Wives and Daughters

She laid her hand on the hot damp skin of the horse’s shoulder; the man started.

‘Is the doctor coming, miss?’ For he saw who it was by the dim light.

‘He is dead, is he not?’ asked Molly, in a low voice.

‘I’m afeard he is,—leastways, there is no doubt according to what they said. But I’ve ridden hard! there may be a chance. Is the doctor coming, miss?’

‘He is gone out. They are seeking him, I believe. I will go myself. Oh! the poor old squire!’ She went into the kitchen—went over the house with swift rapidity to gain news of her father’s whereabouts. The servants knew no more than she did. Neither she nor they had heard what Cynthia, ever quick of perception, had done. The shutting of the front door had fallen on deaf ears as far as others were concerned. Upstairs sped Molly to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Gibson stood at the door, listening to the unusual stir in the house.

‘What is it, Molly? Why, how white you look, child!’

‘Where’s papa?’

‘Gone out. What’s the matter?’

‘Where?’

‘How should I know? I was asleep; Jenny came upstairs on her way to the bedrooms; she’s a girl who never keeps to her work, and Maria takes advantage of her.’

‘Jenny, Jenny!’ cried Molly, frantic at the delay.

‘Don’t shout, dear,—ring the bell. What can be the matter?’

‘Oh, Jenny!’ said Molly, half-way up the stairs to meet her, ‘who wanted papa?’

Cynthia came to join the group; she too had been looking for traces or tidings of Mr. Gibson.

‘What is the matter?’ said Mrs. Gibson. ‘Can nobody speak and answer a question?’

‘Osborne Hamley is dead!’ said Cynthia, gravely.

‘Dead! Osborne! Poor fellow! I knew it would be so, though,—I was sure of it. But Mr. Gibson can do nothing if he’s dead. Poor young man! I wonder where Roger is now? He ought to come home.’

Jenny had been blamed for coming into the drawing-room instead of Maria, whose place it was, and so had lost the few wits she had. To Molly’s hurried questions her replies had been entirely unsatisfactory. A man had come to the back door—she could not see who it was—she had not asked his name; he wanted to speak to master, —master had seemed in a hurry, and only stopped to get his hat.

‘He will not be long away,’ thought Molly, ‘or he would have left word where he was going. But oh! the poor father all alone!’ And then a thought came into her head, which she acted upon straight. ‘Go to James, tell him to put the side-saddle I had in November on Nora Creina. Don’t cry, Jenny. There is no time for that. No one is angry with you. Run!’

So down into the cluster of collected women Molly came, equipped in her jacket and skirt; quick determination in her eyes; controlled quivering about the corners of her mouth.

‘Why, what in the world’—said Mrs. Gibson—‘Molly, what are you thinking about?’ But Cynthia had understood it at a glance, and was arranging Molly’s hastily assumed dress, as she passed along.

‘I am going. I must go. I cannot bear to think of him alone. When papa comes back he is sure to go to Hamley, and if I am not wanted, I can come back with him.’ She heard Mrs. Gibson’s voice following her in remonstrance, but she did not stay for words. She had to wait in the stable-yard, and she wondered how the messenger could bear to eat and drink the food and beer brought out to him by the servants. Her coming out had evidently interrupted the eager talk,—the questions and answers passing sharp to and fro; but she caught the words, ‘all amongst the tangled grass,’ and ‘the squire would let none on us touch him; he took him up as if he was a baby; he had to rest many a time, and once he sat him down on the ground; but still he kept him in his arms; but we thought we should ne’er have gotten him up again—him and the body.’

‘The body!’

Molly had never felt that Osborne was really dead till she heard these words. They rode quick under the shadows of the hedgerow trees, but when they slackened speed, to go up a brow, or to give their horses breath, Molly heard these two little words again in her ears; and said them over again to herself, in hopes of forcing the sharp truth into her unwilling sense. But when they came in sight of the square stillness of the house, shining in the moonlight—the moon had risen by this time—Molly caught at her breath, and for an instant she thought she never could go in, and face the presence in that dwelling. One yellow light burnt steadily, spotting the silver shining with its earthly coarseness. The man pointed it out; it was almost the first word he had spoken since they had left Hollingford.

‘It’s the old nursery. They carried him there. The squire broke down at the stair-foot and they took him to the readiest place. I’ll be bound for it the squire is there hisself, and old Robin too. They fetched him, as a knowledgeable man among dumb beasts, till th’ regular doctor came.’

Molly dropped down from her seat before the man could dismount to help her. She gathered up her skirts and did not stay again to think of what was before her. She ran along the once familiar turns, and swiftly up the stairs, and through the doors, till she came to the last; then she stopped and listened. It was a deathly silence. She opened the door:—the squire was sitting alone at the side of the bed, holding the dead man’s hand, and looking straight before him at vacancy He did not stir or move, even so much as an eyelid, at Molly’s entrance. The truth had entered his soul before this, and he knew that no doctor, be he ever so cunning, could, with all his striving, put the breath into that body again. Molly came up to him with the softest steps, the most hushed breath that ever she could. She did not speak, for she did not know what to say. She felt that he had no more hope from earthly skill, so what was the use of speaking of her father and the delay in his coming? After a moment’s pause, standing by the old man’s side, she slipped down to the floor, and sat at his feet. Possibly her presence might have some balm in it; but uttering of words was as a vain thing. He must have been aware of her being there, but he took no apparent notice. There they sat, silent and still, he in his chair, she on the floor; the dead man, beneath the sheet, for a third. She fancied that she must have disturbed the father in his contemplation of the quiet face, now more than half, but not fully, covered up out of sight. Time had never seemed so without measure, silence had never seemed so noiseless as it did to Molly, sitting there. In the acuteness of her senses she heard a step mounting a distant staircase, coming slowly, coming nearer. She knew it not to be her father’s, and that was all she cared about. Nearer and nearer—close to the outside of the door—a pause, and a soft, hesitating tap. The great gaunt figure sitting by her side quivered at the sound. Molly rose and went to the door: it was Robinson, the old butler, holding in his hand a covered basin of soup.

‘God bless you, miss,’ said he; ‘make him touch a drop o’ this: he’s gone since breakfast without food, and it’s past one in the morning now.’

He softly removed the cover, and Molly took the basin back with her to her place at the squire’s side. She did not speak, for she did not well know what to say, or how to present this homely want of nature before one so rapt in grief. But she put a spoonful to his lips, and touched them with the savoury food, as if he had been a sick child, and she the nurse; and instinctively he took down the first spoonful of the soup. But in a minute he said, with a sort of cry, and almost overturning the basin Molly held, by his passionate gesture as he pointed to the bed,—

‘He will never eat again—never.’

Then he threw himself across the corpse, and wept in such a terrible manner that Molly trembled lest he also should die—should break his heart there and then. He took no more notice of her words, of her tears, of her presence, than he did of that of the moon looking through the unclosed window, with passionless stare. Her father stood by them both before either of them was aware.

‘Go downstairs, Molly,’ said he, gravely; but he stroked her head tenderly as she rose. ‘Go into the dining-room.’ Now she felt the reaction from all her self-control. She trembled with fear as she went along the moonlit passages. It seemed to her as if she should meet Osborne, and hear it all explained; how he came to die—what he now felt and thought and wished her to do. She did get down to the dining-room-the last few steps with a rush of terror—senseless terror of what might be behind her; and there she found supper laid out, and candles lit, and Robinson bustling about, decanting some wine. She wanted to cry; to get into some quiet place, and weep away her over-excitement; but she could hardly do so there. She only felt very much tired, and to care for nothing in this world any more. But vividness of life came back when she found Robinson holding a glass to her lips as she sat in the great leather easy-chair, to which she had gone instinctively as to a place of rest.

‘Drink, miss. It’s good old Madeira. Your papa said as how you was to eat a bit. Says he, “My daughter may have to stay here, Mr. Robinson, and she’s young for the work. Persuade her to eat something, or she’ll break down utterly.” Those was his very words.’

Molly did not say anything. She had not energy enough for resistance. She drank and she ate at the old servant’s bidding; and then she asked him to leave her alone, and went back to her easy-chair, and let herself cry, and so ease her heart.

CHAPTER 52

Squire Hamley’s Sorrow

It seemed very long before Mr. Gibson came down. He went and stood with his back to the empty fire-place, and did not speak for a minute or two.

‘He’s gone to bed,’ said he at length. ‘Robinson and I have got him there. But just as I was leaving him he called me back, and asked me to let you stop. I’m sure I don’t know—but one doesn’t like to refuse at such a time.’

‘I wish to stay,’ said Molly.

‘Do you? There’s a good girl. But how will you manage?’

‘Oh, never mind that. I can manage. Papa’—she paused—‘what did Osborne die of?’ She asked the question in a low, awe-stricken voice.

‘Something wrong about the heart. You wouldn’t understand if I told you. I apprehended it for some time; but it’s better not to talk of such things at home. When I saw him on Thursday week, he seemed better than I’ve seen him for a long time. I told Dr. Nicholls so. But one never can calculate in these complaints.’

‘You saw him on Thursday week? Why, you never mentioned it!’ said Molly.

‘No. I don’t talk of my patients at home. Besides, I didn’t want him to consider me as his doctor, but as a friend. Any alarm about his own health would only have hastened the catastrophe.’

‘Then didn’t he know that he was ill—ill of a dangerous complaint, I mean: one that might end as it has done?’

‘No; certainly not. He would only have been watching his symptoms—accelerating matters, in fact.’

‘Oh, papa!’ said Molly, shocked.

‘I’ve no time to go into the question,’ Mr. Gibson continued. ‘And until you know what has to be said on both sides, and in every instance, you are not qualified to judge. We must keep our attention on the duties in hand now. You sleep here for the remainder of the night, which is more than half gone already?’

‘Yes.’

‘Promise me to go to bed just as usual. You may not think it, but most likely you’ll go to sleep at once. People do at your age.’

‘Papa, I think I ought to tell you something. I know a great secret of Osborne’s, which I promised solemnly not to tell; but the last time I saw him I think he must have been afraid of something like this.’ A fit of sobbing came upon her, which her father was afraid would end in hysterics. But suddenly she mastered herself, and looked up into his anxious face, and smiled to reassure him.

‘I could not help it, papa!’

‘No. I know. Go on with what you were saying. You ought to be in bed; but if you’ve a secret on your mind you won’t sleep.’

‘Osborne was married,’ said she, fixing her eyes on her father. ‘That is the secret.’

‘Married! Nonsense. What makes you think so?’

‘He told me. That’s to say, I was in the library—was reading there, some time ago; and Roger came and spoke to Osborne about his wife. Roger did not see me, but Osborne did. They made me promise secrecy. I don’t think I did wrong.’

‘Don’t worry yourself about right or wrong just now; tell me more about it, at once.’

‘I knew no more till six months ago—last November, when you went up to Lady Cumnor. Then he called, and gave me his wife’s address, but still under promise of secrecy; and, excepting those two times, I have never heard any one mention the subject. I think he would have told me more that last time, only Miss Phoebe came in.’

‘Where is this wife of his?’

‘Down in the south; near Winchester, I think. He said she was a Frenchwoman and a Roman Catholic; and I think he said she was a servant,’ added Molly.

‘Phew!’ Her father made a long whistle of dismay.

‘And,’ continued Molly, ‘he spoke of a child. Now you know as much as I do, papa, except the address. I have it written down safe at home.’

Forgetting, apparently, what time of night it was, Mr. Gibson sat down, stretched out his legs before him, put his hands in his pockets, and began to think. Molly sat still without speaking, too tired to do more than wait.

‘Well!’ said he at last, jumping up, ‘nothing can be done to-night; by to-morrow morning, perhaps, I may find out. Poor little pale face!’—taking it between both his hands and kissing it; ‘poor, sweet, little pale face!’ Then he rang the bell, and told Robinson to send some maid-servant to take Miss Gibson to her room.

‘He won’t be up early,’ said he, in parting. ‘The shock has lowered him too much to be energetic. Send breakfast up to him in his own room. I’ll be here again before ten.’

Late as it was before he left, he kept his word.

‘Now, Molly,’ he said, ‘you and I must tell him the truth between us. I don’t know how he will take it; it may comfort him, but I have very little hope: either way, he ought to know it at once.’

‘Robinson says he has gone into the room again, and he is afraid he has locked the door on the inside.’

‘Never mind. I shall ring the bell, and send up Robinson to say that I am here, and wish to speak to him.’

The message returned was, ‘The squire’s kind love, and could not see Mr. Gibson just then.’ Robinson added, ‘It was a long time before he’d answer at all, sir.’

‘Go up again, and tell him I can wait his convenience. Now that’s a lie,’ Mr. Gibson said, turning round to Molly as soon as Robinson had left the room. ‘I ought to be far enough away at twelve; but, if I’m not much mistaken, the innate habits of a gentleman will make him uneasy at the idea of keeping me waiting his pleasure, and will do more to bring him out of that room into this than any entreaties or reasoning.’ Mr. Gibson was growing impatient, though, before they heard the squire’s footstep on the stairs; he was evidently coming, slowly and unwillingly. He came in almost like one blind, groping along, and taking hold of chair or table for support or guidance till he reached Mr. Gibson. He did not speak when he held the doctor by the hand; he only hung down his head, and kept on a feeble shaking of welcome.

‘I’m brought very low, sir. I suppose it’s God’s doings; but it comes hard upon me. He was my firstborn child.’ He said this almost as if speaking to a stranger, and informing him of facts of which he was ignorant.

‘Here’s Molly,’ said Mr. Gibson, choking a little himself, and pushing her forwards.

‘I beg your pardon; I did not see you at first. My mind is a good deal occupied just now.’ He sat heavily down, and then seemed almost to forget they were there. Molly wondered what was to come next. Suddenly her father spoke—

‘Where’s Roger?’ said he. ‘Is he not likely to be soon at the Cape?’^dz He got up and looked at the directions of one or two unopened letters brought by that morning’s post; among them was one in Cynthia’s handwriting. Both Molly and he saw it at the same time. How long it was since yesterday! But the squire took no notice of their proceedings or their looks.

‘You will be glad to have Roger at home as soon as may be, I think, sir. Some months must elapse first; but I’m sure he will return as speedily as possible.’

The squire said something in a very low voice. Both father and daughter strained their ears to hear what it was. They both believed it to be, ‘Roger isn’t Osborne!’ And Mr. Gibson spoke on that belief. He spoke more quietly than Molly had ever heard him do before.

‘No! we know that. I wish that anything that Roger could do, or that I could do, or that any one could do, would comfort you; but it is past human comfort.’

‘I do try to say, God’s will be done, sir,’ said the squire, looking up at Mr. Gibson for the first time, and speaking with more life in his voice; ‘but it’s harder to be resigned than happy people think.’ They were all silent for a while. The squire himself was the first to speak again,—‘He was my first child, sir; my eldest son. And of late years we weren’t‘—his voice broke down, but he controlled himself—‘we weren’t quite as good friends as could be wished; and I’m not sure—not sure that he knew how I loved him.’ And now he cried aloud with an exceeding bitter cry.^ea

‘Better so!’ whispered Mr. Gibson to Molly. ‘When he’s a little calmer, don’t be afraid; tell him all you know, exactly as it happened.’

Molly began. Her voice sounded high and unnatural to herself, as if some one else was speaking, but she made her words clear. The squire did not attempt to listen at first, at any rate.

‘One day when I was here, at the time of Mrs. Hamley’s last illness’ (the squire here checked his convulsive breathing), ‘I was in the library, and Osborne came in. He said he had only come in for a book, and that I was not to mind him, so I went on reading. Presently, Roger came along the flagged garden-path just outside the window (which was open). He did not see me in the corner where I was sitting, and said to Osborne, “Here’s a letter from your wife!” ’

Now the squire was all attention; for the first time his tear-swollen eyes met the eyes of another, and he looked at Molly with searching anxiety, as he repeated, ‘His wife! Osborne married!’ Molly went on:

‘Osborne was angry with Roger for speaking out before me, and they made me promise never to mention it to any one; or to allude to it to either of them again. I never named it to papa till last night.’

‘Go on,’ said Mr. Gibson. ‘Tell the squire about Osborne’s call—what you told me!’ Still the squire hung on her lips, listening with open mouth and eyes.

‘Some months ago Osborne called. He was not well, and wanted to see papa. Papa was away, and I was alone. I don’t exactly remember how it came about, but he spoke to me of his wife for the first and only time since the affair in the library’ She looked at her father, as if questioning him as to the desirableness of telling the few further particulars that she knew. The squire’s mouth was dry and stiff, but he tried to say, ‘Tell me all—everything.’ And Molly understood the half-formed words.

‘He said his wife was a good woman, and that he loved her dearly; but she was a French Roman Catholic, and a’—another glance at her father—‘she had been a servant once. That was all; except that I have her address at home. He wrote it down and gave it me.’

‘Well, well!’ moaned the squire. ‘It’s all over now. All over. All past and gone. We’ll not blame him,—no; but I wish he’d ha’ told me; he and I to live together with such a secret in one of us. It’s no wonder to me now—nothing can be a wonder again, for one never can tell what’s in a man’s heart. Married so long! and we sitting together at meals—and living together. Why, I told him everything! Too much, maybe, for I showed him all my passions and ill tempers! Married so long! Oh, Osborne, Osborne, you should have told me!’

‘Yes, he should!’ said Mr. Gibson. ‘But I dare say he knew how much you would dislike such a choice as he had made. But he should have told you!’

‘You know nothing about it, sir,’ said the squire, sharply. ‘You don’t know the terms we were on. Not hearty or confidential. I was cross to him many a time; angry with him for being dull, poor lad—and he with all this weight on his mind. I won’t have people interfering and judging between me and my sons. And Roger too! He could know it all, and keep it from me!’

‘Osborne evidently had bound him down to secrecy, just as he bound me,’ said Molly; ‘Roger could not help himself.’

‘Osborne was such a fellow for persuading people, and winning them over,’ said the squire, dreamily. ‘I remember—but what’s the use of remembering? It’s all over, and Osborne’s dead without opening his heart to me. I could have been tender to him, I could. But he’ll never know it now!’

‘But we can guess what wish he had strongest in his mind at the last, from what we do know of his life,’ said Mr. Gibson.

‘What, sir?’ said the squire, with sharp suspicion of what was coming.

‘His wife must have been his last thought, must she not?’

‘How do I know she was his wife? Do you think he’d go and marry a French baggage of a servant? It may be all a tale trumped up.’

‘Stop, squire. I don’t care to defend my daughter’s truth or accuracy. But, with the dead man’s body lying upstairs—his soul with God—think twice before you say more hasty words, impugning his character; if she was not his wife, what was she?’

‘I beg your pardon. I hardly know what I’m saying. Did I accuse Osborne? Oh, my lad, my lad—thou might have trusted thy old dad! he used to call me his “old dad” when he was a little chap not bigger than this,’ indicating a certain height with his hand. ‘I never meant to say he was not—not what one would wish to think him now-his soul with God, as you say very justly—for I’m sure it is there—’

‘Well! but, squire,’ said Mr. Gibson, trying to check the other’s rambling, ‘to return to his wife—’

‘And the child,’ whispered Molly to her father. Low as the whisper was, it struck on the squire’s ear.

‘What?’ said he, turning round to her suddenly, ‘—child? You never named that? Is there a child? Husband and father, and I never knew! God bless Osborne’s child! I say, God bless it!’ He stood up reverently, and the other two instinctively rose. He closed his hands as if in momentary prayer. Then exhausted he sat down again, and put out his hand to Molly.

‘You’re a good girl. Thank you.—Tell me what I ought to do, and I’ll do it.’ This to Mr. Gibson.

‘I’m almost as much puzzled as you are, squire,’ replied he. ‘I fully believe the whole story; but I think there must be some written confirmation of it, which perhaps ought to be found at once, before we act. Most probably this is to be discovered among Osborne’s papers. Will you look over them at once? Molly shall return with me, and find the address that Osborne gave her, while you are busy—’

‘She’ll come back again?’ said the squire, eagerly. ‘You—she won’t leave me to myself?’

