perceptions, he ought to have known
better; but there is some quality in a few men or women, intangible and
yet unmistakable, which makes us instinctively suspect present, or
foretell future, moral evil; and poor Molly was one of these. What it
was, on the other hand, which made her trust Sir Edmund and drew her to
him, it would need a subtle analysis of natural affinities to decide. No
doubt it was greatly because he sought her that Molly liked him, but it
was not only on that account. Nor was this only because Edmund was
worldly wise, successful, and very gentle. There was a quality in the
attraction that drew Molly to Edmund that cannot be put into words. It
is the quality without which there has never been real tragedy in the
relations of a woman to a man. In the first weeks in London this
attraction hardly reached beyond the merest liking, and was a pleasant,
sunny thing of innocent appearance.

Mrs. Delaport Green was, for a short time, of opinion that the problem
of whether to prolong Molly's visit or not would be settled for her by a
quite new development. Then she doubted, and watched, and was puzzled.

Why, she thought, should such a great person as Sir Edmund Grosse, who
was certainly in no need of fortune-hunting, be so attentive to Molly
if he did not really like her? At times she had a notion that he did not
like her at all, but at other times surely he liked her more than he
knew himself. He said that she was graceful, clever, and interesting;
and the acute little onlooker had not the shadow of a doubt that he held
these opinions, but why did she at moments think that he disliked Molly?
Certainly the dislike, if dislike it were, did not prevent him from very
constantly seeking her society. It was the only intimacy that Molly had
formed since she had come up to London.

As Lent was drawing to a close, Mrs. Delaport Green became much occupied
at the thought of how many services she wished to attend. "One does so
wish one could be in several churches at once," she murmured to a devout
lady at an evening party. But, finding one of these churches to be
excessively crowded on Palm Sunday, she had gone for a turn in the
country in her motor with a friend, "as, after all, green fields, and a
few early primroses make one realise, more than anything else in the
world, the things one wishes one could think about quietly at such
seasons."

For Easter there were the happiest prospects, as she and Molly had been
in