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When she came out of the church it was raining, and the wind blowing. It
was only a short walk to her own house, and she and her mother had made
a rule not to take out servants and the carriage for their devotions.
She would have walked on in total silence, but her mother could not bear
the suspense.

"Rose, what is it?" she cried, in a tone of authority and intense
anxiety. After all it might be easier to answer now as they battled with
the rain.

"I don't know how to tell you, mother. Mr. Murray has been with me and
shown me the will. There was some one all the time who had some claim on
him. She may have been his real wife--I know nothing except that since
we have had John Steele's fortune David has always paid her an income
and now has left her a very great deal and me very little. That would
not matter--God knows it is not the poverty that hurts--but the thing
itself, the horror, the shame, the publicity. I mind it all, everything,
more than I ought. I----" She stopped, not a word more would come.

Lady Charlton could only make broken sounds of incredulous horror. When
they crossed the brilliantly lighted hall the mother suddenly seemed
much older, and Rose, for the first time, bore all the traces of a
great, an overpowering sorrow.

"It wasn't natural to be so calm," thought the maid, who had been with
her since her girlhood, as she helped her to take off her cloak. "She
didn't understand at first. It's coming over her now, poor dear, and
indeed he was a real gentleman, and such a husband! Never a harsh
word--not one--that I ever heard, at least."

It was some time before Lady Charlton could be brought to believe it
all, and then at first she was overwhelmed with self-blame. Her mind
fastened chiefly on the fact that she had allowed the marriage without
settlements. Then the next thought was the horror of the publicity, the
way in which this dreadful woman must be heard of and talked about. Lady
Charlton's broken sentences had almost the feebleness of extreme old age
that cannot accept as true what it cannot understand. "It seems
impossible, quite impossible," she said. She was very tired, and Rose
wished it had been practicable to keep this knowledge from her till
later. She knew that her mother was one of those highly-strung women
whose nerve power is at its best quite late at night. As it was, Lady
Charlton had to dress for dinner and sit as upright as usual through the
meal, and to talk a little before the servants. Rose appeared the more
dazed of the two then, though her mind had been quite clear before.
There was nothing said as soon as they were alone, but, as if with one
accord, both glanced at each of the many letters brought by the last
post, and, if it were one of condolence, laid it aside unread. The
butler had placed on a small table two evening papers, which had notices
of the memorial service for Sir David Bright, and one had some lines "In
Memoriam" from a poet of considerable repute. Rose, finding the papers
at her elbow, got up and changed her chair. It was not till they had
gone up to their rooms and parted that Lady Charlton felt speech to be
possible. She wrapped her purple dressing-gown round her and went into
Rose's room. She found her sitting in a low chair by the fire leaning
forward, her elbows pressed on her knees, her face buried in her hands.
Then, very quietly and impersonally, they discussed the situation. With
a rare self-command the mother never used one expression of reprobation;
if she had done so, Rose could not have spoken again. It seemed more and
more, as they spoke in the two gentle voices, so much alike in tone and
accent, in a half pathetic, half musical intonation; it seemed as they
sat so quietly without tears, almost without gestures, as if they
discussed the story of another woman and another man. There were some
differences in their views, and the mother's was ever the hardest on the
dead man. For instance, Rose believed through all that another will
existed, although she was convinced that she should never see it. Her
mother's judgment coincided with the lawyer's; the soldier would have
made the change, if it were made at all, before starting for the war.
No, the whole thing had been too recently gone into; it was so short a
time since the codicil had been added. Of that codicil, too, Lady
Charlton's view was quite clear. She thought the object of adding it had
been to save appearances. "As long as you live in this house, furnished
as well as possible, people will forget the wording of the will, or they
will think that money was given to you in his lifetime to escape the
death duties."

Like many idealists and even mystics, both mother and daughter took
sensible views on money matters. They did not undervalue the fortune
that had gone; they were both honestly sorry it had gone, and would have
taken any reasonable means to get it back again. Only Rose allowed that
possibly there might have been some claim in justice on the woman's
part; she could not frame her lips to use the words again. Without
"legal wife" or any such terms passing between them, they were really
arguing the point. Lady Charlton had not the faintest shadow of a doubt
"the woman was a wicked woman, and the wicked woman, as wicked women do,
had entrapped a" (the adjective was conspicuous by its absence) "a man."
Such a woman was to be forgiven, even--a bitter sigh could not be
suppressed--to be prayed for; but it was not necessary to try to take a
falsely charitable view of her, or invent unlikely circumstances in her
defence. It was a relief to the darkest of all dark thoughts in Rose's
mind, the doubt of the validity of her own marriage, to hear her mother
settling this question as she had settled so many questions years ago,
by the weight of personal authority.

