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Wives and Daughters

by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell · English · Gutenberg #4274 · 1,500,178 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Wives and Daughters

Author: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell


        
Release date: July 1, 2003 [eBook #4274]
                Most recently updated: February 20, 2025

Language: English

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Credits: Charles Aldarondo and Joseph E. Loewenstein


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WIVES AND DAUGHTERS ***

Editorial note:

      _Wives and Daughters_ was first published serially in the
      _Cornhill Magazine_ from August, 1864, to January, 1866.
      Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly in November, 1865. She had
      completed all but the last chapter, and in that sense the
      book, which many consider her masterpiece, is unfinished.
      The editor of the _Cornhill Magazine_, Frederick Greenwood,
      appended his comments about Mrs. Gaskell's intentions for
      the conclusion and about Mrs. Gaskell as a person. Those
      comments are included at the end of this e-book. _Wives
      and Daughters_ was first published in book form in 1866 by
      Smith, Elder.

      Both the _Cornhill_ serial and the Smith, Elder first
      edition had eighteen full-page illustrations by George
      du Maurier, and those are included in this e-book. The
      _Cornhill_ edition also had small illustrations at the
      beginning of seventeen chapters, and those too are
      included. The illustrations can be seen by viewing the
      HTML version of this file. See 4274-h.htm:
      https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4274/pg4274-images.html






WIVES AND DAUGHTERS.

An Every-Day Story.

by

Mrs. Gaskell

With Illustrations by George du Maurier


[Illustration: Molly's New Bonnet. (frontispiece)]




CONTENTS.

         I. THE DAWN OF A GALA DAY.
        II. A NOVICE AMONGST THE GREAT FOLK.
       III. MOLLY GIBSON'S CHILDHOOD.
        IV. MR. GIBSON'S NEIGHBOURS.
         V. CALF-LOVE.
        VI. A VISIT TO THE HAMLEYS.
       VII. FORESHADOWS OF LOVE PERILS.
      VIII. DRIFTING INTO DANGER.
        IX. THE WIDOWER AND THE WIDOW.
         X. A CRISIS.
        XI. MAKING FRIENDSHIP.
       XII. PREPARING FOR THE WEDDING.
      XIII. MOLLY GIBSON'S NEW FRIENDS.
       XIV. MOLLY FINDS HERSELF PATRONIZED.
        XV. THE NEW MAMMA.
       XVI. THE BRIDE AT HOME.
      XVII. TROUBLE AT HAMLEY HALL.
     XVIII. MR. OSBORNE'S SECRET.
       XIX. CYNTHIA'S ARRIVAL.
        XX. MRS. GIBSON'S VISITORS.
       XXI. THE HALF-SISTERS.
      XXII. THE OLD SQUIRE'S TROUBLES.
     XXIII. OSBORNE HAMLEY REVIEWS HIS POSITION.
      XXIV. MRS. GIBSON'S LITTLE DINNER.
       XXV. HOLLINGFORD IN A BUSTLE.
      XXVI. A CHARITY BALL.
     XXVII. FATHER AND SONS.
    XXVIII. RIVALRY.
      XXIX. BUSH-FIGHTING.
       XXX. OLD WAYS AND NEW WAYS.
      XXXI. A PASSIVE COQUETTE.
     XXXII. COMING EVENTS.
    XXXIII. BRIGHTENING PROSPECTS.
     XXXIV. A LOVER'S MISTAKE.
      XXXV. THE MOTHER'S MANOEUVRE.
     XXXVI. DOMESTIC DIPLOMACY.
    XXXVII. A FLUKE, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.
   XXXVIII. MR. KIRKPATRICK, Q.C.
     XXXIX. SECRET THOUGHTS OOZE OUT.
        XL. MOLLY GIBSON BREATHES FREELY.
       XLI. GATHERING CLOUDS.
      XLII. THE STORM BURSTS.
     XLIII. CYNTHIA'S CONFESSION.
      XLIV. MOLLY GIBSON TO THE RESCUE.
       XLV. CONFIDENCES.
      XLVI. HOLLINGFORD GOSSIPS.
     XLVII. SCANDAL AND ITS VICTIMS.
    XLVIII. AN INNOCENT CULPRIT.
      XLIX. MOLLY GIBSON FINDS A CHAMPION.
         L. CYNTHIA AT BAY.
        LI. "TROUBLES NEVER COME ALONE."
       LII. SQUIRE HAMLEY'S SORROW.
      LIII. UNLOOKED-FOR ARRIVALS.
       LIV. MOLLY GIBSON'S WORTH IS DISCOVERED.
        LV. AN ABSENT LOVER RETURNS.
       LVI. "OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE, AND ON WITH THE NEW."
      LVII. BRIDAL VISITS AND ADIEUX.
     LVIII. REVIVING HOPES AND BRIGHTENING PROSPECTS.
       LIX. MOLLY GIBSON AT HAMLEY HALL.
        LX. ROGER HAMLEY'S CONFESSION.
            CONCLUDING REMARKS. [By the Editor of _The
              Cornhill Magazine_.]



ILLUSTRATIONS

   MOLLY'S NEW BONNET.                              FRONTISPIECE.
   A LOVE LETTER.                                   CHAPTER V.
   V® VICTIS!                                       CHAPTER VIII.
   THE NEW MAMMA.                                   CHAPTER XI.
   UNWELCOME ATTENTIONS.                            CHAPTER XIV.
   SHAKSPEARE AND THE MUSICAL GLASSES.              CHAPTER XVI.
   FIRST IMPRESSIONS.                               CHAPTER XIX.
   ROGER IS INTRODUCED AND ENSLAVED.                CHAPTER XXI.
   "TU T'EN REPENTIRAS, COLIN."                     CHAPTER XXIV.
   "WHY, OSBORNE, IS IT YOU?"                       CHAPTER XXIX.
   THE BURNING OF THE GORSE.                        CHAPTER XXX.
   THE LAST TURNING.                                CHAPTER XXXIV.
   "OH! IT IS NO WONDER!"                           CHAPTER XXXIV.
   "I TRUST THIS WILL NEVER OCCUR AGAIN, CYNTHIA!"  CHAPTER XXXVII.
   THERE STOOD MR. PRESTON AND CYNTHIA.             CHAPTER XLII.
   LADY HARRIET ASKS ONE OR TWO QUESTIONS.          CHAPTER XLIX.
   "MAMAN, MAMAN!"                                  CHAPTER LIII.
   "CYNTHIA'S LAST LOVER."                          CHAPTER LVI.




CHAPTER I.

THE DAWN OF A GALA DAY.


[Illustration (untitled)]

To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was
a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there
was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room
there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl; wide awake
and longing to get up, but not daring to do so for fear of the unseen
power in the next room--a certain Betty, whose slumbers must not
be disturbed until six o'clock struck, when she wakened of herself
"as sure as clockwork," and left the household very little peace
afterwards. It was a June morning, and early as it was, the room was
full of sunny warmth and light.

On the drawers opposite to the little white dimity bed in which Molly
Gibson lay, was a primitive kind of bonnet-stand on which was hung a
bonnet, carefully covered over from any chance of dust with a large
cotton handkerchief, of so heavy and serviceable a texture that if
the thing underneath it had been a flimsy fabric of gauze and lace
and flowers, it would have been altogether "scomfished" (again to
quote from Betty's vocabulary). But the bonnet was made of solid
straw, and its only trimming was a plain white ribbon put over the
crown, and forming the strings. Still, there was a neat little
quilling inside, every plait of which Molly knew, for had she not
made it herself the evening before, with infinite pains? and was
there not a little blue bow in this quilling, the very first bit of
such finery Molly had ever had the prospect of wearing?

Six o'clock now! the pleasant, brisk ringing of the church bells told
that; calling every one to their daily work, as they had done for
hundreds of years. Up jumped Molly, and ran with her bare little feet
across the room, and lifted off the handkerchief and saw once again
the bonnet; the pledge of the gay bright day to come. Then to the
window, and after some tugging she opened the casement, and let in
the sweet morning air. The dew was already off the flowers in the
garden below, but still rising from the long hay-grass in the meadows
directly beyond. At one side lay the little town of Hollingford,
into a street of which Mr. Gibson's front door opened; and delicate
columns, and little puffs of smoke were already beginning to rise
from many a cottage chimney where some housewife was already up, and
preparing breakfast for the bread-winner of the family.

Molly Gibson saw all this, but all she thought about it was, "Oh! it
will be a fine day! I was afraid it never, never would come; or that,
if it ever came, it would be a rainy day!" Five-and-forty years ago,
children's pleasures in a country town were very simple, and Molly
had lived for twelve long years without the occurrence of any event
so great as that which was now impending. Poor child! it is true
that she had lost her mother, which was a jar to the whole tenour of
her life; but that was hardly an event in the sense referred to; and
besides, she had been too young to be conscious of it at the time.
The pleasure she was looking forward to to-day was her first share in
a kind of annual festival in Hollingford.

The little straggling town faded away into country on one side close
to the entrance-lodge of a great park, where lived my Lord and Lady
Cumnor: "the earl" and "the countess," as they were always called by
the inhabitants of the town; where a very pretty amount of feudal
feeling still lingered, and showed itself in a number of simple ways,
droll enough to look back upon, but serious matters of importance
at the time. It was before the passing of the Reform Bill, but a
good deal of liberal talk took place occasionally between two or
three of the more enlightened freeholders living in Hollingford;
and there was a great Tory family in the county who, from time to
time, came forward and contested the election with the rival Whig
family of Cumnor. One would have thought that the above-mentioned
liberal-talking inhabitants would have, at least, admitted the
possibility of their voting for the Hely-Harrison, and thus trying to
vindicate their independence. But no such thing. "The earl" was lord
of the manor, and owner of much of the land on which Hollingford was
built; he and his household were fed, and doctored, and, to a certain
measure, clothed by the good people of the town; their fathers'
grandfathers had always voted for the eldest son of Cumnor Towers,
and following in the ancestral track, every man-jack in the place
gave his vote to the liege lord, totally irrespective of such
chimeras as political opinion.

This was no unusual instance of the influence of the great
land-owners over humbler neighbours in those days before railways,
and it was well for a place where the powerful family, who thus
overshadowed it, were of so respectable a character as the Cumnors.
They expected to be submitted to, and obeyed; the simple worship of
the townspeople was accepted by the earl and countess as a right; and
they would have stood still in amazement, and with a horrid memory
of the French sansculottes who were the bugbears of their youth, had
any inhabitant of Hollingford ventured to set his will or opinions
in opposition to those of the earl. But, yielded all that obeisance,
they did a good deal for the town, and were generally condescending,
and often thoughtful and kind in their treatment of their vassals.
Lord Cumnor was a forbearing landlord; putting his steward a little
on one side sometimes, and taking the reins into his own hands now
and then, much to the annoyance of the agent, who was, in fact, too
rich and independent to care greatly for preserving a post where his
decisions might any day be overturned by my lord's taking a fancy
to go "pottering" (as the agent irreverently expressed it in the
sanctuary of his own home), which, being interpreted, meant that
occasionally the earl asked his own questions of his own tenants,
and used his own eyes and ears in the management of the smaller
details of his property. But his tenants liked my lord all the better
for this habit of his. Lord Cumnor had certainly a little time for
gossip, which he contrived to combine with the failing of personal
intervention between the old land-steward and the tenantry. But,
then, the countess made up by her unapproachable dignity for this
weakness of the earl's. Once a year she was condescending. She and
the ladies, her daughters, had set up a school; not a school after
the manner of schools now-a-days, where far better intellectual
teaching is given to the boys and girls of labourers and work-people
than often falls to the lot of their betters in worldly estate; but
a school of the kind we should call "industrial," where girls are
taught to sew beautifully, to be capital housemaids, and pretty fair
cooks, and, above all, to dress neatly in a kind of charity uniform
devised by the ladies of Cumnor Towers;--white caps, white tippets,
check aprons, blue gowns, and ready curtseys, and "please, ma'ams,"
being _de rigueur_.

Now, as the countess was absent from the Towers for a considerable
part of the year, she was glad to enlist the sympathy of the
Hollingford ladies in this school, with a view to obtaining their aid
as visitors during the many months that she and her daughters were
away. And the various unoccupied gentlewomen of the town responded to
the call of their liege lady, and gave her their service as required;
and along with it, a great deal of whispered and fussy admiration.
"How good of the countess! So like the dear countess--always thinking
of others!" and so on; while it was always supposed that no strangers
had seen Hollingford properly, unless they had been taken to the
countess's school, and been duly impressed by the neat little pupils,
and the still neater needlework there to be inspected. In return,
there was a day of honour set apart every summer, when with much
gracious and stately hospitality, Lady Cumnor and her daughters
received all the school visitors at the Towers, the great family
mansion standing in aristocratic seclusion in the centre of the large
park, of which one of the lodges was close to the little town. The
order of this annual festivity was this. About ten o'clock one of the
Towers' carriages rolled through the lodge, and drove to different
houses, wherein dwelt a woman to be honoured; picking them up by ones
or twos, till the loaded carriage drove back again through the ready
portals, bowled along the smooth tree-shaded road, and deposited its
covey of smartly-dressed ladies on the great flight of steps leading
to the ponderous doors of Cumnor Towers. Back again to the town;
another picking up of womankind in their best clothes, and another
return, and so on till the whole party were assembled either in the
house or in the really beautiful gardens. After the proper amount of
exhibition on the one part, and admiration on the other, had been
done, there was a collation for the visitors, and some more display
and admiration of the treasures inside the house. Towards four
o'clock, coffee was brought round; and this was a signal of the
approaching carriage that was to take them back to their own homes;
whither they returned with the happy consciousness of a well-spent
day, but with some fatigue at the long-continued exertion of behaving
their best, and talking on stilts for so many hours. Nor were
Lady Cumnor and her daughters free from something of the same
self-approbation, and something, too, of the same fatigue; the
fatigue that always follows on conscious efforts to behave as will
best please the society you are in.

For the first time in her life, Molly Gibson was to be included among
the guests at the Towers. She was much too young to be a visitor at
the school, so it was not on that account that she was to go; but it
had so happened that one day when Lord Cumnor was on a "pottering"
expedition, he had met Mr. Gibson, _the_ doctor of the neighbourhood,
coming out of the farm-house my lord was entering; and having some
small question to ask the surgeon (Lord Cumnor seldom passed any
one of his acquaintance without asking a question of some sort--not
always attending to the answer; it was his mode of conversation), he
accompanied Mr. Gibson to the out-building, to a ring in the wall of
which the surgeon's horse was fastened. Molly was there too, sitting
square and quiet on her rough little pony, waiting for her father.
Her grave eyes opened large and wide at the close neighbourhood and
evident advance of "the earl;" for to her little imagination the
grey-haired, red-faced, somewhat clumsy man, was a cross between an
arch-angel and a king.

"Your daughter, eh, Gibson?--nice little girl, how old? Pony wants
grooming though," patting it as he talked. "What's your name,
my dear? He's sadly behindhand with his rent, as I was saying,
but if he's really ill, I must see after Sheepshanks, who is a
hardish man of business. What's his complaint? You'll come to our
school-scrimmage on Thursday, little girl--what's-your-name? Mind you
send her, or bring her, Gibson; and just give a word to your groom,
for I'm sure that pony wasn't singed last year, now, was he? Don't
forget Thursday, little girl--what's-your-name?--it's a promise
between us, is it not?" And off the earl trotted, attracted by the
sight of the farmer's eldest son on the other side of the yard.

Mr. Gibson mounted, and he and Molly rode off. They did not speak
for some time. Then she said, "May I go, papa?" in rather an anxious
little tone of voice.

"Where, my dear?" said he, wakening up out of his own professional
thoughts.

"To the Towers--on Thursday, you know. That gentleman" (she was shy
of calling him by his title), "asked me."

"Would you like it, my dear? It has always seemed to me rather a
tiresome piece of gaiety--rather a tiring day, I mean--beginning so
early--and the heat, and all that."

"Oh, papa!" said Molly, reproachfully.

"You'd like to go then, would you?"

"Yes; if I may!--He asked me, you know. Don't you think I may?--he
asked me twice over."

"Well! we'll see--yes! I think we can manage it, if you wish it so
much, Molly."

Then they were silent again. By-and-by, Molly said,--

"Please, papa--I do wish to go,--but I don't care about it."

"That's rather a puzzling speech. But I suppose you mean you don't
care to go, if it will be any trouble to get you there. I can easily
manage it, however, so you may consider it settled. You'll want a
white frock, remember; you'd better tell Betty you're going, and
she'll see after making you tidy."

Now, there were two or three things to be done by Mr. Gibson, before
he could feel quite comfortable about Molly's going to the festival
at the Towers, and each of them involved a little trouble on his
part. But he was very willing to gratify his little girl; so the
next day he rode over to the Towers, ostensibly to visit some sick
housemaid, but, in reality, to throw himself in my lady's way, and
get her to ratify Lord Cumnor's invitation to Molly. He chose his
time, with a little natural diplomacy; which, indeed, he had often
to exercise in his intercourse with the great family. He rode into
the stable-yard about twelve o'clock, a little before luncheon-time,
and yet after the worry of opening the post-bag and discussing its
contents was over. After he had put up his horse, he went in by the
back-way to the house; the "House" on this side, the "Towers" at the
front. He saw his patient, gave his directions to the housekeeper,
and then went out, with a rare wild-flower in his hand, to find one
of the ladies Tranmere in the garden, where, according to his hope
and calculation, he came upon Lady Cumnor too,--now talking to her
daughter about the contents of an open letter which she held in her
hand, now directing a gardener about certain bedding-out plants.

