rrow 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!"

"If I had banished it from my thoughts up till now, I could not leave it
alone now, for I have a clue."

"Oh, don't, Edmund."

"Well, it may come to nothing; only I'm glad that it makes one thing
still more clear to me though it may go no further."

He told her then of what the stud-groom had said, and ended by showing
her the letter. Rose read it in silence, and then, still standing with
her face turned away, she said in a very low voice:

"It is a comfort as far as it goes. But I knew it was so; he never meant
things to be as they are--poor David! Edmund, it is of no use to think
of it. Even if the paper then witnessed were the will, it is lost now
and will never be found. I would rather--I would _really_ rather not
think too much about it."

"No, no," he answered soothingly, "don't dear, don't dwell on it."

"I like," she answered, "to dwell on the thought that David did think of
me lovingly, and did not mean to leave me to any shame. I am sure he
never meant to leave me poor, and to let me suffer all the publicity
about that poor woman. I am sure he always meant to change the will in
time, but, you see