“Ever yours affectionately,

“JANE DAWNING.”

“P.S.—­By the way, is the L3000 sure to go on?  If it is not, might
it not be as well to put a good bit of it away?”

Thus in one short hour, Molly had been told that her mother was living but did not want her child; that the ideal of motherly love had in her own case been a complete fiction; that the mother of her imagination had never existed, and, immediately afterwards, she had been given a glimpse of the world’s view of her own position as a young person best concealed, or, at least, not brought too much forward.

Lastly, with the news of the money that at least meant freedom, she had gained, by a rapid intuition, a faint but unmistakable sense of discomfort as to the money itself.

It was not any scrupulous fear that it could be her duty to inquire whether Sir David Bright ought to have left his fortune to his widow!  Probably Lady Rose had quite as much as many dowagers have to live on.  But she had been forced to know that other people disapproved of Sir David’s will.  It was not a fortune entered into with head erect and eyes proudly facing a friendly world.  Still, Molly was not daunted:  the combat with life was harder and quite different from what she had foreseen, but she had always looked on her future as a fight.

Presently she let the “letter from Jane” fall close to the chair in which her aunt had been sitting, and moved the chair till the paper was half hidden by the chintz frill of the cover.  She meant Mrs. Carteret to think that she had not read it.

She then went out for a long walk and met her aunt at luncheon with a quietly respectful manner, a little more respectful than it had ever been before.

Later in the day Molly wrote to the family lawyer, and consulted him as to how to find a suitable lady with whom to stay in London.  Mrs. Carteret read and passed the letter.  Seeing that Molly was determined to go to London, she was anxious to help her as much as possible, without calling down upon herself such letters of advice as the one from Lady Dawning.  It proved as difficult to find just the right thing in chaperones as it is usually difficult to find exactly the right thing in any form of humanity, and December and January passed in the search.  But in the end all that was to be wished for seemed to be secured in the person of Mrs. Delaport Green, who was known to a former pupil of Miss Carew’s, and at length Molly went out of the rooms with the northern aspect, and drove through the wood that sheltered under the shoulder of the great green hill, with nothing about her to recall the child who had come in there for the first time fourteen years ago, except that she still had the look of one who waits for other circumstances and other people.

CHAPTER VII

EDMUND GROSSE CONTINUES TO INTERFERE

Mr. Murray had had no belief in Sir Edmund Grosse’s doings, and he indulged in the provoking air of “I told you so,” when the latter, who had not been in London for several months, appeared at the office, and owned to the futility of his visit to Florence.  Meanwhile, Mr. Murray had also carried on a fruitless enquiry in a different direction.