"I was calling to see Nanny, and I took the opportunity of bringing
Lady Agnes the plant I was telling her about as growing on Cumnor
Moss."

"Thank you, so much, Mr. Gibson. Mamma, look! this is the _Drosera
rotundifolia_ I have been wanting so long."

"Ah! yes; very pretty I daresay, only I am no botanist. Nanny is
better, I hope? We can't have any one laid up next week, for the
house will be quite full of people,--and here are the Danbys waiting
to offer themselves as well. One comes down for a fortnight of quiet,
at Whitsuntide, and leaves half one's establishment in town, and as
soon as people know of our being here, we get letters without end,
longing for a breath of country air, or saying how lovely the Towers
must look in spring; and I must own, Lord Cumnor is a great deal to
blame for it all, for as soon as ever we are down here, he rides
about to all the neighbours, and invites them to come over and spend
a few days."

"We shall go back to town on Friday the 18th," said Lady Agnes, in a
consolatory tone.

"Ah, yes! as soon as we have got over the school visitors' affair.
But it is a week to that happy day."

"By the way!" said Mr. Gibson, availing himself of the good opening
thus presented, "I met my lord at the Cross-trees Farm yesterday, and
he was kind enough to ask my little daughter, who was with me, to be
one of the party here on Thursday; it would give the lassie great
pleasure, I believe." He paused for Lady Cumnor to speak.

"Oh, well! if my lord asked her, I suppose she must come, but I wish
he was not so amazingly hospitable! Not but what the little girl will
be quite welcome; only, you see, he met a younger Miss Browning the
other day, of whose existence I had never heard."

"She visits at the school, mamma," said Lady Agnes.

"Well, perhaps she does; I never said she did not. I knew there was
one visitor of the name of Browning; I never knew there were two,
but, of course, as soon as Lord Cumnor heard there was another, he
must needs ask her; so the carriage will have to go backwards and
forwards four times now to fetch them all. So your daughter can come
quite easily, Mr. Gibson, and I shall be very glad to see her for
your sake. She can sit bodkin with the Brownings, I suppose? You'll
arrange it all with them; and mind you get Nanny well up to her work
next week."

Just as Mr. Gibson was going away, Lady Cumnor called after him, "Oh!
by-the-by, Clare is here; you remember Clare, don't you? She was a
patient of yours, long ago."

"Clare," he repeated, in a bewildered tone.

"Don't you recollect her? Miss Clare, our old governess," said Lady
Agnes. "About twelve or fourteen years ago, before Lady Cuxhaven was
married."

"Oh, yes!" said he. "Miss Clare, who had the scarlet fever here; a
very pretty delicate girl. But I thought she was married!"

"Yes!" said Lady Cumnor. "She was a silly little thing, and did
not know when she was well off; we were all very fond of her, I'm
sure. She went and married a poor curate, and became a stupid Mrs.
Kirkpatrick; but we always kept on calling her 'Clare.' And now
he's dead, and left her a widow, and she is staying here; and we
are racking our brains to find out some way of helping her to a
livelihood without parting her from her child. She's somewhere about
the grounds, if you like to renew your acquaintance with her."

"Thank you, my lady. I'm afraid I cannot stop to-day. I have a long
round to go; I've stayed here too long as it is, I'm afraid."

Long as his ride had been that day, he called on the Miss Brownings
in the evening, to arrange about Molly's accompanying them to the
Towers. They were tall handsome women, past their first youth, and
inclined to be extremely complaisant to the widowed doctor.

"Eh dear! Mr. Gibson, but we shall be delighted to have her with us.
You should never have thought of asking us such a thing," said Miss
Browning the elder.

"I'm sure I'm hardly sleeping at nights for thinking of it," said
Miss Phoebe. "You know I've never been there before. Sister has
many a time; but somehow, though my name has been down on the
visitors' list these three years, the countess has never named me in
her note; and you know I could not push myself into notice, and go to
such a grand place without being asked; how could I?"

"I told Phoebe last year," said her sister, "that I was sure it was
only inadvertence, as one may call it, on the part of the countess,
and that her ladyship would be as hurt as any one when she didn't
see Phoebe among the school visitors; but Phoebe has got a delicate
mind, you see, Mr. Gibson, and all I could say she wouldn't go, but
stopped here at home; and it spoilt all my pleasure all that day,
I do assure you, to think of Phoebe's face, as I saw it over the
window-blinds, as I rode away; her eyes were full of tears, if you'll
believe me."

"I had a good cry after you was gone, Dorothy," said Miss Phoebe;
"but for all that, I think I was right in stopping away from where
I was not asked. Don't you, Mr. Gibson?"

"Certainly," said he. "And you see you are going this year; and last
year it rained."

"Yes! I remember! I set myself to tidy my drawers, to string myself
up, as it were; and I was so taken up with what I was about that
I was quite startled when I heard the rain beating against the
window-panes. 'Goodness me!' said I to myself, 'whatever will become
of sister's white satin shoes, if she has to walk about on soppy
grass after such rain as this?' for, you see, I thought a deal about
her having a pair of smart shoes; and this year she has gone and got
me a white satin pair just as smart as hers, for a surprise."

"Molly will know she's to put on her best clothes," said Miss
Browning. "We could perhaps lend her a few beads, or artificials, if
she wants them."

"Molly must go in a clean white frock," said Mr. Gibson, rather
hastily; for he did not admire the Miss Brownings' taste in dress,
and was unwilling to have his child decked up according to their
fancy; he esteemed his old servant Betty's as the more correct,
because the more simple. Miss Browning had just a shade of annoyance
in her tone as she drew herself up, and said, "Oh! very well. It's
quite right, I'm sure." But Miss Phoebe said, "Molly will look very
nice in whatever she puts on, that's certain."




CHAPTER II.

A NOVICE AMONGST THE GREAT FOLK.


At ten o'clock on the eventful Thursday the Towers' carriage began
its work. Molly was ready long before it made its first appearance,
although it had been settled that she and the Miss Brownings were not
to go until the last, or fourth, time of its coming. Her face had
been soaped, scrubbed, and shone brilliantly clean; her frills, her
frock, her ribbons were all snow-white. She had on a black mode cloak
that had been her mother's; it was trimmed round with rich lace, and
looked quaint and old-fashioned on the child. For the first time in
her life she wore kid gloves; hitherto she had only had cotton ones.
Her gloves were far too large for the little dimpled fingers, but as
Betty had told her they were to last her for years, it was all very
well. She trembled many a time, and almost turned faint once with the
long expectation of the morning. Betty might say what she liked about
a watched pot never boiling; Molly never ceased to watch the approach
through the winding street, and after two hours the carriage came
for her at last. She had to sit very forward to avoid crushing the
Miss Brownings' new dresses; and yet not too forward, for fear of
incommoding fat Mrs. Goodenough and her niece, who occupied the
front seat of the carriage; so that altogether the fact of sitting
down at all was rather doubtful, and to add to her discomfort, Molly
felt herself to be very conspicuously placed in the centre of the
carriage, a mark for all the observation of Hollingford. It was far
too much of a gala day for the work of the little town to go forward
with its usual regularity. Maid-servants gazed out of upper windows;
shopkeepers' wives stood on the door-steps; cottagers ran out, with
babies in their arms; and little children, too young to know how
to behave respectfully at the sight of an earl's carriage, huzzaed
merrily as it bowled along. The woman at the lodge held the gate
open, and dropped a low curtsey to the liveries. And now they were
in the Park; and now they were in sight of the Towers, and silence
fell upon the carriage-full of ladies, only broken by one faint
remark from Mrs. Goodenough's niece, a stranger to the town, as they
drew up before the double semicircle flight of steps which led to the
door of the mansion.

"They call that a perron, I believe, don't they?" she asked. But
the only answer she obtained was a simultaneous "hush." It was very
awful, as Molly thought, and she half wished herself at home again.
But she lost all consciousness of herself by-and-by when the party
strolled out into the beautiful grounds, the like of which she
had never even imagined. Green velvet lawns, bathed in sunshine,
stretched away on every side into the finely wooded park; if there
were divisions and ha-has between the soft sunny sweeps of grass, and
the dark gloom of the forest-trees beyond, Molly did not see them;
and the melting away of exquisite cultivation into the wilderness
had an inexplicable charm to her. Near the house there were walls
and fences; but they were covered with climbing roses, and rare
honeysuckles and other creepers just bursting into bloom. There were
flower-beds, too, scarlet, crimson, blue, orange; masses of blossom
lying on the greensward. Molly held Miss Browning's hand very tight
as they loitered about in company with several other ladies, and
marshalled by a daughter of the Towers, who seemed half amused at the
voluble admiration showered down upon every possible thing and place.
Molly said nothing, as became her age and position, but every now and
then she relieved her full heart by drawing a deep breath, almost
like a sigh. Presently they came to the long glittering range of
greenhouses and hothouses, and an attendant gardener was there to
admit the party. Molly did not care for this half so much as for
the flowers in the open air; but Lady Agnes had a more scientific
taste, she expatiated on the rarity of this plant, and the mode of
cultivation required by that, till Molly began to feel very tired,
and then very faint. She was too shy to speak for some time; but at
length, afraid of making a greater sensation if she began to cry, or
if she fell against the stands of precious flowers, she caught at
Miss Browning's hand, and gasped out--

"May I go back, out into the garden? I can't breathe here!"

"Oh, yes, to be sure, love. I daresay it's hard understanding for
you, love; but it's very fine and instructive, and a deal of Latin in
it too."

She turned hastily round not to lose another word of Lady Agnes'
lecture on orchids, and Molly turned back and passed out of the
heated atmosphere. She felt better in the fresh air; and unobserved,
and at liberty, went from one lovely spot to another, now in the open
park, now in some shut-in flower-garden, where the song of the birds,
and the drip of the central fountain, were the only sounds, and the
tree-tops made an enclosing circle in the blue June sky; she went
along without more thought as to her whereabouts than a butterfly
has, as it skims from flower to flower, till at length she grew
very weary, and wished to return to the house, but did not know
how, and felt afraid of encountering all the strangers who would be
there, unprotected by either of the Miss Brownings. The hot sun told
upon her head, and it began to ache. She saw a great wide-spreading
cedar-tree upon a burst of lawn towards which she was advancing, and
the black repose beneath its branches lured her thither. There was
a rustic seat in the shadow, and weary Molly sate down there, and
presently fell asleep.

She was startled from her slumbers after a time, and jumped to her
feet. Two ladies were standing by her, talking about her. They were
perfect strangers to her, and with a vague conviction that she had
done something wrong, and also because she was worn-out with hunger,
fatigue, and the morning's excitement, she began to cry.

"Poor little woman! She has lost herself; she belongs to some of the
people from Hollingford, I have no doubt," said the oldest-looking of
the two ladies; she who appeared to be about forty, though she did
not really number more than thirty years. She was plain-featured, and
had rather a severe expression on her face; her dress was as rich as
any morning dress could be; her voice deep and unmodulated,--what in
a lower rank of life would have been called gruff; but that was not a
word to apply to Lady Cuxhaven, the eldest daughter of the earl and
countess. The other lady looked much younger, but she was in fact
some years the elder; at first sight Molly thought she was the most
beautiful person she had ever seen, and she was certainly a very
lovely woman. Her voice, too, was soft and plaintive, as she replied
to Lady Cuxhaven,--

"Poor little darling! she is overcome by the heat, I have no
doubt--such a heavy straw bonnet, too. Let me untie it for you, my
dear."

Molly now found voice to say--"I am Molly Gibson, please. I came here
with Miss Brownings;" for her great fear was that she should be taken
for an unauthorized intruder.

"Miss Brownings?" said Lady Cuxhaven to her companion, as if
inquiringly.

"I think they were the two tall large young women that Lady Agnes was
talking about."

"Oh, I daresay. I saw she had a number of people in tow;" then
looking again at Molly, she said, "Have you had anything to eat,
child, since you came? You look a very white little thing; or is it
the heat?"

"I have had nothing to eat," said Molly, rather piteously; for,
indeed, before she fell asleep she had been very hungry.

The two ladies spoke to each other in a low voice; then the elder
said in a voice of authority, which, indeed, she had always used in
speaking to the other, "Sit still here, my dear; we are going to the
house, and Clare shall bring you something to eat before you try to
walk back; it must be a quarter of a mile at least." So they went
away, and Molly sat upright, waiting for the promised messenger. She
did not know who Clare might be, and she did not care much for food
now; but she felt as if she could not walk without some help. At
length she saw the pretty lady coming back, followed by a footman
with a small tray.

"Look how kind Lady Cuxhaven is," said she who was called Clare. "She
chose you out this little lunch herself; and now you must try and eat
it, and you'll be quite right when you've had some food, darling--You
need not stop, Edwards; I will bring the tray back with me."

There was some bread, and some cold chicken, and some jelly, and
a glass of wine, and a bottle of sparkling water, and a bunch of
grapes. Molly put out her trembling little hand for the water; but
she was too faint to hold it. Clare put it to her mouth, and she took
a long draught and was refreshed. But she could not eat; she tried,
but she could not; her headache was too bad. Clare looked bewildered.
"Take some grapes, they will be the best for you; you must try and
eat something, or I don't know how I shall get you to the house."

"My head aches so," said Molly, lifting her heavy eyes wistfully.

"Oh, dear, how tiresome!" said Clare, still in her sweet gentle
voice, not at all as if she was angry, only expressing an obvious
truth. Molly felt very guilty and very unhappy. Clare went on, with a
shade of asperity in her tone: "You see, I don't know what to do with
you here if you don't eat enough to enable you to walk home. And I've
been out for these three hours trapesing about the grounds till I'm
as tired as can be, and missed my lunch and all." Then, as if a new
idea had struck her, she said,--"You lie back in that seat for a few
minutes, and try to eat the bunch of grapes, and I'll wait for you,
and just be eating a mouthful meanwhile. You are sure you don't want
this chicken?"

Molly did as she was bid, and leant back, picking languidly at the
grapes, and watching the good appetite with which the lady ate up the
chicken and jelly, and drank the glass of wine. She was so pretty and
so graceful in her deep mourning, that even her hurry in eating, as
if she was afraid of some one coming to surprise her in the act, did
not keep her little observer from admiring her in all she did.

"And now, darling, are you ready to go?" said she, when she had eaten
up everything on the tray. "Oh, come; you have nearly finished your
grapes; that's a good girl. Now, if you will come with me to the
side entrance, I will take you up to my own room, and you shall lie
down on the bed for an hour or two; and if you have a good nap your
headache will be quite gone."

So they set off, Clare carrying the empty tray, rather to Molly's
shame; but the child had enough work to drag herself along, and was
afraid of offering to do anything more. The "side entrance" was
a flight of steps leading up from a private flower-garden into a
private matted hall, or ante-room, out of which many doors opened,
and in which were deposited the light garden-tools and the bows and
arrows of the young ladies of the house. Lady Cuxhaven must have seen
their approach, for she met them in this hall as soon as they came
in.

"How is she now?" she asked; then glancing at the plates and glasses,
she added, "Come, I think there can't be much amiss! You're a good
old Clare, but you should have let one of the men fetch that tray in;
life in such weather as this is trouble enough of itself."

Molly could not help wishing that her pretty companion would have
told Lady Cuxhaven that she herself had helped to finish up the
ample luncheon; but no such idea seemed to come into her mind. She
only said,--"Poor dear! she is not quite the thing yet; has got a
headache, she says. I am going to put her down on my bed, to see if
she can get a little sleep."

Molly saw Lady Cuxhaven say something in a half-laughing manner
to "Clare," as she passed her; and the child could not keep from
tormenting herself by fancying that the words spoken sounded
wonderfully like "Over-eaten herself, I suspect." However, she felt
too poorly to worry herself long; the little white bed in the cool
and pretty room had too many attractions for her aching head. The
muslin curtains flapped softly from time to time in the scented air
that came through the open windows. Clare covered her up with a light
shawl, and darkened the room. As she was going away Molly roused
herself to say, "Please, ma'am, don't let them go away without me.
Please ask somebody to waken me if I go to sleep. I am to go back
with Miss Brownings."

"Don't trouble yourself about it, dear; I'll take care," said Clare,
turning round at the door, and kissing her hand to little anxious
Molly. And then she went away, and thought no more about it.
The carriages came round at half-past four, hurried a little by
Lady Cumnor, who had suddenly become tired of the business of
entertaining, and annoyed at the repetition of indiscriminating
admiration.

"Why not have both carriages out, mamma, and get rid of them all at
once?" said Lady Cuxhaven. "This going by instalments is the most
tiresome thing that could be imagined." So at last there had been a
great hurry and an unmethodical way of packing off every one at once.
Miss Browning had gone in the chariot (or "chawyot," as Lady Cumnor
called it;--it rhymed to her daughter, Lady Hawyot--or Harriet,
as the name was spelt in the _Peerage_), and Miss Phoebe had been
speeded along with several other guests, away in a great roomy family
conveyance, of the kind which we should now call an "omnibus." Each
thought that Molly Gibson was with the other, and the truth was, that
she lay fast asleep on Mrs. Kirkpatrick's bed--Mrs. Kirkpatrick _nŽe_
Clare.

