the views of all right-minded people. While the majority sympathised deeply with Rose, there were a few who insinuated that she must be to some degree to blame for what had happened.

"Well, don't you know, I never could understand why she married a man so much older than herself. Of course she had not a penny and he was awfully rich, and people don't look too close into a man's character in such cases. It is rather convenient for some women to be very innocent."

Sir Edmund Grosse, to whom the remark was addressed at a small country house party, turned his back for a moment on the speaker in order to pick up a paper, and then said in a low, indifferent voice: "David Bright came into his cousin's fortune unexpectedly a year after he married Lady Rose."

The subject was dropped that time, but he met it again in somewhat the same terms in London. There seemed a sort of vague impression that Lady Rose had married for the sake of the wealth she had lost. Also at his club there was talk he did not like, not against Rose indeed, but dwelling on the other side of the story, and he hated to hear Rose's name connected with it. People forgot his relationship, and after all he was only a second cousin.

Edmund Grosse was at this time just over forty. He was a tall, loosely built man, with rather a colourless face, with an expression negative in repose, and faintly humorous when speaking. He was rich and supposed to be lazy; he knew his world and had lived it in and for it systematically. Some one had said that he took all the frivolous things of life seriously and all the serious things frivolously. He could advise on the choice of a hotel or a motor-car with intense earnestness, and he had healed more than one matrimonial breach that threatened to become tragic by appealing to the sense of humour in both parties. He never took for granted that anybody was very good or very bad. The best women possible liked him, and looked sorry and incredulous when they were informed by his enemies that he had no morals. He had never told any one that he was sad and bored. Nor had he ever thought it worth while to mention that he had indifferent health and knew what it was to suffer pain. If such personal points were ever approached by his friends they found that he did not dwell upon them. He had the air of not being much interested in himself.

For a long time he had felt no acute sensations of any kind; he had believed them to belong to youth and that was past. But that matter of David Bright's will had stirred him to the very depths. He spent solitary hours in cursing the departed hero, and people found him tiresome and taciturn in company.

At last he determined to meddle in Rose's concerns, and he went to see Mr. Murray, Junior, at his office. There ensued some pretty plain speaking as to the late hero between the two men. Edmund Grosse half drawled out far the worst comments of the two; he liked the lawyer and let himself speak freely. And although the visit was apparently wholly unproductive of other results, it was a decided relief to his feelings. Then he heard that Rose had come back to London, and he went to see her. It was about nine months since she had become a widow. She was alone in the big beautifully furnished drawing-room, which was just as of old. Except that a neat maid had opened the door, instead of a butler, he saw no change.

Rose looked a little nervous for a moment, and then frankly pleased to see him. Edmund always had a talent for seeming to be as natural in any house as if he were the husband or the brother or part of the furniture. Somehow, as Rose gave him tea and they settled into a chat, she felt as if he had been there very often lately, whereas in fact she had not seen him since David died, except at the memorial service. He began to tell her what visits he had paid, whom he had seen, the little gossip he expressed so well in his gentle, sleepy voice; and then he drew her on as to her own interests, her charities, her work for the soldiers' wives. He said nothing more that day, but he dropped in again soon, and then again.

At last one evening he observed quite quietly, in a pause in their talk: "So you live here on £800 a year?"

Rose did not feel annoyed, though she did not know why she was not angry.

"Yes, I can manage," she said simply.

"You can't tell yet; it's too soon." He got up out of his low chair near the fireplace, now filled with plants, and stood with his back against the chimney. "You know it's absurd," he said. Rose moved uneasily and was silent.

"It's absurd," he repeated, "there's another will somewhere. David would never have done that." He struck that note at the start, and cursed David all the deeper in the depths of his diplomatic soul. Rose looked at him gratefully, kindly.

"I think there is another will somewhere," she said, "but I am sure it will never be found. It's no use to think or talk of it, Edmund."

He fidgeted for a moment with the china on the chimney-piece.

"For 'auld lang syne,' Rose," he said in a very low voice, "and because you might possibly, just possibly, have made something of me if you had chosen, let me know a little more about it. I want to see what was in his last letter."

Rose flushed deeply. It was difficult to say why she yielded except that most people did yield to Grosse if he got them alone. She drew off the third finger of her left hand a very remarkable diamond ring and gave it to him. Then she took out of a drawer a faded photograph of a young, commonplace, open-faced officer, now framed in an exquisite stamped leather case, and handed that to him also. He saw that she hesitated.

"May I have the rest," he said very gently. Even her mother had never seen the piece of paper. No, she could not show that. Edmund did not insist further, and a moment later he seemed to have forgotten that she had not given him what he asked for.

"Did he often wear this ring?"

"Never. I never saw it till now, and I had never seen the photograph."

"It was taken in India," he commented, "and the ring has a date twenty years ago."

"I never noticed that," said Rose. She was feeling half consciously soothed and relieved as a child might feel comforted who had found a companion in a room that was haunted.

"Things from such a remote past," he murmured abstractedly. "Did he explain in writing why he sent those things?"

"No, he said nothing about them, he only——" she paused. Edmund did not move, and in a few moments she gave him the paper. He ground his teeth as he read it, he grew white about the lips, but he said nothing. He was horribly disappointed—the scoundrel asked for forgiveness. Then he had not made another will. Edmund did not look round at Rose, but she was acutely present to his consciousness—the woman's beauty, the child's innocence, the suffering and the strength in her face. "As you would be forgiven!" That was a further insult, it seemed to him. To talk of Rose wanting forgiveness. Then a strange kind of sarcasm took hold of him. So it was; she had not been able to believe in himself; he, Edmund, had not been ideal in any sense. Therefore she had passed him by, and then a hero had come whom she had worshipped, and this was the end of it. Every word in the paper burnt into him. "Justice"—how dared he? "Made it as little painful as he could"—it was insufferable, and the coward was beyond reach, had taken refuge whither human vengeance could not follow him.

He succeeded in leaving Rose's house without betraying his feelings, but he felt that no good had come of this attempt, so far at any rate. That night he slept badly, which he did pretty often, but he experienced an unusual sensation on waking. He felt as if he had