At last the clock on the stairs below told them that it was two in the
morning, and Lady Charlton had to leave London by an early train. She
was torn between the claim of her youngest married daughter, who was
laid up in a lonely country house in Scotland, and that of Rose in this
new and miserable trouble.

"I could telegraph to Bertha that I can't come," she said suddenly.
"But I am afraid she would miss me."

"No, no," murmured Rose firmly, "Bertha needs you most now; you must
go," and then, fearing her mother might think she did not want her
quite, quite enough, "I shall look forward to your coming back soon,
very soon."

"Could you--could you come and sleep in my room, Rose?" They were
standing up by the fireplace now.

"If you like mother, only it will be worse for me to-morrow night." They
both looked away from the fire round the room--the room that had been
hers since the first days after the honeymoon.

Then at the same moment Lady Charlton opened her arms and Rose drew
within them, and leant her fair head on her mother's shoulder. So they
stood for a few moments in absolute stillness.

"God bless you, my child," and Rose was left, as she wished, alone.




CHAPTER III

"AS YOU HOPE TO BE FORGIVEN"


Two months passed, and at last the War Office received a parcel for Lady
Rose Bright. It had been sent to headquarters by the next officer in
command under Sir David, who had met his own fate a few weeks later.
Rose received the parcel at tea-time, brought to her by a mounted
messenger from the War Office.

A great calm had settled in Rose's soul during these weeks. She had met
her trouble alone and standing. At first, all had been utter darkness
and bitter questioning. Then the questioning had ceased. Even the wish
to have things clear to her mind and to know why she should have this
particular trial was silenced, and in the completeness of submission she
had come back to life and to peace. Nothing was solved, nothing made
clear, but she was again in the daylight. But when she received the
little parcel in its thick envelope she trembled excessively. It was
addressed in a handwriting she had never seen before. She could not for
some moments force herself to open it. When she did she drew out a faded
photograph, a diamond ring, and a sheet of paper with writing in ink.
The photograph was of Sir David as quite a young man--she had never seen
it before; the ring had one very fine diamond, and that she had never
seen before. On the paper was written in his own hand.--

"This will be brought to you if I die in battle. Forgive me, as you too
hope to be forgiven. Justice had to be done. I have tried to make it as
little painful as I could."

That was all. There was nothing else in the envelope. She took up the
photograph, she took up the ring, and examined them in turn. It was so
strange, this very remarkable diamond, which she had never seen before,
sent to her as if it were a matter of course. He had never worn much
jewellery, and he had left in her care the few seals and rings he
possessed. Then the photograph of her husband as a young man, so much
younger than when she had known him. Why send it to her now? What had
she to do with this remote past? But the paper was the most astonishing
of all. She had been standing when she undid the things; she left the
ring and the photograph on the table, and she sank into a chair near the
fire holding the bit of paper. The tone of it astonished and confused
her. It was more the stern moralist asking to be forgiven for doing
right than the guilty husband asking for mercy in her thoughts of him.

"Yes," thought Rose at length, "that is because she was his wife, and
when he came to face death it was the great wrong of infidelity to her
that haunted him. I must have seemed almost a partner in the wrong."

Again the confused sense of guilt seized her, the horrible possibility
of having been a wife only in name. She did not weigh the matter calmly
enough to feel quite as distinctly as she ought to have done that she
could not be touched or denied in the faintest degree by a sin that was
not her sin. Still she raised her head as she could not have done some
weeks before; for the most acute phase of her trial had been faced and
had been passed. Now in her moments of most bitter pain in the very
depths of her soul was peace. As she became calmer she tried again to
connect together those three parts of the message from the battle-field,
the ring, the photograph, and the letter; but she could not do so. At
last she put them away in the drawer of her bureau, and then wrote to
tell her mother and the lawyer that Sir David had sent her a photograph,
a ring, and a few private lines--that was all. There was no will.