The housemaids came in to arrange the room. Their talking aroused
Molly, who sat up on the bed, and tried to push back the hair from
her hot forehead, and to remember where she was. She dropped down on
her feet by the side of the bed, to the astonishment of the women,
and said,--"Please, how soon are we going away?"

"Bless us and save us! who'd ha' thought of any one being in the bed?
Are you one of the Hollingford ladies, my dear? They are all gone
this hour or more!"

"Oh, dear, what shall I do? That lady they call Clare promised to
waken me in time. Papa will so wonder where I am, and I don't know
what Betty will say."

The child began to cry, and the housemaids looked at each other
in some dismay and much sympathy. Just then, they heard Mrs.
Kirkpatrick's step along the passages, approaching. She was singing
some little Italian air in a low musical voice, coming to her bedroom
to dress for dinner. One housemaid said to the other, with a knowing
look, "Best leave it to her;" and they passed on to their work in the
other rooms.

Mrs. Kirkpatrick opened the door, and stood aghast at the sight of
Molly.

"Why, I quite forgot you!" she said at length. "Nay, don't cry;
you'll make yourself not fit to be seen. Of course I must take the
consequences of your over-sleeping yourself, and if I can't manage to
get you back to Hollingford to-night, you shall sleep with me, and
we'll do our best to send you home to-morrow morning."

"But papa!" sobbed out Molly. "He always wants me to make tea for
him; and I have no night-things."

"Well, don't go and make a piece of work about what can't be helped
now. I'll lend you night-things, and your papa must do without your
making tea for him to-night. And another time don't over-sleep
yourself in a strange house; you may not always find yourself among
such hospitable people as they are here. Why now, if you don't cry
and make a figure of yourself, I'll ask if you may come in to dessert
with Master Smythe and the little ladies. You shall go into the
nursery, and have some tea with them; and then you must come back
here and brush your hair and make yourself tidy. I think it is a very
fine thing for you to be stopping in such a grand house as this; many
a little girl would like nothing better."

During this speech she was arranging her toilette for dinner--taking
off her black morning gown; putting on her dressing-gown; shaking her
long soft auburn hair over her shoulders, and glancing about the room
in search of various articles of her dress,--a running flow of easy
talk came babbling out all the time.

"I have a little girl of my own, dear! I don't know what she would
not give to be staying here at Lord Cumnor's with me; but, instead
of that, she has to spend her holidays at school; and yet you are
looking as miserable as can be at the thought of stopping for
just one night. I really have been as busy as can be with those
tiresome--those good ladies, I mean, from Hollingford--and one can't
think of everything at a time."

Molly--only child as she was--had stopped her tears at the mention
of that little girl of Mrs. Kirkpatrick's, and now she ventured to
say,--

"Are you married, ma'am; I thought she called you Clare?"

In high good-humour Mrs. Kirkpatrick made reply:--"I don't look as
if I was married, do I? Every one is surprised. And yet I have been
a widow for seven months now: and not a grey hair on my head, though
Lady Cuxhaven, who is younger than I, has ever so many."

"Why do they call you 'Clare?'" continued Molly, finding her so
affable and communicative.

"Because I lived with them when I was Miss Clare. It is a pretty
name, isn't it? I married a Mr. Kirkpatrick; he was only a curate,
poor fellow; but he was of a very good family, and if three of his
relations had died without children I should have been a baronet's
wife. But Providence did not see fit to permit it; and we must always
resign ourselves to what is decreed. Two of his cousins married, and
had large families; and poor dear Kirkpatrick died, leaving me a
widow."

"You have a little girl?" asked Molly.

"Yes: darling Cynthia! I wish you could see her; she is my only
comfort now. If I have time I will show you her picture when we come
up to bed; but I must go now. It does not do to keep Lady Cumnor
waiting a moment, and she asked me to be down early, to help with
some of the people in the house. Now I shall ring this bell, and when
the housemaid comes, ask her to take you into the nursery, and to
tell Lady Cuxhaven's nurse who you are. And then you'll have tea with
the little ladies, and come in with them to dessert. There! I'm sorry
you've over-slept yourself, and are left here; but give me a kiss,
and don't cry--you really are rather a pretty child, though you've
not got Cynthia's colouring! Oh, Nanny, would you be so very kind as
to take this young lady--(what's your name, my dear? Gibson?),--Miss
Gibson, to Mrs. Dyson, in the nursery, and ask her to allow her to
drink tea with the young ladies there; and to send her in with them
to dessert. I'll explain it all to my lady."

Nanny's face brightened out of its gloom when she heard the name
Gibson; and, having ascertained from Molly that she was "the
doctor's" child, she showed more willingness to comply with Mrs.
Kirkpatrick's request than was usual with her.

Molly was an obliging girl, and fond of children; so, as long as she
was in the nursery, she got on pretty well, being obedient to the
wishes of the supreme power, and even very useful to Mrs. Dyson, by
playing at tricks, and thus keeping a little one quiet while its
brothers and sisters were being arrayed in gay attire,--lace and
muslin, and velvet, and brilliant broad ribbons.

"Now, miss," said Mrs. Dyson, when her own especial charge were all
ready, "what can I do for you? You have not got another frock here,
have you?" No, indeed, she had not; nor if she had had one, could it
have been of a smarter nature than her present thick white dimity.
So she could only wash her face and hands, and submit to the nurse's
brushing and perfuming her hair. She thought she would rather have
stayed in the park all night long, and slept under the beautiful
quiet cedar, than have to undergo the unknown ordeal of "going
down to dessert," which was evidently regarded both by children and
nurses as the event of the day. At length there was a summons from
a footman, and Mrs. Dyson, in a rustling silk gown, marshalled her
convoy, and set sail for the dining-room door.

There was a large party of gentlemen and ladies sitting round the
decked table, in the brilliantly lighted room. Each dainty little
child ran up to its mother, or aunt, or particular friend; but Molly
had no one to go to.

"Who is that tall girl in the thick white frock? Not one of the
children of the house, I think?"

The lady addressed put up her glass, gazed at Molly, and dropped it
in an instant. "A French girl, I should imagine. I know Lady Cuxhaven
was inquiring for one to bring up with her little girls, that they
might get a good accent early. Poor little woman, she looks wild
and strange!" And the speaker, who sate next to Lord Cumnor, made a
little sign to Molly to come to her; Molly crept up to her as to the
first shelter; but when the lady began talking to her in French, she
blushed violently, and said in a very low voice,--

"I don't understand French. I'm only Molly Gibson, ma'am."

"Molly Gibson!" said the lady, out loud; as if that was not much of
an explanation.

Lord Cumnor caught the words and the tone.

"Oh, ho!" said he. "Are you the little girl who has been sleeping in
my bed?"

He imitated the deep voice of the fabulous bear, who asks this
question of the little child in the story; but Molly had never read
the "Three Bears," and fancied that his anger was real; she trembled
a little, and drew nearer to the kind lady who had beckoned her as
to a refuge. Lord Cumnor was very fond of getting hold of what he
fancied was a joke, and working his idea threadbare; so all the time
the ladies were in the room he kept on his running fire at Molly,
alluding to the Sleeping Beauty, the Seven Sleepers, and any other
famous sleeper that came into his head. He had no idea of the misery
his jokes were to the sensitive girl, who already thought herself
a miserable sinner, for having slept on, when she ought to have
been awake. If Molly had been in the habit of putting two and two
together, she might have found an excuse for herself, by remembering
that Mrs. Kirkpatrick had promised faithfully to awaken her in time;
but all the girl thought of was, how little they wanted her in this
grand house; how she must seem like a careless intruder who had no
business there. Once or twice she wondered where her father was, and
whether he was missing her; but the thought of the familiar happiness
of home brought such a choking in her throat, that she felt she must
not give way to it, for fear of bursting out crying; and she had
instinct enough to feel that, as she was left at the Towers, the less
trouble she gave, the more she kept herself out of observation, the
better.

She followed the ladies out of the dining-room, almost hoping that
no one would see her. But that was impossible, and she immediately
became the subject of conversation between the awful Lady Cumnor and
her kind neighbour at dinner.

"Do you know, I thought this young lady was French when I first saw
her? she has got the black hair and eyelashes, and grey eyes, and
colourless complexion which one meets with in some parts of France,
and I know Lady Cuxhaven was trying to find a well-educated girl who
would be a pleasant companion to her children."

"No!" said Lady Cumnor, looking very stern, as Molly thought. "She
is the daughter of our medical man at Hollingford; she came with
the school visitors this morning, and she was overcome by the heat
and fell asleep in Clare's room, and somehow managed to over-sleep
herself, and did not waken up till all the carriages were gone. We
will send her home to-morrow morning, but for to-night she must stay
here, and Clare is kind enough to say she may sleep with her."

There was an implied blame running through this speech, that Molly
felt like needle-points all over her. Lady Cuxhaven came up at this
moment. Her tone was as deep, her manner of speaking as abrupt and
authoritative, as her mother's, but Molly felt the kinder nature
underneath.

"How are you now, my dear? You look better than you did under the
cedar-tree. So you're to stop here to-night? Clare, don't you think
we could find some of those books of engravings that would interest
Miss Gibson."

Mrs. Kirkpatrick came gliding up to the place where Molly stood; and
began petting her with pretty words and actions, while Lady Cuxhaven
turned over heavy volumes in search of one that might interest the
girl.

"Poor darling! I saw you come into the dining-room, looking so shy;
and I wanted you to come near me, but I could not make a sign to you,
because Lord Cuxhaven was speaking to me at the time, telling me
about his travels. Ah, here is a nice book--_Lodge's Portraits_; now
I'll sit by you and tell you who they all are, and all about them.
Don't trouble yourself any more, dear Lady Cuxhaven; I'll take charge
of her; pray leave her to me!"

Molly grew hotter and hotter as these last words met her ear. If
they would only leave her alone, and not labour at being kind to
her; would "not trouble themselves" about her! These words of Mrs.
Kirkpatrick's seemed to quench the gratitude she was feeling to Lady
Cuxhaven for looking for something to amuse her. But, of course, it
was a trouble, and she ought never to have been there.

By-and-by, Mrs. Kirkpatrick was called away to accompany Lady Agnes'
song; and then Molly really had a few minutes' enjoyment. She could
look round the room, unobserved, and, sure, never was any place out
of a king's house so grand and magnificent. Large mirrors, velvet
curtains, pictures in their gilded frames, a multitude of dazzling
lights decorated the vast saloon, and the floor was studded with
groups of ladies and gentlemen, all dressed in gorgeous attire.
Suddenly Molly bethought her of the children whom she had accompanied
into the dining-room, and to whose ranks she had appeared to
belong,--where were they? Gone to bed an hour before, at some quiet
signal from their mother. Molly wondered if she might go, too--if
she could ever find her way back to the haven of Mrs. Kirkpatrick's
bedroom. But she was at some distance from the door; a long way from
Mrs. Kirkpatrick, to whom she felt herself to belong more than to any
one else. Far, too, from Lady Cuxhaven, and the terrible Lady Cumnor,
and her jocose and good-natured lord. So Molly sate on, turning over
pictures which she did not see; her heart growing heavier and heavier
in the desolation of all this grandeur. Presently a footman entered
the room, and after a moment's looking about him, he went up to Mrs.
Kirkpatrick, where she sate at the piano, the centre of the musical
portion of the company, ready to accompany any singer, and smiling
pleasantly as she willingly acceded to all requests. She came now
towards Molly, in her corner, and said to her,--

"Do you know, darling, your papa has come for you, and brought your
pony for you to ride home; so I shall lose my little bedfellow, for
I suppose you must go?"

Go! was there a question of it in Molly's mind, as she stood up
quivering, sparkling, almost crying out loud. She was brought to her
senses, though, by Mrs. Kirkpatrick's next words.

"You must go and wish Lady Cumnor good-night, you know, my dear, and
thank her ladyship for her kindness to you. She is there, near that
statue, talking to Mr. Courtenay."

Yes! she was there--forty feet away--a hundred miles away! All that
blank space had to be crossed; and then a speech to be made!

"Must I go?" asked Molly, in the most pitiful and pleading voice
possible.

"Yes; make haste about it; there is nothing so formidable in it, is
there?" replied Mrs. Kirkpatrick, in a sharper voice than before,
aware that they were wanting her at the piano, and anxious to get the
business in hand done as soon as possible.

Molly stood still for a minute, then, looking up, she said, softly,--

"Would you mind coming with me, please?"

"No! not I!" said Mrs. Kirkpatrick, seeing that her compliance was
likely to be the most speedy way of getting through the affair; so
she took Molly's hand, and, on the way, in passing the group at the
piano, she said, smiling, in her pretty genteel manner,--

"Our little friend here is shy and modest, and wants me to accompany
her to Lady Cumnor to wish good-night; her father has come for her,
and she is going away."

Molly did not know how it was afterwards, but she pulled her hand out
of Mrs. Kirkpatrick's on hearing these words, and going a step or
two in advance came up to Lady Cumnor, grand in purple velvet, and
dropping a curtsey, almost after the fashion of the school-children,
she said,--

"My lady, papa is come, and I am going away; and, my lady, I wish
you good-night, and thank you for your kindness. Your ladyship's
kindness, I mean," she said, correcting herself as she remembered
Miss Browning's particular instructions as to the etiquette to be
observed to earls and countesses, and their honourable progeny, as
they were given that morning on the road to the Towers.

She got out of the saloon somehow; she believed afterwards, on
thinking about it, that she had never bidden good-by to Lady
Cuxhaven, or Mrs. Kirkpatrick, or "all the rest of them," as she
irreverently styled them in her thoughts.

Mr. Gibson was in the housekeeper's room, when Molly ran in, rather
to the stately Mrs. Brown's discomfiture. She threw her arms round
her father's neck. "Oh, papa, papa, papa! I am so glad you have
come;" and then she burst out crying, stroking his face almost
hysterically as if to make sure he was there.

"Why, what a noodle you are, Molly! Did you think I was going to give
up my little girl to live at the Towers all the rest of her life? You
make as much work about my coming for you, as if you thought I had.
Make haste, now, and get on your bonnet. Mrs. Brown, may I ask you
for a shawl, or a plaid, or a wrap of some kind to pin about her for
a petticoat?"

He did not mention that he had come home from a long round not half
an hour before, a round from which he had returned dinnerless and
hungry; but, on finding that Molly had not come back from the Towers,
he had ridden his tired horse round by Miss Brownings', and found
them in self-reproachful, helpless dismay. He would not wait to
listen to their tearful apologies; he galloped home, had a fresh
horse and Molly's pony saddled, and though Betty called after him
with a riding-skirt for the child, when he was not ten yards from his
own stable-door, he refused to turn back for it, but went off, as
Dick the stableman said, "muttering to himself awful."

Mrs. Brown had her bottle of wine out, and her plate of cake, before
Molly came back from her long expedition to Mrs. Kirkpatrick's room,
"pretty nigh on to a quarter of a mile off," as the housekeeper
informed the impatient father, as he waited for his child to come
down arrayed in her morning's finery with the gloss of newness worn
off. Mr. Gibson was a favourite in all the Towers' household, as
family doctors generally are; bringing hopes of relief at times
of anxiety and distress; and Mrs. Brown, who was subject to gout,
especially delighted in petting him whenever he would allow her. She
even went out into the stable-yard to pin Molly up in the shawl, as
she sate upon the rough-coated pony, and hazarded the somewhat safe
conjecture,--

"I daresay she'll be happier at home, Mr. Gibson," as they rode away.

Once out into the park Molly struck her pony, and urged him on as
hard as he would go. Mr. Gibson called out at last:

"Molly! we're coming to the rabbit-holes; it's not safe to go at such
a pace. Stop." And as she drew rein he rode up alongside of her.

"We're getting into the shadow of the trees, and it's not safe riding
fast here."

"Oh! papa, I never was so glad in all my life. I felt like a lighted
candle when they're putting the extinguisher on it."

"Did you? How d'ye know what the candle feels?"

"Oh, I don't know, but I did." And again, after a pause she
said,--"Oh, I am so glad to be here! It is so pleasant riding here in
the open, free, fresh air, crushing out such a good smell from the
dewy grass. Papa! are you there? I can't see you."

He rode close up alongside of her: he was not sure but what she might
be afraid of riding in the dark shadows, so he laid his hand upon
hers.

"Oh! I am so glad to feel you," squeezing his hand hard. "Papa, I
should like to get a chain like Ponto's, just as long as your longest
round, and then I could fasten us two to each end of it, and when I
wanted you I could pull, and if you didn't want to come, you could
pull back again; but I should know you knew I wanted you, and we
could never lose each other."

"I'm rather lost in that plan of yours; the details, as you state
them, are a little puzzling; but if I make them out rightly, I am to
go about the country, like the donkeys on the common, with a clog
fastened to my hind leg."

"I don't mind your calling me a clog, if only we were fastened
together."

"But I do mind you calling me a donkey," he replied.

"I never did. At least I didn't mean to. But it is such a comfort to
know that I may be as rude as I like."

