"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