The fierce, quick envy betrayed in that “poor, dear Molly” did not reach Miss Carew’s brain, and a little sympathy was very soothing.

“Now, could any fortune stand this sort of thing?” asked Adela.

The companion shook her head sadly, but would not speak.

“You know that she has bought Sir Edmund Grosse’s old yacht?  And that she is taking one of the best deer forests in the Highlands?  And is it true that she is thinking of buying Portlands?”

“Oh, yes!” sighed Miss Carew.  “There is some new scheme every day.”

“She has everything the world can give,” said Adela sharply.  “But, you know,” she went on, “people won’t go on standing her manners as they do now, even if she can pay her amazing way!  Do you know that her cousin, Lady Dawning, declares she won’t have anything more to do with her?  Not that that matters very much; old Lady Dawning hardly counts, now that Molly has really great people as her friends, only little leaks let in the water by degrees.”

A pause, and then suddenly: 

“Do you know Father Molyneux?”

“Yes,” said Miss Carew, who was glad to change the subject.  “He is very charming.”

“I didn’t know he was a friend of Molly’s.”

“Oh! didn’t you?  She took a great fancy to him last autumn; he used to come to luncheon.”

“Did he come often?”

“Oh!  I think so, but I don’t remember exactly.”

“And has he been coming here lately?”

“I really don’t know.  I have my meals by myself now; the hours were so irregular, and I am too old and dull for Molly’s friends.  I know she went to see him a few days ago, and she came back looking agitated.  I was rather glad—­I thought it would be good for her, but I fear it was not.  She has been more excited, I think, these two or three days.  Her nerves are really quite overwrought; she allows herself no quiet.  Yes; she was very much excited after seeing Father Molyneux.”

Miss Carew was talking more to herself than to Adela.

“I thought perhaps he had pressed her to become a Roman Catholic; certainly he upset her in some way.”

Adela’s small eyes were like sharp points as she looked at the older woman.

Then was it really true?  Oh! no; surely not.  But then, what else could he have said to upset Molly?

At that moment Molly’s maid came into the room.

“Miss Dexter has only just heard that you were here, madam.  She is very sorry you have been waiting.  She wished me to say that she is obliged to go immediately to a sale at Christie’s, and would you be able to go with her?”

Adela declined, perceiving that Molly was in no mind for a private talk, and having parted affectionately from Miss Carew, went her way to have a chat with Lady Dawning.

In the afternoon she met several of her Roman Catholic acquaintances at a charity performance in a well-known garden, and she pumped all those she could decoy in turn into a tete-a-tete as to Father Molyneux.  She was in reality devoured with the wish to know the truth.  She had her own thin but genuine share of ideality, and she had been more impressed by Mark’s renouncement of Groombridge Castle than by anything she had met with before.