"Is that what you've learnt from the grand company you've been
keeping to-day? I expected to find you so polite and ceremonious,
that I read a few chapters of _Sir Charles Grandison_, in order to
bring myself up to concert pitch."

"Oh, I do hope I shall never be a lord or a lady."

"Well, to comfort you, I'll tell you this: I'm sure you'll never be a
lord; and I think the chances are a thousand to one against your ever
being the other, in the sense in which you mean."

"I should lose myself every time I had to fetch my bonnet, or else
get tired of long passages and great staircases long before I could
go out walking."

"But you'd have your lady's-maid, you know."

"Do you know, papa, I think lady's-maids are worse than ladies. I
should not mind being a housekeeper so much."

"No! the jam-cupboards and dessert would lie very conveniently to
one's hand," replied her father, meditatively. "But Mrs. Brown tells
me that the thought of the dinners often keeps her from sleeping;
there's that anxiety to be taken into consideration. Still, in every
condition of life, there are heavy cares and responsibilities."

"Well! I suppose so," said Molly, gravely. "I know Betty says I wear
her life out with the green stains I get in my frocks from sitting in
the cherry-tree."

"And Miss Browning said she had fretted herself into a headache with
thinking how they had left you behind. I'm afraid you'll be as bad as
a bill of fare to them to-night. How did it all happen, goosey?"

"Oh, I went by myself to see the gardens; they are so beautiful! and
I lost myself, and sat down to rest under a great tree; and Lady
Cuxhaven and that Mrs. Kirkpatrick came; and Mrs. Kirkpatrick brought
me some lunch, and then put me to sleep on her bed,--and I thought
she would waken me in time, and she didn't; and so they'd all gone
away; and when they planned for me to stop till to-morrow, I didn't
like saying how very, very much I wanted to go home,--but I kept
thinking how you would wonder where I was."

"Then it was rather a dismal day of pleasure, goosey, eh?"

"Not in the morning. I shall never forget the morning in that garden.
But I was never so unhappy in all my life, as I have been all this
long afternoon."

Mr. Gibson thought it his duty to ride round by the Towers, and pay
a visit of apology and thanks to the family, before they left for
London. He found them all on the wing, and no one was sufficiently
at liberty to listen to his grateful civilities but Mrs. Kirkpatrick,
who, although she was to accompany Lady Cuxhaven, and pay a visit
to her former pupil, made leisure enough to receive Mr. Gibson, on
behalf of the family; and assured him of her faithful remembrance of
his great professional attention to her in former days in the most
winning manner.




CHAPTER III.

MOLLY GIBSON'S CHILDHOOD.


Sixteen years before this time, all Hollingford had been disturbed
to its foundations by the intelligence that Mr. Hall, the skilful
doctor, who had attended them all their days, was going to take
a partner. It was no use reasoning to them on the subject; so Mr.
Browning the vicar, Mr. Sheepshanks (Lord Cumnor's agent), and Mr.
Hall himself, the masculine reasoners of the little society, left
off the attempt, feeling that the _Che sarˆ sarˆ_ would prove more
silencing to the murmurs than many arguments. Mr. Hall had told his
faithful patients that, even with the strongest spectacles, his
sight was not to be depended upon; and they might have found out for
themselves that his hearing was very defective, although, on this
point, he obstinately adhered to his own opinion, and was frequently
heard to regret the carelessness of people's communication nowadays,
"like writing on blotting-paper, all the words running into each
other," he would say. And more than once Mr. Hall had had attacks
of a suspicious nature,--"rheumatism" he used to call them, but he
prescribed for himself as if they had been gout--which had prevented
his immediate attention to imperative summonses. But, blind and deaf,
and rheumatic as he might be, he was still Mr. Hall the doctor who
could heal all their ailments--unless they died meanwhile--and he had
no right to speak of growing old, and taking a partner.

He went very steadily to work all the same; advertising in medical
journals, reading testimonials, sifting character and qualifications;
and just when the elderly maiden ladies of Hollingford thought that
they had convinced their contemporary that he was as young as ever,
he startled them by bringing his new partner, Mr. Gibson, to call
upon them, and began "slyly," as these ladies said, to introduce him
into practice. And "who was this Mr. Gibson?" they asked, and echo
might answer the question, if she liked, for no one else did. No
one ever in all his life knew anything more of his antecedents than
the Hollingford people might have found out the first day they saw
him: that he was tall, grave, rather handsome than otherwise; thin
enough to be called "a very genteel figure," in those days, before
muscular Christianity had come into vogue; speaking with a slight
Scotch accent; and, as one good lady observed, "so very trite in
his conversation," by which she meant sarcastic. As to his birth,
parentage, and education,--the favourite conjecture of Hollingford
society was, that he was the illegitimate son of a Scotch duke, by
a Frenchwoman; and the grounds for this conjecture were these:--He
spoke with a Scotch accent; therefore, he must be Scotch. He had
a very genteel appearance, an elegant figure, and was apt--so his
ill-wishers said--to give himself airs; therefore, his father must
have been some person of quality; and, that granted, nothing was
easier than to run this supposition up all the notes of the scale of
the peerage,--baronet, baron, viscount, earl, marquis, duke. Higher
they dared not go, though one old lady, acquainted with English
history, hazarded the remark, that "she believed that one or two
of the Stuarts--hem--had not always been,--ahem--quite correct in
their--conduct; and she fancied such--ahem--things ran in families."
But, in popular opinion, Mr. Gibson's father always remained a duke;
nothing more.

Then his mother must have been a Frenchwoman, because his hair was
so black; and he was so sallow; and because he had been in Paris.
All this might be true, or might not; nobody ever knew, or found out
anything more about him than what Mr. Hall told them, namely, that
his professional qualifications were as high as his moral character,
and that both were far above the average, as Mr. Hall had taken pains
to ascertain before introducing him to his patients. The popularity
of this world is as transient as its glory, as Mr. Hall found out
before the first year of his partnership was over. He had plenty of
leisure left to him now to nurse his gout and cherish his eyesight.
The younger doctor had carried the day; nearly every one sent for
Mr. Gibson. Even at the great houses--even at the Towers, that
greatest of all, where Mr. Hall had introduced his new partner with
fear and trembling, with untold anxiety as to his behaviour, and
the impression he might make on my lord the Earl, and my lady the
Countess, Mr. Gibson was received at the end of a twelvemonth with as
much welcome respect for his professional skill as Mr. Hall himself
had ever been. Nay--and this was a little too much for even the kind
old doctor's good temper--Mr. Gibson had even been invited once to
dinner at the Towers, to dine with the great Sir Astley, the head of
the profession! To be sure, Mr. Hall had been asked as well; but he
was laid up just then with his gout (since he had had a partner the
rheumatism had been allowed to develope itself), and he had not been
able to go. Poor Mr. Hall never quite got over this mortification;
after it he allowed himself to become dim of sight and hard of
hearing, and kept pretty closely to the house during the two winters
that remained of his life. He sent for an orphan grand-niece to keep
him company in his old age; he, the woman-contemning old bachelor,
became thankful for the cheerful presence of the pretty, bonny Mary
Pearson, who was good and sensible, and nothing more. She formed
a close friendship with the daughters of the vicar, Mr. Browning,
and Mr. Gibson found time to become very intimate with all three.
Hollingford speculated much on which young lady would become Mrs.
Gibson, and was rather sorry when the talk about possibilities, and
the gossip about probabilities, with regard to the handsome young
surgeon's marriage, ended in the most natural manner in the world, by
his marrying his predecessor's niece. The two Miss Brownings showed
no signs of going into a consumption on the occasion, although
their looks and manners were carefully watched. On the contrary,
they were rather boisterously merry at the wedding, and poor Mrs.
Gibson it was that died of consumption, four or five years after her
marriage--three years after the death of her great-uncle, and when
her only child, Molly, was just three years old.

Mr. Gibson did not speak much about the grief at the loss of his
wife, which it was supposed that he felt. Indeed, he avoided all
demonstrations of sympathy, and got up hastily and left the room
when Miss Phoebe Browning first saw him after his loss, and burst
into an uncontrollable flood of tears, which threatened to end in
hysterics. Miss Browning declared she never could forgive him for his
hard-heartedness on that occasion; but a fortnight afterwards she
came to very high words with old Mrs. Goodenough, for gasping out her
doubts whether Mr. Gibson was a man of deep feeling; judging by the
narrowness of his crape hat-band, which ought to have covered his
hat, whereas there was at least three inches of beaver to be seen.
And, in spite of it all, Miss Browning and Miss Phoebe considered
themselves as Mr. Gibson's most intimate friends, in right of their
regard for his dead wife, and would fain have taken a quasi-motherly
interest in his little girl, had she not been guarded by a watchful
dragon in the shape of Betty, her nurse, who was jealous of any
interference between her and her charge; and especially resentful and
disagreeable towards all those ladies who, by suitable age, rank, or
propinquity, she thought capable of "casting sheep's eyes at master."

Several years before the opening of this story, Mr. Gibson's position
seemed settled for life, both socially and professionally. He was
a widower, and likely to remain so; his domestic affections were
centred on little Molly, but even to her, in their most private
moments, he did not give way to much expression of his feelings;
his most caressing appellation for her was "Goosey," and he took a
pleasure in bewildering her infant mind with his badinage. He had
rather a contempt for demonstrative people, arising from his medical
insight into the consequences to health of uncontrolled feeling. He
deceived himself into believing that still his reason was lord of
all, because he had never fallen into the habit of expression on any
other than purely intellectual subjects. Molly, however, had her own
intuitions to guide her. Though her papa laughed at her, quizzed her,
joked at her, in a way which the Miss Brownings called "really cruel"
to each other when they were quite alone, Molly took her little
griefs and pleasures, and poured them into her papa's ears, sooner
even than into Betty's, that kind-hearted termagant. The child grew
to understand her father well, and the two had the most delightful
intercourse together--half banter, half seriousness, but altogether
confidential friendship. Mr. Gibson kept three servants; Betty, a
cook, and a girl who was supposed to be housemaid, but who was under
both the elder two, and had a pretty life of it in consequence.
Three servants would not have been required if it had not been Mr.
Gibson's habit, as it had been Mr. Hall's before him, to take two
"pupils" as they were called in the genteel language of Hollingford,
"apprentices" as they were in fact--being bound by indentures, and
paying a handsome premium to learn their business. They lived in the
house, and occupied an uncomfortable, ambiguous, or, as Miss Browning
called it with some truth, "amphibious" position. They had their
meals with Mr. Gibson and Molly, and were felt to be terribly in the
way; Mr. Gibson not being a man who could make conversation, and
hating the duty of talking under restraint. Yet something within him
made him wince, as if his duties were not rightly performed, when,
as the cloth was drawn, the two awkward lads rose up with joyful
alacrity, gave him a nod, which was to be interpreted as a bow,
knocked against each other in their endeavours to get out of the
dining-room quickly; and then might be heard dashing along a passage
which led to the surgery, choking with half-suppressed laughter. Yet
the annoyance he felt at this dull sense of imperfectly fulfilled
duties only made his sarcasms on their inefficiency, or stupidity, or
ill manners, more bitter than before.

Beyond direct professional instruction, he did not know what to do
with the succession of pairs of young men, whose mission seemed to
be, to be plagued by their master consciously, and to plague him
unconsciously. Once or twice Mr. Gibson had declined taking a fresh
pupil, in the hopes of shaking himself free from the incubus, but his
reputation as a clever surgeon had spread so rapidly that his fees
which he had thought prohibitory, were willingly paid, in order that
the young man might make a start in life, with the prestige of having
been a pupil of Gibson of Hollingford. But as Molly grew to be a
little girl instead of a child, when she was about eight years old,
her father perceived the awkwardness of her having her breakfasts
and dinners so often alone with the pupils, without his uncertain
presence. To do away with this evil, more than for the actual
instruction she could give, he engaged a respectable woman, the
daughter of a shopkeeper in the town, who had left a destitute
family, to come every morning before breakfast, and to stay with
Molly till he came home at night; or, if he was detained, until the
child's bed-time.

"Now, Miss Eyre," said he, summing up his instructions the day before
she entered upon her office, "remember this: you are to make good tea
for the young men, and see that they have their meals comfortably,
and--you are five-and-thirty, I think you said?--try and make them
talk,--rationally, I am afraid is beyond your or anybody's power; but
make them talk without stammering or giggling. Don't teach Molly too
much: she must sew, and read, and write, and do her sums; but I want
to keep her a child, and if I find more learning desirable for her,
I'll see about giving it to her myself. After all, I'm not sure that
reading or writing is necessary. Many a good woman gets married
with only a cross instead of her name; it's rather a diluting
of mother-wit, to my fancy; but, however, we must yield to the
prejudices of society, Miss Eyre, and so you may teach the child to
read."

Miss Eyre listened in silence, perplexed but determined to be
obedient to the directions of the doctor, whose kindness she and
her family had good cause to know. She made strong tea; she helped
the young men liberally in Mr. Gibson's absence, as well as in his
presence, and she found the way to unloosen their tongues, whenever
their master was away, by talking to them on trivial subjects in her
pleasant homely way. She taught Molly to read and write, but tried
honestly to keep her back in every other branch of education. It was
only by fighting and struggling hard, that bit by bit Molly persuaded
her father to let her have French and drawing lessons. He was always
afraid of her becoming too much educated, though he need not have
been alarmed; the masters who visited such small country towns as
Hollingford forty years ago, were no such great proficients in their
arts. Once a week she joined a dancing class in the assembly-room
at the principal inn in the town: the "George;" and, being daunted
by her father in every intellectual attempt, she read every book
that came in her way, almost with as much delight as if it had been
forbidden. For his station in life, Mr. Gibson had an unusually
good library; the medical portion of it was inaccessible to Molly,
being kept in the surgery, but every other book she had either read,
or tried to read. Her summer place of study was that seat in the
cherry-tree, where she got the green stains on her frock, that have
already been mentioned as likely to wear Betty's life out. In spite
of this "hidden worm i' th' bud," Betty was to all appearance strong,
alert, and flourishing. She was the one crook in Miss Eyre's lot,
who was otherwise so happy in having met with a suitable well-paid
employment just when she needed it most. But Betty, though agreeing
in theory with her master when he told her of the necessity of having
a governess for his little daughter, was vehemently opposed to any
division of her authority and influence over the child who had been
her charge, her plague, and her delight ever since Mrs. Gibson's
death. She took up her position as censor of all Miss Eyre's sayings
and doings from the very first, and did not for a moment condescend
to conceal her disapprobation. In her heart she could not help
respecting the patience and painstaking of the good lady,--for
a "lady" Miss Eyre was in the best sense of the word, though in
Hollingford she only took rank as a shopkeeper's daughter. Yet Betty
buzzed about her with the teasing pertinacity of a gnat, always ready
to find fault, if not to bite. Miss Eyre's only defence came from the
quarter whence it might least have been expected--from her pupil; on
whose fancied behalf, as an oppressed little personage, Betty always
based her attacks. But very early in the day Molly perceived their
injustice, and soon afterwards she began to respect Miss Eyre for her
silent endurance of what evidently gave her far more pain than Betty
imagined. Mr. Gibson had been a friend in need to her family, so Miss
Eyre restrained her complaints, sooner than annoy him. And she had
her reward. Betty would offer Molly all sorts of small temptations to
neglect Miss Eyre's wishes; Molly steadily resisted, and plodded away
at her task of sewing or her difficult sum. Betty made cumbrous jokes
at Miss Eyre's expense; Molly looked up with the utmost gravity, as
if requesting the explanation of an unintelligible speech; and there
is nothing so quenching to a wag as to be asked to translate his
jest into plain matter-of-fact English, and to show wherein the
point lies. Occasionally Betty lost her temper entirely, and spoke
impertinently to Miss Eyre; but when this had been done in Molly's
presence, the girl flew out into such a violent passion of words
in defence of her silent trembling governess, that even Betty
herself was daunted, though she chose to take the child's anger as
a good joke, and tried to persuade Miss Eyre herself to join in her
amusement.

"Bless the child! one 'ud think I was a hungry pussy-cat, and she
a hen-sparrow, with her wings all fluttering, and her little eyes
aflame, and her beak ready to peck me just because I happened to
look near her nest. Nay, child! if thou lik'st to be stifled in a
nasty close room, learning things as is of no earthly good when they
is learnt, instead o' riding on Job Donkin's hay-cart, it's thy
look-out, not mine. She's a little vixen, isn't she?" smiling at
Miss Eyre, as she finished her speech. But the poor governess saw no
humour in the affair; the comparison of Molly to a hen-sparrow was
lost upon her. She was sensitive and conscientious, and knew, from
home experience, the evils of an ungovernable temper. So she began to
reprove Molly for giving way to her passion, and the child thought
it hard to be blamed for what she considered her just anger against
Betty. But, after all, these were the small grievances of a very
happy childhood.




CHAPTER IV.

MR. GIBSON'S NEIGHBOURS.


[Illustration (untitled)]

Molly grew up among these quiet people in calm monotony of life,
without any greater event than that which has been recorded--the
being left behind at the Towers--until she was nearly seventeen. She
had become a visitor at the school, but she had never gone again to
the annual festival at the great house; it was easy to find some
excuse for keeping away, and the recollection of that day was not
a pleasant one on the whole, though she often thought how much she
should like to see the gardens again.

