But he had to speak at last.  “Is it you?”

Edmund thought he spoke as usual, but there was a depth of pain and of tenderness revealed in the face that usually betrayed so little.  He held out his hand unconsciously and then drew it back half closed, and looked again at the flowing water.  It was a moment of temptation, when love was fighting against itself.  Then, with the same half movement of the hand towards her: 

“I have had a bolt from the blue, Rose.  That man, Hewitt, whom I trusted as I would myself, has absconded.  It is thought he has been playing wildly with my money, and that this crisis in South America has been the last blow.  I shan’t know yet if I am ruined completely or not.”

“Oh, Edmund, how dreadful!”

“Don’t pity me, dear, it’s not worth while.  It only means that one of the unemployed will get to work at last.  That is, if he can find a job.  But I must hurry home at once and leave you to follow.  If I put back into Genoa now I can leave by the night express.  And you and your mother had better go on to Marseilles in the yacht after you have dropped me.”

CHAPTER XXII

SOMETHING LIKE EVIDENCE

Mr. Murray Junior’s step sounded heavy, and his head was a little more bent than usual, as he passed down the passage into his sanctum.  The snow, turning to rain and then reasserting itself and insisting that it would be snow, was dreary enough already when the fog set in firmly and without compromise.  There was a good fire in the sanctum; the electric light was on, and the clean sheet of blotting-paper, fresh every morning, lay on the table.

But Mr. Murray, Junior, was struggling for a few moments to realize where he was, for his mind was in such different surroundings.  In his thoughts it was June—­not June sweltering in London, but June gone mad with roses in a tiny Surrey garden; and with true realism his memory chose just one rose-tree out of them all, which best implied the glory of the others.  And one branch of this tree was bent down by a girl’s hand; her arm, from which a cotton sleeve had fallen back, was wonderfully white, and the roses wonderfully red.

And the office boy, slowly pulling off one damp, well-made boot and then the other over the gouty toes, was the only person who noticed that “the governor” was awfully down in the mouth.

But no one knew that in Mr. Murray Junior’s pocket was a letter from a great specialist, who had seen Mr. Murray Junior’s wife the day before,—­and what that letter said has nothing to do with this story.

Sir Edmund called about mid-day, and noticed nothing unusual in the heavy face; only it struck him that Murray was looking old, and he wondered on which side of seventy the lawyer might be.