‘No! She shall come back this evening. I’ll manage to send her somehow. But she has no clothes but the habit she came in, and I want my horse that she rode away upon.’

‘Take the carriage,’ said the squire. ‘Take anything. I’ll give orders. You’ll come back again, too?’

‘No! I’m afraid not, to-day. I’ll come to-morrow, early. Molly shall return this evening, whenever it suits you to send for her.’

‘This afternoon; the carriage shall be at your house at three. I dare not look at Osborne’s—at the papers without one of you with me; and yet I shall never rest till I know more.’

‘I’ll send the desk in by Robinson before I leave. And—can you give me some lunch before I go?’

Little by little he led the squire to eat a morsel or so of food; and so, strengthening him physically, and encouraging him mentally, Mr. Gibson hoped that he could begin his researches during Molly’s absence.

There was something touching in the squire’s wistful looks after Molly as she moved about. A stranger might have imagined her to be his daughter instead of Mr. Gibson’s. The meek, broken-down, considerate ways of the bereaved father never showed themselves more strongly than when he called them back to his chair, out of which he seemed too languid to rise, and said, as if by an after-thought: ‘Give my love to Miss Kirkpatrick; tell her I look upon her as quite one of the family. I shall be glad to see her after—after the funeral. I don’t think I can before.’

‘He knows nothing of Cynthia’s resolution to give up Roger,’ said Mr. Gibson as they rode away. ‘I had a long talk with her last night, but she was as resolute as ever. From what your mamma tells me, there is a third lover in London, whom she’s already refused. I’m thankful that you’ve no lover at all, Molly, unless that abortive attempt of Mr. Coxe’s at an offer, long ago, can be called a lover.’

‘I never heard of it, papa!’ said Molly.

‘Oh, no; I forgot. What a fool I was! Why, don’t you remember the hurry I was in to get you off to Hamley Hall, the very first time you ever went? It was all because I got hold of a desperate love-letter from Coxe, addressed to you.’

But Molly was too tired to be amused, or even interested. She could not get over the sight of the straight body covered with a sheet, which yet let the outlines be seen—all that remained of Osborne. Her father had trusted too much to the motion of the ride, and the change of scene from the darkened house. He saw his mistake.

‘Some one must write to Mrs. Osborne Hamley,’ said he. ‘I believe her to have a legal right to the name; but whether or no, she must be told that the father of her child is dead. Shall you do it, or I?’

‘Oh, you, please, papa!’

‘I will, if you wish. But she may have heard of you as a friend of her dead husband’s; while of me—a mere country doctor—it’s very probable she has never heard the name.’

‘If I ought, I will do it.’ Mr. Gibson did not like this ready acquiescence, given in so few words, too.

‘There’s Hollingford church-spire,’ said she, presently, as they drew near the town, and caught a glimpse of the church through the trees. ‘I think I never wish to go out of sight of it again.’

‘Nonsense!’ said he. ‘Why, you’ve all your travelling to do yet; and if these new-fangled railways spread, as they say they will, we shall all be spinning about the world; “sitting on tea-kettles,” as Phoebe Browning calls it. Miss Browning wrote such a capital letter of advice to Miss Hornblower. I heard of it at the Millers’. Miss Hornblower was going to travel by railroad for the first time; and Dorothy was very anxious, and sent her directions for her conduct; one piece of advice was not to sit on the boiler.’

Molly laughed a little, as she was expected to do. ‘Here we are at home, at last.’

Mrs. Gibson gave Molly a warm welcome. For one thing, Cynthia was in disgrace; for another, Molly came from the centre of news; for a third, Mrs. Gibson was really fond of the girl, in her way, and sorry to see her pale heavy looks.

‘To think of it all being so sudden at last. Not but what I always expected it! And so provoking! Just when Cynthia had given up Roger! If she had only waited a day! What does the squire say to it all?’

‘He is beaten down with grief,’ replied Molly.

‘Indeed! I should not have fancied he had liked the engagement so much.’

‘What engagement?’

‘Why, Roger to Cynthia, to be sure. I asked you how the squire took her letter, announcing the breaking of it off?’

‘Oh—I made a mistake. He hasn’t opened his letters to-day. I saw Cynthia’s among them.’

‘Now that I call positive disrespect.’

‘I don’t know. He did not mean it for such. Where is Cynthia?’

‘Gone out into the meadow-garden. She’ll be in directly. I wanted her to do some errands for me, but she flatly refused to go into the town. I am afraid she mismanages her affairs badly. But she won’t allow me to interfere. I hate to look at such things in a mercenary spirit, but it is provoking to see her throw over two such good matches. First Mr. Henderson, and now Roger Hamley. When does the squire expect Roger? Does he think he will come back sooner for poor dear Osborne’s death?’

‘I don’t know. He hardly seems to think of anything but Osborne. He appears to me to have almost forgotten everyone else. But perhaps the news of Osborne’s being married, and of the child, may rouse him up.’

Molly had no doubt that Osborne was really and truly married, nor had she any idea that her father had never breathed the facts of which she had told him on the previous night, to his wife or Cynthia. But Mr. Gibson had been slightly dubious of the full legality of the marriage, and had not felt inclined to speak of it to his wife until that had been ascertained one way or another. So Mrs. Gibson exclaimed, ‘What do you mean, child? Married! Osborne married. Who says so?’

‘Oh, dear! I suppose I ought not to have named it. I’m very stupid to-day.Yes! Osborne has been married a long time; but the squire did not know of it till this morning. I think it has done him good. But I don’t know.’

‘Who is the lady? Why, I call it a shame to go about as a single man, and be married all the time! If there is one thing that revolts me, it is duplicity. Who is the lady? Do tell me all you know about it, there’s a dear.’

‘She is French, and a Roman Catholic,’ said Molly.

‘French! They are such beguiling women; and he was so much abroad! You said there was a child—is it a boy or a girl?’

‘I did not hear. I did not ask.’

Molly did not think it necessary to do more than answer questions ; indeed, she was vexed enough to have told anything of what her father evidently considered it desirable to keep secret. Just then Cynthia came wandering into the room with a careless, hopeless look in her face, which Molly noticed at once. She had not heard of Molly’s arrival, and had no idea that she was returned until she saw her sitting there.

‘Molly, darling! Is that you? You’re as welcome as the flowers in May, though you’ve not been gone twenty-four hours. But the house is not the same when you are away!’

‘And she brings us such news too!’ said Mrs. Gibson. ‘I’m really almost glad you wrote to the squire yesterday, for if you had waited till to-day—I thought you were in too great a hurry at the time—he might have thought you had some interested reason for giving up your engagement. Osborne Hamley was married all this time unknown to everybody, and has got a child too.’

‘Osborne married!’ exclaimed Cynthia. ‘If ever a man looked a bachelor, he did. Poor Osborne! with his fair delicate elegance—he looked so young and boyish!’

‘Yes! it was a great piece of deceit, and I can’t easily forgive him for it. Only think! If he had paid either of you any particular attention, and you had fallen in love with him! Why, he might have broken your heart, or Molly’s either. I can’t forgive him, even though he is dead, poor fellow!’

‘Well, as he never did pay either of us any particular attention, and as we neither of us did fall in love with him, I think I only feel sorry that he had all the trouble and worry of concealment.’ Cynthia spoke with a pretty keen recollection of how much trouble and worry her concealment had cost her.

‘And now of course it is a son, and will be the heir, and Roger will just be as poorly off as ever. I hope you’ll take care and let the squire know Cynthia was quite ignorant of these new facts that have come out when she wrote those letters, Molly? I should not like a suspicion of worldliness to rest upon any one with whom I had any concern.’

‘He has not read Cynthia’s letter yet. Oh, do let me bring it home unopened,’ said Molly. ‘Send another letter to Roger—now—at once; it will reach him at the same time; he will get both when he arrives at the Cape, and make him understand which is the last—the real one. Think! he will hear of Osborne’s death at the same time—two such sad things! Do, Cynthia!’

‘No, my dear,’ said Mrs. Gibson. ‘I could not allow that, even if Cynthia felt inclined for it. Asking to be re-engaged to him! At any rate, she must wait now until he proposes again, and we see how things turn out.’

But Molly kept her pleading eyes fixed on Cynthia.

‘No!’ said Cynthia, firmly, but not without consideration. ‘It cannot be. I’ve felt more content this last night than I’ve done for weeks past. I’m glad to be free. I dreaded Roger’s goodness, and learning, and all that. It was not in my way, and I don’t believe I should have ever married him, even without knowing of all these ill-natured stories that are circulating about me, and which he would hear of, and expect me to explain, and be sorry for, and penitent and humble. I know he could not have made me happy, and I don’t believe he would have been happy with me. It must stay as it is. I would rather be a governess than married to him. I should get weary of him every day of my life.’

‘Weary of Roger!’ said Molly to herself ‘It is best as it is, I see,’ she answered aloud. ‘Only I am very sorry for him, very. He did love you so. You will never get any one to love you like him!’

‘Very well. I must take my chance. And too much love is rather oppressive to me, I believe. I like a great deal, widely spread about; not all confined to one individual lover.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Molly. ‘But don’t let us talk any more about it. It is best as it is. I thought—I almost felt sure you would be sorry this morning. But we will leave it alone now.’ She sat silently looking out of the window, her heart sorely stirred, she scarcely knew how or why. But she could not have spoken. Most likely she would have begun to cry if she had spoken. Cynthia stole softly up to her after a while.

‘You are vexed with me, Molly,’ she began, in a low voice. But Molly turned sharply round.

‘I! I have no business at all in the affair. It is for you to judge. Do what you think right. I believe you have done right. Only I don’t want to discuss it, and paw it over with talk. I’m very much tired, dear’—gently now she spoke—‘and I hardly know what I say. If I speak crossly, don’t mind it.’ Cynthia did not reply at once. Then she said,—

‘Do you think I might go with you, and help you? I might have done yesterday; and you say he hasn’t opened my letter, so he has not heard as yet. And I was always fond of poor Osborne, in my way, you know.’

‘I cannot tell; I have no right to say,’ replied Molly, scarcely understanding Cynthia’s motives, which, after all, were only impulses in this case. ‘Papa would be able to judge; I think, perhaps, you had better not. But don’t go by my opinion; I can only tell what I should wish to do in your place.’

‘It was as much for your sake as any one’s, Molly,’ said Cynthia.

‘Oh, then, don’t! I am tired to-day with sitting up; but to-morrow I shall be all right; and I should not like it, if, for my sake, you came into the house at so solemn a time.’

‘Very well!’ said Cynthia, half-glad that her impulsive offer was declined; for, as she said, thinking to herself, ‘It would have been awkward after all.’ So Molly went back in the carriage alone, wondering how she should find the squire; wondering what discoveries he had made among Osborne’s papers, and at what conviction he would have arrived.

CHAPTER 53

Unlooked-For Arrivals

Robinson opened the door for Molly, almost before the carriage had fairly drawn up at the Hall, and told her that the squire had been very anxious for her return, and had more than once sent him to an upstairs window, from which a glimpse of the hill-road between Hollingford and Hamley could be caught, to know if the carriage was not yet in sight. Molly went into the drawing-room. The squire was standing in the middle of the floor awaiting her—in fact, longing to go out and meet her, but restrained by a feeling of solemn etiquette, which prevented his moving about as usual in that house of mourning. He held a paper in his hands, which were trembling with excitement and emotion; and four or five open letters were strewed on a table near him.

‘It’s all true,’ he began; ‘she’s his wife, and he’s her husband—was her husband—that’s the word for it—was! Poor lad! poor lad! it’s cost him a deal. Pray God, it wasn’t my fault. Read this, my dear. It’s a certificate. It’s all regular—Osborne Hamley to Maria-Aimée Scherer—parish—church and all, and witnessed. Oh, dear!’ He sat down in the nearest chair and groaned. Molly took a seat by him, and read the legal paper, the perusal of which was not needed to convince her of the fact of the marriage. She held it in her hand after she had finished reading it, waiting for the squire’s next coherent words; for he kept talking to himself in broken sentences. ‘Aye, aye! that comes o’ temper, and crabbedness. She was the only one as could—and I have been worse since she was gone. Worse! worse! and see what it has come to! He was afraid of me—aye—afraid. That’s the truth of it—afraid. And it made him keep all to himself, and care killed him. They may call it heart-disease—0 my lad, my lad, I know better now; but it’s too late—that’s the sting of it—too late, too late!’ He covered his face, and moved himself backward and forward till Molly could bear it no longer.

‘There are some letters,’ said she: ‘may I read any of them?’ At another time she would not have asked; but she was driven to it now by her impatience of the speechless grief of the old man.

‘Aye, read ’em, read ‘em,’ said he. ‘Maybe you can. I can only pick out a word here and there. I put em there for you to look at; and tell me what is in ’em.’

Molly’s knowledge of written French of the present day was not so great as her knowledge of the French of the Mémoires de Sully, and neither the spelling nor the writing of the letters was of the best; but she managed to translate into good enough colloquial English some innocent sentences of love, and submission to Osborne’s will—as if his judgment was infallible—and of faith in his purposes—little sentences in ‘little language’ that went home to the squire’s heart. Perhaps if Molly had read French more easily she might not have translated them into such touching, homely, broken words. Here and there, there were expressions in English; these the hungry-hearted squire had read while waiting for Molly’s return. Every time she stopped, he said ‘Go on.’ He kept his face shaded, and only repeated those two words at every pause. She got up to find some more of Aimée’s letters. In examining the papers, she came upon one in particular. ‘Have you seen this, sir? This certificate of baptism’ (reading aloud) ‘of Roger Stephen Osborne Hamley, born June 21, 183-, child of Osborne Hamley and Marie-Aimée his wife—’

‘Give it me,’ said the squire, his voice breaking now, and stretching forth his eager hand. “‘Roger,” that’s me, “Stephen,” that’s my poor old father: he died when he was not so old as I am; but I’ve always thought on him as very old. He was main and fond of Osborne, when he was quite a little one. It’s good of the lad to have thought on my father Stephen. Aye! that was his name. And Osborne—Osborne Hamley! One Osborne Hamley lies dead on his bed—and t’other—t‘other I’ve never seen, and never heard on till to-day. He must be called Osborne, Molly. There is a Roger—there’s two for that matter; but one is a good-for-nothing old man; and there’s never an Osborne any more, unless this little thing is called Osborne; we’ll have him here, and get a nurse for him; and make his mother comfortable for life in her own country. I’ll keep this, Molly. You’re a good lass for finding it. Osborne Hamley! And if God will give me grace, he shall never hear a cross word from me—never! He shan’t be afeard of me. Oh, my Osborne, my Osborne’ (he burst out), ‘do you know how bitter and sore is my heart for every hard word as. I ever spoke to you? Do you know now how I loved you—my boy—my boy?’

From the general tone of the letters, Molly doubted if the mother would consent, so easily as the squire seemed to expect, to be parted from her child. They were not very wise, perhaps (though of this Molly never thought), but a heart full of love spoke tender words in every line. Still, it was not for Molly to talk of this doubt of hers just then; but rather to dwell on the probable graces and charms of the little Roger Stephen Osborne Hamley. She let the squire exhaust himself in wondering as to the particulars of every event, helping him out in conjectures; and both of them, from their imperfect knowledge of possibilities, made the most curious, fantastic, and improbable guesses at the truth. And so that day passed over, and the night came.

There were not many people who had any claim to be invited to the funeral, and of these Mr. Gibson and the squire’s hereditary man of business had taken charge. But when Mr. Gibson came, early on the following morning, Molly referred the question to him, which had suggested itself to her mind, though apparently not to the squire’s, what intimation of her loss should be sent to the widow, living solitary near Winchester, watching, and waiting, if not for his coming who lay dead in his distant home, at least for his letters. One from her had already come, in her foreign hand-writing, to the post office to which all her communications were usually sent but of course they at the Hall knew nothing of this.

‘She must be told,’ said Mr. Gibson, musing.

‘Yes, she must,’ replied his daughter. ‘But how?’

‘A day or two of waiting will do no harm,’ said he, almost as if he was anxious to delay the solution of the problem. ‘It will make her anxious, poor thing, and all sorts of gloomy possibilities will suggest themselves to her mind—amongst them the truth; it will be a kind of preparation.’

‘For what? Something must be done at last,’ said Molly.

‘Yes; true. Suppose you write, and say he’s very ill; write to-morrow. I dare say they’ve indulged themselves in daily postage, and then she’ll have had three days’ silence. You say how you come to know all you do about it; I think she ought to know he is very ill—in great danger, if you like: and you can follow it up next day with the full truth. I wouldn’t worry the squire about it. After the funeral we will have a talk about the child.’

‘She will never part with it,’ said Molly.

‘Whew! Till I see the woman I can’t tell,’ said her father; ‘some women would. It will be well provided for, according to what you say. And she’s a foreigner, and may very likely wish to go back to her own people and kindred. There’s much to be said on both sides.’

‘So you always say, papa. But in this case I think you’ll find I’m right. I judge from her letters; but I think I’m right.’

‘So you always say, daughter. Time will show. So the child is a boy? Mrs. Gibson told me particularly to ask. It will go far to reconciling her to Cynthia’s dismissal of Roger. But indeed it is quite as well for both of them, though of course he will be a long time before he thinks so. They were not suited to each other. Poor Roger! It was hard work writing to him yesterday; and who knows what may have become of him! Well, well! one has to get through the world somehow. I’m glad, however, this little lad has turned up to be the heir, I shouldn’t have liked the property to go to the Irish Hamleys, who are the next heirs, as Osborne once told me. Now write that letter, Molly, to the poor little Frenchwoman out yonder. It will prepare her for it; and we must think a bit how to spare her the shock, for Osborne’s sake.’

The writing this letter was rather difficult work for Molly, and she tore up two or three copies before she could manage it to her satisfaction; and at last, in despair of ever doing it better, she sent it off without re-reading it. The next day was easier; the fact of Osborne’s death was told briefly and tenderly. But when this second letter was sent off, Molly’s heart began to bleed for the poor creature, bereft of her husband in a foreign land, and he at a distance from her, dead and buried without her ever having had the chance of printing his dear features on her memory by one last long lingering look. With her thoughts full of the unknown Aimée, Molly talked much about her that day to the squire. He would listen for ever to any conjecture, however wild, about the grandchild, but perpetually winced away from all discourse about ‘the Frenchwoman,’ as he called her; not unkindly, but to his mind she was simply the Frenchwoman—chattering, dark-eyed, demonstrative, and possibly even rouged. He would treat her with respect as his son’s widow, and would try even not to think upon the female inveiglement in which he believed. He would make her an allowance to the extent of his duty: but he hoped and trusted he might never be called upon to see her. His solicitor, Gibson, anybody and everybody, should be called upon to form a phalanx of defence against that danger.