Lady Agnes was married; there was only Lady Harriet remaining at
home; Lord Hollingford, the eldest son, had lost his wife, and was
a good deal more at the Towers since he had become a widower. He
was a tall ungainly man, considered to be as proud as his mother,
the countess; but, in fact, he was only shy, and slow at making
commonplace speeches. He did not know what to say to people whose
daily habits and interests were not the same as his; he would have
been very thankful for a handbook of small-talk, and would have
learnt off his sentences with good-humoured diligence. He often
envied the fluency of his garrulous father, who delighted in talking
to everybody, and was perfectly unconscious of the incoherence of his
conversation. But, owing to his constitutional reserve and shyness,
Lord Hollingford was not a popular man although his kindness of
heart was very great, his simplicity of character extreme, and his
scientific acquirements considerable enough to entitle him to much
reputation in the European republic of learned men. In this respect
Hollingford was proud of him. The inhabitants knew that the great,
grave, clumsy heir to its fealty was highly esteemed for his wisdom;
and that he had made one or two discoveries, though in what direction
they were not quite sure. But it was safe to point him out to
strangers visiting the little town, as "That's Lord Hollingford--the
famous Lord Hollingford, you know; you must have heard of him, he is
so scientific." If the strangers knew his name, they also knew his
claims to fame; if they did not, ten to one but they would make as
if they did, and so conceal not only their own ignorance, but that
of their companions, as to the exact nature of the sources of his
reputation.

He was left a widower with two or three boys. They were at a public
school; so that their companionship could make the house in which
he had passed his married life but little of a home to him, and he
consequently spent much of his time at the Towers; where his mother
was proud of him, and his father very fond, but ever so little afraid
of him. His friends were always welcomed by Lord and Lady Cumnor; the
former, indeed, was in the habit of welcoming everybody everywhere;
but it was a proof of Lady Cumnor's real affection for her
distinguished son, that she allowed him to ask what she called "all
sorts of people" to the Towers. "All sorts of people" meant really
those who were distinguished for science and learning, without regard
to rank: and it must be confessed, without much regard to polished
manners likewise.

Mr. Hall, Mr. Gibson's predecessor, had always been received with
friendly condescension by my lady, who had found him established as
the family medical man, when first she came to the Towers on her
marriage; but she never thought of interfering with his custom of
taking his meals, if he needed refreshment, in the housekeeper's
room, not _with_ the housekeeper, _bien entendu_. The comfortable,
clever, stout, and red-faced doctor would very much have preferred
this, even if he had had the choice given him (which he never had) of
taking his "snack," as he called it, with my lord and my lady, in the
grand dining-room. Of course, if some great surgical gun (like Sir
Astley) was brought down from London to bear on the family's health,
it was due to him, as well as to the local medical attendant, to ask
Mr. Hall to dinner, in a formal and ceremonious manner, on which
occasions Mr. Hall buried his chin in voluminous folds of white
muslin, put on his black knee-breeches, with bunches of ribbon at
the sides, his silk stockings and buckled shoes, and otherwise made
himself excessively uncomfortable in his attire, and went forth in
state in a post-chaise from the "George," consoling himself in the
private corner of his heart for the discomfort he was enduring with
the idea of how well it would sound the next day in the ears of the
squires whom he was in the habit of attending: "Yesterday at dinner
the earl said," or "the countess remarked," or "I was surprised to
hear when I was dining at the Towers yesterday." But somehow things
had changed since Mr. Gibson had become "the doctor" _par excellence_
at Hollingford. Miss Brownings thought that it was because he had
such an elegant figure, and "such a distinguished manner;" Mrs.
Goodenough, "because of his aristocratic connections"--"the son of a
Scotch duke, my dear, never mind on which side of the blanket." But
the fact was certain; although he might frequently ask Mrs. Brown
to give him something to eat in the housekeeper's room--he had no
time for all the fuss and ceremony of luncheon with my lady--he was
always welcome to the grandest circle of visitors in the house. He
might lunch with a duke any day that he chose; given that a duke was
forthcoming at the Towers. His accent was Scotch, not provincial. He
had not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones; and leanness goes
a great way to gentility. His complexion was sallow, and his hair
black; in those days, the decade after the conclusion of the great
continental war, to be sallow and black-a-vised was of itself a
distinction; he was not jovial (as my lord remarked with a sigh, but
it was my lady who endorsed the invitations), sparing of his words,
intelligent, and slightly sarcastic. Therefore he was perfectly
presentable.

His Scotch blood (for that he was of Scottish descent there could be
no manner of doubt) gave him just the kind of thistly dignity which
made every one feel that they must treat him with respect; so on that
head he was assured. The grandeur of being an invited guest to dinner
at the Towers from time to time, gave him but little pleasure for
many years, but it was a form to be gone through in the way of his
profession, without any idea of social gratification.

But when Lord Hollingford returned to make the Towers his home,
affairs were altered. Mr. Gibson really heard and learnt things that
interested him seriously, and that gave fresh flavour to his reading.
From time to time he met the leaders of the scientific world;
odd-looking, simple-hearted men, very much in earnest about their
own particular subjects, and not having much to say on any other. Mr.
Gibson found himself capable of appreciating such persons, and also
perceived that they valued his appreciation, as it was honestly
and intelligently given. Indeed, by-and-by, he began to send
contributions of his own to the more scientific of the medical
journals, and thus partly in receiving, partly in giving out
information and accurate thought, a new zest was added to his life.
There was not much intercourse between Lord Hollingford and himself;
the one was too silent and shy, the other too busy, to seek each
other's society with the perseverance required to do away with the
social distinction of rank that prevented their frequent meetings.
But each was thoroughly pleased to come into contact with the other.
Each could rely on the other's respect and sympathy with a security
unknown to many who call themselves friends; and this was a source
of happiness to both; to Mr. Gibson the most so, of course; for
his range of intelligent and cultivated society was the smaller.
Indeed, there was no one equal to himself among the men with whom he
associated, and this he had felt as a depressing influence, although
he never recognized the cause of his depression. There was Mr.
Ashton, the vicar, who had succeeded Mr. Browning, a thoroughly good
and kind-hearted man, but one without an original thought in him;
whose habitual courtesy and indolent mind led him to agree to every
opinion, not palpably heterodox, and to utter platitudes in the most
gentlemanly manner. Mr. Gibson had once or twice amused himself, by
leading the vicar on in his agreeable admissions of arguments "as
perfectly convincing," and of statements as "curious but undoubted,"
till he had planted the poor clergyman in a bog of heretical
bewilderment. But then Mr. Ashton's pain and suffering at suddenly
finding out into what a theological predicament he had been brought,
his real self-reproach at his previous admissions, were so great
that Mr. Gibson lost all sense of fun, and hastened back to the
Thirty-nine Articles with all the good-will in life, as the only
means of soothing the vicar's conscience. On any other subject,
except that of orthodoxy, Mr. Gibson could lead him any lengths; but
then his ignorance on most of them prevented bland acquiescence from
arriving at any results which could startle him. He had some private
fortune, and was not married, and lived the life of an indolent and
refined bachelor; but though he himself was no very active visitor
among his poorer parishioners, he was always willing to relieve their
wants in the most liberal, and, considering his habits, occasionally
in the most self-denying manner, whenever Mr. Gibson, or any one
else, made them clearly known to him. "Use my purse as freely as if
it was your own, Gibson," he was wont to say. "I'm such a bad one at
going about and making talk to poor folk--I daresay I don't do enough
in that way--but I am most willing to give you anything for any one
you may consider in want."

"Thank you; I come upon you pretty often, I believe, and make very
little scruple about it; but if you'll allow me to suggest, it is,
that you shouldn't try to make talk when you go into the cottages;
but just talk."

"I don't see the difference," said the vicar, a little querulously;
"but I daresay there is a difference, and I have no doubt what you
say is quite true. I shouldn't make talk, but talk; and as both are
equally difficult to me, you must let me purchase the privilege of
silence by this ten-pound note."

"Thank you. It's not so satisfactory to me; and, I should think, not
to yourself. But probably the Joneses and Greens will prefer it."

Mr. Ashton would look with plaintive inquiry into Mr. Gibson's face
after some such speech, as if asking if a sarcasm was intended. On
the whole, they went on in the most amicable way; only beyond the
gregarious feeling common to most men, they had very little actual
pleasure in each other's society. Perhaps the man of all others
to whom Mr. Gibson took the most kindly--at least, until Lord
Hollingford came into the neighbourhood--was a certain Squire Hamley.
He and his ancestors had been called squire as long back as local
tradition extended. But there was many a greater land-owner in the
county, for Squire Hamley's estate was not more than eight hundred
acres or so. But his family had been in possession of it long before
the Earls of Cumnor had been heard of; before the Hely-Harrisons
had bought Coldstone Park; no one in Hollingford knew the time when
the Hamleys had not lived at Hamley. "Ever since the Heptarchy,"
said the vicar. "Nay," said Miss Browning, "I have heard that there
were Hamleys of Hamley before the Romans." The vicar was preparing
a polite assent, when Mrs. Goodenough came in with a still more
startling assertion. "I have always heerd," said she, with all the
slow authority of an oldest inhabitant, "that there was Hamleys of
Hamley afore the time of the pagans." Mr. Ashton could only bow, and
say, "Possibly, very possibly, madam." But he said it in so courteous
a manner that Mrs. Goodenough looked round in a gratified way, as
much as to say, "The Church confirms my words; who now will dare
dispute them?" At any rate, the Hamleys were a very old family, if
not aborigines. They had not increased their estate for centuries;
they had held their own, if even with an effort, and had not sold
a rood of it for the last hundred years or so. But they were not
an adventurous race. They never traded, or speculated, or tried
agricultural improvements of any kind. They had no capital in any
bank; nor what perhaps would have been more in character, hoards of
gold in any stocking. Their mode of life was simple, and more like
that of yeomen than squires. Indeed Squire Hamley, by continuing the
primitive manners and customs of his forefathers, the squires of the
eighteenth century, did live more as a yeoman, when such a class
existed, than as a squire of this generation. There was a dignity in
this quiet conservatism that gained him an immense amount of respect
both from high and low; and he might have visited at every house
in the county had he so chosen. But he was very indifferent to the
charms of society; and perhaps this was owing to the fact that the
squire, Roger Hamley, who at present lived and reigned at Hamley,
had not received so good an education as he ought to have done.
His father, Squire Stephen, had been plucked at Oxford, and, with
stubborn pride, he had refused to go up again. Nay, more! he had
sworn a great oath, as men did in those days, that none of his
children to come should ever know either university by becoming a
member of it. He had only one child, the present Squire, and he was
brought up according to his father's word; he was sent to a petty
provincial school, where he saw much that he hated, and then turned
loose upon the estate as its heir. Such a bringing up did not do him
all the harm that might have been anticipated. He was imperfectly
educated, and ignorant on many points; but he was aware of his
deficiency, and regretted it in theory. He was awkward and ungainly
in society, and so kept out of it as much as possible; and he was
obstinate, violent-tempered, and dictatorial in his own immediate
circle. On the other side, he was generous, and true as steel; the
very soul of honour, in fact. He had so much natural shrewdness, that
his conversation was always worth listening to, although he was apt
to start by assuming entirely false premises, which he considered
as incontrovertible as if they had been mathematically proved; but,
given the correctness of his premises, nobody could bring more
natural wit and sense to bear upon the arguments based upon them.

He had married a delicate fine London lady; it was one of those
perplexing marriages of which one cannot understand the reasons. Yet
they were very happy, though possibly Mrs. Hamley would not have sunk
into the condition of a chronic invalid, if her husband had cared a
little more for her various tastes, or allowed her the companionship
of those who did. After his marriage he was wont to say he had got
all that was worth having out of the crowd of houses they called
London. It was a compliment to his wife which he repeated until the
year of her death; it charmed her at first, it pleased her up to the
last time of her hearing it; but, for all that, she used sometimes
to wish that he would recognize the fact that there might still be
something worth hearing and seeing in the great city. But he never
went there again, and though he did not prohibit her going, yet he
showed so little sympathy with her when she came back full of what
she had done on her visit that she ceased caring to go. Not but what
he was kind and willing in giving his consent, and in furnishing her
amply with money. "There, there, my little woman, take that! Dress
yourself up as fine as any on 'em, and buy what you like, for the
credit of Hamley of Hamley; and go to the park and the play, and show
off with the best on 'em. I shall be glad to see thee back again, I
know; but have thy fling while thou'rt about it." Then when she came
back it was, "Well, well, it has pleased thee, I suppose, so that's
all right. But the very talking about it tires me, I know, and I
can't think how you have stood it all. Come out and see how pretty
the flowers are looking in the south garden. I've made them sow all
the seeds you like; and I went over to Hollingford nursery to buy the
cuttings of the plants you admired last year. A breath of fresh air
will clear my brain after listening to all this talk about the whirl
of London, which is like to have turned me giddy."

Mrs. Hamley was a great reader, and had considerable literary taste.
She was gentle and sentimental; tender and good. She gave up her
visits to London; she gave up her sociable pleasure in the company
of her fellows in education and position. Her husband, owing to the
deficiencies of his early years, disliked associating with those
to whom he ought to have been an equal; he was too proud to mingle
with his inferiors. He loved his wife all the more dearly for her
sacrifices for him; but, deprived of all her strong interests, she
sank into ill-health; nothing definite; only she never was well.
Perhaps if she had had a daughter it would have been better for her:
but her two children were boys, and their father, anxious to give
them the advantages of which he himself had suffered the deprivation,
sent the lads very early to a preparatory school. They were to go
on to Rugby and Cambridge; the idea of Oxford was hereditarily
distasteful in the Hamley family. Osborne, the eldest--so called
after his mother's maiden name--was full of taste, and had some
talent. His appearance had all the grace and refinement of his
mother's. He was sweet-tempered and affectionate, almost as
demonstrative as a girl. He did well at school, carrying away many
prizes; and was, in a word, the pride and delight of both father and
mother; the confidential friend of the latter, in default of any
other. Roger was two years younger than Osborne; clumsy and heavily
built, like his father; his face was square, and the expression
grave, and rather immobile. He was good, but dull, his schoolmasters
said. He won no prizes, but brought home a favourable report of his
conduct. When he caressed his mother, she used laughingly to allude
to the fable of the lap-dog and the donkey; so thereafter he left
off all personal demonstration of affection. It was a great question
as to whether he was to follow his brother to college after he
left Rugby. Mrs. Hamley thought it would be rather a throwing
away of money, as he was so little likely to distinguish himself
in intellectual pursuits; anything practical--such as a civil
engineer--would be more the kind of life for him. She thought that
it would be too mortifying for him to go to the same college and
university as his brother, who was sure to distinguish himself--and,
to be repeatedly plucked, to come away wooden-spoon at last. But his
father persevered doggedly, as was his wont, in his intention of
giving both his sons the same education; they should both have the
advantages of which he had been deprived. If Roger did not do well at
Cambridge it would be his own fault. If his father did not send him
thither, some day or other he might be regretting the omission, as
the Squire had done himself for many a year. So Roger followed his
brother Osborne to Trinity, and Mrs. Hamley was again left alone,
after the year of indecision as to Roger's destination, which had
been brought on by her urgency. She had not been able for many years
to walk beyond her garden; the greater part of her life was spent on
a sofa, wheeled to the window in summer, to the fireside in winter.
The room which she inhabited was large and pleasant; four tall
windows looked out upon a lawn dotted over with flower-beds, and
melting away into a small wood, in the centre of which there was a
pond, filled with water-lilies. About this unseen pond in the deep
shade Mrs. Hamley had written many a pretty four-versed poem since
she lay on her sofa, alternately reading and composing verse. She had
a small table by her side on which there were the newest works of
poetry and fiction; a pencil and blotting-book, with loose sheets
of blank paper; a vase of flowers always of her husband's gathering;
winter and summer, she had a sweet fresh nosegay every day. Her maid
brought her a draught of medicine every three hours, with a glass of
clear water and a biscuit; her husband came to her as often as his
love for the open air and his labours out-of-doors permitted; but
the event of her day, when her boys were absent, was Mr. Gibson's
frequent professional visits.

He knew there was real secret harm going on all this time that people
spoke of her as a merely fanciful invalid; and that one or two
accused him of humouring her fancies. But he only smiled at such
accusations. He felt that his visits were a real pleasure and
lightening of her growing and indescribable discomfort; he knew that
Squire Hamley would have been only too glad if he had come every day;
and he was conscious that by careful watching of her symptoms he
might mitigate her bodily pain. Besides all these reasons, he took
great pleasure in the Squire's society. Mr. Gibson enjoyed the
other's unreasonableness; his quaintness; his strong conservatism
in religion, politics, and morals. Mrs. Hamley tried sometimes to
apologize for, or to soften away, opinions which she fancied were
offensive to the doctor, or contradictions which she thought too
abrupt; but at such times her husband would lay his great hand almost
caressingly on Mr. Gibson's shoulder, and soothe his wife's anxiety,
by saying, "Let us alone, little woman. We understand each other,
don't we, doctor? Why, bless your life, he gives me better than he
gets many a time; only, you see, he sugars it over, and says a sharp
thing, and pretends it's all civility and humility; but I can tell
when he's giving me a pill."

