Edmund had in his masculine way ranged her once for all among good and nice women.  He had felt touched and guilty at a suspicion that he had been to blame in playing his paternal role too zealously.  Until then he had at times had hard thoughts of her; after that time he was a little ashamed of himself, and he believed in her simplicity and goodness.  He was sorry and disappointed now that she was making quite so much effect in this London world.  There was something disquieting in Molly’s success, and he could appraise better than any one what a remarkable success it was.  But he felt that she was going the pace, and he would not have liked his daughter to go the pace, unmarried and at twenty-two.  She needed friendship and advice.  But the pinch came from the fact that the wealth he could have advised her to use wisely ought to be Rose’s, and that he was resolved, in the depths of his soul, to regain that wealth for his cousin—­for that “belle dame sans merci” who wrote him such pretty letters about his troubles.

Edmund put Murray’s letter in his pocket, and immediately went out.  He was living in a small, but clean, lodging in Fulham, kept by a former housemaid and a former footman of his own, now Mr. and Mrs. Tart, kindly souls who were proud to receive him.  He gave no trouble, and the preparation of his coffee and boiled egg was all the cooking he had done for him.  Mrs. Tart would have felt strangely upset had she known that the said coffee and egg were, on some days, his only food till tea-time; she was under the impression that he lunched at his club when not engaged to friends.  Both she and Mr. Tart took immense pains with his clothes, and he would rather have been well valeted than eat luxurious luncheons every day.

He went out at once after getting Murray’s letter, because he wanted to call on Molly before he heard any more of the important intelligence.

Molly was alone when he was announced.  She had told the butler she was “not at home,” but somehow the man decided to show Sir Edmund up because he saw that he wished to be shown up.  Edmund had always had an odd influence below stairs, partly because he never forgot a servant’s face.

Molly coloured deeply when she saw her visitor.  She was annoyed to think that he would make her talk against her will—­and they would not be interrupted.  She could have used strong language to the butler, but she did not dare tell him that she would now see visitors.  It would look to Edmund as if she were afraid of a tete-a-tete.

Almost as soon as he was in the room she had an impression that he was quite at home, curiously at his ease.

“I am glad the house is so little changed.  I came to my first dance here.  You have done wonderfully well, and all on the old lines.  A friend told me it was the hugest success.”

A remembrance of past jokes as to Edmund’s second-hand compliments and his friend “Mr. Harris” came into Molly’s mind, but she only felt angry at the remembrance.