be used for the
house and garden. It is an elaborate affair, going into every detail."

"Should I be able to let the house?"

"For a period of four months, not longer. But should you refuse to live
in this house, this sum will go with the bulk of the fortune. We had
immediate application on behalf of Madame Danterre from a lawyer in
Florence as soon as the news of the death reached us. It seems that she
has a copy of the will."

"Has she"--Rose hesitated, and then repeated, "Has Madame Danterre any
children?"

"I do not know," said Mr. Murray. "Beyond paying considerable sums to
this lawyer from time to time for her benefit, we have known nothing
about her. There has been also a large annual allowance since the year
when Sir David came into his cousin's fortune." There was another
silence, and then Mr. Murray spoke in a more natural way, though it was
impossible to conceal all the sympathy that was filling his heart with
an almost murderous wrath.

"After all, the General had plenty of time before starting for the war
to arrange his affairs; he was not a man who would neglect business. I
came here with a faint hope--or I tried to think it was a hope--that you
might have another will in the house. I'm afraid this--document
represents Sir David Bright's last wishes." There was a ring of
indignant scorn in his voice.

Rose looked through the window on to the thin black London turf outside,
and her eyes were blank from the intensity of concentration. She had no
thought for the lawyer; if he had been sympathetic even to impertinence
she would not have noticed it.

She was questioning her own instincts, her perceptions. No, it was
almost more as if she were emptying her mind of any conscious action
that her whole power of instinctive perception might have play. When
the blow had fallen, her only surprise had been to find that she was not
surprised, not astonished. It seemed as if she had known this all the
time, for the thing had been alongside of her for years, she had lived
too close to it for any surprise when it raised its head and found a
name. Her reasoning powers indeed asked with astonishment why she was
not surprised. She could not explain, the symptoms of the thing that had
haunted her had been too subtle, too elusive, too minute to be brought
forward now as witnesses. But while the lawyer looked at the open face
and the large eyes, and the frank bearing of the figure in the
photograph, and felt that outer