One of Mrs. Hamley's often-expressed wishes had been, that Molly
might come and pay her a visit. Mr. Gibson always refused this
request of hers, though he could hardly have given his reasons for
these refusals. He did not want to lose the companionship of his
child, in fact; but he put it to himself in quite a different way.
He thought her lessons and her regular course of employment would be
interrupted. The life in Mrs. Hamley's heated and scented room would
not be good for the girl; Osborne and Roger Hamley would be at home,
and he did not wish Molly to be thrown too exclusively upon them for
young society; or they would not be at home, and it would be rather
dull and depressing for his girl to be all the day long with a
nervous invalid.

But at length the day came when Mr. Gibson rode over, and volunteered
a visit from Molly; an offer which Mrs. Hamley received with the
"open arms of her heart," as she expressed it; and of which the
duration was unspecified.

The cause for the change in Mr. Gibson's wishes just referred to
was as follows:--It has been mentioned that he took pupils, rather
against his inclination, it is true; but there they were, a Mr. Wynne
and Mr. Coxe, "the young gentlemen," as they were called in the
household; "Mr. Gibson's young gentlemen," as they were termed in the
town. Mr. Wynne was the elder, the more experienced one, who could
occasionally take his master's place, and who gained experience by
visiting the poor, and the "chronic cases." Mr. Gibson used to talk
over his practice with Mr. Wynne, and try and elicit his opinions in
the vain hope that, some day or another, Mr. Wynne might start an
original thought. The young man was cautious and slow; he would never
do any harm by his rashness, but at the same time he would always be
a little behind his day. Still Mr. Gibson remembered that he had had
far worse "young gentlemen" to deal with; and was content with, if
not thankful for, such an elder pupil as Mr. Wynne. Mr. Coxe was a
boy of nineteen or so, with brilliant red hair, and a tolerably red
face, of both of which he was very conscious and much ashamed. He was
the son of an Indian officer, an old acquaintance of Mr. Gibson's.
Major Coxe was at some unpronounceable station in the Punjaub, at the
present time; but the year before he had been in England, and had
repeatedly expressed his great satisfaction at having placed his only
child as a pupil to his old friend, and had in fact almost charged
Mr. Gibson with the guardianship as well as the instruction of his
boy, giving him many injunctions which he thought were special in
this case; but which Mr. Gibson with a touch of annoyance assured the
major were always attended to in every case, with every pupil. But
when the poor major ventured to beg that his boy might be considered
as one of the family, and that he might spend his evenings in the
drawing-room instead of the surgery, Mr. Gibson turned upon him with
a direct refusal.

"He must live like the others. I can't have the pestle and mortar
carried into the drawing-room, and the place smelling of aloes."

"Must my boy make pills himself, then?" asked the major, ruefully.

"To be sure. The youngest apprentice always does. It's not hard
work. He'll have the comfort of thinking he won't have to swallow
them himself. And he'll have the run of the pomfret cakes, and the
conserve of hips, and on Sundays he shall have a taste of tamarinds
to reward him for his weekly labour at pill-making."

Major Coxe was not quite sure whether Mr. Gibson was not laughing
at him in his sleeve; but things were so far arranged, and the real
advantages were so great, that he thought it was best to take no
notice, but even to submit to the indignity of pill-making. He was
consoled for all these rubs by Mr. Gibson's manner at last when the
supreme moment of final parting arrived. The doctor did not say much;
but there was something of real sympathy in his manner that spoke
straight to the father's heart, and an implied "you have trusted me
with your boy, and I have accepted the trust in full," in each of the
few last words.

Mr. Gibson knew his business and human nature too well to distinguish
young Coxe by any overt marks of favouritism; but he could not help
showing the lad occasionally that he regarded him with especial
interest as the son of a friend. Besides this claim upon his regard,
there was something about the young man himself that pleased Mr.
Gibson. He was rash and impulsive, apt to speak, hitting the nail on
the head sometimes with unconscious cleverness, at other times making
gross and startling blunders. Mr. Gibson used to tell him that his
motto would always be "kill or cure," and to this Mr. Coxe once made
answer that he thought it was the best motto a doctor could have; for
if he could not cure the patient, it was surely best to get him out
of his misery quietly, and at once. Mr. Wynne looked up in surprise,
and observed that he should be afraid that such putting out of misery
might be looked upon as homicide by some people. Mr. Gibson said
in a dry tone, that for his part he should not mind the imputation
of homicide, but that it would not do to make away with profitable
patients in so speedy a manner; and that he thought that as long as
they were willing and able to pay two-and-sixpence for the doctor's
visit, it was his duty to keep them alive; of course, when they
became paupers the case was different. Mr. Wynne pondered over this
speech; Mr. Coxe only laughed. At last Mr. Wynne said,--

"But you go every morning, sir, before breakfast to see old Nancy
Grant, and you've ordered her this medicine, sir, which is about the
most costly in Corbyn's bill?"

"Have you not found out how difficult it is for men to live up to
their precepts? You've a great deal to learn yet, Mr. Wynne!" said
Mr. Gibson, leaving the surgery as he spoke.

"I never can make the governor out," said Mr. Wynne, in a tone of
utter despair. "What are you laughing at, Coxey?"

"Oh! I'm thinking how blest you are in having parents who have
instilled moral principles into your youthful bosom. You'd go and be
poisoning all the paupers off, if you hadn't been told that murder
was a crime by your mother; you'd be thinking you were doing as you
were bid, and quote old Gibson's words when you came to be tried.
'Please, my lord judge, they were not able to pay for my visits, and
so I followed the rules of the profession as taught me by Mr. Gibson,
the great surgeon at Hollingford, and poisoned the paupers.'"

"I can't bear that scoffing way of his."

"And I like it. If it wasn't for the governor's fun, and the
tamarinds, and something else that I know of, I would run off to
India. I hate stifling rooms, and sick people, and the smell of
drugs, and the stink of pills on my hands;--faugh!"




CHAPTER V.

CALF-LOVE.


One day, for some reason or other, Mr. Gibson came home unexpectedly.
He was crossing the hall, having come in by the garden-door--the
garden communicated with the stable-yard, where he had left his
horse--when the kitchen door opened, and the girl who was underling
in the establishment, came quickly into the hall with a note in her
hand, and made as if she was taking it upstairs; but on seeing her
master she gave a little start, and turned back as if to hide herself
in the kitchen. If she had not made this movement, so conscious of
guilt, Mr. Gibson, who was anything but suspicious, would never have
taken any notice of her. As it was, he stepped quickly forwards,
opened the kitchen door, and called out "Bethia" so sharply that she
could not delay coming forwards.

"Give me that note," he said. She hesitated a little.

"It's for Miss Molly," she stammered out.

"Give it to me!" he repeated more quickly than before. She looked as
if she would cry; but still she kept the note tight held behind her
back.

"He said as I was to give it into her own hands; and I promised as I
would, faithful."

"Cook, go and find Miss Molly. Tell her to come here at once."

He fixed Bethia with his eyes. It was of no use trying to escape: she
might have thrown it into the fire, but she had not presence of mind
enough. She stood immovable, only her eyes looked any way rather than
encounter her master's steady gaze. "Molly, my dear!"

"Papa! I did not know you were at home," said innocent, wondering
Molly.

"Bethia, keep your word. Here is Miss Molly; give her the note."

"Indeed, miss, I couldn't help it!"

Molly took the note, but before she could open it, her father
said,--"That's all, my dear; you needn't read it. Give it to me. Tell
those who sent you, Bethia, that all letters for Miss Molly must pass
through my hands. Now be off with you, goosey, and go back to where
you came from."


[Illustration: A LOVE LETTER.]


"Papa, I shall make you tell me who my correspondent is."

"We'll see about that, by-and-by."

She went a little reluctantly, with ungratified curiosity, upstairs
to Miss Eyre, who was still her daily companion, if not her
governess. He turned into the empty dining-room, shut the door,
broke the seal of the note, and began to read it. It was a flaming
love-letter from Mr. Coxe; who professed himself unable to go on
seeing her day after day without speaking to her of the passion she
had inspired--an "eternal passion," he called it; on reading which
Mr. Gibson laughed a little. Would she not look kindly at him? would
she not think of him whose only thought was of her? and so on, with a
very proper admixture of violent compliments to her beauty. She was
fair, not pale; her eyes were loadstars, her dimples marks of Cupid's
finger, &c.

Mr. Gibson finished reading it; and began to think about it in his
own mind. "Who would have thought the lad had been so poetical? but,
to be sure, there's a 'Shakspeare' in the surgery library: I'll take
it away and put 'Johnson's Dictionary' instead. One comfort is the
conviction of her perfect innocence--ignorance, I should rather
say--for it's easy to see it's the first 'confession of his love,' as
he calls it. But it's an awful worry--to begin with lovers so early.
Why, she's only just seventeen,--not seventeen, indeed, till July;
not for six weeks yet. Sixteen and three-quarters! Why, she's quite
a baby. To be sure--poor Jeanie was not so old, and how I did love
her!" (Mrs. Gibson's name was Mary, so he must have been referring to
some one else.) Then his thoughts wandered back to other days, though
he still held the open note in his hand. By-and-by his eyes fell upon
it again, and his mind came back to bear upon the present time. "I'll
not be hard upon him. I'll give him a hint; he's quite sharp enough
to take it. Poor laddie! if I send him away, which would be the
wisest course, I do believe he's got no home to go to."

After a little more consideration in the same strain, Mr. Gibson went
and sat down at the writing-table and wrote the following formula:--

   _Master Coxe._

("That 'master' will touch him to the quick," said Mr. Gibson to
himself as he wrote the word.)


   Rx. Verecundi¾ i oz.
       Fidelitatis Domestic¾ i oz.
       Reticenti¾ gr. iij.
   M.  Capiat hanc dosim ter die in aqu‰ pur‰.

   R. GIBSON, _Ch._


Mr. Gibson smiled a little sadly as he re-read his words. "Poor
Jeanie," he said aloud. And then he chose out an envelope, enclosed
the fervid love-letter, and the above prescription; sealed it with
his own sharply-cut seal-ring, R. G., in old English letters, and
then paused over the address.

"He'll not like _Master Coxe_ outside; no need to put him to
unnecessary shame." So the direction on the envelope was--

   _Edward Coxe, Esq._

Then Mr. Gibson applied himself to the professional business which
had brought him home so opportunely and unexpectedly, and afterwards
he went back through the garden to the stables; and just as he had
mounted his horse, he said to the stable-man,--"Oh! by the way,
here's a letter for Mr. Coxe. Don't send it through the women; take
it round yourself to the surgery-door, and do it at once."

The slight smile upon his face, as he rode out of the gates, died
away as soon as he found himself in the solitude of the lanes. He
slackened his speed, and began to think. It was very awkward, he
considered, to have a motherless girl growing up into womanhood in
the same house with two young men, even if she only met them at
meal-times; and all the intercourse they had with each other was
merely the utterance of such words as, "May I help you to potatoes?"
or, as Mr. Wynne would persevere in saying, "May I assist you to
potatoes?"--a form of speech which grated daily more and more upon
Mr. Gibson's ears. Yet Mr. Coxe, the offender in this affair which
had just occurred, had to remain for three years more as a pupil in
Mr. Gibson's family. He should be the very last of the race. Still
there were three years to be got over; and if this stupid passionate
calf-love of his lasted, what was to be done? Sooner or later Molly
would become aware of it. The contingencies of the affair were so
excessively disagreeable to contemplate, that Mr. Gibson determined
to dismiss the subject from his mind by a good strong effort. He
put his horse to a gallop, and found that the violent shaking over
the lanes--paved as they were with round stones, which had been
dislocated by the wear and tear of a hundred years--was the very best
thing for the spirits, if not for the bones. He made a long round
that afternoon, and came back to his home imagining that the worst
was over, and that Mr. Coxe would have taken the hint conveyed in
the prescription. All that would be needed was to find a safe place
for the unfortunate Bethia, who had displayed such a daring aptitude
for intrigue. But Mr. Gibson reckoned without his host. It was the
habit of the young men to come in to tea with the family in the
dining-room, to swallow two cups, munch their bread or toast, and
then disappear. This night Mr. Gibson watched their countenances
furtively from under his long eye-lashes, while he tried against his
wont to keep up a dŽgagŽ manner, and a brisk conversation on general
subjects. He saw that Mr. Wynne was on the point of breaking out
into laughter, and that red-haired, red-faced Mr. Coxe was redder
and fiercer than ever, while his whole aspect and ways betrayed
indignation and anger.

"He will have it, will he?" thought Mr. Gibson to himself; and he
girded up his loins for the battle. He did not follow Molly and Miss
Eyre into the drawing-room as he usually did. He remained where he
was, pretending to read the newspaper, while Bethia, her face swelled
up with crying, and with an aggrieved and offended aspect, removed
the tea-things. Not five minutes after the room was cleared, came
the expected tap at the door. "May I speak to you, sir?" said the
invisible Mr. Coxe, from outside.

"To be sure. Come in, Mr. Coxe. I was rather wanting to talk to you
about that bill of Corbyn's. Pray sit down."

"It is about nothing of that kind, sir, that I wanted--that I
wished--No, thank you--I would rather not sit down." He, accordingly,
stood in offended dignity. "It is about that letter, sir--that letter
with the insulting prescription, sir."

"Insulting prescription! I am surprised at such a word being applied
to any prescription of mine--though, to be sure, patients are
sometimes offended at being told the nature of their illnesses; and,
I daresay, they may take offence at the medicines which their cases
require."

"I did not ask you to prescribe for me."

"Oh, ho! Then you were the Master Coxe who sent the note through
Bethia! Let me tell you it has cost her her place, and was a very
silly letter into the bargain."

"It was not the conduct of a gentleman, sir, to intercept it, and to
open it, and to read words never addressed to you, sir."

"No!" said Mr. Gibson, with a slight twinkle in his eye and a curl on
his lips, not unnoticed by the indignant Mr. Coxe. "I believe I was
once considered tolerably good-looking, and I daresay I was as great
a coxcomb as any one at twenty; but I don't think that even then I
should quite have believed that all those pretty compliments were
addressed to myself."

"It was not the conduct of a gentleman, sir," repeated Mr. Coxe,
stammering over his words--he was going on to say something more,
when Mr. Gibson broke in,--

"And let me tell you, young man," replied Mr. Gibson, with a sudden
sternness in his voice, "that what you have done is only excusable
in consideration of your youth and extreme ignorance of what are
considered the laws of domestic honour. I receive you into my house
as a member of my family--you induce one of my servants--corrupting
her with a bribe, I have no doubt--"

"Indeed, sir! I never gave her a penny."

"Then you ought to have done. You should always pay those who do your
dirty work."

"Just now, sir, you called it corrupting with a bribe," muttered Mr.
Coxe.

Mr. Gibson took no notice of this speech, but went on--"Inducing one
of my servants to risk her place, without offering her the slightest
equivalent, by begging her to convey a letter clandestinely to my
daughter--a mere child."

"Miss Gibson, sir, is nearly seventeen! I heard you say so only the
other day," said Mr. Coxe, aged twenty. Again Mr. Gibson ignored the
remark.

"A letter which you were unwilling to have seen by her father, who
had tacitly trusted to your honour, by receiving you as an inmate of
his house. Your father's son--I know Major Coxe well--ought to have
come to me, and have said out openly, 'Mr. Gibson, I love--or I fancy
that I love--your daughter; I do not think it right to conceal this
from you, although unable to earn a penny; and with no prospect of an
unassisted livelihood, even for myself, for several years, I shall
not say a word about my feelings--or fancied feelings--to the very
young lady herself.' That is what your father's son ought to have
said; if, indeed, a couple of grains of reticent silence wouldn't
have been better still."

"And if I had said it, sir--perhaps I ought to have said it," said
Mr. Coxe, in a hurry of anxiety, "what would have been your answer?
Would you have sanctioned my passion, sir?"

"I would have said, most probably--I will not be certain of my exact
words in a suppositional case--that you were a young fool, but not
a dishonourable young fool, and I should have told you not to let
your thoughts run upon a calf-love until you had magnified it into
a passion. And I daresay, to make up for the mortification I should
have given you, I might have prescribed your joining the Hollingford
Cricket Club, and set you at liberty as often as I could on the
Saturday afternoons. As it is, I must write to your father's agent in
London, and ask him to remove you out of my household, repaying the
premium, of course, which will enable you to start afresh in some
other doctor's surgery."

"It will so grieve my father," said Mr. Coxe, startled into dismay,
if not repentance.

"I see no other course open. It will give Major Coxe some trouble
(I shall take care that he is at no extra expense), but what I think
will grieve him the most is the betrayal of confidence; for I trusted
you, Edward, like a son of my own!" There was something in Mr.
Gibson's voice when he spoke seriously, especially when he referred
to any feeling of his own--he who so rarely betrayed what was passing
in his heart--that was irresistible to most people: the change from
joking and sarcasm to tender gravity.

Mr. Coxe hung his head a little, and meditated.

"I do love Miss Gibson," said he, at length. "Who could help it?"

"Mr. Wynne, I hope!" said Mr. Gibson.

"His heart is pre-engaged," replied Mr. Coxe. "Mine was free as air
till I saw her."

