Great Possessions Part 21

"Not Groombridge's cousin?"

"Yes, the same."

"I wonder if he repents of his folly now? I didn't think he looked particularly cheerful!"

"Didn't you?" said Molly. "Well, I think he is the happiest person I know! But we never do agree about people, do we?"

"About a few we do, but it's much more amusing to talk about ourselves, isn't it?"

"Much more. What do you want me to tell you about myself this time?"

Edmund looked at her with sleepy eyes and perceived that something had changed. "I should like to know what you think about me?" he said gently.

"No, you wouldn't," said Molly, and she gave a tiny sigh. "No, for some reason or other you want to know something which I have settled to tell you."

Her manner alarmed and excited him. As a matter of honourable dealing he felt that he ought to give her pause. "Are you sure you are wise?" he said.

"I'm not sure, but that's my own affair, and it will be a relief. I would rather you knew what you want to know, though why you want to know"--her eyes were searching him--"I can't tell."

Sir Edmund Grosse almost told her that he did not want to know.

"You want to know for certain that my mother is living in Florence under the name of Madame Danterre--the Madame Danterre you have tried to see there. And further, you want to know how much I have ever seen of her."

"Oh, please!" cried Edmund, "I don't indeed wish you to tell me all this."

"You do, and so I shall answer the questions. I have never seen her in my life. But these last few weeks I have thought I ought to try, so I wrote and offered to go to her, and I have this evening had the first letter she has ever written to me. In this letter"--she drew it half out of her pocket--"she declines to see me, and she exhorts me to a vegetable diet."

There was a moment in which her face looked the embodiment of sarcasm, then something gentler came athwart it. He had never come so near to liking her before. He could no longer think of her as all the more dangerous on account of her attractions; she was a suffering, cruelly-treated woman. It is dangerous to see too much of one's enemies: Edmund was growing much softer.

"But why," she went on with quiet dignity, "did you try so hard to break through her seclusion?"

It was a dreadful question--a question impossible to answer. He was silent; then he said--

"Dear lady, I told you I did not want you to satisfy what you supposed to be my wish for knowledge, and I am very sorry that now, at least, I cannot tell you why I wished to see Madame Danterre."

Naturally, it never struck him for a moment that Molly might think it was for her sake that he had tried to see her mother, as he had not known of her existence when he was in Florence. But his reticence made her incline much more to that idea. She almost blushed in the firelight.

Edmund was feeling baffled and sorry. If there were another will--and he still maintained that there was another--certainly Miss Dexter knew nothing about it. He had wronged her; and after all what reasonable grounds had there been for his suspicions as to her guilt?

"I suppose," he thought, "Rose is right, and will-hunting is demoralising, or 'not healthy,' as she calls it."

But he had been too long silent.

"It is very hard on you to get such a letter," he said, with a ring of true sympathy in his voice and more expression than usual in his face.

"I wish I had not come in and disturbed you; I wish you had a woman friend here instead."

"I don't," said Molly quickly. "Don't go yet. I can say as little as I like with you, and then I'm going to church to hear the _bon pet.i.t pretre_ preach."

"He will lure you to Rome."

"Perhaps."

"Well, I think there's a good deal to be said for Rome."

"Don't you mind people joining it?" she asked, a little eagerly.

"No, I like it better than Ritualism."

"But Lady Rose is a Ritualist."

"I believe you will find angels few and far between in any religion."

"It must be nice to be an angel," mused Molly.

He had risen to go; he thought he might still find Rose at home and he wanted to speak to her, yet he was in no hurry to be gone.

"Don't give me an excuse for compliments; I warn you, you will repent it if you do," he said warmly; and then, after a little hesitation which might well have been mistaken for an effort at self-command in a moment of emotion, he added in a low voice--

"May I come and see you again very soon?"

As Molly gave him her hand he looked at her with wistful apology for having wronged her in his thoughts, for having intruded into her secrets. There was more pity in his eyes than he knew at the moment. He bent his head after that, and with the foreign fas.h.i.+on he sometimes fell into, and which Molly had known before, gently kissed her hand. The quick kindly action was the expression of his wish to make amends.

Molly stood quite still after he had gone away, as motionless as a living figure could stand, her grey eyes dilated and full of light.

Would he could have seen her! But if he had, would he have understood what love meant in a heart that had never before been opened by any great human affection? No love of father, mother, sister, or brother had ever laid a claim on Molly. The whole kingdom of her affections had been standing empty and ready, and now the hour of fulfilment was near.

"He will come again very soon," she whispered to herself. And then she put her hand to her lips and kissed it where it had been kissed a moment before, but with a devotion and reverence and gentleness that made the last kiss a tragic contrast.

Presently, happier than she had ever been in her life before, Molly went out to hear Mark Molyneux preach on sanctifying our common actions.

"No position is so hard" he said in his peroration, "no circ.u.mstances are so difficult, no duties so conflicting, no temptations so mighty, as not to be the means to lead us to G.o.d if we seek to do His will."

But the words seemed in no way appropriate to Molly's mind, which was wholly occupied in a wordless song of thanksgiving.

CHAPTER XIX

LADY ROSE'S SCRUPLE

As Edmund Grosse was shown up-stairs to Lady Rose Bright, he pa.s.sed a young clergyman coming down. He found Rose standing with a worried look in the middle of the room.

"Edmund! how nice," she said gently.

"What has that fellow been worrying you about?"

"It isn't his fault, poor man," said Rose, "only it's so sad. He has had at last to close his little orphanage. You see, we used to give him 100 a year, and after David died I had to write and tell him that I couldn't go on, and it has been a hard struggle for him since that. I don't think he meant it, but when he came and saw this house"--she waved her hands round the very striking furniture of the room--"I think he wondered, or perhaps it was my fancy. You see, Edmund, I don't know how it is, but I've overdrawn again. What do you think it can be? The housekeeping comes to so little; I have only four servants, and----"