Still everything had not been brought back. There had been portmanteaux
sent down to Capetown, and there might yet be discovered a small
despatch box, or a writing case, something or other that might hold a
will. But the limit of time was reached at last; the portmanteaux and a
despatch box were recovered, but they held no will.

The solicitor delayed to the last possible moment, and then the will was
proved. It was published in the papers at a moment when a lull in the
war gave leisure for private gossip, and the gossip accordingly raged
hotly. All the sweetness, gentleness, and kindness that made Rose
deservedly popular did not prevent there being two currents of opinion.
There are wits so active that they cannot share the views of all
right-minded people. While the majority sympathised deeply with Rose,
there were a few who insinuated that she must be to some degree to blame
for what had happened.

"Well, don't you know, I never could understand why she married a man so
much older than herself. Of course she had not a penny and he was
awfully rich, and people don't look too close into a man's character in
such cases. It is rather convenient for some women to be very innocent."

Sir Edmund Grosse, to whom the remark was addressed at a small country
house party, turned his back for a moment on the speaker in order to
pick up a paper, and then said in a low, indifferent voice: "David
Bright came into his cousin's fortune unexpectedly a year after he
married Lady Rose."

The subject was dropped that time, but he met 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 drawing-room, which was just as of old.
Except that a neat maid had opened the door, instead of a butler, he saw
no change.

Rose looked a little nervous for a moment, and then frankly pleased to
see him. Edmund always had a talent for seeming to be as natural in any
house as if he were the husband or the brother or part of the furniture.
Somehow, as Rose gave him tea and they settled into a chat, she felt as
if he had been there very often lately, whereas in fact she had not seen
him since David died, except at the memorial service. He began to tell
her what visits he had paid, whom he had seen, the little gossip he
expressed so well in his gentle, sleepy voice; and then he drew her on
as to her own interests, her charities, her work for the soldiers'
wives. He said nothing more that day, but he dropped in again soon, and
then again.

At last one evening he observed quite quietly, in a pause in their talk:
"So you live here on L800 a year?"

Rose did not feel annoyed, though she did not know why she was not
angry.

"Yes, I can manage," she said simply.

"You can't tell yet; it's too soon." He got up out of his low chair near
the fireplace, now filled with plants, and stood with his back against
the chimney. "You know it's absurd," he said. Rose moved uneasily and
was silent.

"It's absurd," he repeated, "there's another will somewhere. David would
never have done that." He struck that note at the start, and cursed
David all the deeper in the depths of his diplomatic soul. Rose looked
at him gratefully, kindly.

"I think there is another will somewhere," she said, "but I am sure it
will never be found. It's no use to think or talk of it, Edmund."

He fidgeted for a moment with the china on the chimney-piece.

"For 'auld lang syne,' Rose," he said in a very low voice, "and because
you might possibly, just possibly, have made something of me if you had
chosen, let me know a little more about it. I want to see what was in
his last letter."

Rose flushed deeply. It was difficult to say why she yielded except that
most people did yield to Grosse if he got them alone. She drew off the
third finger of her left hand a very remarkable diamond ring and gave it
to him. Then she took out of a drawer a faded photograph of a young,
commonplace, open-faced officer, now framed in an exquisite stamped
leather case, and handed that to him also. He saw that she hesitated.

"May I have the rest," he said very gently. Even her mother 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
listened with profound attention until he had finished what he had to
tell him.

"Lady Rose has allowed you to see the paper, then?" he said at last.
"She has not even shown it to Lady Charlton. He asked her pardon," he
mused, half to himself, "and said justice must be done. I am afraid, Sir
Edmund, that that points in the same direction as our worst fears--that
Madame Danterre was his wife."

"But he would not have written such a letter as that to Rose; it is
impossible. 'Forgive as you too hope to be forgiven.' That sentence in
connection with Lady Rose is positively grotesque, whereas it would be
most fitting when addressed elsewhere."

Mr. Murray could not see the case in the same light as Edmund. He
allowed the possibility of the scrap of paper and the ring having been
sent to Rose by mistake, but he was not inclined to indulge in what
seemed to him to be guesswork as to what conceivably had been intended
to be sent to her in place of them.

