Almost as soon as he was in the room she had an impression that he was quite at home, curiously at his ease. "I am glad the house is so little changed. I came to my first dance here. You have done wonderfully well, and all on the old lines. A friend told me it was the hugest success." A remembrance of past jokes as to Edmund's second-hand compliments and his friend "Mr. Harris" came into Molly's mind, but she only felt angry at the remembrance. He talked on about the pictures and the furniture until she became more natural. It was impossible not to be interested in her work, and the decoration and furnishing of the whole house was her own doing, not that of any hireling adviser. Then, too, he knew its history, and she became keenly interested. She had at times a strong feeling of the past life still in possession of the house, into which her own strangely fated life had intruded. She wanted, half-consciously, to know if her guilty secret was a desecration or only a continuance of something that had gone before. Suddenly she leant forward with the crude simplicity he was glad to see again. "Have there been any wicked people here?" Her voice was low and young. "'All houses in which men have lived and died are haunted houses,'" he quoted. "It's not very cynical to suppose that there has been sin and sorrow here before now." "I think," said Molly quickly, "there was a wicked woman who used the little dining-room; perhaps she was only a guest. I don't think she went upstairs often." "Perhaps she came in with my looking-glasses," suggested Edmund. "I have often wished I could see what they have seen." Molly was now quite off her guard. Edmund rose and examined some china on a table near him. "Why are you so displeased with me?" he said, without any change of voice. Molly sprang to her feet, careless whether her unguarded vehemence might betray her to his observation. "I shall not answer that question," she said; but he knew that she would answer it. "You cut me at the Court; you were displeased at having to sit by me at dinner; you have pretended not to see me at least four times since then, and your butler showed me up by mistake." Molly had moved away from him to the window. She knew she must speak or her conduct would look too like wounded love--a thing quite unbearable. She knew, too, that his influence would make her speak, and, besides that, something in her cried for the relief of speech. She needed a fight although she did not know it; an open fight with an enemy she could see would distract her from the incessant fight with an enemy she did not see.