But could she, ought she, to go away on Edmund’s yacht?

Could Rose honestly feel quite sure that all his kindness meant nothing more?  She had never since she was eighteen, and wearing her first long skirt, heard from him any word that need mean more than cousinly affection.  He had contrived after that Easter visit to Groombridge to make her feel that she had been foolish and self-conscious in trying not to be alone with him.  For many months now she had felt absolutely at her ease in his company.  It seemed to be only to-day that this thought had come back to trouble her.  She did not want to be disturbed with such notions; they would spoil their friendship.  And he could not be feeling like that; he was always so cool, so untroubled.  Why to-night, just as he was waiting to know if she would come on the yacht or not, he had talked much more warmly of Miss Dexter than seemed quite natural!  Faintly she felt that it might be good for him if they went on the yacht, she and her mother.  They would be better for Edmund than some of the people he might otherwise ask; he was not always wise as to his lady friends.  And it would be so good for Lady Charlton, and so good, too, for those four orphans.  And where should they go?  It did not matter much where they went if they only gained light and colour and rest.  The artist was strong in Rose at that moment.  She looked at one or two old guide-books till it was bed-time.  Then, the last thing at night, a strange gust of thought came upon her just after her prayers.

Could she, would she, ever marry again?  She knelt on at the priedieu with her fair head bowed, and then there came over her a strong sense of the impossibility of it.  The shock she had had was too great, too lasting in its effects.  She did not know it was that, she did not tell herself that once humiliated, once misled, she could not trust again.  She did not say that the past married life which she had made so full of duty, so full of reverence as almost to deceive herself while she lived it, had been desecrated, polluted and had made her shrink unutterably from another married life.

A young widow, sometimes, when drawing near to a second marriage, suddenly realises it to be impossible because the past asserts its tyrannous claim upon her heart.  What had appeared to be a dead past is found to be both alive and powerful.  But with Rose it was not simply her heart; it was her nature as a woman that refused.  That nature had been hurt to the very quick, humbled and brought low once.  Surely it was enough!

CHAPTER XX

THE HEIRESS OF MADAME DANTERRE

For about a week after the evening on which she had received her mother’s letter and Edmund Grosse had been to see her, Molly Dexter stayed at home from four o’clock till seven o’clock and wore beautiful tea-gowns.  She had a very small list of people to whom she was always at home written on a slate, but one by one they had been reduced in number.  Now there were five—­Father Molyneux, who never came except by appointment; Sir Edmund Grosse; and three ladies who happened to be abroad for the winter.