The subject was dropped that time, but he met it again in somewhat the same terms in London.  There seemed a sort of vague impression that Lady Rose had married for the sake of the wealth she had lost.  Also at his club there was talk he did not like, not against Rose indeed, but dwelling on the other side of the story, and he hated to hear Rose’s name connected with it.  People forgot his relationship, and after all he was only a second cousin.

Edmund Grosse was at this time just over forty.  He was a tall, loosely built man, with rather a colourless face, with an expression negative in repose, and faintly humorous when speaking.  He was rich and supposed to be lazy; he knew his world and had lived it in and for it systematically.  Some one had said that he took all the frivolous things of life seriously and all the serious things frivolously.  He could advise on the choice of a hotel or a motor-car with intense earnestness, and he had healed more than one matrimonial breach that threatened to become tragic by appealing to the sense of humour in both parties.  He never took for granted that anybody was very good or very bad.  The best women possible liked him, and looked sorry and incredulous when they were informed by his enemies that he had no morals.  He had never told any one that he was sad and bored.  Nor had he ever thought it worth while to mention that he had indifferent health and knew what it was to suffer pain.  If such personal points were ever approached by his friends they found that he did not dwell upon them.  He had the air of not being much interested in himself.

For a long time he had felt no acute sensations of any kind; he had believed them to belong to youth and that was past.  But that matter of David Bright’s will had stirred him to the very depths.  He spent solitary hours in cursing the departed hero, and people found him tiresome and taciturn in company.

At last he determined to meddle in Rose’s concerns, and he went to see Mr. Murray, Junior, at his office.  There ensued some pretty plain speaking as to the late hero between the two men.  Edmund Grosse half drawled out far the worst comments of the two; he liked the lawyer and let himself speak freely.  And although the visit was apparently wholly unproductive of other results, it was a decided relief to his feelings.  Then he heard that Rose had come back to London, and he went to see her.  It was about nine months since she had become a widow.  She was alone in the big beautifully furnished drawing-room, which was just as of old.  Except that a neat maid had opened the door, instead of a butler, he saw no change.

Rose looked a little nervous for a moment, and then frankly pleased to see him.  Edmund always had a talent for seeming to be as natural in any house as if he were the husband or the brother or part of the furniture.  Somehow, as Rose gave him tea and they settled into a chat, she felt as if he had been there very often lately, whereas in fact she had not seen him since David died, except at the memorial service.  He began to tell her what visits he had paid, whom he had seen, the little gossip he expressed so well in his gentle, sleepy voice; and then he drew her on as to her own interests, her charities, her work for the soldiers’ wives.  He said nothing more that day, but he dropped in again soon, and then again.