TWELVEAs Rietta came back into the sitting-room she saw Carr Robertson on his feet. Her mind was full of her conversation with Catherine—what she had said, what Catherine had said, what James Lessiter might be going to do. And then she saw Carr’s face, and everything went. One of the papers which Henry Ainger had brought lay open across the table. He stood over it now, his hand on it, pointing, every muscle taut, eyes blazing from a colourless face. Fancy was leaning forward, frightened, her red mouth a little open.
Rietta came to him and said his name. When she touched his arm it felt like a bar of steel. She looked where the hand pointed and saw the photograph which Mrs. Lessiter had been so proud of—James as she had seen him last night at Catherine Welby’s.
In a voice that was just ab
