? They tell me Olwen can’t bear the sight of her; and I don’t wonder.”

“But Miss Gault, my dear Miss Gault, what has Christie done? I should think she was the one most to be pitied.”