ction. 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