Mr. Westlake shortly joined them, and spoke with an extreme kindness
which completed Adela's sense of being at home. No one disturbed
them through the evening; Adela went to bed early and slept without
a dream.
Stella and her husband talked of her in the night. Mr. Westlake had,
at the time of the election, heard for the first time the story of
Mutimer and the obscure work-girl in Hoxton, and had taken some
trouble to investigate it. It had not reached his ears when the
Hoxton Socialists made it a subject of public discussion; Comrade
Roodhouse had inserted only a very general report of the proceedings
in his paper the 'Tocsin, and even this Mr. Westlake had not seen.
But a copy of the pamphlet which circulated in Belwick came into his
hands, and when he began to talk on the subject with an intimate
friend, who, without being a Socialist, amused himself with
following the movement closely, he heard more than he liked. To
Stella he said nothing of all this. His own ultimate judgment was
that you cannot expect men to be perfect, and that great causes have
often been served by very indifferent characters.
'She looks shockingly ill,' he began to-night when alone with
Stella. 'Wasn't there something said about consumption when she was
at Exmouth? Has she any cough?'
'No, I don't think it is that,' Stella answered.
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