And all this time a little young grey-eyed woman was making her way,—not towards him, but towards the dead son, whom as yet she believed to be her living husband. She knew she was acting in defiance of his expressed wish; but he had never dismayed her with any expression of his own fears about his health; and she, bright with life, had never contemplated death coming to fetch away one so beloved. He was ill—very ill, the letter from the strange girl said that; but Aimée had nursed her parents, and knew what illness was. The French doctor had praised her skill and neat-handedness as a nurse, and even if she had been the clumsiest of women, was he not her husband—her all? And was she not his wife, whose place was by his pillow? So, without even as much reasoning as has been here given, Aimée made her preparations, swallowing down the tears that would overflow her eyes, and drop into the little trunk she was packing so neatly. And by her side, on the ground, sat the child, now nearly two years old; and for him Aimée had always a smile and a cheerful word. Her servant loved her and trusted her; and the woman was of an age to have had experience of humankind. Aimée had told her that her husband was ill, and the servant had known enough of the household history to be aware that as yet Aimée was not his acknowledged wife. But she sympathized with the prompt decision of her mistress to go to him directly wherever he was. Caution comes from education of one kind or another, and Aimée was not dismayed by warnings; only the woman pleaded hard for the child to be left. ‘He was such company,’ she said; ‘and he would so tire his mother in her journeyings; and maybe his father would be too ill to see him.’ To which Aimée replied, ‘Good company for you, but better for me. A woman is never tired with carrying her own child’ (which was not true; but there was sufficient truth in it to make it believed by both mistress and servant), ‘and if monsieur could care for anything, he would rejoice to hear the babble of his little son.’ So Aimée caught the evening coach to London at the nearest crossroad, Martha standing by as chaperon and friend to see her off, and handing her in a large lusty child, already crowing with delight at the sight of the horses. There was a ‘lingerie’ shop, kept by a Frenchwoman, whose acquaintance Aimée had made in the days when she was a London nursemaid, and thither she betook herself, rather than to an hotel, to spend the few night hours that intervened before the Birmingham coach started at early morning. She slept or watched on a sofa in the parlour, for spare bed there was none; but Madame Pauline came in betimes with a good cup of coffee for the mother, and of ‘soupe blanche’^eb for the boy; and they went off again into the wide world, only thinking of, only seeking the ‘him,’ who was everything human to both. Aimee remembered the sound of the name of the village where Osborne had often told her that he alighted from the coach to walk home; and though she could never have spelt the strange uncouth word, yet she spoke it with pretty, slow distinctness to the guard, asking him in her broken English when they should arrive there? Not till four o’clock. Alas! and what might happen before then! Once with him she would have no fear; she was sure that she could bring him round; but what might not happen before he was in her tender care? She was a very capable person in many ways, though so childish and innocent in others. She made up her mind to the course she should take when the coach set her down at Fever-sham. She asked for a man to carry her trunk, and show her the way to Hamley Hall.

‘Hamley Hall!’ said the innkeeper. ‘Eh! there’s a deal o’ trouble there just now.’

‘I know, I know,’ said she, hastening off after the wheelbarrow in which her trunk was going, and breathlessly struggling to keep up with it, her heavy child asleep in her arms. Her pulses beat all over her body; she could hardly see out of her eyes. To her, a foreigner, the drawn blinds of the house, when she came in sight of it, had no significance; she hurried, stumbled on.

‘Back door or front, missus?’ asked the boots from the inn.

‘The most nearest,’ said she. And the front door was ‘the most nearest.’ Molly was sitting with the squire in the darkened drawing-room, reading out her translations of Aimée’s letters to her husband. The squire was never weary of hearing them; the very sound of Molly’s voice soothed and comforted him, it was so sweet and low. And he pulled her up, much as a child does; if on a second reading of the same letter she substituted one word for another. The house was very still this afternoon—still as it had been now for several days; every servant in it, however needlessly, moving about on tiptoe, speaking below the breath, and shutting doors as softly as might be. The nearest noise or stir of active life was that of the rooks in the trees, who were beginning their spring chatter of business. Suddenly through this quiet, there came a ring at the front-door bell that sounded, and went on sounding, through the house, pulled by an ignorant vigorous hand. Molly stopped reading; she and the squire looked at each other in surprised dismay. Perhaps a thought of Roger’s sudden (and impossible) return was in the mind of each; but neither spoke. They heard Robinson hurrying to answer the unwonted summons. They listened; but they heard no more. There was little more to hear. When the old servant opened the door, a lady with a child in her arms stood there. She gasped out her ready-prepared English sentence.

‘Can I see Mr. Osborne Hamley? He is ill, I know; but I am his wife.’

Robinson had been aware that there was some mystery, long suspected by the servants, and come to light at last to the master—he had guessed that there was a young woman in the case; but when she stood there before him, asking for her dead husband as if he were living, any presence of mind Robinson might have had forsook him; he could not tell her the truth—he could only leave the door open, and say to her, ‘Wait awhile, I’ll come back,’ and betake himself to the drawing-room where Molly was, he knew. He went up to her in a flutter and a hurry, and whispered something to her which turned her white with dismay.

‘What is it? What is it?’ said the squire, trembling with excitement. ‘Don’t keep it from me. I can bear it. Roger—’

They both thought he was going to faint; he had risen up and came close to Molly; suspense would be worse than anything.

‘Mrs. Osborne Hamley is here,’ said Molly ‘I wrote to tell her her husband was very ill, and she has come.’

‘She does not know what has happened, seemingly,’ said Robinson.

‘I can’t see her—I can’t see her,’ said the squire, shrinking away into a corner. ‘You will go, Molly, won’t you? You’ll go.’

Molly stood for a moment or two, irresolute. She, too, shrank from the interview. Robinson put in his word: ‘She looks but a weakly thing, and has carried a big baby, choose how far, I didn’t stop to ask.’

At this instant the door softly opened, and right into the midst of them came the little figure in grey, looking ready to fall with the weight of her child.

‘You are Molly,’ said she, not seeing the squire at once. ‘The lady who wrote the letter; he spoke of you sometimes. You will let me go to him.’

Molly did not answer, except that at such moments the eyes speak solemnly and comprehensively Aimée read their meaning. All she said was—‘He is not—oh, my husband—my husband!’ Her arms relaxed, her figure swayed, the child screamed and held out his arms for help. That help was given him by his grandfather, just before Aimée fell senseless on the floor.

‘Maman, maman!’ cried the little fellow, now striving and fighting to get back to her, where she lay; he fought so lustily that the squire had to put him down, and he crawled to the poor inanimate body, behind which sat Molly, holding the head; whilst Robinson rushed away for water, wine, and more womankind.

‘Poor thing, poor thing!’ said the squire, bending over her, and crying afresh over her suffering. ‘She is but young, Molly, and she must ha’ loved him dearly’

‘To be sure!’ said Molly, quickly. She was untying the bonnet, and taking off the worn, but neatly-mended gloves; there was the soft luxuriant black hair, shading the pale, innocent face—the little notable-looking brown hands, with the wedding-ring for sole ornament. The child clustered his fingers round one of hers, and nestled up against her with his plaintive cry, getting more and more into a burst of wailing: ‘Maman, maman!’ At the growing acuteness of his imploring, her hand moved, her lips quivered, consciousness came partially back. She did not open her eyes, but great heavy tears stole out from beneath her eyelashes. Molly held her head against her own breast; and they tried to give her wine—which she shrank from—water, which she did not reject; that was all. As last she tried to speak. ‘Take me away,’ she said, ‘into the dark. Leave me alone.’

So Molly and the woman lifted her up and carried her away, and laid her on the bed, in the best bed-chamber in the house, and darkened the already shaded light. She was like an unconscious corpse herself, in that she offered neither assistance nor resistance to all that they were doing. But just before Molly was leaving the room to take up her watch outside the door, she felt rather than heard that Aimée spoke to her.

‘Food—bread and milk for baby.’ But when they brought her food herself, she only shrank away and turned her face to the wall without a word. In the hurry, the child had been left with Robinson and the squire. For some unknown, but most fortunate reason, he took a dislike to Robinson’s red face and hoarse voice, and showed a most decided preference for his grandfather. When Molly came down she found the squire feeding the child, with more of peace upon his face than there had been for all these days. The boy was every now and then leaving off taking his bread and milk to show his dislike to Robinson by word and gesture: a proceeding which only amused the old servant, while it highly delighted the more favoured squire.

‘She is lying very still, but she will neither speak nor eat. I don’t even think she is crying,’ said Molly, volunteering this account, for the squire was, for the moment, too much absorbed in his grandson to ask many questions.

Robinson put in his word: ‘Dick Hayward, he’s boots at the Hamley Arms, says the coach she come by started at five this morning from London, and the passengers said she’d been crying a deal on the road, when she thought folks were not noticing; and she never came in to meals with the rest, but stopped feeding her child.’

‘She’ll be tired out; we must let her rest,’ said the squire. ‘And I do believe this little chap is going to sleep in my arms. God bless him.’ But Molly stole out, and sent off a lad to Hollingford with a note to her father. Her heart had warmed towards the poor stranger, and she felt uncertain as to what ought to be the course pursued in her case.

She went up from time to time to look at the girl, scarce older than herself, who lay there with her eyes open, but as motionless as death. She softly covered her over, and let her feel the sympathetic presence from time to time; and that was all she was allowed to do. The squire was curiously absorbed in the child, but Molly’s supreme tenderness was for the mother. Not but what she admired the sturdy, gallant, healthy little fellow, whose every limb, and square inch of clothing, showed the tender and thrifty care that had been taken of him. By and by the squire said in a whisper,—

‘She’s not like a Frenchwoman, is she, Molly?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what Frenchwomen are like. People say Cynthia is French.’

‘And she didn’t look like a servant? We won’t speak of Cynthia since she’s served my Roger so. Why, I began to think, as soon as I could think after that, how I would make Roger and her happy, and have them married at once; and then came that letter! I never wanted her for a daughter-in-law, not I. But he did, it seems; and he wasn’t one for wanting many things for himself But it’s all over now; only we won’t talk of her; and maybe, as you say, she was more French than English. This poor thing looks like a gentlewoman, I think. I hope she’s got friends who’ll take care of her—she can’t be above twenty. I thought she must be older than my poor lad!’

‘She’s a gentle, pretty creature,’ said Molly. ‘But—but I sometimes think it has killed her; she lies like one dead.’ And Molly could not keep from crying softly at the thought.

‘Nay, nay!’ said the squire. ‘It’s not so easy to break one’s heart. Sometimes I’ve wished it were. But one has to go on living—“all the appointed days,” as is said in the Bible.^ec But we’ll do our best for her. We’ll not think of letting her go away till she’s fit to travel.’

Molly wondered in her heart about this going away, on which the squire seemed fully resolved. She was sure that he intended to keep the child; perhaps he had a legal right to do so;—but would the mother ever part from it? Her father, however, would solve the difficulty—her father, whom she always looked to as so clear-seeing and experienced. She watched and waited for his coming. The February evening drew on; the child lay asleep in the squire’s arms till his grandfather grew tired, and laid him down on the sofa: the large square-cornered yellow sofa upon which Mrs. Hamley used to sit, supported by pillows in a half-reclining position. Since her time it had been placed against the wall, and had served merely as a piece of furniture to fill up the room. But once again a human figure was lying upon it; a little human creature, like a cherub in some old Italian picture. The squire remembered his wife as he put the child down. He thought of her as he said to Molly—

‘How pleased she would have been!’ But Molly thought of the poor young widow upstairs. Aimee was her ‘she’ at the first moment. Presendy,—but it seemed a long long time first—she heard the quick prompt sounds which told of her father’s arrival. In he came—to the room as yet only lighted by the fitful blaze of the fire.

CHAPTER 54

Molly Gibson’s Worth is Discovered

Mr. Gibson came in rubbing his hands after his frosty ride. Molly judged from the look in his eye that he had been fully informed of the present state of things at the Hall by some one. But he simply went up to and greeted the squire, and waited to hear what was said to him. The squire was fumbling at the taper on the writing-table, and before he answered much he lighted it, and signing to his friend to follow him, he went softly to the sofa and showed him the sleeping child, taking the utmost care not to arouse it by flare or sound.

‘Well! this is a fine young gentleman,’ said Mr. Gibson, returning to the fire rather sooner than the squire expected. ‘And you’ve got the mother here, I understand—Mrs. Osborne Hamley, as we must call her, poor thing! It’s a sad coming home to her; for I hear she knew nothing of his death.’ He spoke without exactly addressing any one, so that either Molly or the squire might answer as they liked. The squire said,—

‘Yes ! She’s felt a terrible shock. She’s upstairs in the best bedroom. I should like you to see her, Gibson, if she’ll let you. We must do our duty by her, for my poor lad’s sake. I wish he could have seen his boy lying there; I do. I dare say it preyed on him to have to keep it all to himself He might ha’ known me, though. He might ha’ known my bark was waur than my bite. It’s all over now, though; and God forgive me if I was too sharp. I’m punished now.’

Molly grew impatient on the mother’s behalf.

‘Papa, I feel as if she was very ill; perhaps worse than we think. Will you go and see her at once?’

Mr. Gibson followed her upstairs, and the squire came too, thinking that he would do his duty now, and even feeling some self-satisfaction at conquering his desire to stay with the child. They went into the room where she had been taken. She lay quite still in the same position as at first. Her eyes were open and tearless, fixed on the wall. Mr. Gibson spoke to her, but she did not answer; he lifted her hand to feel her pulse; she never noticed.

‘Bring me some wine at once, and order some beef-tea,’ he said to Molly.

But when he tried to put the wine into her mouth as she lay there on her side, she made no effort to receive or swallow it, and it ran out upon the pillow. Mr. Gibson left the room abruptly; Molly chafed the little inanimate hand; the squire stood by in dumb dismay, touched in spite of himself by the death-in-life of one so young, and who must have been so much beloved.

Mr. Gibson came back two steps at a time; he was carrying the half-awakened child in his arms. He did not scruple to rouse him into yet further wakefulness—did not grieve to hear him begin to wail and cry. His eyes were on the figure upon the bed, which at that sound quivered all through; and when her child was laid at her back, and began caressingly to scramble yet closer, Aimée turned round, and took him in her arms, and lulled him and soothed him with the soft wont of mother’s love.

Before she lost this faint consciousness, which was habit or instinct rather than thought, Mr. Gibson spoke to her in French. The child’s one word of ‘maman’ had given him this clue. It was the language sure to be most intelligible to her dulled brain; and as it happened—only Mr. Gibson did not think of that—it was the language in which she had been commanded, and had learnt to obey.

Mr. Gibson’s tongue was a little stiff at first, but by and by he spoke it with more readiness. He extorted from her short answers at first, then longer ones, and from time to time he plied her with little drops of wine, until some further nourishment should be at hand. Molly was struck by her father’s low tones of comfort and sympathy, although she could not follow what was said quickly enough to catch the meaning of what passed.

By and by, however, when her father had done all that he could, and they were once more downstairs, he told them more about her journey than they yet knew. The hurry, the sense of acting in defiance of a prohibition, the over-mastering anxiety, the broken night, and fatigue of the journey, had ill-prepared her for the shock at last, and Mr. Gibson was seriously alarmed for the consequences. She had wandered strangely in her replies to him; he had perceived that she was wandering, and had made great efforts to recall her senses; but Mr. Gibson foresaw that some bodily illness was coming on, and stopped late that night, arranging many things with Molly and the squire. One—the only—comfort arising from her state was, the probability that she would be entirely unconscious by the morrow—the day of the funeral. Worn out by the contending emotions of the day, the squire seemed now unable to look beyond the wrench and trial of the next twelve hours. He sat with his head in his hand declining to go to bed, refusing to dwell on the thought of his grandchild—not three hours ago such a darling in his eyes. Mr. Gibson gave some instructions to one of the maid-servants as to the watch she was to keep by Mrs. Osborne Hamley, and insisted on Molly’s going to bed. When she pleaded the apparent necessity of staying up, he said,—

‘Now, Molly, look how much less trouble the dear old squire would give if he would obey orders. He is only adding to anxiety by indulging himself. One pardons everything to extreme grief, however. But you will have enough to do to occupy all your strength for days to come; and go to bed you must now. I only wish I saw my way as clearly through other things as I do to your nearest duty. I wish I’d never let Roger go wandering off; he’ll wish it too, poor fellow! Did I tell you Cynthia is going off in hot haste to her uncle Kirkpatrick’s. I suspect a visit to him will stand in lieu of going out to Russia as a governess.’

‘I am sure she was quite serious in wishing for that.’

‘Yes, yes! at the time. I’ve no doubt she thought she was sincere in intending to go. But the great thing was to get out of the unpleasantness of the present time and place; and uncle Kirkpatrick’s will do this as effectually, and more pleasantly, than a situation at Nijni-Novgorod in an ice-palace.’

He had given Molly’s thoughts a turn, which was what he wanted to do. Molly could not help remembering Mr. Henderson, and his offer, and all the consequent hints; and wondering, and wishing—what did she wish? or had she been falling asleep? Before she had quite ascertained this point she was asleep in reality.

After this, long days passed over in a monotonous round of care; for no one seemed to think of Molly’s leaving the Hall during the woeful illness that befell Mrs. Osborne Hamley. It was not that her father allowed her to take much active part in the nursing; the squire gave him carte blanche, and he engaged two efficient hospital nurses to watch over the unconscious Aimée; but Molly was needed to receive the finer directions as to her treatment and diet. It was not that she was wanted for the care of the little boy; the squire was too jealous of the child’s exclusive love for that, and one of the housemaids was employed in the actual physical charge of him; but he needed some one to listen to his incontinence of language, both when his passionate regret for his dead son came uppermost, and also when he had discovered some extraordinary charm in that son’s child; and again when he was oppressed with the uncertainty of Aimée’s long-continued illness. Molly was not so good or so bewitching a listener to ordinary conversation as Cynthia; but where her heart was interested her sympathy was deep and unfailing. In this case she only wished that the squire could really feel that Aimée was not the encumbrance which he evidently considered her to be. Not that he would have acknowledged the fact, if it had been put before him in plain words. He fought against the dim consciousness of what was in his mind; he spoke repeatedly of patience when no one but himself was impatient; he would often say that, when she grew better, she must not be allowed to leave the Hall until she was perfectly strong, when no one was even contemplating the remotest chance of her leaving her child, excepting only himself. Molly once or twice asked her father if she might not speak to the squire, and represent the hardship of sending her away—the improbability that she would consent to quit her boy, and so on; but Mr. Gibson only replied,—

‘Wait quietly. Time enough when nature and circumstance have had their chance, and have failed.’

It was well that Molly was such a favourite with the old servants; for she had frequently to restrain and to control. To be sure, she had her father’s authority to back her; and they were aware that where her own comfort, ease, or pleasure was concerned, she never interfered, but submitted to their will. If the squire had known of the want of attendance to which she submitted with the most perfect meekness, as far as herself was the only sufferer, he would have gone into a towering rage. But Molly hardly thought of it, so anxious was she to do all she could for others, and to remember the various charges which her father gave her in his daily visits. Perhaps he did not spare her enough; she was willing and uncomplaining; but, one day, after Mrs. Osborne Hamley had ‘taken the turn,’ as the nurses called it, when she was lying weak as a new-born baby, but with her faculties all restored, and her fever gone—when spring buds were blooming out, and spring birds sang merrily—Molly answered to her father’s sudden questioning, that she felt unaccountably weary; that her head ached heavily, and that she was aware of a sluggishness of thought which it required a painful effort to overcome.

‘Don’t go on,’ said Mr. Gibson, with a quick pang of anxiety, almost of remorse. ‘Lie down here—with your back to the light. I’ll come back and see you before I go.’ Arid off he went in search of the squire. He had a good long walk before he came upon Mr. Hamley in a field of spring wheat, where the women were weeding, his little grandson holding to his finger in the intervals of short walks of inquiry into the dirtiest places, which was all his sturdy little limbs could manage.

‘Well, Gibson, and how goes the patient? Better? I wish we could get her out of doors, such a fine day as it is. It would make her strong as soon as anything. I used to beg my poor lad to come out more. Maybe, I worried him; but the air is the finest thing for strengthening that I know of Though, perhaps, she’ll not thrive in English air as if she’d been born here; and she’ll not be quite right till she gets back to her native place, wherever that is.’

‘I don’t know. I begin to think we shall get her quite round here; and I don’t know that she could be in a better place. But it’s not about her. May I order the carriage for my Molly?’ Mr. Gibson’s voice sounded as if he was choking a little as he said these last words.

‘To be sure,’ said the squire, setting his child down. He had been holding him in his arms the last few minutes: but now he wanted all his eyes to look into Mr. Gibson’s face. ‘I say,’ said he, catching hold of Mr. Gibson’s arm, ‘what’s the matter, man? Don’t twitch up your face like that, but speak!’

‘Nothing’s the matter,’ said Mr. Gibson, hastily. ‘Only I want her at home under my own eye;’ and he turned away to go to the house. But the squire left his field and his weeders, and kept at Mr. Gibson’s side. He wanted to speak, but his heart was so full he did not know what to say. ‘I say, Gibson,’ he got out at last, ‘your Molly is liker a child of mine than a stranger; and I reckon we’ve all on us been coming too hard upon her. You don’t think there’s much amiss, do you?’

