it again in somewhat the
same terms in London. There seemed a sort of vague impression that Lady
Rose had married for the sake of the wealth she had lost. Also at his
club there was talk he did not like, not against Rose indeed, but
dwelling on the other side of the story, and he hated to hear Rose's
name connected with it. People forgot his relationship, and after all he
was only a second cousin.

Edmund Grosse was at this time just over forty. He was a tall, loosely
built man, with rather a colourless face, with an expression negative in
repose, and faintly humorous when speaking. He was rich and supposed to
be lazy; he knew his world and had lived it in and for it
systematically. Some one had said that he took all the frivolous things
of life seriously and all the serious things frivolously. He could
advise on the choice of a hotel or a motor-car with intense earnestness,
and he had healed more than one matrimonial breach that threatened to
become tragic by appealing to the sense of humour in both parties. He
never took for granted that anybody was very good or very bad. The best
women possible liked him, and looked sorry and incredulous when they
were informed by his enemies that he had no morals. He had never told
any one that he was sad and bored. Nor had he ever thought it worth
while to mention that he had indifferent health and knew what it was to
suffer pain. If such personal points were ever approached by his friends
they found that he did not dwell upon them. He had the air of not being
much interested in himself.

For a long time he had felt no acute sensations of any kind; he had
believed them to belong to youth and that was past. But that matter of
David Bright's will had stirred him to the very depths. He spent
solitary hours in cursing the departed hero, and people found him
tiresome and taciturn in company.

At last he determined to meddle in Rose's concerns, and he went to see
Mr. Murray, Junior, at his office. There ensued some pretty plain
speaking as to the late hero between the two men. Edmund Grosse half
drawled out far the worst comments of the two; he liked the lawyer and
let himself speak freely. And although the visit was apparently wholly
unproductive of other results, it was a decided relief to his feelings.
Then he heard that Rose had come back to London, and he went to see her.
It was about nine months since she had become a widow. She was alone in
the big beautifully furnished drawin