“Do you know,” said Rose, with a smile, “I believe it’s conceivable that it is in the box, but that she has never opened the box at all!  I believe a girl might shrink so much from reading that woman’s papers that she might not even open the box.”

“No one but a woman would have thought of such a possibility, but I daresay you are right.”

He looked at her more gently, with more pleasure, and she instantly felt brighter.

“Then don’t you think it would be possible to get at some plan, some arrangement with her?  It seems to me,” she went on earnestly, “that we ought to try to do it privately.  Perhaps we might offer her the allowance that would have been made to her mother.  If she could be convinced herself that the fortune is not really hers she might give it up without all the horrid shame and publicity of a trial.”

“Yes, but the scandal was public, and you have to think of David’s good name.”

“Yes; but then you see, Edmund, the true will would be proved publicly, and the explanation of the delay would be that it had not been found before.”

“She would have to expose her wretched mother.”

“Not more than the trial would expose her; whether we won the case or lost it, Madame Danterre must be exposed.  But if I am right how could it be done?”

“I think I had better do it myself,” said Edmund.  “I could see Miss Dexter.  I really think I could do it, feeling my way, of course.”

Rose did not answer.  She locked her fingers tightly together as something inarticulate and shapeless struggled in her mind and in her heart.  She had no right, no claim, she thought earnestly, trying to keep calm and at peace in her innermost soul.  But she did not then or afterwards allow to herself what she meant by “right” or by “claim.”

She looked up a moment later with a bright smile.

“Yes,” she said, “you would be the best—­far the best.  Miss Dexter would feel more at her ease with you than with me or anyone I can think of.”

“Of course, I must consult Murray first,” said Edmund, absorbed in the thought of the proposed interview.  “I ought to go now; I have an appointment at the Foreign Office—­probably as futile as any of my efforts hitherto when looking for work.”

He spoke the last words rather to himself than to his cousin, and then left her alone.  He did not question as he walked through the streets across the park whether he had been as full of sympathy to Rose as he had ever been; he was far too much accustomed to his own constancy to question it now.  But somehow his consciousness of Rose’s presence had not been as apparent as usual.  No half ironic, half tender comments on her attitude at this crisis had escaped him.  He had been more business-like than usual, and, man-like, he did not know it.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE WRATH OF A FRIEND