"Would it tend to cure your--well! passion, we'll say--if she wore
blue spectacles at meal-times? I observe you dwell much on the beauty
of her eyes."

"You are ridiculing my feelings, Mr. Gibson. Do you forget that you
yourself were young once?"

"Poor Jeanie" rose before Mr. Gibson's eyes; and he felt a little
rebuked.

"Come, Mr. Coxe, let us see if we can't make a bargain," said he,
after a minute or so of silence. "You have done a really wrong thing,
and I hope you are convinced of it in your heart, or that you will
be when the heat of this discussion is over, and you come to think a
little about it. But I won't lose all respect for your father's son.
If you will give me your word that, as long as you remain a member of
my family--pupil, apprentice, what you will--you won't again try to
disclose your passion--you see I am careful to take your view of what
I should call a mere fancy--by word or writing, looks or acts, in any
manner whatever, to my daughter, or to talk about your feelings to
any one else, you shall remain here. If you cannot give me your word,
I must follow out the course I named, and write to your father's
agent."

Mr. Coxe stood irresolute.

"Mr. Wynne knows all I feel for Miss Gibson, sir. He and I have no
secrets from each other."

"Well, I suppose he must represent the reeds. You know the story of
King Midas's barber, who found out that his royal master had the ears
of an ass beneath his hyacinthine curls. So the barber, in default
of a Mr. Wynne, went to the reeds that grew on the shores of a
neighbouring lake, and whispered to them, 'King Midas has the ears of
an ass.' But he repeated it so often that the reeds learnt the words,
and kept on saying them all day long, till at last the secret was no
secret at all. If you keep on telling your tale to Mr. Wynne, are you
sure he won't repeat it in his turn?"

"If I pledge my word as a gentleman, sir, I pledge it for Mr. Wynne
as well."

"I suppose I must run the risk. But remember how soon a young girl's
name may be breathed upon, and sullied. Molly has no mother, and for
that very reason she ought to move among you all, as unharmed as Una
herself."

"Mr. Gibson, if you wish it, I'll swear it on the Bible," cried the
excitable young man.

"Nonsense. As if your word, if it's worth anything, wasn't enough!
We'll shake hands upon it, if you like."

Mr. Coxe came forward eagerly, and almost squeezed Mr. Gibson's ring
into his finger.

As he was leaving the room, he said, a little uneasily, "May I give
Bethia a crown-piece?"

"No, indeed! Leave Bethia to me. I hope you won't say another word to
her while she's here. I shall see that she gets a respectable place
when she goes away."

Then Mr. Gibson rang for his horse, and went out on the last visits
of the day. He used to reckon that he rode the world around in the
course of the year. There were not many surgeons in the county who
had so wide a range of practice as he; he went to lonely cottages on
the borders of great commons; to farm-houses at the end of narrow
country lanes that led to nowhere else, and were overshadowed by the
elms and beeches overhead. He attended all the gentry within a circle
of fifteen miles round Hollingford; and was the appointed doctor to
the still greater families who went up to London every February--as
the fashion then was--and returned to their acres in the early weeks
of July. He was, of necessity, a great deal from home, and on this
soft and pleasant summer evening he felt the absence as a great evil.
He was startled at discovering that his little one was growing fast
into a woman, and already the passive object of some of the strong
interests that affect a woman's life; and he--her mother as well as
her father--so much away that he could not guard her as he would
have wished. The end of his cogitations was that ride to Hamley the
next morning, when he proposed to allow his daughter to accept Mrs.
Hamley's last invitation--an invitation that had been declined at the
time.

"You may quote against me the proverb, 'He that will not when he
may, when he will he shall have nay.' And I shall have no reason to
complain," he had said.

But Mrs. Hamley was only too much charmed with the prospect of having
a young girl for a visitor; one whom it would not be a trouble to
entertain; who might be sent out to ramble in the gardens, or told
to read when the invalid was too much fatigued for conversation; and
yet one whose youth and freshness would bring a charm, like a waft
of sweet summer air, into her lonely shut-up life. Nothing could be
pleasanter, and so Molly's visit to Hamley was easily settled.

"I only wish Osborne and Roger had been at home," said Mrs. Hamley,
in her low soft voice. "She may find it dull, being with old people,
like the squire and me, from morning till night. When can she come?
the darling--I am beginning to love her already!"

Mr. Gibson was very glad in his heart that the young men of the house
were out of the way; he did not want his little Molly to be passing
from Scylla to Charybdis; and, as he afterwards scoffed at himself
for thinking, he had got an idea that all young men were wolves in
chase of his one ewe-lamb.

"She knows nothing of the pleasure in store for her," he replied;
"and I'm sure I don't know what feminine preparations she may think
necessary, or how long they may take. You'll remember she is a little
ignoramus, and has had no ... training in etiquette; our ways at
home are rather rough for a girl, I'm afraid. But I know I could not
send her into a kinder atmosphere than this."

When the Squire heard from his wife of Mr. Gibson's proposal, he was
as much pleased as she at the prospect of their youthful visitor;
for he was a man of a hearty hospitality, when his pride did not
interfere with its gratification; and he was delighted to think of
his sick wife's having such an agreeable companion in her hours of
loneliness. After a while he said,--"It's as well the lads are at
Cambridge; we might have been having a love-affair if they had been
at home."

"Well--and if we had?" asked his more romantic wife.

"It wouldn't have done," said the Squire, decidedly. "Osborne
will have had a first-rate education--as good as any man in the
county--he'll have this property, and he's a Hamley of Hamley; not a
family in the shire is as old as we are, or settled on their ground
so well. Osborne may marry where he likes. If Lord Hollingford had a
daughter, Osborne would have been as good a match as she could have
required. It would never do for him to fall in love with Gibson's
daughter--I shouldn't allow it. So it's as well he's out of the way."

"Well! perhaps Osborne had better look higher."

"Perhaps! I say he must." The Squire brought his hand down with a
thump on the table, near him, which made his wife's heart beat hard
for some minutes. "And as for Roger," he continued, unconscious of
the flutter he had put her into, "he'll have to make his own way,
and earn his own bread; and, I'm afraid, he's not getting on very
brilliantly at Cambridge. He mustn't think of falling in love for
these ten years."

"Unless he marries a fortune," said Mrs. Hamley, more by way of
concealing her palpitation than anything else; for she was unworldly
and romantic to a fault.

"No son of mine shall ever marry a wife who is richer than himself
with my good will," said the Squire again, with emphasis, but without
a thump.

"I don't say but what if Roger is gaining five hundred a year by
the time he's thirty, he shall not choose a wife with ten thousand
pounds down; but I do say, if a boy of mine, with only two hundred a
year--which is all Roger will have from us, and that not for a long
time--goes and marries a woman with fifty thousand to her portion,
I'll disown him--it would be just disgusting."

"Not if they loved each other, and their whole happiness depended
upon their marrying each other," put in Mrs. Hamley, mildly.

"Pooh! away with love! Nay, my dear, we loved each other so dearly
we should never have been happy with any one else; but that's a
different thing. People aren't like what they were when we were
young. All the love nowadays is just silly fancy, and sentimental
romance, as far as I can see."

Mr. Gibson thought that he had settled everything about Molly's going
to Hamley before he spoke to her about it, which he did not do, until
the morning of the day on which Mrs. Hamley expected her. Then he
said,--"By the way, Molly! you're to go to Hamley this afternoon;
Mrs. Hamley wants you to go to her for a week or two, and it suits me
capitally that you should accept her invitation just now."

"Go to Hamley! This afternoon! Papa, you've got some odd reason at
the back of your head--some mystery, or something. Please, tell me
what it is. Go to Hamley for a week or two! Why, I never was from
home before this without you in all my life."

"Perhaps not. I don't think you ever walked before you put your feet
to the ground. Everything must have a beginning."

"It has something to do with that letter that was directed to me, but
that you took out of my hands before I could even see the writing of
the direction." She fixed her grey eyes on her father's face, as if
she meant to pluck out his secret.

He only smiled and said,--"You're a witch, goosey!"

"Then it had! But if it was a note from Mrs. Hamley, why might I
not see it? I have been wondering if you had some plan in your head
ever since that day.--Thursday, wasn't it? You've gone about in a
kind of thoughtful, perplexed way, just like a conspirator. Tell me,
papa"--coming up to him, and putting on a beseeching manner--"why
mightn't I see that note? and why am I to go to Hamley all on a
sudden?"

"Don't you like to go? Would you rather not?" If she had said that
she did not want to go he would have been rather pleased than
otherwise, although it would have put him into a great perplexity;
but he was beginning to dread the parting from her even for so short
a time. However, she replied directly,--

"I don't know--I daresay I shall like it when I have thought a little
more about it. Just now I'm so startled by the suddenness of the
affair, I haven't considered whether I shall like it or not. I shan't
like going away from you, I know. Why am I to go, papa?"

"There are three old ladies sitting somewhere, and thinking about
you just at this very minute; one has a distaff in her hands, and is
spinning a thread; she has come to a knot in it, and is puzzled what
to do with it. Her sister has a great pair of scissors in her hands,
and wants--as she always does, when any difficulty arises in the
smoothness of the thread--to cut it off short; but the third, who has
the most head of the three, plans how to undo the knot; and she it is
who has decided that you are to go to Hamley. The others are quite
convinced by her arguments; so, as the Fates have decreed that this
visit is to be paid, there is nothing left for you and me but to
submit."

"That's all nonsense, papa, and you're only making me more curious to
find out this hidden reason."

Mr. Gibson changed his tone, and spoke gravely now. "There is a
reason, Molly, and one which I do not wish to give. When I tell you
this much, I expect you to be an honourable girl, and to try and not
even conjecture what the reason may be,--much less endeavour to put
little discoveries together till very likely you may find out what I
want to conceal."

"Papa, I won't even think about your reason again. But then I shall
have to plague you with another question. I've had no new gown this
year, and I've outgrown all my last summer frocks. I've only three
that I can wear at all. Betty was saying only yesterday that I ought
to have some more."

"That'll do that you have got on, won't it? It's a very pretty
colour."

"Yes; but, papa" (holding it out as if she was going to dance), "it's
made of woollen, and so hot and heavy; and every day it will be
getting warmer."

"I wish girls could dress like boys," said Mr. Gibson, with a little
impatience. "How is a man to know when his daughter wants clothes?
and how is he to rig her out when he finds it out, just when she
needs them most and hasn't got them?"

"Ah, that's the question!" said Molly, in some despair.

"Can't you go to Miss Rose's? Doesn't she keep ready-made frocks for
girls of your age?"

"Miss Rose! I never had anything from her in my life," replied Molly,
in some surprise; for Miss Rose was the great dressmaker and milliner
of the little town, and hitherto Betty had made the girl's frocks.

"Well, but it seems people consider you as a young woman now, and
so I suppose you must run up milliners' bills like the rest of your
kind. Not that you're to get anything anywhere that you can't pay for
down in ready money. Here's a ten-pound note; go to Miss Rose's, or
Miss anybody's, and get what you want at once. The Hamley carriage
is to come for you at two, and anything that isn't quite ready, can
easily be sent by their cart on Saturday, when some of their people
always come to market. Nay, don't thank me! I don't want to have the
money spent, and I don't want you to go and leave me: I shall miss
you, I know; it's only hard necessity that drives me to send you
a-visiting, and to throw away ten pounds on your clothes. There, go
away; you're a plague, and I mean to leave off loving you as fast as
I can."

"Papa!" holding up her finger as in warning, "you're getting
mysterious again; and though my honourableness is very strong, I
won't promise that it shall not yield to my curiosity if you go on
hinting at untold secrets."

"Go away and spend your ten pounds. What did I give it you for but to
keep you quiet?"

Miss Rose's ready-made resources and Molly's taste combined, did not
arrive at a very great success. She bought a lilac print, because
it would wash, and would be cool and pleasant for the mornings; and
this Betty could make at home before Saturday. And for high-days and
holidays--by which was understood afternoons and Sundays--Miss Rose
persuaded her to order a gay-coloured flimsy plaid silk, which she
assured her was quite the latest fashion in London, and which Molly
thought would please her father's Scotch blood. But when he saw the
scrap which she had brought home as a pattern, he cried out that the
plaid belonged to no clan in existence, and that Molly ought to have
known this by instinct. It was too late to change it, however, for
Miss Rose had promised to cut the dress out as soon as Molly left her
shop.

Mr. Gibson had hung about the town all the morning instead of going
away on his usual distant rides. He passed his daughter once or twice
in the street, but he did not cross over when he was on the opposite
side--only gave her a look or a nod, and went on his way, scolding
himself for his weakness in feeling so much pain at the thought of
her absence for a fortnight or so.

"And, after all," thought he, "I'm only where I was when she comes
back; at least, if that foolish fellow goes on with his imaginating
fancy. She'll have to come back some time, and if he chooses to
imagine himself constant, there's still the devil to pay." Presently
he began to hum the air out of the "Beggar's Opera"--

   I wonder any man alive
     Should ever rear a daughter.




CHAPTER VI.

A VISIT TO THE HAMLEYS.


Of course the news of Miss Gibson's approaching departure had spread
through the household before the one o'clock dinner-time came; and
Mr. Coxe's dismal countenance was a source of much inward irritation
to Mr. Gibson, who kept giving the youth sharp glances of savage
reproof for his melancholy face, and want of appetite; which he
trotted out, with a good deal of sad ostentation; all of which was
lost upon Molly, who was too full of her own personal concerns to
have any thought or observation to spare from them, excepting once or
twice when she thought of the many days that must pass over before
she should again sit down to dinner with her father.

When she named this to him after the meal was over, and they were
sitting together in the drawing-room, waiting for the sound of the
wheels of the Hamley carriage, he laughed, and said,--

"I'm coming over to-morrow to see Mrs. Hamley; and I daresay I shall
dine at their lunch; so you won't have to wait long before you've the
treat of seeing the wild beast feed."

Then they heard the approaching carriage.

"Oh, papa," said Molly, catching at his hand, "I do so wish I wasn't
going, now that the time is come."

"Nonsense; don't let us have any sentiment. Have you got your keys?
that's more to the purpose."

Yes; she had got her keys, and her purse; and her little box was
put up on the seat by the coachman; and her father handed her in;
the door was shut, and she drove away in solitary grandeur, looking
back and kissing her hand to her father, who stood at the gate, in
spite of his dislike of sentiment, as long as the carriage could
be seen. Then he turned into the surgery, and found Mr. Coxe had
had his watching too, and had, indeed, remained at the window
gazing, moonstruck, at the empty road, up which the young lady had
disappeared. Mr. Gibson startled him from his reverie by a sharp,
almost venomous, speech about some small neglect of duty a day or two
before. That night Mr. Gibson insisted on passing by the bedside of a
poor girl whose parents were worn-out by many wakeful anxious nights
succeeding to hard-working days.

Molly cried a little, but checked her tears as soon as she remembered
how annoyed her father would have been at the sight of them. It
was very pleasant driving quickly along in the luxurious carriage,
through the pretty green lanes, with dog-roses and honeysuckles so
plentiful and rathe in the hedges, that she once or twice was tempted
to ask the coachman to stop till she had gathered a nosegay. She
began to dread the end of her little journey of seven miles; the only
drawback to which was, that her silk was not a true clan-tartan, and
a little uncertainty as to Miss Rose's punctuality. At length they
came to a village; straggling cottages lined the road, an old church
stood on a kind of green, with the public-house close by it; there
was a great tree, with a bench all round the trunk, midway between
the church gates and the little inn. The wooden stocks were close to
the gates. Molly had long passed the limit of her rides, but she knew
this must be the village of Hamley, and that they must be very near
to the hall.

They swung in at the gates of the park in a few minutes, and drove up
through meadow-grass, ripening for hay,--it was no grand aristocratic
deer-park this--to the old red-brick hall; not three hundred yards
from the high-road. There had been no footman sent with the carriage,
but a respectable servant stood at the door, even before they drew
up, ready to receive the expected visitor, and take her into the
drawing-room where his mistress lay awaiting her.

Mrs. Hamley rose from her sofa to give Molly a gentle welcome; she
kept the girl's hand in hers after she had finished speaking, looking
into her face, as if studying it, and unconscious of the faint blush
she called up on the otherwise colourless cheeks.

"I think we shall be great friends," said she, at length. "I like
your face, and I am always guided by first impressions. Give me a
kiss, my dear."

It was far easier to be active than passive during this process of
"swearing eternal friendship," and Molly willingly kissed the sweet
pale face held up to her.

"I meant to have gone and fetched you myself; but the heat oppresses
me, and I did not feel up to the exertion. I hope you had a pleasant
drive?"

"Very," said Molly, with shy conciseness.

"And now I will take you to your room; I have had you put close to
me; I thought you would like it better, even though it was a smaller
room than the other."

She rose languidly, and wrapping her light shawl round her yet
elegant figure, led the way upstairs. Molly's bedroom opened
out of Mrs. Hamley's private sitting-room; on the other side of
which was her own bedroom. She showed Molly this easy means of
communication, and then, telling her visitor she would await her in
the sitting-room, she closed the door, and Molly was left at leisure
to make acquaintance with her surroundings.

