th Sir Edmund Grosse.

Molly sank down on a low seat by the window. Then she went slowly
upstairs, dragging her feet a little from fatigue, and took out of the
tin box the packet of very old letters. She burned them one by one, with
a match for each, kneeling in front of the empty fireplace in her
bed-room. They told the story of her mother's attempt to persuade Sir
David of their marriage during his illness in India. It was not a pretty
story--one of deceit and intrigue. It should disappear now.

Then she sat down in a deep chair in the window. She stayed very still,
curled up against the cushion behind her, her eyes fixed on the ground.
She was hardly conscious of thought; she was trying to recall things
Mark had said, murmuring them over to herself. She was trying not to
sink into the depths of humiliation and despair. It was a blind clinging
to a vague hope for better things, with a certain torpor of all her
faculties.

Then gradually things in the vague gloom became definite to her. "No,"
she said to them with entreaty, "not to-night. My life is only just
dead. I am tired by the shock--it was so sudden--only let me rest till
morning, and in the morning I will try to face it."

She had, it seemed, quite settled this point; the present and the future
were to be left; a pause was absolutely necessary. Then followed quickly
the sharp pang of a fresh thought. It was not in her power to make
things pause. She could not make a truce by calling it a truce. If she
did not realise things now and act now herself, others would come upon
the scene. Even to-night Sir Edmund Grosse might know. She shivered.
Perhaps he was being told now. It would be insufferable to endure his
kindness prompted by Rose's generous forgiveness. But ought she to find
anything unbearable? Was she going to revolt at the very outset? She was
not trained in spiritual matters, but it seemed to her that any revolt
would betray a want of reality in her reparation, and in this great
change of feeling she wanted above all things to be real. She tried to
face what must come next. How could she hand over Westmoreland House? It
could not be done as quietly as she had handed that letter to Father
Mark. The house had been bought with the great lump sum Madame Danterre
had accumulated in Florence--much of that money had been put in the bank
before Sir David died. Perhaps if they were ready to come to terms, as
Father Mark had said, an arrangement would be sugges