"There is, too," he argued, "a quite possible interpretation of the
words of that scrap of paper. It is possible that he was full of remorse
for his treatment of Madame Danterre. Sometimes a man is haunted by
wrong-doing in the past until it prevents his understanding the point of
view of anybody but the victim of the old haunting sin. Remorse is very
exclusive, Sir Edmund. In such a state of mind he would hardly think of
Lady Rose enough to realise the bearing of his words. 'Forgive as you
too hope to be forgiven' would be an appeal wrung out from him by sheer
suffering. It is a possible cry from any human being to another. Then as
to the ring and the photograph, we have no proof that he put them in the
envelope. They may have been found on him and put into the envelope by
the same hand that addressed it. I quite grant you that those few words
are extraordinary, but they can be explained. But even if it were
obvious that they were intended for somebody else, you cannot deduce
from that, that another letter, intended for Lady Rose and containing a
will, was sent elsewhere."

But Sir Edmund was obstinate. The piece of paper had been intended for
Madame Danterre, together with the ring and the photograph--things
belonging to Sir David's early life, to the days when he most probably
loved this other woman; he even went so far as to maintain that the lady
in Florence had given Sir David the ring.

"After all," said Mr. Murray, "what can you do? You could only raise
hopes that won't be fulfilled."

"I think myself that my explanation would calm my cousin's mind; the
possibility that she was not Sir David's wife is, I am convinced, the
most painful part of the trial to her. I shall write it to her, but I
shall also tell her that there is no hope whatever of proving what I
believe to be the truth."

"None at all; do impress that upon her, Sir Edmund. We have nothing to
begin upon. The officer who sent the paper to headquarters is dead; Sir
David's own servant is dead; Sir David's will in favour of Madame
Danterre has been published without even a protest."

"Lady Rose will not be inclined to raise the question."

"No, I believe that is true," said the lawyer; "Lady Rose Bright is a
wise woman."

But Mr. Murray was annoyed to find that Edmund Grosse was far less wise,
and that whatever he might promise to say to Rose he would not really be
content to leave things alone. He intended to go to Florence and to get
into touch with Madame Danterre. Such interference could do no good, and
it might do harm.

"I won't alarm her," said Edmund, "believe me, she will have no reason
to suppose that I am in Florence on her account. I am, in any case,
going to the Italian lakes this autumn, and I have often been offered
the loan of a flat overlooking the Arno. If the offer is still open I
shall accept it. I have long wished to know that fascinating town a
little better."

When Rose received the letter from Edmund it had the effect he had
expected. It was simply calming, not exciting. Rose was even more
anxious than the lawyer that nothing should be attempted in order to
follow up her cousin's suggestion. But she could now let her imagination
be comforted by Edmund's solution of the mystery, and let her fancy rest
in the thought of a very different letter intended for herself. The
words on that scrap of paper no longer burnt with such agony into her
soul, and she no longer felt it a dreadful duty to wear the ring with
its glorious stone so full of light, an object that was to her intensely
repugnant. She would put it away, and with it all dark and morbid
thoughts. She had a life to lead, thoughts to think, actions to do, and
all that was in her own control must escape from the shadow of the past
into a working daylight.




CHAPTER IV

THE WICKED WOMAN IN FLORENCE


Edmund Grosse's friend was delighted to put the flat in the Palazzo at
his disposal. The weather was unusually warm for the autumn when Edmund
arrived in Florence. He was glad to get there, and glad to get away from
the gay group he had left in a beautiful villa on Lake Como; and
probably they were glad to see him go.

Edmund had indeed only stayed with them long enough to leave a very
marked impression of low spirits and irritation. "What's come to
Grosse?" was asked by more than one guest of the hostess.

"I don't know, but he really is impossible. It's partly because of
Billy--but I won't condescend to explain that Billy proposed himself and
I could not well refuse."

Billy is the only one of this gay, quarrelsome little group that need be
named here. It was really partly on his account that Edmund so quickly
left them to their gossip alternating with happy phrases of joy in the
beauty of mountains and lakes, and to their quarrels alternating with
moments of love-making, so avowedly brief that only an artist could
believe in its exquisite enjoyment. Neither Edmund nor Billy were
really _habitues_ of this Bohemian circle. They both belonged to a more
conventional social atmosphere; they were at once above and below the
rest of the party. The cause of antipathy to Billy on Sir Edmund's part
was a certain likeness in their lives--contrasting with a most marked
dissimilarity of character.

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