There was silence, and Rose rearranged a bowl of roses her sister had sent her from the country.  She chose out a copper-coloured bud and held it towards him, and a certain pleading would creep into her manner as she did so.

Edmund smiled.  She was really always the same quite hopeless mixture of soft and hard elements.

“Have you seen Mr. Murray, Junior?” he asked.

“Yes; he came this morning, and I can’t conceive what to do.  At last I got so dazed with thinking that this afternoon I have tried to forget all about it.”

“That will hardly get things settled,” said Edmund, rather drily.

Tears came into her eyes, and were forced back by an effort of will.  Then she told him quite quietly of Nurse Edith’s evidence.

“You mean,” he explained, “that there is a copy of the real will leaving everything to you.  I can hardly believe it.  In fact, I find it harder to believe than when I first guessed at the truth.  I suppose it is an effect on the nerves, but now that we are actually proved right I am simply bewildered.  It seems almost too good to be true.”

Rose was also, it seemed, more dazed than triumphant.  He felt it very strange that she had not told him the great news as soon as he came into the room.

“What made you say that you could not conceive what to do?  There can be no doubt now.”  He spoke quickly and incisively.

“I cannot see,” she said at last, “what is right.  Mr. Murray is very positive, and absolutely insists that it is my duty to allow the thing to go on.”

“Of course,” Edmund interjected.

“But then, if he is mistaken!  He really believes that Miss Dexter received the will from Dr. Larrone and has suppressed it.”

Edmund got up suddenly, and looked down on her with what she felt to be a stern attention.

“And that,” she concluded, looking bravely into the grave eyes bent on her, “I absolutely decline to believe!”

“Of course,” said Grosse abruptly, “it’s out of the question.  It’s just like a solicitor—­fits his puzzle neatly together and is quite satisfied without seeing the gross absurdity of supposing that such a girl could carry on a huge fraud.  A perfectly innocent, fresh, candid girl, brought up in a respectable English country house—­the thing is ridiculous!”

He spoke with great feeling; he was more moved than she had seen him for a long time past, perhaps that was why she felt her own enthusiasm for Molly’s innocence just a little damped.  He sat down again as abruptly as he had risen.

“But it would be madness to drop the whole affair.  This evidence of Nurse Edith’s is really conclusive; and the only thing I can see to be said on the other side would be that David might have sent the will to Madame Danterre to give her the option of destroying it.  But there is just another possibility, which Murray won’t even consider, that Larrone destroyed the will on the journey.”