For the fraction of a second Rose looked helplessly at Edmund, and then held out a little bunch of violets to Molly.
"Won"t you have these? There; they suit so well with your gown."
With a quick and very gentle touch she put the violets into Molly"s belt, and smiled at her with the sunshine that was all about them.
Molly looked a little dazed, and the "Thank you" of her clear low voice was mechanical.
"I was just coming for a few minutes" walk in the wood."
Rose"s voice was very rich in inflection, and now it sounded like a caress.
"But I wonder if it is late? I think I have forgotten the time, it is all so beautiful."
She laid her hand for a moment on Molly"s arm.
"It is very late," said Edmund with decision, but without consulting his watch on the point.
They all moved quickly, and while making their way back to the Castle Rose and Edmund talked of Lord and Lady Groombridge, and Molly walked silently beside them.
CHAPTER X
THE PET VICE
"May I come in?"
At the same moment the door was half opened, and Lady Groombridge, in a heavy, dark-coloured gown, made her way in, with the swish of a long, silk train. She half opened the door with an air of mystery, and she closed it softly while she held her flat silver candlestick in her hand as if she wished she could conceal it, yet the oil lamps were still burning in the gallery behind her. The appearance of the wish for concealment was merely the unconscious expression of her mental condition at the moment.
Two women looked up in surprise as she made this unconsciously dramatic entrance into her guest"s bedroom. Lady Rose was sitting in front of the uncurtained window in a loose, white dressing-gown, lifting a ma.s.s of her golden hair with her hair brush. She had been talking eagerly, but vaguely, before her hostess came in, in order to conceal the fact that she wished intensely to be allowed to go to bed.
Lady Rose made many such minor sacrifices on the altar of charity, and she was sorry for the tall, thin, mysterious girl who, at first almost impossibly stiff and cold, had volunteered a visit to her room to-night.
It was only a very few who were ever asked to come into Rose"s room, and she had hastily covered the miniature of her dead husband in his uniform with her small fan before she admitted Molly.
By some strange impulse, Molly had attached herself to Rose during the rest of that Easter Sunday. Curiosity, admiration, or jealousy might have accounted for Molly"s doing this. To herself it seemed merely part of her determination to face the position without fear or fancies. If Lady Rose found out later with whom she had spent those hours, at least she should not think that Molly had been embarra.s.sed. Perhaps, too, Sir Edmund"s efforts to keep them apart made her more anxious to be with her.
Having been kindly welcomed to Rose"s room, Molly found herself slightly embarra.s.sed; they seemed to have used up all common topics during the day, and Molly was certainly not prepared to be confidential.
The entrance of the hostess came as a relief. That lady, without glancing at Rose or Molly as she came into the middle of the room, banged the candlestick down on a small table, and then threw herself into an arm-chair, which gave a creak of sympathy in response to her loud sigh.
"It is perfectly disgraceful!" she said, "and now I don"t really know what has happened. On Easter Sunday night, too!"
Molly had been standing by the window, looking out on the moonlit park.
She now leaned further across the wide window-seat, so that her slight, sea-green silk-clad figure might not be obtrusive, and the dark keen face was turned away for the same purpose.
"That woman has actually," Lady Groombridge went on, "been playing cards in the smoking-room on Easter Sunday night with Billy and those two boys. What Groombridge will say, I can"t conceive; it is perfectly disgraceful!"
"Have they been playing for much?"
"Oh, for anything, I suppose; and Edmund Grosse says that the boy from the Parsonage has lost any amount to Billy. They have fleeced him in the most disgraceful way."
There was a long silence. Rose looked utterly distressed.
"If he had only refused to play," she said at last, as if she wished to return in imagination to a happier state of things.
"It"s no use saying that now," said Lady Groombridge, with an air of ineffable wisdom.
Molly Dexter bit her tiny evening handkerchief, and her grey eyes laughed at the moonlight.
"Well, Rose, I can"t say you are much comfort to me," the hostess went on presently, with a dawn of humour on her countenance as she crossed one leg over the other.
"But, my dear, what can I say?"
The tall, white figure, brush in hand, rose and stood over the elderly woman in the chair. Rose had had the healthy development of a girlhood in the country, but her regular features were more deeply marked now and there were dark lines under her clear, blue eyes.
"Do you think," said the hostess in a brooding way, "that Mrs.
What"s-her-name Green would tell you how much he lost, Rose, if you went to her room? Of course, I can"t possibly ask her."
"Oh no; she thinks me a goody-goody old frump."
At the same moment another brush at the splendid hair betrayed a half-consciousness of the grace of her own movements.
"She wouldn"t say a word to me--she is much more likely to tell one of the men. Perhaps she will tell Edmund Grosse to-morrow; he is so easy to talk to."
"But that"s no use for to-night, and Groombridge will be simply furious if I ask him to interfere without telling him how much it comes to.
Billy won"t say a word."
"I think," said Rose very slowly, "that if we all go to bed now, we shall have some bright idea in the morning."
Before this master-stroke of suggestion had reached Lady Groombridge"s brain, a very low voice came from the window.
"Would you like me to go and ask her?"
The hostess started; she had forgotten Miss Molly Dexter. A little dull blush rose to her forehead.
"Oh dear, I had forgotten you were there; but, after all, she is no relation of yours, and it isn"t your fault, you know. Could you--would you really not mind asking her?"
"I don"t mind at all. Might I take your candle?"
"Of course," said Lady Groombridge, "you won"t, don"t you know----"
"Say that you sent me?" The low, detached voice betrayed no sarcasm. She knew perfectly well that Lady Groombridge disliked being beholden to her at that moment. It was rather amusing to make her so.
For fifteen minutes after that the travelling clock by Lady Rose"s bed ticked loudly, and drowned the faint murmur of her prayers while she knelt at the _prie-dieu_.
Lady Groombridge knew Rose too well to be surprised. But she did not, like the young widow, pa.s.s the time in prayer; she was worried--even deeply so. She was of an anxious temperament, and she was really shocked at what had happened.