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 me—to dwell on it. I do really wish you would leave it alone."
Edmund frowned, though he liked that expression, "mother and you and me."
"You needn't think about it unless you wish to," he answered.
"But I wish you wouldn't!"