“Why about Miss Dexter? what can I have to do with her?” The tone was almost contemptuous—­not quite, Rose was too kind.

“Do you remember that I went to Florence?”

“Yes; I did not want you to go.”  There was at once a distinct note of distress in her voice.  It was horribly painful to her to have to think of the things she tried so hard to bury away.

“No, but I went,” he said very gently; “and it was useless, as I knew it would be.  But I want to tell you one thing which I have learnt, and which I think you ought to know, as it may be inconvenient if you do not.  It is that Miss Dexter——­” Rose interrupted him quickly.

“Is the daughter of the lady in Florence?” She gave a little hysterical laugh.  He looked at her in astonishment.

“And that is why she dislikes me so much.  Do you know, Edmund, I had a feeling from the moment I first saw her that there was something wrong between us.  It gave me a horrible feeling, and then I asked Mary Groombridge about her, and she told me the poor girl’s story; only she said the mother lived in Paris.  Of course Mary does not know, or she would never have asked us here together.  But that is how I knew what you were going to say; and yet I had no notion of it till a moment ago, when it came to me in a flash.  Only I wish I had known sooner!”

It was not common with Rose to say so much at a time, and there had been slight breaks and gaps in her voice, pathetic sounds to the listener.  She seemed a little—­just a little—­out of breath with past sorrow and present pain.  Edmund thought he would never come to know all the inflections in that voice.

“I wish I had known sooner.  I am afraid I have not been kind to her.”

“And if you had known you would have cast your pearls at her feet,” he said, in tender anger.  “Don’t make the mistake of being too kind to her, Rose.  I want you to keep her at a distance.  There is something all the more dangerous about her because she is distinctly attractive.  She has primitive passions, and yet she is not melodramatic; it’s a dangerous species.”

It was amazing how easy it was to take a severe view of poor Molly after she had gone away, and how he believed what he said.

“She has never seen her mother?” asked Rose gently.

“No, but I am sure she knows about her mother,” the slowness in his voice was vindictive; “and that her mother knows what we don’t know about the will.”

“Edmund dear,” said Rose very earnestly, “do please leave that point alone; no good can come of it.  I do assure you that no good, only harm, will come of it.  It’s bad and unwholesome for us all—­mother and you and me—­to dwell on it.  I do really wish you would leave it alone.”

Edmund frowned, though he liked that expression, “mother and you and me.”

“You needn’t think about it unless you wish to,” he answered.

“But I wish you wouldn’t!”