‘Yes, alright,’ she said in a voice quite different now, a voice that was very low and tired and beaten. She still wore that veil, though he wondered why she bothered when the night was as black as a priest’s hat and a man could no more see the lady’s face than he could see into her heart. Though it was black, he decided, her heart. But the way she had said, Yes, alright, that made him wonder what she did look like beneath that veil, and the part of him that was still wistful and that remembered how it felt to fall in love thought of all the beautiful things in the world that he could not have, and his bed, which a moment before he had wished for, now seemed a cold and lonely place.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: ASYLUM

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

ASYLUM

The deputy superintendent at the Benevolent Asylum, an ardent young man named Quinn whose soft edges were steadily being hardened by the work he had chosen, knew Mrs Dunlevy. Or, rather, he knew of her. The wife of the minister was a long-serving member of the asylum’s Ladies’ Committee and so he did not hesitate to show her, at her request, the records of recent admissions. And if he privately considered it odd she make such a request late on a Sunday evening and clearly in a state of some agitation, he kept such thoughts to himself.

He watched her, though discreetly, and the soft glow of the desk lamp cast a shadow over one side of her face and illuminated the other so that he thought of Renaissance paintings and the sufferings of saints and a great many other things about which he knew almost nothing but which seemed to him at that moment fateful and immense. If the minister’s wife searched the records for a particular name, she did not deign to share it with him, and when she closed the book and looked for a moment, searchingly it seemed, into his face, he said nothing and showed no surprise. It was evident she had not found that for which she searched. He watched her depart into the rainy night and a waiting cab.

He wished very much he had been able to assist her.

It occurred to him that many of the women—the unmarried ones, that is—provided a false name when they were admitted and he wondered, on reflection, if he might have mentioned this to her. Indeed, the thought now took such a hold of him that he started towards the door to follow her but could see, already, Mrs Dunlevy’s hansom moving off and the moment was past. So he gave it up and instead returned to his little room upstairs and the warmth of a wood stove and a nip of rum.