the mystery.  The fact was that Tim had no wish to punish effectively.  As long as Adela passed untouched by one sin, as long as he felt sure of one great virtue in her life, all such details as much gambling, much selfishness, absurd extravagance, could be easily forgiven.  Molly herself would be fairly dealt with and set aside; the “paying guest” was an indignity that he would soon forget.  He would have been entirely indifferent to the impression of regretful interest that he had made upon her.

That night Edmund Grosse was Molly’s confidant as to the second, and evidently final, rupture between herself and Mrs. Delaport Green that had taken place in the afternoon.  He could not but be kind and sympathetic as to her difficulties.  It was, no doubt, very blind of him not to see that she was too quickly convinced of the wisdom of his advice, far too anxious to act as seemed well in his opinion.  It never dawned on his imagination for a moment that the most serious part of the loss of the end of the season to Molly was the loss of his society during that time.

They strolled in the moonlight between the cedars and under the great wall with its alternate “ebon and ivory” of darkest evergreen growths and masses of white climbing roses, Molly’s white gown rustling a little in the stillness.  And Molly discovered with joy that he was trying to set her mind against marriage with Edgar Tonmore.  If he only knew how little danger there was of that!  And under Edmund’s influence she decided to offer herself for a visit of two or three weeks to Mrs. Carteret, in the old and much disliked home of her childhood.  It would look right; it would give a certain dignity to her position after the breakdown of the Delaport Green alliance, and it was always a great mistake to break with natural connections.  So far Edmund Grosse; and in Molly’s mind it ran something like this:  “He wants me to stand well with the world, and I will do this, intolerable as it is, to please him.  He likes to think that I have some nice relations, and so I must try to be friendly with Aunt Anne Carteret, though that is the hardest part.  And he wants me to get away from Edgar Tonmore, and I would go away from so many more people if he wished it.”

The evening passed into night, and Edmund was walking alone under the wall, dreaming of Rose.

All this foolish gambling, quarrelsome, small world of men and women made such a foil to her image.  Molly and her mother, the Delaport Greens, and many others were grouped in his mind as he purled the smoke disdainfully from his cigar.  Something in Molly’s walk by his side just now had made him see again the old woman with her quick, alert movements in the garden at Florence; after all they were cut from the same piece, the old wicked woman and the slight, dark girl with the curious eyes.  Molly must not be trusted; she must be suspected all the more because of her attractions in the moments of dangerous gentleness.  And with a certain simplicity Edmund looked again at the moon above him, all the more glorious because secret and dark things were moving stealthily under the trees in the lower world.