r had never
seen the piece of paper. No, she could not show that. Edmund did not
insist further, and a moment later he seemed to have forgotten that she
had not given him what he asked for.

"Did he often wear this ring?"

"Never. I never saw it till now, and I had never seen the photograph."

"It was taken in India," he commented, "and the ring has a date twenty
years ago."

"I never noticed that," said Rose. She was feeling half consciously
soothed and relieved as a child might feel comforted who had found a
companion in a room that was haunted.

"Things from such a remote past," he murmured abstractedly. "Did he
explain in writing why he sent those things?"

"No, he said nothing about them, he only----" she paused. Edmund did not
move, and in a few moments she gave him the paper. He ground his teeth
as he read it, he grew white about the lips, but he said nothing. He was
horribly disappointed--the scoundrel asked for forgiveness. Then he had
not made another will. Edmund did not look round at Rose, but she was
acutely present to his consciousness--the woman's beauty, the child's
innocence, the suffering and the strength in her face. "As you would be
forgiven!" That was a further insult, it seemed to him. To talk of Rose
wanting forgiveness. Then a strange kind of sarcasm took hold of him. So
it was; she had not been able to believe in himself; he, Edmund, had not
been ideal in any sense. Therefore she had passed him by, and then a
hero had come whom she had worshipped, and this was the end of it. Every
word in the paper burnt into him. "Justice"--how dared he? "Made it as
little painful as he could"--it was insufferable, and the coward was
beyond reach, had taken refuge whither human vengeance could not follow
him.

He succeeded in leaving Rose's house without betraying his feelings, but
he felt that no good had come of this attempt, so far at any rate. That
night he slept badly, which he did pretty often, but he experienced an
unusual sensation on waking. He felt as if he had been working hard and
in vain all night at a problem, and he suddenly said to himself, "The
ring, the photograph, and the paper were of course meant for the other
woman, and she has got whatever was meant for Rose. Now if the thing
that was meant for Rose was the will, Madame Danterre has got it now
unless she has had the nerve to destroy it." He felt as if he had been
an ass till this moment. Then he went to see Mr. Murray, Junior, who