They drove off.

“I am so glad it is Lady Rose Bright.”  Molly hardly heard the words.

“I have so wished to know her,” Adela went on joyfully, “and she has had such an interesting story and so extraordinary.”

“Can I get away—­can I go back?” thought Molly, and she leant forward and drew off her cloak as if she felt suffocated.  “To meet her is just the one thing I can’t do.  Oh, it is hard, it is horrible!”

“You see,” Adela continued, “she married Sir David Bright, who was three times her age, because he was very rich, and also, of course, because she loved him for having won the Victoria Cross, and then he died, and they found he had left all the money to some one he had liked better all the time.  So there is a horrid woman with forty thousand a-year somewhere or other, and Rose Bright is almost starving and can’t afford to buy decent boots, and every one is devoted to her.  I am rather surprised that she should come to Groombridge for a party, she has shut herself up so much; but it must be a year and a half at least since that wicked old General was killed, and he certainly didn’t deserve much mourning at her hands.”

As Adela’s little staccato voice went on, Molly stiffened and straightened and starched herself morally, not unaided by this facile description of the story in which she was so much involved.  She would fight it out here and now; nothing should make her flinch; she would come up to time as calm and cool as if she were quite happy.  And, after all, Sir Edmund Grosse would be there to help her.

It was not until the first of the two heavy handsome old-fashioned carriages, drawn by fine, sleek horses, was beginning to crawl up a very steep hill that its occupants began to take an interest in those who were following.

“Who is in the carriage behind us?” asked Sir Edmund of the young man usually called Billy, who was sitting opposite him, and whom he was never glad to meet.

“Mrs. Delaport Green and a girl I don’t know—­very dark and thin.”

Edmund growled and fidgeted.

“Horrid vulgar little woman,” he muttered between his teeth, “pushes herself in everywhere, and I suppose she has got the heiress with her.”

“Don’t be so cross, Edmund,” said Lady Rose.  “Who is the heiress?”

“Oh! a Miss Dickson—­not Dickson—­what is it?  The money was all made in beer”—­which was really quite a futile little lie.  “But that isn’t the name:  the name is Dexter.  The girl is handsome and untruthful and clever; let her alone.”

Rose perceived that he was seriously annoyed, and waited with a little curiosity to see the ladies in question.

As the two carriages crawled slowly up the zigzag road, climbing the long and steep hill, the occupants of both gazed at the towers of the Castle whenever they came in sight at a turn of the road, or at an opening in the mighty horse-chestnuts and beeches, but they spoke little about them.  Those in the first carriage were too familiar with Groombridge and its history and the others were too ignorant of both to have much to say.  Edmund Grosse gave expression to Rose’s thought at the sight of the familiar towers when he said: