of considerable repute.  Rose, finding the papers at her elbow, got up and changed her chair.  It was not till they had gone up to their rooms and parted that Lady Charlton felt speech to be possible.  She wrapped her purple dressing-gown round her and went into Rose’s room.  She found her sitting in a low chair by the fire leaning forward, her elbows pressed on her knees, her face buried in her hands.  Then, very quietly and impersonally, they discussed the situation.  With a rare self-command the mother never used one expression of reprobation; if she had done so, Rose could not have spoken again.  It seemed more and more, as they spoke in the two gentle voices, so much alike in tone and accent, in a half pathetic, half musical intonation; it seemed as they sat so quietly without tears, almost without gestures, as if they discussed the story of another woman and another man.  There were some differences in their views, and the mother’s was ever the hardest on the dead man.  For instance, Rose believed through all that another will existed, although she was convinced that she should never see it.  Her mother’s judgment coincided with the lawyer’s; the soldier would have made the change, if it were made at all, before starting for the war.  No, the whole thing had been too recently gone into; it was so short a time since the codicil had been added.  Of that codicil, too, Lady Charlton’s view was quite clear.  She thought the object of adding it had been to save appearances.  “As long as you live in this house, furnished as well as possible, people will forget the wording of the will, or they will think that money was given to you in his lifetime to escape the death duties.”

Like many idealists and even mystics, both mother and daughter took sensible views on money matters.  They did not undervalue the fortune that had gone; they were both honestly sorry it had gone, and would have taken any reasonable means to get it back again.  Only Rose allowed that possibly there might have been some claim in justice on the woman’s part; she could not frame her lips to use the words again.  Without “legal wife” or any such terms passing between them, they were really arguing the point.  Lady Charlton had not the faintest shadow of a doubt “the woman was a wicked woman, and the wicked woman, as wicked women do, had entrapped a” (the adjective was conspicuous by its absence) “a man.”  Such a woman was to be forgiven, even—­a bitter sigh could not be suppressed—­to be prayed for; but it was not necessary to try to take a falsely charitable view of her, or invent unlikely circumstances in her defence.  It was a relief to the darkest of all dark thoughts in Rose’s mind, the doubt of the validity of her own marriage, to hear her mother settling this question as she had settled so many questions years ago, by the weight of personal authority.

At last the clock on the stairs below told them that it was two in the morning, and Lady Charlton had to leave London by an early train.  She was torn between the claim of her youngest married daughter, who was laid up in a lonely country house in Scotland, and that of Rose in this new and miserable trouble.