‘How can I tell?’ said Mr. Gibson, almost savagely. But any hastiness of temper was instinctively understood by the squire; and he was not offended, though he did not speak again till they reached the house. Then he went to order the carriage, and stood by sorrowful enough while the horses were being put in. He felt as if he should not know what to do without Molly; he had never known her value, he thought, till now. But he kept silence on this view of the case; which was a praiseworthy effort on the part of one who usually let bystanders see and hear as much of his passing feelings as if he had had a window in his breast. He stood by while Mr. Gibson helped the faintly-smiling, tearful Molly into the carriage. Then the squire mounted on the step and kissed her hand; but when he tried to thank her and bless her, he broke down; and as soon as he was once more safely on the ground, Mr. Gibson cried out to the coachman to drive on. And so Molly left Hamley Hall. From time to time her father rode up to the window, and made some little cheerful and apparently careless remark. When they came within two miles of Hollingford, he put spurs to his horse, and rode briskly past the carriage windows, kissing his hand to the occupant as he did so. He went on to prepare her home for Molly: when she arrived Mrs. Gibson was ready to greet her. Mr. Gibson had given one or two of his bright, imperative orders, and Mrs. Gibson was feeling rather lonely ‘without either of her two dear girls at home,’ as she phrased it, to herself as well as to others.

‘Why, my sweet Molly, this is an unexpected pleasure. Only this morning I said to papa, “When do you think we shall see our Molly back?” He did not say much—he never does, you know; but I am sure he thought directly of giving me this surprise, this pleasure. You’re looking a little—what shall I call it? I remember such a pretty line of poetry, “Oh, call her fair, not pale!”^ed so we’ll call you fair.’

‘You’d better not call her anything, but let her get to her own room and have a good rest as soon as possible. Haven’t you got a trashy novel or two in the house? That’s the literature to send her to sleep.’

He did not leave her till he had seen her laid on a sofa in a darkened room, with some slight pretence of reading in her hand. Then he came away, leading his wife, who turned round at the door to kiss her hand to Molly, and make a little face of unwillingness to be dragged away.

‘Now, Hyacinth,’ said he, as he took his wife into the drawing-room, ‘she will need much care. She has been overworked, and I’ve been a fool. That’s all. We must keep her from all worry and care,—but I won’t answer for it that she’ll not have an illness, for all that!’

‘Poor thing! she does look worn out. She is something like me, her feelings are too much for her. But now she is come home she shall find us as cheerful as possible. I can answer for myself; and you really must brighten up your doleful face, my dear—nothing so bad for invalids as the appearance of depression in those around them. I have had such a pleasant letter from Cynthia to-day. Uncle Kirkpatrick really seems to make so much of her, he treats her just like a daughter ; he has given her a ticket to the Concerts of Ancient Music; and Mr. Henderson has been to call on her, in spite of all that has gone before.’

For an instant, Mr. Gibson thought that it was easy enough for his wife to be cheerful, with the pleasant thoughts and evident anticipations she had in her mind, but a little more difficult for him to put off his doleful looks while his own child lay in a state of suffering and illness which might be the precursor of a still worse malady. But he was always a man for immediate action as soon as he had resolved on the course to be taken; and he knew that ‘some must watch, while some must sleep, so runs the world away.’

The illness which he apprehended came upon Molly; not violently or acutely, so that there was any immediate danger to be dreaded; but making a long pull upon her strength, which seemed to lessen day by day, until at last her father feared that she might become a permanent invalid. There was nothing very decided or alarming to tell Cynthia, and Mrs. Gibson kept the dark side from her in her letters. ‘Molly was feeling the spring weather’; or ‘Molly had been a good deal overdone with her stay at the Hall, and was resting’; such little sentences told nothing of Molly’s real state. But then, as Mrs. Gibson said to herself, it would be a pity to disturb Cynthia’s pleasure by telling her much about Molly; indeed, there was not much to tell, one day was so like another. But it so happened that Lady Harriet, who came whenever she could to sit awhile with Molly, at first against Mrs. Gibson’s will, and afterwards with her full consent,—for reasons of her own, Lady Harriet wrote a letter to Cynthia, to which she was urged by Mrs. Gibson. It fell out in this manner:—One day, when Lady Harriet was sitting in the drawing-room for a few minutes, after she had been with Molly, she said,—

‘Really, Clare, I spend so much time in your house that I’m going to establish a work-basket here. Mary has infected me with her notability, and I’m going to work mamma a footstool. It is to be a surprise; and so if I do it here she will know nothing about it. Only I cannot match the gold beads I want for the pansies in this dear little town; and Hollingford, who could send me down stars and planets if I asked him, I make no doubt, could no more match beads than—’

‘My dear Lady Harriet! you forget Cynthia! Think what a pleasure it would be to her to do anything for you.’

‘Would it? Then she shall have plenty of it; but mind, it is you who have answered for her. She shall get me some wool too; how good I am to confer so much pleasure on a fellow creature! But seriously, do you think I might write and give her a few commissions? Neither Agnes nor Mary are in town—’

‘I am sure she would be delighted,’ said Mrs. Gibson, who also took into consideration the reflection of aristocratic honour that would fall upon Cynthia if she had a letter from Lady Harriet while at Mr. Kirkpatrick’s. So she gave the address, and Lady Harriet wrote. All the first part of the letter was taken up with apology and commissions; but then, never doubting but that Cynthia was aware of Molly’s state, she went on to say—

‘I saw Molly this morning. Twice I have been forbidden admittance, as she was too ill to see any one out of her own family. I wish we could begin to perceive a change for the better; but she looks more fading every time, and I fear Mr. Gibson considers it a very anxious case.’

The day but one after this letter was dispatched, Cynthia walked into the drawing-room at home with as much apparent composure as if she had left it not an hour before. Mrs. Gibson was dozing, but believing herself to be reading; she had been with Molly the greater part of the morning, and now after her lunch, and the invalid’s pretence of early dinner, she considered herself entitled to some repose. She started up as Cynthia came in:

‘Cynthia! Dear child, where have you come from? Why in the world have you come? My poor nerves! My heart is quite fluttering; but, to be sure, it’s no wonder with all this anxiety I have to undergo. Why have you come back?’

‘Because of the anxiety you speak of, mamma. I never knew—you never told me how ill Molly was.’

‘Nonsense! I beg your pardon, my dear, but it’s really nonsense. Molly’s illness is only nervous, Mr. Gibson says. A nervous fever; but you must remember nerves are mere fancy, and she’s getting better. Such a pity for you to have left your uncle’s. Who told you about Molly^?’

‘Lady Harriet. She wrote about some wool—’

‘I know—I know. But you might have known she always exaggerates things. Not but what I have been almost worn out with nursing. Perhaps, after all, it is a very good thing you have come, my dear; and now you shall come down into the dining-room and have some lunch, and tell me all the Hyde Park Street news—into my room,—don’t go into yours yet—Molly is so sensitive to noise!’

While Cynthia ate her lunch, Mrs. Gibson went on questioning. ‘And your aunt, how is her cold? And Helen, quite strong again? Margaretta as pretty as ever? The boys are at Harrow, I suppose? And my old favourite, Mr. Henderson?’ She could not manage to slip in this last inquiry naturally; in spite of herself, there was a change of tone, an accent of eagerness. Cynthia did not reply on the instant; she poured herself out some water with great deliberation, and then said,—

‘My aunt is quite well; Helen is as strong as she ever is, and Margaretta very pretty. The boys are at Harrow, and I conclude that Mr. Henderson is enjoying his usual health, for he was to dine at my uncle’s to-day.’

‘Take care, Cynthia. Look how you are cutting that gooseberry tart,’ said Mrs. Gibson, with sharp annoyance; not provoked by Cynthia’s present action, although it gave excuse for a little vent of temper. ‘I can’t think how you could come off in this sudden kind of way; I am sure it must have annoyed your uncle and aunt. I dare say they’ll never ask you again.’

‘On the contrary, I am to go back there as soon as ever I can be easy to leave Molly.’

‘“Easy to leave Molly.” Now that really is nonsense, and rather uncomplimentary to me, I must say nursing her as I have been doing, daily, and almost nightly; for I have been wakened times out of number by Mr. Gibson getting up, and going to see if she had had her medicine properly.’

‘I’m afraid she has been very ill?’ asked Cynthia.

‘Yes, she has, in one way; but not in another. It was what I call more a tedious than an interesting illness. There was no immediate danger, but she lay much in the same state from day to day.’

‘I wish I had known!’ sighed Cynthia. ‘Do you think I might go and see her now?’

‘I’ll go and prepare her. You’ll find her a good deal better than she has been. Ah! here’s Mr. Gibson!’ He came into the dining-room, hearing voices. Cynthia thought that he looked much older.

‘You here!’ said he, coming forward to shake hands. ‘Why, how did you come?’

‘By the “Umpire.” I never knew Molly had been so ill, or I would have come directly.’ Her eyes were full of tears. Mr. Gibson was touched; he shook her hand again, and murmured, ‘You’re a good girl, Cynthia.’

‘She’s heard one of dear Lady Harriet’s exaggerated accounts,’ said Mrs. Gibson, ‘and come straight off. I tell her it’s very foolish, for Molly is a great deal better now.’

‘Very foolish,’ said Mr. Gibson, echoing his wife’s words, but smiling at Cynthia. ‘But sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.’

‘I am afraid folly always annoys me,’ said his wife. ‘However, Cynthia is here, and what is done, is done.’

‘Very true, my dear. And now I’ll run up and see my little girl, and tell her the good news. You’d better follow me in a couple of minutes.’ This to Cynthia.

Molly’s delight at seeing her showed itself first in a few happy tears; and then in soft caresses and inarticulate sounds of love. Once or twice she began, ‘It is such a pleasure,’ and there she stopped short. But the eloquence of these five words sank deep into Cynthia’s heart. She had returned just at the right time, when Molly wanted the gentle fillip of the society of a fresh and yet a familiar person. Cynthia’s tact made her talkative or silent, gay or grave, as the varying humour of Molly required. She listened, too, with the semblance, if not the reality, of unwearied interest, to Molly’s continual recurrence to all the time of distress and sorrow at Hamley Hall, and to the scenes which had then so deeply impressed themselves upon her susceptible nature. Cynthia instinctively knew that the repetition of all these painful recollections would ease the oppressed memory, which refused to dwell on anything but what had occurred at a time of feverish disturbance of health. So she never interrupted Molly, as Mrs. Gibson had so frequently done, with—‘You told me all that before, my dear. Let us talk of something else;’ or, ‘Really I cannot allow you to be always dwelling on painful thoughts. Try and be a little more cheerful. Youth is gay. You are young, and therefore you ought to be gay. That is put in a famous form of speech; I forget exactly what it is called.’

So Molly’s health and spirits improved rapidly after Cynthia’s return: and although she was likely to retain many of her invalid habits during the summer, she was able to take drives, and enjoy the fine weather; it was only her as yet tender spirits that required a little management. All the Hollingford people forgot that they had ever thought of her except as a darling of the town; and each in his or her way showed kind interest in her father’s child. Miss Browning and Miss Phoebe considered it quite a privilege that they were allowed to see her a fortnight or three weeks before any one else; Mrs. Goodenough, spectacles on nose, stirred dainty messes in a silver saucepan for Molly’s benefit; the Towers sent books, and forced fruit, and new caricatures, and strange and delicate poultry; humble patients of ‘ the doctor,’ as Mr. Gibson was usually termed, left the earliest cauliflowers they could grow in their cottage gardens, with ‘their duty for Miss.’

The last of all, though strongest in regard, most piteously eager in interest, came Squire Hamley himself. When she was at the worst, he rode over every day to hear the smallest detail, facing even Mrs. Gibson (his abomination), if her husband was not at home, to ask and hear, and ask and hear, till the tears were unconsciously stealing down his cheeks. Every resource of his heart, or his house, or his lands were searched and tried, if it could bring a moment’s pleasure to her; and whatever it might be that came from him, at her very worst time, it brought out a dim smile upon her face.

CHAPTER 55

An Absent Lover Returns

And now it was late June; and to Molly’s and her father’s extreme urgency in pushing, and Mr. and Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s affectionate persistency in pulling, Cynthia had yielded, and had gone back to finish her interrupted visit in London, but not before the bruit of her previous sudden return to nurse Molly had told strongly in her favour in the fluctuating opinion of the little town. Her affair with Mr. Preston was thrust into the shade; while every one was speaking of her warm heart. Under the gleam of Molly’s recovery everything assumed a rosy hue, as indeed became the time when actual roses were fully in bloom.

One morning Mrs. Gibson brought Molly a great basket of flowers that had been sent from the Hall. Molly still breakfasted in bed, but she had just come down, and was now well enough to arrange the flowers for the drawing-room, and as she did so with these blossoms, she made some comments on each.

‘Ah! these white pinks! They were Mrs. Hamley’s favourite flower; and so like her! This little bit of sweetbrier, it quite scents the room. It has pricked my fingers, but never mind. Oh, mamma, look at this rose! I forget its name, but it is very rare, and grows up in the sheltered corner of the wall, near the mulberry-tree. Roger bought the tree for his mother with his own money when he was quite a boy; he showed it me, and made me notice it.’

‘I dare say it was Roger who got it now. You heard papa say he had seen him yesterday.’

‘No! Roger! Roger come home!’ said Molly, turning first red, then very white.

‘Yes. Oh, I remember you had gone to bed before papa came in, and he was called off early to tiresome Mrs. Beale. Yes, Roger turned up at the Hall the day before yesterday.’

But Molly leaned back against her chair, too faint to do more at the flowers for some time. She had been startled by the suddenness of the news. ‘Roger come home!’

It happened that Mr. Gibson was unusually busy on this particular day, and he did not come home till late in the afternoon. But Molly kept her place in the drawing-room all the time, not even going to take her customary siesta, so anxious was she to hear everything about Roger’s return, which as yet appeared to her almost incredible. But it was quite natural in reality; the long monotony of her illness had made her lose all count of time. When Roger left England, his idea was to coast round Africa on the eastern side until he reached the Cape; and thence to make what further journey or voyage might seem to him best in pursuit of his scientific objects. To Cape Town all his letters had been addressed of late; and there, two months before, he had received the intelligence of Osborne’s death, as well as Cynthia’s hasty letter of relinquishment. He did not consider that he was doing wrong in returning to England immediately and reporting himself to the gentlemen who had sent him out, with a full explanation of the circumstances relating to Osborne’s private marriage and sudden death. He offered, and they accepted his offer, to go out again for any time that they might think equivalent to the five months he was yet engaged to them for. They were most of them gentlemen of property, and saw the full importance of proving the marriage of an eldest son, and installing his child as the natural heir to a long-descended estate. This much information, but in a more condensed form, Mr. Gibson gave to Molly, in a very few minutes. She sat up on her sofa, looking very pretty with the flush on her cheeks, and the brightness in her eyes.

‘Well!’ said she, when her father stopped speaking.

‘Well! what?’ asked he, playfully.

‘Oh! why, such a number of things. I’ve been waiting all day to ask you all about everything. How is he looking?’

‘If a young man of twenty-four ever does take to growing taller, I should say that he was taller. As it is, I suppose it’s only that he looks broader, stronger—more muscular.’

‘Oh! is he changed?’ asked Molly, a little disturbed by this account.

‘No, not changed; and yet not the same. He’s as brown as a berry for one thing; caught a little of the negro tinge, and a beard as fine and sweeping as my bay mare’s tail.’

‘A beard! But go on, papa. Does he talk as he used to do? I should know his voice amongst ten thousand.’

‘I didn’t catch any Hottentot twang, if that’s what you mean. Nor did he say, “Caesar and Pompey berry much alike, ’specially Pompey,” which is the only specimen of negro language I can remember just at this moment.’

‘And which I never could see the wit of,’ said Mrs. Gibson, who had come into the room after the conversation had begun; and did not understand what it was aiming at. Molly fidgeted; she wanted to go on with her questions and keep her father to definite and matter-of-fact answers, and she knew that when his wife chimed into a conversation, Mr. Gibson was very apt to find out that he must go about some necessary piece of business.

‘Tell me, how are they all getting on together?’ It was an inquiry which she did not make in general before Mrs. Gibson, for Molly and her father had tacitly agreed to keep silence on what they knew or had observed, respecting the three who formed the present family at the Hall.

‘Oh!’ said Mr. Gibson, ‘Roger is evidently putting everything to rights in his firm, quiet way.’

“‘Things to rights.” Why, what’s wrong?’ asked Mrs. Gibson quickly. ‘The squire and the French daughter-in-law don’t get on well together, I suppose? I am always so glad Cynthia acted with the promptitude she did; it would have been very awkward for her to have been mixed up with all these complications. Poor Roger! to find himself supplanted by a child when he comes home!’

‘You were not in the room, my dear, when I was telling Molly of the reasons for Roger’s return; it was to put his brother’s child at once into his rightful and legal place. So now, when he finds the work partly done to his hands, he is happy and gratified in proportion.’

‘Then he is not much affected by Cynthia’s breaking off her engagement?’ (Mrs. Gibson could afford to call it an ‘engagement’ now.) ‘I never did give him credit for very deep feelings.’

‘On the contrary, he feels it very acutely. He and I had a long talk about it, yesterday.’

Both Molly and Mrs. Gibson would have liked to have heard something more about this conversation; but Mr. Gibson did not choose to go on with the subject. The only point which he disclosed was that Roger had insisted on his right to have a personal interview with Cynthia; and, on hearing that she was in London at present, had deferred any further explanation or expostulation by letter, preferring to await her return.

Molly went on with her questions on other subjects. ‘And Mrs. Osborne Hamley? How is she?’

‘Wonderfully brightened up by Roger’s presence. I don’t think I have ever seen her smile before; but she gives him the sweetest smiles from time to time. They are evidently good friends; and she loses her strange startled look when she speaks to him. I suspect she has been quite aware of the squire’s wish that she should return to France; and has been hard put to it to decide whether to leave her child or not. The idea that she would have to make some such decision came upon her when she was completely shattered by grief and illness, and she hasn’t had any one to consult as to her duty until Roger came, upon whom she has evidently firm reliance. He told me something of this himself.’

‘You seem to have had quite a long conversation with him, papa!’

‘Yes. I was going to see old Abraham, when the squire called to me over the hedge, as I was jogging along. He told me the news; and there was no resisting his invitation to come back and lunch with them. Besides, one gets a great deal of meaning out of Roger’s words; it did not take so very long a time to hear this much.’

‘I should think he would come and call upon us soon,’ said Mrs. Gibson to Molly, ‘and then we shall see how much we can manage to hear.’

‘Do you think he will, papa?’ said Molly, more doubtfully. She remembered the last time he was in that very room, and the hopes with which he left it; and she fancied that she could see traces of this thought in her father’s countenance at his wife’s speech.

‘I can’t tell, my dear. Until he’s quite convinced of Cynthia’s intentions, it can’t be very pleasant for him to come on mere visits of ceremony to the house in which he has known her; but he’s one who will always do what he thinks right, whether pleasant or not.’

Mrs. Gibson could hardly wait till her husband had finished his sentence before she testified against a part of it.

‘Convinced of Cynthia’s intentions! I should think she had made them pretty clear! What more does the man want?’

‘He’s not as yet convinced that the letter wasn’t written in a fit of temporary feeling. I’ve told him that this was true; although I didn’t feel it my place to explain to him the causes of that feeling. He believes that he can induce her to resume the former footing. I don’t; and I’ve told him so; but, of course, he needs the full conviction that she alone can give him.’

‘Poor Cynthia! My poor child!’ said Mrs. Gibson, plaintively. ‘What she has exposed herself to by letting herself be over-persuaded by that man!’

Mr. Gibson’s eyes flashed fire. But he kept his lips tight closed; and only said, ‘That man, indeed!’ quite below his breath.

Molly, too, had been damped by an expression or two in her father’s speech. ‘Mere visits of ceremony!’ Was it so, indeed? A ‘mere visit of ceremony!’ Whatever it was, the call was paid before many days were over. That he felt all the awkwardness of his position towards Mrs. Gibson—that he was in reality suffering pain all the time—was but too evident to Molly; but of course Mrs. Gibson saw nothing of this in her gratification at the proper respect paid to her by one whose name was in the newspapers that chronicled his return, and about whom already Lord Cumnor and the Towers family had been making inquiry.

