Later in the day Molly wrote to the family lawyer, and consulted him as to how to find a suitable lady with whom to stay in London. Mrs. Carteret read and passed the letter. Seeing that Molly was determined to go to London, she was anxious to help her as much as possible, without calling down upon herself such letters of advice as the one from Lady Dawning. It proved as difficult to find just the right thing in chaperones as it is usually difficult to find exactly the right thing in any form of humanity, and December and January passed in the search. But in the end all that was to be wished for seemed to be secured in the person of Mrs. Delaport Green, who was known to a former pupil of Miss Carew's, and at length Molly went out of the rooms with the northern aspect, and drove through the wood that sheltered under the shoulder of the great green hill, with nothing about her to recall the child who had come in there for the first time fourteen years ago, except that she still had the look of one who waits for other circumstances and other people. CHAPTER VII EDMUND GROSSE CONTINUES TO INTERFERE Mr. Murray had had no belief in Sir Edmund Grosse's doings, and he indulged in the provoking air of "I told you so," when the latter, who had not been in London for several months, appeared at the office, and owned to the futility of his visit to Florence. Meanwhile, Mr. Murray had also carried on a fruitless enquiry in a different direction. "The General's two most intimate friends were killed about two months after his death, and his servant died in the same action--probably before Sir David himself. I have tried to find out if he had any talk on his own affairs with friends on board ship going out, but it seems not. I can show you the list of those who went out with him." Sir Edmund knew something of most people and after studying the list he went to look up an old soldier friend at the Army and Navy Club. Indeed, for some weeks he was often to be seen there, and he was as attentive to Generals as an anxious parent seeking advancement in the Army for an only son. He soon became discouraged as to obtaining any information regarding David's later years, but some gossip on his younger days he did glean. Nothing could have been better than David's record; he seemed to have been a paragon of virtue. "That's what made it all the more strange that he should have fallen into the hands of Mrs. Johnny Dexter," mused an old Colonel as he puffed at one of Grosse's most admirable cigars. "Poor old David; he was wax in her hands for a few weeks, then he got fever and recovered from her and from it at the same time--he went home soon after. He'd have done anything for her at one moment." This Colonel might well have been flattered by Edmund's attentions; but he gave little in return for them except what he said that day.