were going to say; and yet I had no notion of it till a moment ago, when
it came to me in a flash. Only I wish I had known sooner!"

It was not common with Rose to say so much at a time, and there had been
slight breaks and gaps in her voice, pathetic sounds to the listener.
She seemed a little--just a little--out of breath with past sorrow and
present pain. Edmund thought he would never come to know all the
inflections in that voice.

"I wish I had known sooner. I am afraid I have not been kind to her."

"And if you had known you would have cast your pearls at her feet," he
said, in tender anger. "Don't make the mistake of being too kind to her,
Rose. I want you to keep her at a distance. There is something all the
more dangerous about her because she is distinctly attractive. She has
primitive passions, and yet she is not melodramatic; it's a dangerous
species."

It was amazing how easy it was to take a severe view of poor Molly after
she had gone away, and how he believed what he said.

"She has never seen her mother?" asked Rose gently.

"No, but I am sure she knows about her mother," the slowness in his
voice was vindictive; "and that her mother knows what we don't know
about the will."

"Edmund dear," said Rose very earnestly, "do please leave that point
alone; no good can come of it. I do assure you that no good, only harm,
will come of it. It's bad and unwholesome for us all--mother and you and