Molly was sitting in her pretty white invalid’s dress; half reading, half dreaming, for the June air was so clear and ambient, the garden so full of bloom, the trees so full of leaf, that reading by the open window was only a pretence at such a time; besides which, Mrs. Gibson continually interrupted her with remarks about the pattern of her worsted work. It was after lunch—orthodox calling time, when Maria ushered in Mr. Roger Hamley. Molly started up; and then stood shyly and quietly in her place while a bronzed, bearded, grave man came into the room, in whom she at first had to seek for the merry boyish face she knew by heart only two years ago. But months in the climates in which Roger had been travelling age as much as years in more temperate regions. And constant thought and anxiety, while in daily peril of life, deepen the lines of character upon the face. Moreover, the circumstances that had of late affected him personally were not of a nature to make him either buoyant or cheerful. But his voice was the same; that was the first point of the old friend Molly caught, when he addressed her in a tone far softer than he used in speaking conventional politenesses to her stepmother.

‘I was so sorry to hear how ill you had been! You are looking but delicate!’ letting his eyes rest upon her face with affectionate examination. Molly felt herself colour all over with the consciousness of his regard. To do something to put an end to it, she looked up, and showed him her beautiful soft grey eyes, which he never remembered to have noticed before. She smiled at him as she blushed still deeper, and said,—

‘Oh! I am quite strong now to what I was. It would be a shame to be ill when everything is in its full summer beauty.’

‘I have heard how deeply we—I am indebted to you—my father can hardly praise you’—

‘Please don’t,’ said Molly, the tears coming into her eyes in spite of herself. He seemed to understand her at once; he went on as if speaking to Mrs. Gibson: ‘Indeed, my little sister-in-law is never weary of talking about Monsieur le Docteur, as she calls your husband!’

‘I have not had the pleasure of making Mrs. Osborne Hamley’s acquaintance yet,’ said Mrs. Gibson, suddenly aware of a duty which might have been expected from her, ‘and I must beg you to apologize to her for my remissness. But Molly has been such a care and anxiety to me—for, you know, I look upon her quite as my own child—that I really have not gone anywhere, excepting to the Towers, perhaps I should say, which is just like another home to me. And then I understood that Mrs. Osborne Hamley was thinking of returning to France before long? Still it was very remiss.’

The little trap thus set for news of what might be going on in the Hamley family was quite successful. Roger answered her thus:—

‘I am sure Mrs. Osborne Hamley will be very glad to see any friends of the family, as soon as she is a little stronger. I hope she will not go back to France at all. She is an orphan, and I trust we shall induce her to remain with my father. But at present nothing is arranged.’ Then, as if glad to have got over his ‘visit of ceremony,’ he got up and took leave. When he was at the door he looked back, having, as he thought, a word more to say; but he quite forgot what it was, for he surprised Molly’s intent gaze, and sudden confusion at discovery, and went away as soon as he could.

‘Poor Osborne was right!’ said he. ‘She has grown into delicate fragrant beauty, just as he said she would: or is it the character which has formed her face? Now the next time I enter these doors, it will be to learn my fate!’

Mr. Gibson had told his wife of Roger’s desire to have a personal interview with Cynthia rather with a view to her repeating what he said to her daughter. He did not see any exact necessity for this, it is true; but he thought it might be advisable that she should know all the truth in which she was concerned, and he told his wife this. But she took the affair into her own management, and, although she apparently agreed with Mr. Gibson, she never named the affair to Cynthia; all that she said to her was—

‘Your old admirer, Roger Hamley, has come home in a great hurry, in consequence of poor dear Osborne’s unexpected decease. He must have been rather surprised to find the widow and her little boy established at the Hall. He came to call here the other day, and made himself really rather agreeable, although his manners are not improved by the society he has kept on his travels. Still I prophesy he will be considered as a fashionable “lion,” and perhaps the very uncouthness which jars against my sense of refinement, may even become admired in a scientific traveller, who has been into more desert places, and eaten more extraordinary food, than any other Englishman of the day. I suppose he has given up all chance of inheriting the estate, for I hear he talks of returning to Africa, and becoming a regular wanderer. Your name was not mentioned, but I believe he inquired about you from Mr. Gibson.’

‘There!’ said she to herself, as she folded up and directed her letter. ‘That can’t disturb her, or make her uncomfortable. And it’s all the truth too, or very near it. Of course he’ll want to see her when she comes back; but by that time I do hope Mr. Henderson will have proposed again, and that that affair will be all settled.’

But Cynthia returned to Hollingford one Tuesday morning, and in answer to her mother’s anxious inquiries on the subject, would only say that Mr. Henderson had not offered again. Why should he? She had refused him once, and he did not know the reason of her refusal, at least one of the reasons. She did not know if she should have taken him if there had been no such person as Roger Hamley in the world. No! Uncle and aunt Kirkpatrick had never heard anything about Roger’s offer—nor had her cousins. She had always declared her wish to keep it a secret, and she had not mentioned it to any one, whatever other people might have done. Underneath this light and careless vein there were other feelings; but Mrs. Gibson was not one to probe beneath the surface. She had set her heart on Mr. Henderson’s marrying Cynthia, very early in their acquaintance; and to know, firstly, that the same wish had entered into his head, and that Roger’s attachment to Cynthia, with its consequences, had been the obstacle; and secondly, that Cynthia herself, with all the opportunities of propinquity which she had lately had, had failed to provoke a repetition of the offer,—was, as Mrs. Gibson said, ‘enough to provoke a saint.’ All the rest of the day she alluded to Cynthia as a disappointing and ungrateful daughter; Molly could not make out why, and resented it for Cynthia, until the latter said, bitterly, ‘Never mind, Molly. Mamma is only vexed because Mr. ^_______ because I have not come back an engaged young lady.’

‘Yes; and I am sure you might have done—there’s the ingratitude! I am not so unjust as to want you to do what you can’t do!’ said Mrs. Gibson, querulously.

‘But where’s the ingratitude, mamma? I’m very much tired, and perhaps that makes me stupid; but I cannot see the ingratitude.’ Cynthia spoke very wearily, leaning her head back on the sofa-cushions, as if she did not care to have an answer.

‘Why, don’t you see we are doing all we can for you; dressing you well, and sending you to London; and when you might relieve us of the expense of all this, you don’t.’

‘No! Cynthia, I will speak,’ said Molly, all crimson with indignation, and pushing away Cynthia’s restraining hand. ‘I am sure papa does not feel, and does not mind, any expense he incurs about his daughters. And I know quite well that he does not wish us to marry, unless^_______’ She faltered and stopped.

‘Unless what?’ said Mrs. Gibson, half-mocking.

‘Unless we love some one very dearly indeed,’ said Molly, in a low, firm tone.

‘Well, after this tirade—really rather indelicate, I must say—I have done. I will neither help nor hinder any love-affairs of you two young ladies. In my days we were glad of the advice of our elders.’ And she left the room to put into fulfilment an idea which had just struck her: to write a confidential letter to Mrs. Kirkpatrick, giving her her version of Cynthia’s ‘unfortunate entanglement,’ and ‘delicate sense of honour,’ and hints of her entire indifference to all the masculine portion of the world, Mr. Henderson being dexterously excluded from the category.

‘Oh, dear!’ said Molly, throwing herself back in a chair with a sigh of relief, as Mrs. Gibson left the room; ‘how cross I do get since I’ve been ill! But I couldn’t bear her to speak as if papa grudged you anything.’

‘I’m sure he doesn’t, Molly. You need not defend him on my account. But I’m sorry mamma still looks upon me as “an encumbrance,” as the advertisements in The Times always call us unfortunate children. But I’ve been an encumbrance to her all my life. I’m getting very much into despair about everything, Molly. I shall try my luck in Russia. I’ve heard of a situation as English governess at Moscow, in a family owning whole provinces of land, and serfs by the hundred. I put off writing my letter till I came home; I shall be as much out of the way there as if I was married. Oh, dear! travelling all night isn’t good for the spirits. How’s Mr. Preston?’

‘Oh, he has taken Cumnor Grange, three miles away, and he never comes in to the Hollingford tea-parties now. I saw him once in the street, but it’s a question which of us tried the hardest to get out of the other’s way.’

‘You’ve not said anything about Roger, yet.’

‘No; I didn’t know if you would care to hear. He is very much older-looking; quite a strong grown-up man. And papa says he is much graver. Ask me any questions, if you want to know, but I have only seen him once.’

‘I was in hopes he would have left the neighbourhood by this time. Mamma said he was going to travel again.’

‘I can’t tell,’ said Molly. ‘I suppose you know,’ she continued, but hesitating a little before she spoke, ‘that he wishes to see you?’

‘No! I never heard. I wish he would have been satisfied with my letter. It was as decided as I could make it. If I say I won’t see him, I wonder if his will or mine will be the strongest?’

‘His,’ said Molly. ‘But you must see him; you owe it to him. He will never be satisfied without it.’

‘Suppose he talks me round into resuming the engagement? I should only break it off again.’

‘Surely, you can’t be “talked round,” if your mind is made up. But perhaps it is not really, Cynthia?’ asked she, with a little wistful anxiety betraying itself in her face.

‘It is quite made up. I am going to teach little Russian girls; and am never going to marry nobody.’

‘You are not serious, Cynthia. And yet it is a very serious thing.’

But Cynthia went into one of her wild moods, and no more reason or sensible meaning was to be got out of her at the time.

CHAPTER 56

‘Off with the Old Love, and On with the New’

The next morning saw Mrs. Gibson in a much more contented frame of mind. She had written and posted her letter, and the next thing was to keep Cynthia in what she called a reasonable state, or, in other words, to try and cajole her into docility. But it was so much labour lost. Cynthia had already received a letter from Mr. Henderson before she came down to breakfast,—a declaration of love, a proposal of marriage as clear as words could make it; together with an intimation that, unable to wait for the slow delays of the post, he was going to follow her down to Hollingford, and would arrive at the same time that she had done herself on the previous day. Cynthia said nothing about this letter to anyone. She came late into the breakfast-room, after Mr. and Mrs. Gibson had finished the actual business of the meal; but her unpunctuality was quite accounted for by the fact that she had been travelling all the night before. Molly was not as yet strong enough to get up so early. Cynthia hardly spoke, and did not touch her food. Mr. Gibson went about his daily business, and Cynthia and her mother were left alone.

‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Gibson, ‘you are not eating your breakfast as you should do. I am afraid our meals seem very plain and homely to you after those in Hyde Park Street?’

‘No,’ said Cynthia; ‘I’m not hungry, that’s all.’

‘If we were as rich as your uncle, I should feel it to be both a duty and a pleasure to keep an elegant table; but limited means are a sad clog to one’s wishes. I don’t suppose that, work as he will, Mr. Gibson can earn more than he does at present; while the capabilities of the law are boundless. Lord Chancellor! Titles as well as fortune!’

Cynthia was almost too much absorbed in her own reflections to reply, but she did say,—

‘Hundreds of briefless barristers. Take the other side, mamma.’

‘Well; but I have noticed that many of these have private fortunes.’

‘Perhaps. Mamma, I expect Mr. Henderson will come and call this morning.’

‘Oh, my precious child! But how do you know? My darling Cynthia, am I to congratulate you?’

‘No! I suppose I must tell you. I have had a letter this morning from him, and he is coming down by the “Umpire” to-day.’

‘But he has offered? He surely must mean to offer, at any rate?’

Cynthia played with her teaspoon before she replied; then she looked up, like one startled from a dream, and caught the echo of her mother’s question.

‘Offered! yes, I suppose he has.’

‘And you accept him? Say “yes,” Cynthia, and make me happy!’

‘I shan’t say “yes” to make any one happy except myself, and the Russian scheme has great charms for me.’ She said this to plague her mother, and lessen Mrs. Gibson’s exuberance of joy, it must be confessed; for her mind was pretty well made up. But it did not affect Mrs. Gibson, who affixed even less truth to it than there really was. The idea of a residence in a new, strange country, among new, strange people, was not without allurement to Cynthia.

‘You always look nice, dear; but don’t you think you had better put on that pretty lilac silk?’

‘I shall not vary a thread or a shred from what I have got on now.’

‘You dear, wilful creature! you know you always look lovely in whatever you put on.’ So, kissing her daughter, Mrs. Gibson left the room, intent on the lunch which should impress Mr. Henderson at once with an idea of family refinement.

Cynthia went upstairs to Molly; she was inclined to tell her about Mr. Henderson, but she found it impossible to introduce the subject naturally, so she left it to time to reveal the future as gradually as it might. Molly was tired with a bad night; and her father, in his flying visit to his darling before going out, had advised her to stay upstairs for the greater part of the morning, and to keep quiet in her own room till after her early dinner, so Time had not a fair chance of telling her what he had in store in his budget. Mrs. Gibson sent an apology to Molly for not paying her her usual morning visit, and told Cynthia to give Mr. Henderson’s probable coming as a reason for her occupation downstairs. But Cynthia did no such thing. She kissed Molly, and sat silently by her, holding her hand; till at length she jumped up, and said, ‘You shall be left alone now, little one. I want you to be very well and very bright this afternoon: so rest now.’ And Cynthia left her, and went to her own room, locked the door, and began to think.

Some one was thinking about her at the same time, and it was not Mr. Henderson. Roger had heard from Mr. Gibson that Cynthia had come home, and he was resolving to go to her at once, and have one strong, manly attempt to overcome the obstacles, whatever they might be—and of their nature he was not fully aware—that she had conjured up against the continuance of their relation to each other. He left his father—he left them all—and went off into the woods, to be alone until the time came when he might mount his horse and ride over to put his fate to the touch. He was as careful as ever not to interfere with the morning hours that were tabooed to him of old; but waiting was very hard work when he knew that she was so near, and the time so near at hand.

Yet he rode slowly, compelling himself to quietness and patience when he was once really on the way to her.

‘Mrs. Gibson at home? Miss Kirkpatrick?’ he asked of the servant, Maria, who opened the door. She was confused, but he did not notice it.

‘I think so—I’m not sure! Will you walk up into the drawing-room, sir? Miss Gibson is there, I know.’

So he went upstairs, all his nerves on the strain for the coming interview with Cynthia. It was either a relief or a disappointment, he was not sure which, to find only Molly in the room:—Molly, half lying on the couch in the bow-window which commanded the garden; draped in soft white drapery, very white herself, and a laced half-handkerchief tied over her head to save her from any ill effects of the air that blew in through the open window. He was so ready to speak to Cynthia that he hardly knew what to say to any one else.

‘I’m afraid you are not so well,’ he said to Molly, who sat up to receive him, and who suddenly began to tremble with emotion.

‘I’m a little tired, that’s all,’ said she; and then she was quite silent, hoping that he might go, and yet somehow wishing him to stay. But he took a chair and placed it near her, opposite to the window. He thought that surely Maria would tell Miss Kirkpatrick that she was wanted, and that at any moment he might hear her light quick footstep on the stairs.

He thought he ought to talk, but he could not think of anything to say. The pink flush came out on Molly’s cheeks; once or twice she was on the point of speaking, but again she thought better of it; and the pauses between their faint disjointed remarks became longer and longer. Suddenly, in one of these pauses, the merry murmur of distant happy voices in the garden came nearer and nearer; Molly looked more and more uneasy and flushed, and in spite of herself kept watching Roger’s face. He could see over her into the garden. A sudden deep colour overspread him, as if his heart had sent its blood out coursing at full gallop. Cynthia and Mr. Henderson had come in sight; he eagerly talking to her, as he bent forward to look into her face; she, her looks half averted in pretty shyness, was evidently coquetting about some flowers, which she either would not give, or would not take. Just then, for the lovers had emerged from the shrubbery into comparatively public life, Maria was seen approaching; apparently she had feminine tact enough to induce Cynthia to leave her present admirer, and to go a few steps to meet her to receive the whispered message that Mr. Roger Hamley was there, and wished to speak to her. Roger could see her startled gesture; she turned back to say something to Mr. Henderson before coming towards the house. Now Roger spoke to Molly—spoke hurriedly, spoke hoarsely.

‘Molly, tell me! Is it too late for me to speak to Cynthia? I came on purpose. Who is that man?’

‘Mr. Henderson. He only came to-day-but now he is her accepted lover. Oh, Roger, forgive me the pain!’

‘Tell her I have been, and am gone. Send out word to her. Don’t let her be interrupted.’

And Roger ran downstairs at full speed, and Molly heard the passionate clang of the outer door. He had hardly left the house before Cynthia entered the room, pale and resolute.

‘Where is he?’ she said, looking around, as if he might yet be hidden.

‘Gone!’ said Molly, very faint.

‘Gone. Oh, what a relief! It seems to be my fate never to be off with the old lover before I am on with the new, and yet I did write as decidedly as I could. Why, Molly, what’s the matter?’ for now Molly had fainted away utterly. Cynthia flew to the bell, summoned Maria, water, salts, wine, anything; and as soon as Molly, gasping and miserable, became conscious again, she wrote a little pencil-note to Mr. Henderson, bidding him return to the George, whence he had come in the morning, and saying that if he obeyed her at once, he might be allowed to call again in the evening, otherwise she would not see him till the next day. This she sent down by Maria, and the unlucky man never believed but that it was Miss Gibson’s sudden indisposition in the first instance that had deprived him of his charmer’s company. He comforted himself for the long solitary afternoon by writing to tell all his friends of his happiness, and amongst them uncle and aunt Kirkpatrick, who received his letter by the same post as that discreet epistle of Mrs. Gibson’s, which she had carefully arranged to reveal as much as she wished, and no more.

‘Was he very terrible?’ asked Cynthia, as she sat with Molly in the stillness of Mrs. Gibson’s dressing-room.

‘Oh, Cynthia, it was such pain to see him, he suffered so!’

‘I don’t like people of deep feelings,’ said Cynthia, pouting. ‘They don’t suit me. Why couldn’t he let me go without this fuss? I’m not worth his caring for!’

‘You’ve the happy gift of making people love you. Remember Mr. Preston,—he too wouldn’t give up hope.’

‘Now I won’t have you classing Roger Hamley and Mr. Preston together in the same sentence. One was as much too bad for me as the other is too good. Now I hope that man in the garden is the juste milieu,^ee—I’m that myself, for I don’t think I’m vicious, and I know I’m not virtuous.’

‘Do you really like him enough to marry him?’ asked Molly, earnestly. ‘Do think, Cynthia. It won’t do to go on throwing your lovers off; you give pain that I’m sure you do not mean to do,—that you cannot understand.’

‘Perhaps I can’t. I’m not offended. I never set up for what I am not, and I know I’m not constant. I’ve told Mr. Henderson so—’ She stopped, blushing and smiling at the recollection.

‘You have! and what did he say?’

‘That he liked me just as I was; so you see he’s fairly warned. Only he’s a little afraid, I suppose,—for he wants me to be married very soon, almost directly, in fact. But I don’t know if I shall give way,—you hardly saw him, Molly,—but he’s coming again to-night, and mind, I’ll never forgive you if you don’t think him very charming. I believe I cared for him when he offered all those months ago, but I tried to think I didn’t; only sometimes I really was so unhappy, I thought I must put an iron band round my heart to keep it from breaking, like the Faithful John of the German story,—do you remember, Molly?—how when his master came to his crown and his fortune and his lady-love, after innumerable trials and disgraces, and was driving away from the church where he’d been married in a coach and six, with Faithful John behind, the happy couple heard three cracks in succession, and on inquiring, they were the iron bands round his heart, that Faithful John had worn all during the time of his master’s tribulation, to keep it from breaking.’ ¹

In the evening Mr. Henderson came. Molly had been very curious to see him; and when she saw him she was not sure whether she liked him or not. He was handsome, without being conceited; gentlemanly, without being foolishly fine. He talked easily, and never said a silly thing. He was perfectly well-appointed, yet never seemed to have given a thought to his dress. He was good-tempered and kind; not without some of the cheerful flippancy of repartee which belonged to his age and profession, and which his age and profession are apt to take for wit. But he wanted something in Molly’s eyes—at any rate, in this first interview, and in her heart of hearts she thought him rather commonplace. But of course she said nothing of this to Cynthia, who was evidently as happy as she could be. Mrs. Gibson, too, was in the seventh heaven of ecstasy, and spoke but little; but what she did say, expressed the highest sentiments in the finest language. Mr. Gibson was not with them for long, but while he was there he was evidently studying the unconscious Mr. Henderson with his dark penetrating eyes. Mr. Henderson behaved exactly as he ought to have done to everybody: respectful to Mr. Gibson, deferential to Mrs. Gibson, friendly to Molly, devoted to Cynthia.

