been living in for months. For, looking back now,
she could not feel sure that any of her views of Edmund’s
feelings towards herself had been true. It was
a tearing at her heart’s most precious feelings
to be forced to common sense, to see the past in the
matter-of-fact way in which it might appear to other
people. And yet, Adela Delaport Green had expected
him to propose even in the season, but then, what
might not the Adela Delaport Greens of life suspect
and expect without the slightest foundation?
Could Molly herself say firmly and without delusion
that Edmund had treated her badly? How she wished
she could! She would rather think that he had
been charmed away by hostile influence, or even that
he had deliberately played with her than feel it all
to have been her own vain fancy! It was agony
to her to feel that she had without any excuse, set
up an idol in her sacred places, and woven about him
all the dreams and loves of her youth. It must
be remembered not only that it was the first time
that Molly had loved in the ordinary sense of the
word, but it was absolutely the first time that she
had ever felt any deep affection for any human being
whatever. And now a great sense of abandonment
was on her; the old feeling of isolation, of being
cast out, that she had had all her life, was frightfully
strong. Edmund had left her; he had deceived her,
played with her, she told herself, deluded her; and
now her mother’s death brought home all the
horror, the disgrace, which that mother’s life
had been for Molly. An outcast whom no one cared
for, no one loved, no one wanted. The new gentleness
of the past weeks, the new softness, all the high
and sacred thoughts that had seemed to have taken possession
of her inner life, were gone at this moment.
Her feeling now was that, if she were made to suffer,
she could at least make others suffer too.
She had thrown off her furs in walking up and down,
and they had fallen on to the box which Dr. Larrone
had brought. Presently they slipped to the floor,
and showed the small, black tin despatch box.
Molly broke the seal of the envelope, took out the
key, and opened the box, half mechanically and half
as seeking a distraction.
Inside she found two or three packets of old yellow
letters, a few faded photographs, and a tiny gold
watch and chain; and underneath these things a large
registered envelope addressed to Madame Danterre.
Molly was not acutely excited about this box.
She knew that her mother’s will would be at
the lawyer’s. She had no anxiety on this
point, but there is always a strange thrill in touching
such things as the dead have kept secret. Even
if they have bid us do it, it seems too bold.
Molly shrank from what that box might contain, what
history of the past it might have to tell, but she
did not think it would touch her own life. Therefore,
thinking more of her own sorrow than anything else,
Molly drew two papers out of the registered envelope,
and then shrank back helplessly in her chair.
She had just seen that the larger of the two enclosures
was a long letter beginning: “Dearest Rose.”
She hesitated, but only for a moment, and then went
on reading.