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Larrone had left Florence within a few hours of Madame Danterre's death, and that, by her desire, he had taken a small box to Miss Dexter. There was evidently a certain sense of mystery and excitement among the nurses and servants as to the box and the sudden journey.
But he could not conceal an added degree of respect, and liking even, under the impenetrable manner which hid his own aching sense of close personal suffering. Grosse answered the firm hand-grip with a kindly smile. "I only heard of Madame Danterre's death when I got to Genoa on our return journey." "And she died just before you left London," said Murray.
She unclasped the pearl necklace that Edmund had seen on Madame Danterre's withered neck in the garden at Florence. She slipped off four large rings, and then gathered up a few jewels that lay about. "One ought not to leave valuables about," she thought, and she did not know that she added "after a death."
Madame Danterre had only just moved into it from a much smaller house in the same quarter. Edmund next drove to the nearest chemist, and there found out that Dr. Larrone was the name of Madame Danterre's medical man. He already knew the name of her lawyer from Mr.
Perhaps Madame Danterre's assertion, when Molly came of age, that she did not want to see Molly, was only an attempt to find out whether Molly really wished to come to her mother. From the day on which her ideal of her mother had been completely shattered Molly had shrunk from even thinking of her.
But before that must come the publication of Madame Danterre's will." Edmund drove back from the city absorbed in the thought of Molly, in comparing his different impressions of her at different stages of their acquaintance. He had spoken so firmly and undoubtingly to Murray.
He began to realise his own ignorance as to his own affairs, and he went through the slow torture of understanding how blindly he had left everything in his solicitor's hands. He was beginning to face actual poverty as inevitable, when he heard from Mr. Murray that Madame Danterre's will was proved in London, and that her daughter was her sole heir.
The poor girl was, in fact, constantly wondering whether the people she met were hot partisans of Lady Rose Bright, or whether they knew of Madame Danterre's existence, and if so, whether they had the further knowledge that Miss Molly Dexter was that lady's daughter. They might, for either of these reasons, have some secret objection to herself.
She did not know that he had not been in Florence since he had known her. But what could have started him in the notion that Miss Dexter was Madame Danterre's child? And did he know it for certain now? That was what she would like to find out. Molly had on a pale green tea-gown, which fell into a succession of almost classic folds with each rapid characteristic movement.
Murray leant back in the round office chair, and crossed his legs in the well of the massive table before him. Edmund bent forward, his face sunburnt and healthy after the weeks on the yacht, but the eyes seemed tired. "I don't know that it comes to much," Murray went on slowly, "but three days after Madame Danterre's death a foreigner asked to see me who refused to give his name to my clerk.
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