The next time Mr. Gibson found Molly alone, he began,—‘Well! and how do you like the new relation that is to be?’

‘It’s difficult to say. I think he’s very nice in all his bits, but—rather dull on the whole.’

‘I think him perfection,’ said Mr. Gibson, to Molly’s surprise; but in an instant afterwards she saw that he had been speaking ironically. He went on. ‘I don’t wonder she preferred him to Roger Hamley. Such scents! such gloves! And then his hair and his cravat!’

‘Now, papa, you’re not fair. He’s a great deal more than that. One could see that he had very good feeling; and he’s very handsome, and very much attached to her.’

‘So was Roger. However, I must confess I shall be only too glad to have her married. She’s a girl who’ll always have some love affair on hand, and will always be apt to slip through a man’s fingers if he doesn’t look sharp; as I was saying to Roger—’

‘You have seen him, then, since he was here?’

‘Met him in the street.’

‘How was he?’

‘I don’t suppose he’d been going through the pleasantest thing in the world; but he’ll get over it before long. He spoke with sense and resignation, and didn’t say much about it; but one could see that he was feeling it pretty sharply. He’s had three months to think it over, remember. The squire, I should guess, is showing more indignation. He is boiling over, that any one should reject his son. The enormity of the sin never seems to have been apparent to him till now, when he sees how Roger is affected by it. Indeed, with the exception of myself, I don’t know one reasonable father; eh, Molly?’

Whatever else Mr. Henderson might be, he was an impatient lover; he wanted to marry Cynthia directly—next week—the week after. At any rate before the long vacation, so that they could go abroad at once. Trousseaux, and preliminary ceremonies, he gave to the winds. Mr. Gibson, generous as usual, called Cynthia aside a morning or two after her engagement, and put a hundred-pound note into her hands.

‘There! that’s to pay your expenses to Russia and back. I hope you’ll find your pupils obedient.’

To his surprise, and rather to his discomfiture, Cynthia threw her arms round his neck and kissed him.

‘You are the kindest person I know,’ said she; ‘and I don’t know how to thank you in words.’

‘If you tumble my shirt-collars again in that way, I’ll charge you for the washing. Just now, too, when I’m trying so hard to be trim and elegant, like your Mr. Henderson.’

‘But you do like him, don’t you?’ said Cynthia, pleadingly. ‘He does so like you.’

‘Of course. We’re all angels just now, and you’re an archangel. I hope he’ll wear as well as Roger.’

Cynthia looked grave. ‘That was a very silly affair,’ she said. ‘We were two as unsuitable people—’

‘It has ended, and that’s enough. Besides, I’ve no more time to waste; and there’s your smart young man coming here in all haste.’

Mr. and Mrs. Kirkpatrick sent all manner of congratulations; and Mrs. Kirkpatrick, in a private letter, assured Mrs. Gibson that her ill-timed confidence about Roger should be considered as quite private. For as soon as Mr. Henderson had made his appearance in Hollingford, she had written a second letter, entreating them not to allude to anything she might have said in her first; which she said was written in such excitement on discovering the real state of her daughter’s affections, that she had hardly known what she said, and had exaggerated some things, and misunderstood others: all that she did know now was, that Mr. Henderson had just proposed to Cynthia, and was accepted, and that they were as happy as the day was long, and (‘excuse the vanity of a mother’) made a most lovely couple. So Mr. and Mrs. Kirkpatrick wrote back an equally agreeable letter, praising Mr. Henderson, admiring Cynthia, and generally congratulatory; insisting into the bargain that the marriage should take place from their house in Hyde Park Street, and that Mr. and Mrs. Gibson and Molly should all come up and pay them a visit. There was a little postscript at the end. ‘Surely you do not mean the famous traveller, Hamley, about whose discoveries all our scientific men are so much excited. You speak of him as a young Hamley, who went to Africa. Answer this question, pray, for Helen is most anxious to know.’ This PS. being in Helen’s handwriting. In her exultation at the general success of everything, and desire for sympathy, Mrs. Gibson read parts of this letter to Molly; the postscript among the rest. It made a deeper impression on Molly than even the proposed kindness of the visit to London.

There were some family consultations; but the end of them all was that the Kirkpatrick invitation was accepted. There were many small reasons for this, which were openly acknowledged, but there was one general and unspoken wish to have the ceremony performed out of the immediate neighbourhood of the two men whom Cynthia had previously rejected; that was the word now to be applied to her treatment of them. So Molly was ordered and enjoined and entreated to become strong as soon as possible, in order that her health might not prevent her attending the marriage; Mr. Gibson himself, though he thought it his duty to damp the excellent anticipations of his wife and her daughter, being not at all averse to the prospect of going to London, and seeing half-a-dozen old friends, and many scientific exhibitions, independently of the very fair amount of liking which he had for his host, Mr. Kirkpatrick himself.

CHAPTER 57

Bridal Visits and Adieux

The whole town of Hollingford came to congratulate and inquire into particulars. Some indeed—Mrs. Goodenough at the head of this class of malcontents—thought that they were defrauded of their right to a fine show by Cynthia’s being married in London. Even Lady Cumnor was moved into action. She, who had hardly ever paid calls ‘out of her own sphere,’ who had only once been to see ‘Clare’ in her own house—she came to congratulate after her fashion. Maria had only just time to run up into the drawing-room one morning, and say—

‘Please, ma’am, the great carriage from the Towers is coming up to the gate, and my lady the Countess is sitting inside.’ It was but eleven o’clock, and Mrs. Gibson would have been indignant at any commoner who had ventured to call at such an untimely hour, but in the case of the peerage the rules of domestic morality were relaxed.

The family ‘stood at arms,’ as it were, till Lady Cumnor appeared in the drawing-room; and then she had to be settled in the best chair, and the light adjusted before anything like conversation began. She was the first to speak; and Lady Harriet, who had begun a few words to Molly, dropped into silence.

‘I have been taking Mary—Lady Cuxhaven—to the railway station on this new line between Birmingham and London,^ef and I thought I would come on here, and offer you my congratulations. Clare, which is the young lady?’—putting on her glasses, and looking at Cynthia and Molly, who were dressed pretty much alike. ‘I did not think it would be amiss to give you a little advice, my dear,’ said she, when Cynthia had been properly pointed out to her as bride-elect. ‘I have heard a good deal about you; and I am only too glad for your mother’s sake,—your mother is a very worthy woman, and did her duty very well while she was in our family—I am truly rejoiced, I say, to hear that you are going to make so creditable a marriage. I hope it will efface your former errors of conduct—which we will hope were but trivial in reality—and that you will live to be a comfort to your mother,—for whom both Lord Cumnor and I entertain a very sincere regard. But you must conduct yourself with discretion in whatever state of life it pleases God to place you, whether married or single. You must reverence your husband, and conform to his opinion in all things. Look up to him as your head, and do nothing without consulting him.’—It was as well that Lord Cumnor was not amongst the audience; or he might have compared precept with practice.—‘Keep strict accounts; and remember your station in life. I understand that Mr.—’ looking about for some help as to the name she had forgotten ‘Henderson—Henderson is in the law. Although there is a general prejudice against attorneys, I have known two or three who are very respectable men; and I am sure Mr. Henderson is one, or your good mother and our old friend Gibson would not have sanctioned the engagement.’

‘He’s a barrister,’ put in Cynthia, unable to restrain herself any longer. ‘Barrister-at-law.’^eg

‘Ah, yes. Attorney-at-law. Barrister-at-law. I understand without your speaking so loud, my dear. What was I going to say before you interrupted me? When you have been a little in society you will find that it is reckoned bad manners to interrupt. I had a great deal more to say to you, and you have put it all out of my head. There was something else your father wanted me to ask—what was it, Harriet?’

‘I suppose you mean about Mr. Hamley?’

‘Oh, yes! we are intending to have the house full of Lord Hollingford’s friends next month, and Lord Cumnor is particularly anxious to secure Mr. Hamley.’

‘The squire?’ asked Mrs. Gibson in some surprise. Lady Cumnor bowed slightly, as much as to say, ‘If you did not interrupt me I should explain.’

‘The famous traveller—the scientific Mr. Hamley, I mean. I imagine he is son to the squire. Lord Hollingford knows him well; but when we asked him before, he declined coming, and assigned no reason.’

Had Roger indeed been asked to the Towers and declined? Mrs. Gibson could not understand it. Lady Cumnor went on—

‘Now this time we are particularly anxious to secure him, and my son Lord Hollingford will not return to England until the very week before the Duke of Atherstone is coming to us. I believe Mr. Gibson is very intimate with Mr. Hamley; do you think he could induce him to favour us with his company?’

And this from the proud Lady Cumnor; and the object of it Roger Hamley, whom she had all but turned out of her drawing-room two years ago for calling at an untimely hour; and whom Cynthia had turned out of her heart. Mrs. Gibson was surprised, and could only murmur out that she was sure Mr. Gibson would do all that her ladyship wished.

‘Thank you. You know me well enough to be aware that I am not the person, nor is the Towers the house, to go about soliciting guests. But in this instance I bend my head; high rank should always be the first to honour those who have distinguished themselves by art or science.’

‘Besides, mamma,’ said Lady Harriet, ‘papa was saying that the Hamleys have been on their land since before the Conquest; while we only came into the county a century ago; and there is a tale that the first Cumnor began his fortune through selling tobacco in King James’s reign.’

If Lady Cumnor did not exactly shift her trumpet and take snuff there on the spot, she behaved in an equivalent manner. She began a low-toned but nevertheless authoritative conversation with Clare about the details of the wedding, which lasted until she thought it fit to go, when she abruptly plucked Lady Harriet up, and carried her off in the very midst of a description she was giving to Cynthia about the delights of Spa, which was to be one of the resting-places of the newly-married couple on their wedding-tour.

Nevertheless, she prepared a handsome present for the bride: a Bible and a Prayer-book bound in velvet with silver clasps; and also a collection of household account-books, at the beginning of which Lady Cumnor wrote down with her own hand the proper weekly allowance of bread, butter, eggs, meat, and groceries per head, with the London prices of the articles, so that the most inexperienced housekeeper might ascertain whether her expenditure exceeded her means, as she expressed herself in the note which she sent with the handsome, dull present.

‘If you are driving into Hollingford, Harriet, perhaps you will take these books to Miss Kirkpatrick,’ said Lady Cumnor, after she had sealed her note with all the straightness and correctness befitting a countess of her immaculate character. ‘I understand they are all going up to London to-morrow for this wedding, in spite of what I said to Clare of the duty of being married in one’s own parish church. She told me at the time that she entirely agreed with me, but that her husband had such a strong wish for a visit to London, that she did not know how she could oppose him consistently with her wifely duty. I advised her to repeat to him my reasons for thinking that they would be ill-advised to have the marriage in town; but I am afraid she has been overruled. That was her one great fault when she lived with us; she was always so yielding, and never knew how so say “No.” ’

‘Mamma!’ said Lady Harriet, with a little sly coaxing in her tone, ‘do you think you would have been so fond of her, if she had opposed you, and said “No” when you wished her to say “Yes”?’

‘To be sure I should, my dear. I like everybody to have an opinion of their own; only when my opinions are based on thought and experience, which few people have had equal opportunities of acquiring, I think it is but proper deference in others to allow themselves to be convinced. In fact, I think it is only obstinacy which keeps them from acknowledging that they are. I am not a despot, I hope?’ she asked, with some anxiety.

‘If you are, dear mamma,’ said Lady Harriet, kissing the stern uplifted face very fondly, ‘I like a despotism better than a republic, and I must be very despotic over my ponies, for it’s already getting very late for my drive round by Ash-holt.’

But when she arrived at the Gibsons’, she was detained so long there by the state of the family, that she had to give up her going to Ash-holt.

Molly was sitting in the drawing-room pale and trembling, and keeping herself quiet only by a strong effort. She was the only person there when Lady Harriet entered: the room was all in disorder, strewed with presents and paper, and pasteboard boxes, and half-displayed articles of finery.

‘You look like Marius sitting amidst the ruins of Carthage,^eh my dear! What’s the matter? Why have you got on that woebegone face? This marriage isn’t broken off, is it? Though nothing would surprise me where the beautiful Cynthia is concerned.’

‘Oh, no! that’s all right. But I’ve caught a fresh cold, and papa says he thinks I had better not go to the wedding.’

‘Poor little one! And it’s the first visit to London too!’

‘Yes. But what I most care for is the not being with Cynthia to the last; and then, papa’—she stopped, for she could hardly go on without open crying, and she did not want to do that. Then she cleared her voice. ‘Papa!’ she continued, ‘has so looked forward to this holiday,—and seeing—and—and going—oh! I can’t tell you where; but he has quite a list of people and sights to be seen,—and now he says he should not be comfortable to leave me all alone for more than three days,—two for travelling, and one for the wedding.’ Just then Mrs. Gibson came in, ruffled too after her fashion, though the presence of Lady Harriet was wonderfully smoothing.

‘My dear Lady Harriet—how kind of you! Ah, yes, I see this poor unfortunate child has been telling you of her ill-luck; just when everything was going on so beautifully; I’m sure it was that open window at your back, Molly,—you know you would persist that it could do you no harm, and now you see the mischief! I’m sure I shan’t be able to enjoy myself—and at my only child’s wedding too—without you; for I can’t think of leaving you without Maria. I would rather sacrifice anything myself than think of you, uncared for, and dismal at home.’

‘I’m sure Molly is as sorry as any one,’ said Lady Harriet.

‘No. I don’t think she is,’ said Mrs. Gibson, with happy disregard of the chronology of events, ‘or she would not have sat with her back to an open window the day before yesterday, when I told her not. But it can’t be helped now. Papa too—but it is my duty to make the best of everything, and look at the cheerful side of life. I wish I could persuade her to. do the same’ (turning and addressing Lady Harriet). ‘But, you see, it is a great mortification to a girl of her age to lose her first visit to London.’

‘It is not that,’ began Molly; but Lady Harriet made her a little sign to be silent while she herself spoke.

‘Now, Clare! you and I can manage it all, I think, if you will but help me in a plan I’ve got in my head. Mr. Gibson shall stay as long as ever he can in London; and Molly shall be well cared for, and have some change of air and scene too, which is really what she needs as much as anything, in my poor opinion. I can’t spirit her to the wedding and give her a sight of London; but I can carry her off to the Towers, and invite her myself; and send daily bulletins up to London, so that Mr. Gibson may feel quite at ease, and stay with you as long as you like. What do you say to it, Clare?’

‘Oh, I could not go,’ said Molly; ‘I should only be a trouble to everybody.’

‘Nobody asked you for your opinion, little one. If we wise elders decide that you are to go, you must submit in silence.’

Meanwhile Mrs. Gibson was rapidly balancing advantages and disadvantages. Amongst the former,—it would sound well; Maria could then accompany Cynthia and herself as ‘their maid,‘—Mr. Gibson would stay longer with her, and it was always desirable to have a man at her beck and call in such a place as London; besides that, this identical man was gentlemanly and good-looking, and a favourite with her prosperous brother-in-law; the ayes had it.

‘What a charming plan! I cannot think of anything kinder or pleasanter for this poor darling. Only—what will Lady Cumnor say? I am modest for my family as much as for myself,’ she continued.

‘You know mamma’s sense of hospitality is never more gratified than when the house is quite full; and papa is just like her. Besides, she is fond of you, and grateful to our good Mr. Gibson, and will be fond of you, little one, when she knows you as I do.’

Molly’s heart sank within her at the prospect. Excepting on the one evening of her father’s wedding-day, she had never even seen the outside of the Towers since that unlucky day in her childhood when she had fallen asleep on Clare’s bed. She had a dread of the countess, a dislike to her house; only it seemed as if it was a solution to the problem of what to do with her, which had been perplexing every one all the morning, and so evidently that it had caused her much distress. She kept silence, though her lips quivered from time to time. Oh, if Miss Brownings had not chosen this very time of all others to pay their monthly visit to Miss Hornblower! If she could only have gone there, and lived with them in their quaint, quiet, primitive way, instead of having to listen, without remonstrance, to hearing plans discussed about her, as if she was an inanimate chattel.

‘She shall have the south pink room, opening out of mine by one door, you remember; and the dressing-room shall be made into a cosy little sitting-room for her, in case she likes to be by herself Parkes shall attend upon her, and I’m sure Mr. Gibson must know Parkes’s powers as a nurse by this time. We shall have all manner of agreeable people in the house to amuse her downstairs; and when she has got rid of this access of cold, I will drive her out every day, and write daily bulletins as I said. Pray tell Mr. Gibson all that, and let it be considered as settled. I will come for her in the close carriage to-morrow, at eleven. And now may I see the lovely bride-elect, and give her mamma’s present, and my own good wishes?’

So Cynthia came in, and demurely received the very proper present, and the equally coveted congratulations, without testifying any very great delight or gratitude at either for she was quite quick enough to detect there was no great afflux of affection accompanying either. But when she heard her mother quickly recapitulating all the details of the plan for Molly, Cynthia’s eyes did sparkle with gladness; and, almost to Lady Harriet’s surprise, she thanked her as if she had conferred a personal favour upon her. Lady Harriet saw, too, that, in a very quiet way, she had taken Molly’s hand, and was holding it all the time, as if loth to think of their approaching separation—somehow, she and Lady Harriet were brought nearer together by this little action than they had ever been before.

Molly had hoped that her father might have raised some obstacles to the project; in this she was disappointed. But she was satisfied when she perceived how he seemed to feel that, by placing her under the care of Lady Harriet and Parkes, he should be relieved from anxiety. And now he spoke of this change of air and scene as being the very thing he had been wishing to secure for her; country air, and absence of excitement as this would be; for the only other place where he could have secured her these advantages, and at the same time sent her as an invalid, was to Hamley Hall; and he dreaded the associations there with the beginning of her present illness.

So Molly was driven off in state the next day, leaving her own home all in confusion with the assemblage of boxes and trunks in the hall, and all the other symptoms of the approaching departure of the family for London and the wedding. All the morning Cynthia had been with her in her room, attending to the arrangement of Molly’s clothes, instructing her what to wear with what, and rejoicing over the pretty smartnesses which, having been prepared for her as bridesmaid, were now to serve as adornments for her visit to the Towers. Both Molly and Cynthia spoke about dress as if it was the very object of their lives; for each dreaded the introduction of more serious subjects; Cynthia more for Molly than herself Only when the carriage was announced, and Molly was preparing to go downstairs, Cynthia said—

‘I’m not going to thank you, Molly, or to tell you how I love you.’

‘Don’t,’ said Molly, ‘I can’t bear it.’

‘Only you know you are to be my first visitor, and if you wear brown ribbons to a green gown, I’ll turn you out of the house!’ So they parted. Mr. Gibson was there in the hall to hand Molly in. He had ridden hard; and was now giving her two or three last injunctions as to her health.

‘Think of us on Thursday,’ said he. ‘I declare I don’t know which of her three lovers she mayn’t summon at the very last moment to act the part of bridegroom. I’m determined to be surprised at nothing; and will give her away with a good grace to whoever comes.’

They drove away, and until they were out of sight of the house, Molly had enough to do to keep returning the kisses of the hand wafted to her by her stepmother out of the drawing-room window, while at the same time her eyes were fixed on a white handkerchief fluttering out of the attic from which she herself had watched Roger’s departure nearly two years before. What changes time had brought!

