“Have you any French blood?”

“Yes; my mother was French.”

“But you do good works; I remember how you nursed the kitchenmaid at Groombridge.”

“I like to stop pain, but not because it is a good work.  I can’t stand all the fuss about good works and committees, and nonsense about loving the poor.  It’s a way rich people have to make themselves feel comfortable.  Don’t you think so?”

“No, I don’t.  I know people who make themselves exceedingly uncomfortable because they give away half what they possess.”

“Really,” said Molly, a little contemptuously.  She knew that he was thinking of Rose Bright.  “My opinion is that doing good works means to bustle about trying to get as much of other people’s money to give away as you can, without giving any yourself.”

Edmund did not like to suggest that this opinion might be the result of special experiences gained while living in the house of Mrs. Delaport Green.

“If,” Molly went on, evidently glad to relieve her mind on the subject, “you got the money to pay your unfortunate dressmaker, there would be some justice in that.  But,” she suddenly sat up and her eyes shot fire at Edmund, “to fuss at a bazaar to show your kindness of heart while you know you are not going to pay the woman who made the very gown you have on, is perfectly sickening.”

“It is atrocious,” said Grosse, who wanted to change the subject.  But this was effected by the most unexpected apparition of Mr. Delaport Green, whom they had both supposed to be refreshing himself by the sea at Brighton.

Mr. Delaport Green was dressed in very light grey, with a white waistcoat.  His figure was curious, as it extended in parts so far in front of the rest that it gave the impression that you must pass your eyes over a great deal of substance in the foreground before you could see the face.  Then again, the nose was so predominant that it checked any attempt to realise the eyes and forehead, while the cheeks were baggy and the skin unwholesome.

Edmund Grosse had only seen him on two occasions when he dined at his house, and he had liked him at once.  There was something markedly masculine about him; he knew life, and had made up his mind as to his own part in it without delusions and without whining.  He would have preferred to have been slim and handsome, and to have known the ways of the social world from his youth, but there were plenty of other things to be interested in, and he was not averse to the power which follows on wealth.  He was a self-made Englishman, with nothing of the Jew about him, either for good or evil.  But no apparition could have been more surprising to the two as he came slowly over the grass to meet them.  Molly saw at once that Adela’s husband was exceedingly annoyed, probably exceedingly angry, and although she had always felt his capacity for being very angry, she had never seen him in that condition before.