nd strain when he was
young and helpless in India. It was evident that he had felt that any
agony was bearable to shield Rose from the suffering of a public
scandal. If he could only have brought himself to consult one of the
Murrays something might have been done. As it was, he had recourse to
subterfuge. He assured Madame Danterre annually, in answer to her
insisting on the point, that no other will had ever been signed by him,
but he always carried a will with him ready to be signed. There was much
of self-pity perhaps in the letter, there was the plaint of a wrecked
life, but there was still more of real delicate feeling for Rose, of
intense anxiety to shield her, of poignant regret for "what might have
been" in their home life. The man had been of a wholesome nature; his
great physical courage was part of a good fellow's construction. But he
had been taught to worship a good name, an unsullied reputation, and to
love things of good repute too much, perhaps, for the sake of their
repute, as he could not venture to risk the shadow for the reality. The
effect of reading Sir David's last letter to Rose on an unbiassed reader
of a humane turn of mind would have been an intensity of pity, and a
sigh at the sadness of life on this planet.

Molly was passionately biassed, and as much of Sir David's story as
reached her through the letter was to her simply a sickening revelation
from a cowardly traitor of his own treason through life, and even up to
the hour of death. Her mother had been basely deceived; for his sake she
had been divorced, and he had denied the marriage that followed. Of
course, it was a marriage, or he would never have been so frightened.
Then her mother, thus deserted, young and weak, had gone astray, and he
had defended himself by threatening divorce if she proclaimed herself
his wife. Every word of the history was interpreted on the same lines.
And then, last of all, this will was sent to her mother. Was it a tardy
repentance? Had he, perhaps when too weak for more, asked some one to
send it to Madame Danterre that she might destroy it? If so, why had she
not destroyed it? Why, if it might honourably have been destroyed, send
to Molly now a will that, if proved, would make her an absolute pauper?
In plain figures Molly's fortune could not be less than L20,000 a year
if that paper did not exist, and would be under L80 a year if it were
valid.

Molly next seized on one of the old packets of letters in tr