When Molly arrived at the Towers she was convoyed into Lady Cumnor’s presence by Lady Harriet. It was a mark of respect to the lady of the house, which the latter knew that her mother would expect; but she was anxious to get it over, and take Molly up into the room which she had been so busy arranging for her. Lady Cumnor was, however, very kind, if not positively gracious.

‘You are Lady Harriet’s visitor, my dear,’ said she, ‘and I hope she will take good care of you. If not, come and complain of her to me.’ It was as near an approach to a joke as Lady Cumnor ever perpetrated, and from it Lady Harriet knew that her mother was pleased by Molly’s manners and appearance.

‘Now, here you are in your own kingdom; and into this room I shan’t venture to come without express permission. Here’s the last new Quarterly, and the last new novel, and the last new essay. Now, my dear, you needn’t come down again to-day unless you like it. Parkes shall bring you everything and anything you want. You must get strong as fast as you can, for all sorts of great and famous people are coming to-morrow and the next day, and I think you’ll like to see them. Suppose for to-day you only come down to lunch, and if you like it, in the evening. Dinner is such a wearily long meal, if one isn’t strong; and you wouldn’t miss much, for there’s only my cousin Charles in the house now, and he’s the personification of sensible silence.’

Molly was only too glad to allow Lady Harriet to decide everything for her. It had begun to rain, and was altogether a gloomy day for August; and there was a small fire of scented wood burning cheerfully in the sitting-room appropriated to her. High up, it commanded a wide and pleasant view over the park, and from it could be seen the spire of Hollingford Church, which gave Molly a pleasant idea of neighbourhood to home. She was left alone, lying on the sofa—books near her, wood crackling and blazing, wafts of wind bringing the beating rain against the window, and so enhancing the sense of indoor comfort by the outdoor contrast. Parkes was unpacking for her. Lady Harriet had introduced Parkes to Molly by saying, ‘Now, Molly, this is Mrs. Parkes, the only person I am ever afraid of. She scolds me if I dirty myself with my paints, just as if I was a little child; and she makes me go to bed when I want to sit up,’—Parkes was smiling grimly all the time;—‘so to get rid of her tyranny I give her you as victim. Parkes, rule over Miss Gibson with a rod of iron; make her eat and drink, and rest and sleep, and dress as you think wisest and best.’

Parkes had begun to reign by putting Molly on the sofa, and saying, ‘If you will give me your keys, miss, I will unpack your things, and let you know when it is time for me to arrange your hair, preparatory to luncheon.’ For if Lady Harriet used familiar colloquialisms from time to time, she certainly had not learnt it from Parkes, who piqued herself on the correctness of her language.

When Molly went down to lunch she found ‘cousin Charles,’ with his aunt, Lady Cumnor. He was a certain Sir Charles Morton, the son of Lady Cumnor’s only sister: a plain, sandy-haired man of thirty-five or so; immensely rich, very sensible, awkward, and reserved. He had had a chronic attachment, of many years’ standing, to his cousin, Lady Harriet, who did not care for him in the least, although it was the marriage very earnestly desired for her by her mother. Lady Harriet was, however, on friendly terms with him, ordered him about, and told him what to do, and what to leave undone, without having even a doubt as to the willingness of his obedience. She had given him his cue about Molly.

‘Now Charles, the girl wants to be interested and amused without having to take any trouble for herself; she’s too delicate to be very active either in mind or body. Just look after her when the house gets full, and place her where she can hear and see everything and everybody, without any fuss and responsibility.’

So Sir Charles began this day at luncheon by taking Molly under his quiet protection. He did not say much to her; but what he did say was thoroughly friendly and sympathetic; and Molly began, as he and Lady Harriet intended that she should, to have a kind of pleasant reliance upon him. Then in the evening while the rest of the family were at dinner—after Molly’s tea and hour of quiet repose, Parkes came and dressed her in some of the new clothes prepared for the Kirkpatrick visit, and did her hair in some new and pretty way, so that when Molly looked at herself in the cheval-glass, she scarcely knew the elegant reflection to be that of herself. She was fetched down by Lady Harriet into the great long formidable drawing-room, which, as an interminable place of pacing, had haunted her dreams ever since her childhood. At the farther end sat Lady Cumnor at her tapestry-work; the light of fire and candle seemed all concentrated on that one bright part where presently Lady Harriet made tea, and Lord Cumnor went to sleep, and Sir Charles read passages aloud from the Edinburgh Review to the three ladies at their work.

When Molly went to bed she was constrained to admit that staying at the Towers as a visitor was rather pleasant than otherwise; and she tried to reconcile old impressions with new ones, until she fell asleep. There was another comparatively quiet lay before the expected guests began to arrive in the evening. Lady Harriet took Molly a drive in her little pony-carriage; and for the first time for many weeks Molly began to feel the delightful spring of returning health; the dance of youthful spirits in the fresh air cleared by the previous day’s rain.

CHAPTER 58

Reviving Hopes and Brightening Prospects

If you can without fatigue, dear, do come down to dinner to-day; you’ll then see the people one by one as they appear, instead of having to encounter a crowd of strangers. Hollingford will be here too. I hope you’ll find it pleasant.’

So Molly made her appearance at dinner that day; and got to know, by sight at least, some of the most distinguished of the visitors at the Towers. The next day was Thursday, Cynthia’s wedding-day; bright and fine in the country, whatever it might be in London. And there were several letters from the home people awaiting Molly when she came downstairs to the late breakfast. For, every day, every hour, she was gaining strength and health, and she was unwilling to continue her invalid habits any longer than was necessary. She looked so much better that Sir Charles noticed it to Lady Harriet; and several of the visitors spoke of her this morning as a very pretty, lady-like, and graceful girl. This was Thursday; and Friday, as Lady Harriet had told her, some visitors from the more immediate neighbourhood were expected, to stay over the Sunday; but she had not mentioned their names, and when Molly went down into the drawing-room before dinner, she was almost startled by perceiving Roger Hamley in the centre of a group of gentlemen, who were all talking together eagerly, and as it seemed to her, making him the object of their attention. He made a hitch in his conversation, lost the precise meaning of a question addressed to him; answered it rather hastily, and made his way to where Molly was sitting, a little behind Lady Harriet. He had heard that she was staying at the Towers, but he was almost as much surprised as she was, by his unexpected appearance, for he had only seen her once or twice since his return from Africa, and then in the guise of an invalid. Now in her pretty evening dress, with her hair beautifully dressed, her delicate complexion flushed a little with timidity, yet her movements and manners bespeaking quiet ease, Roger hardly recognized her, although he acknowledged her identity. He began to feel that admiring deference which most young men experience when conversing with a very pretty girl: a sort of desire to obtain her good opinion in a manner very different to his old familiar friendliness. He was annoyed when Sir Charles, whose especial charge she still was, came up to take her in to dinner. He could not quite understand the smile of mutual intelligence that passed between the two, each being aware of Lady Harriet’s plan of sheltering Molly from the necessity of talking, and acting in conformity with her wishes as much as with their own. Roger found himself puzzling, and watching them from time to time during dinner. Again in the evening he sought her out, but found her again preoccupied with one of the young men staying in the house, who had had the advantage of a two days of mutual interest, and acquaintance with the daily events, and jokes and anxieties of the family circle. Molly could not help wishing to break off all this trivial talk and to make room for Roger: she had so much to ask him about everything at the Hall; he was, and had been such a stranger to them all for these last two months and more. But though both wanted to speak to the other more than to any one else in the room, it so happened that everything seemed to conspire to prevent it. Lord Hollingford carried off Roger to the clatter of middle-aged men; he was wanted to give his opinion upon some scientific subject. Mr. Ernest Watson, the young man referred to above, kept his place by Molly, as the prettiest girl in the room, and almost dazed her by his never-ceasing flow of clever small talk. She looked so tired and pale at last that the ever-watchful Lady Harriet sent Sir Charles to the rescue, and after a few words with Lady Harriet, Roger saw Molly quietly leave the room; and a sentence or two which he heard Lady Harriet address to her cousin made him know that it was for the night. Those sentences might bear another interpretation than the obvious one.

‘Really, Charles, considering that she is in your charge, I think you might have saved her from the chatter and patter of Mr. Watson; I can only stand it when I am in the strongest health.’

Why was Molly in Sir Charles’s charge? why? Then Roger remembered many little things that might serve to confirm the fancy he had got into his head; and he went to bed puzzled and annoyed. It seemed to him such an incongruous, hastily-got-up sort of engagement, if engagement it really was. On Saturday they were more fortunate: they had a long tête-à-tête in the most public place in the house—on a sofa in the hall where Molly was resting at Lady Harriet’s command before going upstairs after a walk. Roger was passing through, and saw her, and came to her. Standing before her, and making pretence of playing with the gold-fish in a great marble basin close at hand,—

‘I was very unlucky,’ said he. ‘I wanted to get near you last night, but it was quite impossible. You were so busy talking to Mr. Watson, until Sir Charles Morton came and carried you off—with such an air of authority? Have you known him long?’

Now this was not at all the manner in which Roger had predetermined that he would speak of Sir Charles to Molly; but the words came out in spite of himself.

‘No! not long. I never saw him before I came here—on Tuesday. But Lady Harriet told him to see that I did not get tired, for I wanted to come down; but you know I have not been strong. He is a cousin of Lady Harriet’s, and does all she tells him to do.’

‘Oh! he’s not handsome; but I believe he’s a very sensible man.’

‘Yes! I should think so. He is so silent though, that I can hardly judge.’

‘He bears a very high character in the county,’ said Roger, willing now to give him his full due.

Molly stood up.

‘I must go upstairs,’ she said; ‘I only sat down here for a minute or two because Lady Harriet bade me.’

‘Stop a little longer,’ said he. ‘This is really the pleasantest place; this basin of water-lilies gives one the idea, if not the sensation of coolness; besides—it seems so long since I saw you, and I’ve a message from my father to give you. He is very angry with you.’

‘Angry with me!’ said Molly in surprise.

‘Yes! He heard that you had come here for change of air; and he was offended that you hadn’t come to us—to the Hall, instead. He said that you should have remembered old friends!’

Molly took all this quite gravely, and did not at first notice the smile on his face.

‘Oh! I am so sorry!’ said she. ‘But will you please tell him how it all happened? Lady Harriet called the very day when it was settled that I was not to go to—’ Cynthia’s wedding, she was going to add, but she suddenly stopped short, and, blushing deeply, changed the expression, ‘go to London, and she planned it all in a minute, and convinced mamma and papa, and had her own way. There was really no resisting her.’

‘I think you will have to tell all this to my father yourself if you mean to make your peace. Why can you not come on to the Hall when you leave the Towers?’

To go in the cool manner suggested from one house to another, after the manner of a royal progress, was not at all according to Molly’s primitive home-keeping notions. She made answer,—

‘I should like it very much some time. But I must go home first. They will want me more than ever now—’

Again she felt herself touching on a sore subject, and stopped short. Roger became annoyed at her so constantly conjecturing what he must be feeling on the subject of Cynthia’s marriage. With sympathetic perception she had discerned that the idea must give him pain; and perhaps she also knew that he would dislike to show the pain; but she had not the presence of mind or ready wit to give a skilful turn to the conversation. All this annoyed Roger, he could hardly tell why. He determined to take the metaphorical bull by the horns. Until that was done, his footing with Molly would always be insecure; as it always is between two friends, who mutually avoid a subject to which their thoughts perpetually recur.

‘Ah, yes!’ said he. ‘Of course you must be of double importance now Miss Kirkpatrick has left you. I saw her marriage in The Times yesterday.’

His tone of voice was changed in speaking of her, but her name had been named between them, and that was the great thing to accomplish.

‘Still,’ he continued, ‘I think I must urge my father’s claim for a short visit, and all the more, because I can really see the apparent improvement in your health since I came—only yesterday. Besides, Molly,’ it was the old familiar Roger of former days who spoke now, ‘I think you could help us at home. Aimée is shy and awkward with my father, and he has never taken quite kindly to her,—yet I know they would like and value each other, if some one could but bring them together,—and it would be such a comfort to me if this could take place before I have to leave.’

‘To leave—are you going away again?’

‘Yes. Have you not heard? I didn’t complete my engagement. I’m going again in September for six months.’

‘I remember. But somehow I fancied—you seemed to have settled down into the old way at the Hall.’

‘So my father appears to think. But it is not likely I shall ever make it my home again; and that is partly the reason I want my father to adopt the notion of Aimée’s living with him. Ah, here are all the people coming back from their walk. However, I shall see you again; perhaps this afternoon we may get a little quiet time, for I’ve a great deal to consult you about.’

They separated then, and Molly went upstairs very happy; very full and warm at her heart; it was so pleasant to have Roger talking to her in this way, like a friend; she had once thought that she could never look upon the great brown-bearded celebrity in the former light of almost brotherly intimacy, but now it was all coming right. There was no opportunity for renewed confidences that afternoon. Molly went a quiet decorous drive as fourth with two dowagers and one spinster; but it was very pleasant to think that she should see him again at dinner, and again to-morrow. On the Sunday evening, as they all were sitting and loitering on the lawn before dinner, Roger went on with what he had to say about the position of his sister-in-law in his father’s house; the mutual bond between the mother and grandfather being the child; who was also, through jealousy, the bone of contention and the severance. There were many details to be given in order to make Molly quite understand the difficulty of the situations on both sides; and the young man and the girl became absorbed in what they were talking about, and wandered away into the shade of the long avenue. Lady Harriet separated herself from a group and came up to Lord Hollingford, who was sauntering a little apart, and putting her arm within his with the familiarity of a favourite sister, she said—

‘Don’t you think that your pattern young man, and my favourite young woman, are finding out each other’s good qualities?’

He had not been observing as she had been.

‘Who do you mean?’ said he.

‘Look along the avenue; who are those?’

‘Mr. Hamley and—is it not Miss Gibson? I can’t quite make out. Oh! if you’re letting your fancy run off in that direction, I can tell you it’s quite waste of time. Roger Hamley is a man who will soon have a European reputation!’

‘That’s very possible, and yet it doesn’t make any difference in my opinion. Molly Gibson is capable of appreciating him.’

‘She is a very pretty, good little country-girl. I don’t mean to say anything against her, but—’

‘Remember the Charity Ball; you called her “unusually intelligent” after you had danced with her there. But, after all, we’re like the genie and the fairy in the Arabian Nights Entertainment, who each cried up the merits of the Prince Caramalzaman and the Princess Badoura.’

‘Hamley is not a marrying man.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know that he has very little private fortune, and I know that science is not a remunerative profession, if profession it can be called.’

‘Oh, if that’s all—a hundred things may happen—some one may leave him a fortune—or this tiresome little heir that nobody wanted may die.’

‘Hush, Harriet, that’s the worst of allowing yourself to plan far ahead for the future; you are sure to contemplate the death of some one, and to reckon upon the contingency as affecting events.’

‘As if lawyers were not always doing something of the kind.’

‘Leave it to those to whom it is necessary. I dislike planning marriages, or looking forward to deaths, about equally.’

‘You are getting very prosaic and tiresome, Hollingford!’

‘Only getting!’ said he, smiling. ‘I thought you had always looked upon me as a tiresome matter-of-fact fellow.’

‘Now, if you’re going to fish for a compliment I am gone. Only remember my prophecy when my vision comes to pass; or make a bet, and whoever wins shall spend the money on a present to Prince Caramalzaman or Princess Badoura, as the case may be.’

Lord Hollingford remembered his sister’s words as he heard Roger say to Molly as he was leaving the Towers on the following day,—

‘Then I may tell my father that, you will come and pay him a visit next week? You don’t know what pleasure it will give him.’ He had been on the point of saying will give us, but he had an instinct which told him it was as well to consider Molly’s promised visit as exclusively made to his father.

The next day Molly went home; she was astonished at herself for being so sorry to leave the Towers; and found it difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the long-fixed idea of the house, as a place wherein to suffer all a child’s tortures of dismay and forlornness, with her new and fresh conception. She had gained health, she had had pleasure, the faint fragrance of a new and unacknowledged hope had stolen into her life. No wonder that Mr. Gibson was struck with the improvement in her looks, and Mrs. Gibson impressed with her increased grace.

‘Ah Molly,’ said she, ‘it’s really wonderful to see what a little good society will do for a girl. Even a week of association with such people as one meets with at the Towers is, as somebody said of a lady of rank whose name I have forgotten, “a polite education in itself.” There is something quite different about you—a je ne sais quoi^ei—that would tell me at once that you have been mingling with the aristocracy. With all her charms, it was what my darling Cynthia wanted; not that Mr. Henderson thought so, for a more devoted lover can hardly be conceived. He absolutely bought her a parure of diamonds. I was obliged to say to him that I had studied to preserve her simplicity of taste, and that he must not corrupt her with too much luxury. But I was rather disappointed at their going off without a maid. It was the one blemish in the arrangements—the spot in the sun. Dear Cynthia, when I think of her, I do assure you, Molly, I make it my nightly prayer that I may be able to find you just such another husband. And all this time you have never told me who you met at the Towers?’

Molly ran over a list of names. Roger Hamley’s came last.

‘Upon my word! That young man is pushing his way up!’

‘The Hamleys are a far older family than the Cumnors,’ said Molly, flushing up.

‘Now, Molly, I can’t have you democratic. Rank is a great distinction. It is quite enough to have dear papa with democratic tendencies. But we won’t begin to quarrel. Now that you and I are left alone, we ought to be bosom friends, and I hope we shall be. Roger Hamley did not say much about that unfortunate little Osborne Hamley, I suppose?’

‘On the contrary, he says his father dotes on the child; and he seemed very proud of him, himself.’

‘I thought the squire must be getting very much infatuated with something. I dare say the French mother takes care of that. Why! he has scarcely taken any notice of you for this month or more, and before that you were everything.’

It was about six weeks since Cynthia’s engagement had become publicly known, and that might have had something to do with the squire’s desertion, Molly thought. But she said,—

‘The squire has sent me an invitation to go and stay there next week if you have no objection, mamma. They seem to want a companion for Mrs. Osborne Hamley, who is not very strong.’

‘I can hardly tell what to say,—I don’t like your having to associate with a Frenchwoman of doubtful rank; and I can’t bear the thought of losing my child—my only daughter now. I did ask Helen Kirkpatrick, but she can’t come for some time; and the house is going to be altered. Papa has consented to build me another room at last, for Cynthia and Mr. Henderson will, of course, come and see us; we shall have many more visitors, I expect, and your bedroom will make a capital lumber-room; and Maria wants a week’s holiday. I am always so unwilling to put any obstacles in the way of one’s pleasure, —weakly unwilling, I believe,—but it certainly would be very convenient to have you out of the house for a few days; so, for once, I will waive my own wish for your companionship, and plead your cause with papa.’

Miss Brownings came to call and hear the double batch of news. Mrs. Goodenough had come the very day on which they had returned from Miss Hornblower’s, to tell them the astounding fact of Molly Gibson having gone on a visit to the Towers; not to come back at night, but to sleep there, to be there for two or three days, just as if she was a young lady of quality. So Miss Brownings came to hear all the details of the wedding from Mrs. Gibson, and the history of Molly’s visit at the Towers as well. But Mrs. Gibson did not like this divided interest, and some of her old jealousy of Molly’s intimacy at the Towers had returned.

‘Now, Molly,’ said Miss Browning, ‘let us hear how you behaved among the great folks. You must not be set up with all their attention; remember that they pay it to you for your good father’s sake.’

‘Molly is, I think, quite aware,’ put in Mrs. Gibson, in her most soft and languid tone, ‘that she owes her privilege of visiting at such a house to Lady Cumnor’s kind desire to set my mind quite at liberty at the time of Cynthia’s marriage. As soon as ever I had returned home, Molly came back; indeed, I should not have thought it right to let her intrude upon their kindness beyond what was absolutely necessary.

Molly felt extremely uncomfortable at all this, although perfectly aware of the entire inaccuracy of the statement.

