Edmund drove back from the city absorbed in the thought of Molly, in comparing his different impressions of her at different stages of their acquaintance.  He had spoken so firmly and undoubtingly to Murray.  His first thought had been one of simple indignation, and yet—­But no! he remembered her simplicity in speaking of her mother’s letter; he could see her now with the gentle, pathetic look on her face as she told him of her offering to go out to the wicked old woman, and how her poor little advance had been rejected.

Edmund had thought it one of the advantages of the expedition on the yacht that it would make it impossible for many weeks to call again at Molly’s flat.  He had often before felt uncomfortable and annoyed with himself when he had been too friendly with Molly.  Not that he felt her attraction to be a temptation to disloyalty to Rose.  He knew he was incurable in his devotion to his love.  But he did feel it mean to enjoy this pleasant, philosopher-and-guide attitude, towards the daughter of Madame Danterre.  That Molly could hold any delusion about his feelings had never dawned on his imagination as a possibility until the night when she confided in him her forlorn attempt at doing a daughter’s duty.  He had never liked her so well; never so entirely dissociated her from her mother, and from all possibilities of evil.

And now the situation was changed; now there was this hazy mass of suspicion revealed in Florence, and this most detestable story of Larrone and the box.

How differently things looked when it was a question of suspecting of a crime the woman he had seen in the Florentine garden, and of that same suspicion regarding poor little graceful, original, Molly Dexter!

Within two or three days Edmund became still more immersed in business.  He began to realise his own ignorance as to his own affairs, and he went through the slow torture of understanding how blindly he had left everything in his solicitor’s hands.  He was beginning to face actual poverty as inevitable, when he heard from Mr. Murray that Madame Danterre’s will was proved in London, and that her daughter was her sole heir.

“The income cannot be less than L20,000 a year, and the whole fortune is entirely at Miss Dexter’s disposal,” wrote Mr. Murray without any comment whatever.

Edmund was not sorry that Rose and her mother were staying on in Paris.  They would escape the first outburst of gossip as to the further history of Sir David Bright’s fortune.  Nor was he sorry that they should also miss the growing rumours as to the disappearance of the fortune of Sir Edmund Grosse.  Of Rose herself he dared not let himself think; but every evil conclusion which he had to face as to his own future, every undoubted loss that was discovered in the inquiry which was being carried on, seemed as a heavy door shut between him and the hopes of those last days on the yacht.

CHAPTER XXIII