‘Well, but, Molly!’ said Miss Browning, ‘never mind whether you went there on your own merits, or your worthy father’s merits, or Mrs. Gibson’s merits; but tell us what you did when you were there.’

So Molly began an account of their sayings and doings, which she could have made far more interesting to Miss Browning and Miss Phoebe if she had not been conscious of her stepmother’s critical listening. She had to tell it all with a mental squint; the surest way to spoil a narration. She was also subject to Mrs. Gibson’s perpetual corrections of little statements which she knew to be facts. But what vexed her most of all was Mrs. Gibson’s last speech before the Miss Brownings left.

‘Molly has fallen into rambling ways with this visit of hers, of which she makes so much, as if nobody had ever been in a great house but herself. She is going to Hamley Hall next week—getting quite dissipated, in fact.’

Yet to Mrs. Goodenough, the next caller on the same errand of congratulation, Mrs. Gibson’s tone was quite different. There had always been a tacit antagonism between the two, and the conversation now ran as follows:—

Mrs. Goodenough began,

‘Well! Mrs. Gibson, I suppose I must wish you joy of Miss Cynthia’s marriage; I should condole with some mothers as had lost their daughters; but you’re not one of that sort, I reckon.’

Now, as Mrs. Gibson was not quite sure to which ‘sort’ of mothers the greatest credit was to be attached, she found it a little difficult how to frame her reply.

‘Dear Cynthia!’ she said. ‘One can’t but rejoice in her happiness! And yet—’ she ended her sentence by sighing.

‘Aye. She was a young woman as would always have her followers; for, to tell the truth, she was as pretty a creature as ever I saw in my life. And all the more she needed skilful guidance. I’m sure I, for one, am as glad as can be she’s done so well by herself Folks say Mr. Henderson has a handsome private fortune over and above what he makes by the law.’

‘There is no fear but that my Cynthia will have everything this world can give!’ said Mrs. Gibson with dignity.

‘Well, well! she was always a bit of a favourite of mine; and as I was saying to my granddaughter there’ (for she was accompanied by a young lady, who looked keenly to the prospect of some wedding-cake), ‘I was never one of those who ran her down, and called her a flirt and a jilt. I’m glad to hear she’s like to be so well off. And now, I suppose, you’ll be turning your mind to doing something for Miss Molly there?’

‘If you mean by that, doing anything that can, by hastening her marriage, deprive me of the company of one who is like my own child, you are very much mistaken, Mrs. Goodenough. And pray remember, I am the last person in the world to match-make. Cynthia made Mr. Henderson’s acquaintance at her uncle’s in London.’

‘Aye! I thought her cousins was very often ill, and needing her nursing, and you were very keen she should be of use. I’m not saying but what it’s right in a mother; I’m only putting in a word for Miss Molly.’

‘Thank you, Mrs. Goodenough,’ said Molly, half angry, half laughing. ‘When I want to be married, I’ll not trouble mamma. I’ll look out for myself.’

‘Molly is becoming so popular, I hardly know how we shall keep her at home,’ said Mrs. Gibson. ‘I miss her sadly, but, as I said to Mr. Gibson, let young people have change, and see a little of the world while they are young. It has been a great advantage to her, being at the Towers while so many clever and distinguished people were there. I can already see a difference in her tone and conversation: an elevation in her choice of subjects. And now she is going to Hamley Hall. I can assure you I feel quite a proud mother, when I see how she is sought after. And my other daughter—my Cynthia—writing such letters from Paris!’

‘Things is a deal changed since my days, for sure,’ said Mrs. Goodenough. ‘So, perhaps, I’m no judge. When I was married first, him and me went in a post-chaise to his father’s house, a matter of twenty mile off at the outside; and sat down to as good a supper amongst his friends and relations as you’d wish to see. And that was my first wedding jaunt. My second was when I better knowed my worth as a bride, and thought that now or never I must see London. But I were reckoned a very extravagant sort of a body to go so far, and spend my money, though Jerry had left me uncommon well off. But now young folks go off to Paris, and think nothing of the cost: and it’s well if wilful waste don’t make woeful want before they die. But I’m thankful somewhat is being done for Miss Molly’s chances, as I said afore. It’s not quite what I should have liked to have done for my Anna-Maria, though. But times are changed, as I said just now.’

CHAPTER 59

Molly Gibson at Hamley Hall

The conversation ended there for the time. Wedding-cake and wine were brought in, and it was Molly’s duty to serve them out. But those last words of Mrs. Goodenough’s tingled in her ears, and she tried to interpret them to her own satisfaction in any way but the obvious one. And that, too, was destined to be confirmed; for directly after Mrs. Goodenough took her leave, Mrs. Gibson desired Molly to carry away the tray to a table close to an open corner window, where the things might be placed in readiness for any future callers; and underneath this open window went the path from the house-door to the road. Molly heard Mrs. Goodenough saying to her granddaughter,—

‘That Mrs. Gibson is a deep ’un. There’s Mr. Roger Hamley as like as not to have the Hall estate, and she sends Molly a-visiting—’ and then she passed out of hearing. Molly could have burst out crying, with a full sudden conviction of what Mrs. Goodenough had been alluding to: her sense of the impropriety of Molly’s going to visit at the Hall when Roger was at home. To be sure, Mrs. Goodenough was a commonplace, unrefined woman. Mrs. Gibson did not seem to have even noticed the allusion. Mr. Gibson took it all as a matter of course that Molly should go to the Hall as simply now as she had done before. Roger had spoken of it in so straightforward a manner as showed he had no conception of its being an impropriety,—this visit,—this visit until now so happy a subject of anticipation. Molly felt as if she could never speak to any one of the idea to which Mrs. Goodenough’s words had given rise; as if she could never be the first to suggest the notion of impropriety, which pre-supposed what she blushed to think of. Then she tried to comfort herself by reasoning. If it had been forward or indelicate, really improper in the slightest degree, who would have been so ready as her father to put his veto upon it? But reasoning was of no use after Mrs. Goodenough’s words had put fancies into Molly’s head. The more she bade these fancies begone the more they answered her (as Daniel O’Rourke did the man in the moon, when he bade Dan get off his seat on the sickle, and go into empty space):—‘The more ye ask us the more we won’t stir.’ One may smile at a young girl’s miseries of this description; but they are very real and stinging miseries to her. All that Molly could do was to resolve on a single eye to the dear old squire, and his mental and bodily comforts; to try and heal up any breaches which might have occurred between him and Aimée; and to ignore Roger as much as possible. Good Roger! Kind Roger! Dear Roger! It would be very hard to avoid him as much as was consistent with common politeness; but it would be right to do it; and when she was with him she must be as natural as possible, or he might observe some difference; but what was natural? How much ought she to avoid being with him? Would he even notice if she was more chary of her company, more calculating of her words? Alas! the simplicity of their intercourse was spoilt henceforwards! She made laws for herself; she resolved to devote herself to the squire and to Aimee, and to forget Mrs. Goodenough’s foolish speeches; but her perfect freedom was gone; and with it half her chance, that is to say, half her chance would have been lost over any strangers who had not known her before; they would probably have thought her stiff and awkward, and apt to say things and then retract them. But she was so different from her usual self that Roger noticed the change in her as soon as she arrived at the Hall. She had carefully measured out the days of her visit; they were to be exactly the same number as she had spent at the Towers. She feared lest if she stayed a shorter time the squire might be annoyed. Yet how charming the place looked in its early autumnal glow as she drove up! And there was Roger at the hall-door, waiting to receive her, watching for her coming. And then he retreated, apparently to summon his sister-in-law, who came now timidly forwards in her deep widow’s mourning, holding her boy in her arms as if to protect her shyness; but he struggled down, and ran towards the carriage, eager to greet his friend the coachman, and to obtain a promised ride. Roger did not say much himself; he wanted to make Aimée feel her place as daughter of the house; but she was too timid to speak much. And she only took Molly by the hand and led her into the drawing-room, where, as if by a sudden impulse of gratitude for all the tender nursing she had received during her illness, she put her arms round Molly, and kissed her long and well. And after that they came to be friends.

It was nearly lunch-time, and the squire always made his appearance at that meal more for the pleasure of seeing his grandson eat his dinner than for any hunger of his own. To-day Molly quickly saw the whole state of the family affairs. She thought that, even had Roger said nothing about them at the Towers, she should have seen that neither the father nor the daughter-in-law had as yet found the clue to each other’s character, although they had now been living for several months in the same house. Aimée seemed to forget her English in her nervousness; and to watch with the jealous eyes of a dissatisfied mother all the proceedings of the squire towards her little boy. They were not of the wisest kind, it must be owned; the child sipped the strong ale with evident relish, and clamoured for everything which he saw the others enjoying. Aimée could hardly attend to Molly for her anxiety as to what her boy was doing and eating; yet she said nothing. Roger took the end of the table opposite to that at which sat grandfather and grandchild. After the boy’s first wants were gratified the squire addressed himself to Molly.

‘Well! and so you can come here a-visiting though you have been among the grand folks. I thought you were going to cut us, Miss Molly, when I heard you was gone to the Towers. Couldn’t find any other place to stay at while father and mother were away, but an earl’s, eh?’

‘They asked me, and I went,’ said Molly; ‘now you’ve asked me, and I’ve come here.’

‘I think you might ha’ known you’d be always welcome here, without waiting for asking. Why, Molly! I look upon you as a kind of daughter more than madam there!’ dropping his voice a little, and perhaps supposing that the child’s babble would drown the signification of his words.

‘Nay, you needn’t look at me so pitifully, she doesn’t follow English readily.’

‘I think she does!’ said Molly, in a low voice—not looking up, however, for fear of catching another glimpse at Aimée’s sudden forlornness of expression and deepened colour. She felt grateful, as if for a personal favour, when she heard Roger speaking to Aimée the moment afterwards in the tender terms of brotherly friendliness; and presently these two were sufficiently engaged in a separate conversation to allow Molly and the squire to go on talking.

‘He’s a sturdy chap, isn’t he?’ said the squire, stroking the little Roger’s curly head. ‘And he can puff four puffs at grandpapa’s pipe without being sick, can’t he?’

‘I s’ant puff any more puffs,’ said the boy, resolutely. ‘Mamma says No. I s‘ant.’

‘That’s just like her!’ said the squire, dropping his voice this time, however. ‘As if it could do the child any harm!’

Molly made a point of turning the conversation from all personal subjects after this, and kept the squire talking about the progress of his drainage during the rest of lunch. He offered to take her to see it; and she acceded to the proposal, thinking, meantime, how little she need have anticipated the being thrown too intimately with Roger, who seemed to devote himself to his sister-in-law. But, in the evening, when Aimée had gone upstairs to put her boy to bed, and the squire was asleep in his easy chair, a sudden flush of memory brought Mrs. Goodenough’s words again to her mind. She was virtually tête-à-tête with Roger, as she had been dozens of times before, but now she could not help assuming an air of constraint; her eyes did not meet his in the old frank way; she took up a book at a pause in the conversation, and left him puzzled and annoyed at the change in her manner. And so it went on during all the time of her visit. If sometimes she forgot, and let herself go into all her old naturalness, by and by she checked herself, and became comparatively cold and reserved. Roger was pained at all this—more pained day after day; more anxious to discover the cause. Aimee, too, silently noticed how different Molly became in Roger’s presence. One day she could not help saying to Molly,—

‘Don’t you like Roger? You would, if you only knew how good he was! He is learned, but that is nothing; it is his goodness that one admires and loves.’

‘He is very good,’ said Molly. ‘I have known him long enough to know that.’

‘But you don’t think him agreeable? He is not like my poor husband, to be sure; and you knew him well, too. Ah! tell me about him once again. When you first knew him? When his mother was alive?’

Molly had grown very fond of Aimée; when the latter was at her ease she had very charming and attaching ways; but feeling uneasy in her position in the squire’s house, she was almost repellent to him; and he, too, put on his worst side to her. Roger was most anxious to bring them together, and had several consultations with Molly as to the best means of accomplishing this end. As long as they talked upon this subject, she spoke to him in the quiet sensible manner which she inherited from her father; but when their discussions on this point were ended, she fell back into her piquant assumption of dignified reserve. It was very difficult to her to maintain this strange manner, especially when once or twice she fancied that it gave him pain; and she would go into her own room and suddenly burst into tears on these occasions, and wish that her visit was ended, and that she was once again in the eventless tranquillity of her own home. Yet presently her fancy changed, and she clung to the swiftly passing hours, as if she would still retain the happiness of each. For, unknown to her, Roger was exerting himself to make her visit pleasant. He was not willing to appear as the instigator of all the little plans for each day, for he felt as if, somehow, he did not hold the same place in her regard as formerly. Still, one day Aimée suggested a nutting expedition—another day they gave little Roger the unheard-of pleasure of tea out-of-doors—there was something else agreeable for a third; and it was Roger who arranged all these simple pleasures—such as he knew Molly would enjoy. But to her he only appeared as the ready forwarder of Aimée’s devices. The week was nearly gone, when one morning the squire found Roger sitting in the old library—with a book before him, it is true, but so deep in thought that he was evidently startled by his father’s unexpected entrance.

‘I thought I should find thee here, my lad! We’ll have the old room done up again before winter; it smells musty enough, and yet I see it’s the place for thee! I want thee to go with me round the five-acre. I’m thinking of laying it down in grass. It’s time for you to be getting into the fresh air, you look quite woe-begone over books, books, books; there never was a thing like ’em for stealing a man’s health out of him!’

So Roger went out with his father, without saying many words till they were at some distance from the house. Then he brought out a sentence with such abruptness that he repaid his father for the start the latter had given him a quarter of an hour before.

‘Father, you remember I’m going out again to the Cape next month! You spoke of doing up the library. If it is for me, I shall be away all the winter.’

‘Can’t you get off it?’ pleaded his father. ‘I thought maybe you’d forgotten all about it.’

‘Not likely!’ said Roger, half smiling.

‘Well, but they might have found another man to finish up your work.’

‘No one can finish it but myself. Besides, an engagement is an engagement. When I wrote to Lord Hollingford to tell him I must come home, I promised to go out again for another six months.’

‘Aye. I know. And perhaps it will put it out of my mind. It will always be hard on me to part from thee. But I dare say it’s best for you.’

Roger’s colour deepened. ‘You are alluding to—to Miss Kirkpatrick. Mrs. Henderson I mean. Father, let me tell you once for all I think that was rather a hasty affair. I’m pretty sure now that we were not suited to each other. I was wretched when I got her letter—at the Cape I mean—but I believe it was for the best.’

‘That’s right. That’s my own boy,’ said the squire, turning round, and shaking hands with his son with vehemence. ‘And now I’ll tell you what I heard the other day, when I was at the magistrates’ meeting. They were all saying she had jilted Preston.’

‘I don’t want to hear anything against her; she may have her faults, but I can never forget how I once loved her.’

‘Well, well! Perhaps it’s right. I was not so bad about it, was I, Roger? Poor Osborne needn’t have been so secret with me. I asked your Miss Cynthia out here—and her mother and all—my bark is worse than my bite. For, if I had a wish on earth it was to see Osborne married as befitted one of an old stock, and he went and chose out this French girl, of no family at all, only a—’

‘Never mind what she was; look at what she is! I wonder you are not more taken with her humility and sweetness, father!’

‘I don’t even call her pretty,’ said the squire, uneasily, for he dreaded a repetition of the arguments which Roger had often used to make him give Aimée her proper due of affection and position. ‘Now your Miss Cynthia was pretty, I will say that for her, the baggage! and to think that when you two lads flew right in your father’s face, and picked out girls below you in rank and family, you should neither of you have set your fancies on my little Molly there. I dare say I should ha’ been angry enough at the time; but the lassie would ha’ found her way to my heart, as never this French lady, nor t’other one could ha’ done.’

Roger did not answer.

‘I don’t see why you mightn’t put up for her still. I’m humble enough now, and you’re not heir as Osborne was who married a servant-maid. Don’t you think you could turn your thoughts upon Molly Gibson, Roger?’

‘No!’ said Roger, shortly. ‘It’s too late—too late. Don’t let us talk any more of my marrying. Isn’t this the five-acre field?’ And soon he was discussing the relative values of meadow, arable and pasture land with his father, as heartily as if he had never known Molly, or loved Cynthia. But the squire was not in such good spirits, and went but heavily into the discussion. At the end of it he said d propos de bottes,^ej—

‘But don’t you think you could like her if you tried, Roger?’

Roger knew perfectly well to what his father was alluding, but for an instant he was on the point of pretending to misunderstand. At length, however, he said, in a low voice,—

‘I shall never try, father. Don’t let us talk any more about it. As I said before, it’s too late.’

The squire was like a child to whom some toy has been refused; from time to time the thought of his disappointment in this matter recurred to his mind; and then he took to blaming Cynthia as the primary cause of Roger’s present indifference to womankind.

It so happened that on Molly’s last morning at the Hall, she received her first letter from Cynthia—Mrs. Henderson. It was just before breakfast-time; Roger was out of doors, Aimee had not as yet come down; Molly was alone in the dining-room, where the table was already laid. She had just finished reading her letter when the squire came in, and she immediately and joyfully told him what the morning had brought to her. But when she saw the squire’s face, she could have bitten her tongue out for having named Cynthia’s name to him. He looked vexed and depressed.

‘I wish I might never hear of her again. I do. She’s been the bane of my Roger, that’s what she has. I haven’t slept half the night, and it’s all her fault. Why, there’s my boy saying now that he has no heart for ever marrying, poor lad! I wish it had been you, Molly, my lads had taken a fancy for. I told Roger so t’other day, and I said that for all you were beneath what I ever thought to see them marry,—well—it’s of no use—it’s too late, now, as he said. Only never let me hear that baggage’s name again, that’s all, and no offence to you either, lassie. I know you love the wench; but if you’ll take an old man’s word, you’re worth a score of her. I wish young men would think so too,’ he muttered as he went to the side-table to carve the ham, while Molly poured out the tea—her heart very hot all the time, and effectually silenced for a space. It was with the greatest difficulty that she could keep tears of mortification from falling. She felt altogether in a wrong position in that house, which had been like a home to her until this last visit. What with Mrs. Goodenough’s remarks, and now this speech of the squire’s, implying—at least to her susceptible imagination—that his father had proposed her as a wife to Roger, and that she had been rejected—she was more glad than she could express, or even think, that she was going home this very morning. Roger came in from his walk while she was in this state of feeling. He saw in an instant that something had distressed Molly; and he longed to have the old friendly right of asking her what it was. But she had effectually kept him at too great a distance during the last few days for him to feel at liberty to speak to her in the old straightforward brotherly way; especially now, when he perceived her efforts to conceal her feelings, and the way in which she drank her tea in feverish haste, and accepted bread only to crumble it about her plate, untouched. It was all that he could do to make talk under these circumstances; but he backed up her efforts as well as he could until Aimée came down, grave and anxious: her boy had not had a good night, and did not seem well; he had fallen into a feverish sleep now, or she could not have left him. Immediately the whole table was in a ferment. The squire pushed away his plate, and could eat no more; Roger was trying to extract a detail or a fact out of Aimée, who began to give way to tears. Molly quickly proposed that the carriage, which had been ordered to take her home at eleven, should come round immediately—she had everything ready packed up, she said,—and bring back her father at once. By leaving directly, she said it was probable they might catch him after he had returned from his morning visits in the town, and before he had set off on his more distant round. Her proposal was agreed to, and she went upstairs to put on her things. She came down all ready into the drawing-room, expecting to find Aimée and the squire there; but during her absence word had been brought to the anxious mother and grandfather that the child had wakened up in a panic, and both had rushed up to their darling. But Roger was in the drawing-room awaiting Molly, with a large bunch of the choicest flowers.

‘Look, Molly!’ said he, as she was on the point of leaving the room again, on finding him there alone. ‘I gathered these flowers for you before breakfast.’ He came to meet her reluctant advance.

‘Thank you!’ said she. ‘You are very kind. I am very much obliged to you.’

‘Then you must do something for me,’ said he, determined not to notice the restraint of her manner, and making the re-arrangement of the flowers which she held as a sort of link between them, so that she could not follow her impulse, and leave the room.