First of all, she went to the window to see what was to be seen.
A flower-garden right below; a meadow of ripe grass just beyond,
changing colour in long sweeps, as the soft wind blew over it; great
old forest-trees a little on one side; and, beyond them again, to be
seen only by standing very close to the side of the window-sill, or
by putting her head out, if the window was open, the silver shimmer
of a mere, about a quarter of a mile off. On the opposite side to the
trees and the mere, the look-out was bounded by the old walls and
high-peaked roofs of the extensive farm-buildings. The deliciousness
of the early summer silence was only broken by the song of the birds,
and the nearer hum of bees. Listening to these sounds, which enhanced
the exquisite sense of stillness, and puzzling out objects obscured
by distance or shadow, Molly forgot herself, and was suddenly
startled into a sense of the present by a sound of voices in the
next room--some servant or other speaking to Mrs. Hamley. Molly
hurried to unpack her box, and arrange her few clothes in the
pretty old-fashioned chest of drawers, which was to serve her
as dressing-table as well. All the furniture in the room was as
old-fashioned and as well-preserved as it could be. The chintz
curtains were Indian calico of the last century--the colours almost
washed out, but the stuff itself exquisitely clean. There was a
little strip of bedside carpeting, but the wooden flooring, thus
liberally displayed, was of finely-grained oak, so firmly joined,
plank to plank, that no grain of dust could make its way into the
interstices. There were none of the luxuries of modern days; no
writing-table, or sofa, or pier-glass. In one corner of the walls was
a bracket, holding an Indian jar filled with pot-pourri; and that and
the climbing honeysuckle outside the open window scented the room
more exquisitely than any toilette perfumes. Molly laid out her white
gown (of last year's date and size) upon the bed, ready for the (to
her new) operation of dressing for dinner, and having arranged her
hair and dress, and taken out her company worsted-work, she opened
the door softly, and saw Mrs. Hamley lying on the sofa.

"Shall we stay up here, my dear? I think it is pleasanter than
down below; and then I shall not have to come upstairs again at
dressing-time."

"I shall like it very much," replied Molly.

"Ah! you've got your sewing, like a good girl," said Mrs. Hamley.
"Now, I don't sew much. I live alone a great deal. You see, both
my boys are at Cambridge, and the squire is out of doors all day
long--so I have almost forgotten how to sew. I read a great deal. Do
you like reading?"

"It depends upon the kind of book," said Molly. "I'm afraid I don't
like 'steady reading,' as papa calls it."

"But you like poetry!" said Mrs. Hamley, almost interrupting Molly.
"I was sure you did, from your face. Have you read this last poem of
Mrs. Hemans? Shall I read it aloud to you?"

So she began. Molly was not so much absorbed in listening but that
she could glance round the room. The character of the furniture was
much the same as in her own. Old-fashioned, of handsome material,
and faultlessly clean, the age and the foreign appearance of it gave
an aspect of comfort and picturesqueness to the whole apartment. On
the walls there hung some crayon sketches--portraits. She thought
she could make out that one of them was a likeness of Mrs. Hamley,
in her beautiful youth. And then she became interested in the poem,
and dropped her work, and listened in a manner that was after Mrs.
Hamley's own heart. When the reading of the poem was ended, Mrs.
Hamley replied to some of Molly's words of admiration, by saying:

"Ah! I think I must read you some of Osborne's poetry some day; under
seal of secrecy, remember; but I really fancy they are almost as good
as Mrs. Hemans'."

To be nearly as good as Mrs. Hemans' was saying as much to the young
ladies of that day, as saying that poetry is nearly as good as
Tennyson's would be in this. Molly looked up with eager interest.

"Mr. Osborne Hamley? Does your son write poetry?"

"Yes. I really think I may say he is a poet. He is a very brilliant,
clever young man, and he quite hopes to get a fellowship at Trinity.
He says he is sure to be high up among the wranglers, and that
he expects to get one of the Chancellor's medals. That is his
likeness--the one hanging against the wall behind you."

Molly turned round, and saw one of the crayon sketches--representing
two boys, in the most youthful kind of jackets and trousers, and
falling collars. The elder was sitting down, reading intently.
The younger was standing by him, and evidently trying to call the
attention of the reader off to some object out of doors--out of
the window of the very room in which they were sitting, as Molly
discovered when she began to recognize the articles of furniture
faintly indicated in the picture.

"I like their faces!" said Molly. "I suppose it is so long ago now,
that I may speak of their likenesses to you as if they were somebody
else; may not I?"

"Certainly," said Mrs. Hamley, as soon as she understood what Molly
meant. "Tell me just what you think of them, my dear; it will amuse
me to compare your impressions with what they really are."

"Oh! but I did not mean to guess at their characters. I could not do
it; and it would be impertinent, if I could. I can only speak about
their faces as I see them in the picture."

"Well! tell me what you think of them!"

"The eldest--the reading boy--is very beautiful; but I can't quite
make out his face yet, because his head is down, and I can't see the
eyes. That is the Mr. Osborne Hamley who writes poetry."

"Yes. He is not quite so handsome now; but he was a beautiful boy.
Roger was never to be compared with him."

"No; he is not handsome. And yet I like his face. I can see his eyes.
They are grave and solemn-looking; but all the rest of his face is
rather merry than otherwise. It looks too steady and sober, too good
a face, to go tempting his brother to leave his lesson."

"Ah! but it was not a lesson. I remember the painter, Mr. Green, once
saw Osborne reading some poetry, while Roger was trying to persuade
him to come out and have a ride in the hay-cart--that was the
'motive' of the picture, to speak artistically. Roger is not much of
a reader; at least, he doesn't care for poetry, and books of romance,
or sentiment. He is so fond of natural history; and that takes him,
like the squire, a great deal out of doors; and when he is in, he is
always reading scientific books that bear upon his pursuits. He is a
good, steady fellow, though, and gives us great satisfaction, but he
is not likely to have such a brilliant career as Osborne."

Molly tried to find out in the picture the characteristics of the
two boys, as they were now explained to her by their mother; and in
questions and answers about the various drawings hung round the room
the time passed away until the dressing-bell rang for the six o'clock
dinner.

Molly was rather dismayed by the offers of the maid whom Mrs. Hamley
had sent to assist her. "I am afraid they expect me to be very
smart," she kept thinking to herself. "If they do, they'll be
disappointed; that's all. But I wish my plaid silk gown had been
ready."

She looked at herself in the glass with some anxiety, for the first
time in her life. She saw a slight, lean figure, promising to be
tall; a complexion browner than cream-coloured, although in a year or
two it might have that tint; plentiful curly black hair, tied up in a
bunch behind with a rose-coloured ribbon; long, almond-shaped, soft
gray eyes, shaded both above and below by curling black eyelashes.

"I don't think I am pretty," thought Molly, as she turned away from
the glass; "and yet I'm not sure." She would have been sure, if,
instead of inspecting herself with such solemnity, she had smiled her
own sweet merry smile, and called out the gleam of her teeth, and the
charm of her dimples.

She found her way downstairs into the drawing-room in good time;
she could look about her, and learn how to feel at home in her
new quarters. The room was forty-feet long or so, fitted up with
yellow satin at some distant period; high spindle-legged chairs and
pembroke-tables abounded. The carpet was of the same date as the
curtains, and was thread-bare in many places; and in others was
covered with drugget. Stands of plants, great jars of flowers,
old Indian china and cabinets gave the room the pleasant aspect
it certainly had. And to add to it, there were five high, long
windows on one side of the room, all opening to the prettiest
bit of flower-garden in the grounds--or what was considered as
such--brilliant-coloured, geometrically-shaped beds, converging
to a sun-dial in the midst. The Squire came in abruptly, and in
his morning dress; he stood at the door, as if surprised at the
white-robed stranger in possession of his hearth. Then, suddenly
remembering himself, but not before Molly had begun to feel very hot,
he said--

"Why, God bless my soul, I'd quite forgotten you; you're Miss Gibson,
Gibson's daughter, aren't you? Come to pay us a visit? I'm sure I'm
very glad to see you, my dear."

By this time, they had met in the middle of the room, and he was
shaking Molly's hand with vehement friendliness, intended to make up
for his not knowing her at first.

"I must go and dress, though," said he, looking at his soiled
gaiters. "Madam likes it. It's one of her fine London ways, and she's
broken me into it at last. Very good plan, though, and quite right
to make oneself fit for ladies' society. Does your father dress for
dinner, Miss Gibson?" He did not stay to wait for her answer, but
hastened away to perform his toilette.

They dined at a small table in a great large room. There were so few
articles of furniture in it, and the apartment itself was so vast,
that Molly longed for the snugness of the home dining-room; nay,
it is to be feared that, before the stately dinner at Hamley Hall
came to an end, she even regretted the crowded chairs and tables,
the hurry of eating, the quick unformal manner in which everybody
seemed to finish their meal as fast as possible, and to return to the
work they had left. She tried to think that at six o'clock all the
business of the day was ended, and that people might linger if they
chose. She measured the distance from the sideboard to the table with
her eye, and made allowances for the men who had to carry things
backwards and forwards; but, all the same, this dinner appeared to
her a wearisome business, prolonged because the Squire liked it, for
Mrs. Hamley seemed tired out. She ate even less than Molly, and sent
for fan and smelling-bottle to amuse herself with, until at length
the table-cloth was cleared away, and the dessert was put upon a
mahogany table, polished like a looking-glass.

The Squire had hitherto been too busy to talk, except about the
immediate concerns of the table, and one or two of the greatest
breaks to the usual monotony of his days; a monotony in which he
delighted, but which sometimes became oppressive to his wife. Now,
however, peeling his orange, he turned to Molly--

"To-morrow you'll have to do this for me, Miss Gibson."

"Shall I? I'll do it to-day, if you like, sir."

"No; to-day I shall treat you as a visitor, with all proper ceremony.
To-morrow I shall send you errands, and call you by your Christian
name."

"I shall like that," said Molly.

"I was wanting to call you something less formal than Miss Gibson,"
said Mrs. Hamley.

"My name is Molly. It is an old-fashioned name, and I was christened
Mary. But papa likes Molly."

"That's right. Keep to the good old fashions, my dear."

"Well, I must say I think Mary is prettier than Molly, and quite as
old a name, too," said Mrs. Hamley.

"I think it was," said Molly, lowering her voice, and dropping her
eyes, "because mamma was Mary, and I was called Molly while she
lived."

"Ah, poor thing," said the squire, not perceiving his wife's signs
to change the subject, "I remember how sorry every one was when she
died; no one thought she was delicate, she had such a fresh colour,
till all at once she popped off, as one may say."

"It must have been a terrible blow to your father," said Mrs. Hamley,
seeing that Molly did not know what to answer.

"Ay, ay. It came so sudden, so soon after they were married."

"I thought it was nearly four years," said Molly.

"And four years is soon--is a short time to a couple who look to
spending their lifetime together. Every one thought Gibson would have
married again."

"Hush," said Mrs. Hamley, seeing in Molly's eyes and change of colour
how completely this was a new idea to her. But the squire was not so
easily stopped.

"Well--I'd perhaps better not have said it, but it's the truth; they
did. He's not likely to marry now, so one may say it out. Why, your
father is past forty, isn't he?"

"Forty-three. I don't believe he ever thought of marrying again,"
said Molly, recurring to the idea, as one does to that of danger
which has passed by, without one's being aware of it.

"No! I don't believe he did, my dear. He looks to me just like a man
who would be constant to the memory of his wife. You must not mind
what the squire says."

"Ah! you'd better go away, if you're going to teach Miss Gibson such
treason as that against the master of the house."

Molly went into the drawing-room with Mrs. Hamley, but her thoughts
did not change with the room. She could not help dwelling on the
danger which she fancied she had escaped, and was astonished at
her own stupidity at never having imagined such a possibility as
her father's second marriage. She felt that she was answering Mrs.
Hamley's remarks in a very unsatisfactory manner.

"There is papa, with the Squire!" she suddenly exclaimed. There they
were coming across the flower-garden from the stable-yard, her father
switching his boots with his riding whip, in order to make them
presentable in Mrs. Hamley's drawing-room. He looked so exactly like
his usual self, his home-self, that the seeing him in the flesh was
the most efficacious way of dispelling the phantom fears of a second
wedding, which were beginning to harass his daughter's mind; and the
pleasant conviction that he could not rest till he had come over
to see how she was going on in her new home, stole into her heart,
although he spoke but little to her, and that little was all in a
joking tone. After he had gone away, the Squire undertook to teach
her cribbage, and she was happy enough now to give him all her
attention. He kept on prattling while they played; sometimes in
relation to the cards; at others telling her of small occurrences
which he thought might interest her.

"So you don't know my boys, even by sight. I should have thought you
would have done, for they're fond enough of riding into Hollingford;
and I know Roger has often enough been to borrow books from your
father. Roger is a scientific sort of a fellow. Osborne is clever,
like his mother. I shouldn't wonder if he published a book some day.
You're not counting right, Miss Gibson. Why, I could cheat you as
easily as possible." And so on, till the butler came in with a solemn
look, placed a large prayer-book before his master, who huddled the
cards away in a hurry, as if caught in an incongruous employment; and
then the maids and men trooped in to prayers--the windows were still
open, and the sounds of the solitary corncrake, and the owl hooting
in the trees, mingled with the words spoken. Then to bed; and so
ended the day.

Molly looked out of her chamber window--leaning on the sill, and
snuffing up the night odours of the honeysuckle. The soft velvet
darkness hid everything that was at any distance from her; although
she was as conscious of their presence as if she had seen them.

"I think I shall be very happy here," was in Molly's thoughts, as she
turned away at length, and began to prepare for bed. Before long the
Squire's words, relating to her father's second marriage, came across
her, and spoilt the sweet peace of her final thoughts. "Who could he
have married?" she asked herself. "Miss Eyre? Miss Browning? Miss
Phoebe? Miss Goodenough?" One by one, each of these was rejected
for sufficient reasons. Yet the unsatisfied question rankled in her
mind, and darted out of ambush to disturb her dreams.

Mrs. Hamley did not come down to breakfast; and Molly found out
with a little dismay, that the Squire and she were to have it by
themselves. On this first morning he put aside his newspapers--one
an old established Tory journal, with all the local and county
news, which was the most interesting to him; the other the _Morning
Chronicle_, which he called his dose of bitters, and which called out
many a strong expression and tolerably pungent oath. To-day, however,
he was "on his manners," as he afterwards explained to Molly; and he
plunged about, trying to find ground for a conversation. He could
talk of his wife and his sons, his estate, and his mode of farming;
his tenants, and the mismanagement of the last county election.
Molly's interests were her father, Miss Eyre, her garden and pony;
in a fainter degree Miss Brownings, the Cumnor Charity School, and
the new gown that was to come from Miss Rose's; into the midst of
which the one great question, "Who was it that people thought it was
possible papa might marry?" kept popping up into her mouth, like a
troublesome Jack-in-the-box. For the present, however, the lid was
snapped down upon the intruder as often as he showed his head between
her teeth. They were very polite to each other during the meal; and
it was not a little tiresome to both. When it was ended the Squire
withdrew into his study to read the untasted newspapers. It was
the custom to call the room in which Squire Hamley kept his coats,
boots, and gaiters, his different sticks and favourite spud, his
gun and fishing-rods, "the study." There was a bureau in it, and a
three-cornered arm-chair, but no books were visible. The greater part
of them were kept in a large, musty-smelling room, in an unfrequented
part of the house; so unfrequented that the housemaid often neglected
to open the window-shutters, which looked into a part of the grounds
over-grown with the luxuriant growth of shrubs. Indeed, it was a
tradition in the servants' hall that, in the late squire's time--he
who had been plucked at college--the library windows had been boarded
up to avoid paying the window-tax. And when the "young gentlemen"
were at home the housemaid, without a single direction to that
effect, was regular in her charge of this room; opened the windows
and lighted fires daily, and dusted the handsomely-bound volumes,
which were really a very fair collection of the standard literature
in the middle of the last century. All the books that had been
purchased since that time were held in small book-cases between
each two of the drawing-room windows, and in Mrs. Hamley's own
sitting-room upstairs. Those in the drawing-room were quite enough to
employ Molly; indeed, she was so deep in one of Sir Walter Scott's
novels that she jumped as if she had been shot, when an hour or so
after breakfast the Squire came to the gravel-path outside one of the
windows, and called to ask her if she would like to come out of doors
and go about the garden and home-fields with him.

"It must be a little dull for you, my girl, all by yourself, with
nothing but books to look at, in the mornings here; but you see,
madam has a fancy for being quiet in the mornings: she told your
father about it, and so did I, but I felt sorry for you all the same,
when I saw you sitting on the ground all alone in the drawing-room."

Molly had been in the very middle of the _Bride of Lammermoor_, and
would gladly have stayed in-doors to finish it, but she felt the
squire's kindness all the same. They went in and out of old-fashioned
greenhouses, over trim lawns, the Squire unlocked the great walled
kitchen-garden, and went about giving directions to gardeners; and
all the time Molly followed him like a little dog, her mind quite
full of "Ravenswood" and "Lucy Ashton." Presently, every place near
the house had been inspected and regulated, and the Squire was more
at liberty to give his attention to his companion, as they passed
through the little wood that separated the gardens from the adjoining
fields. Molly, too, plucked away her thoughts from the seventeenth
century; and, somehow or other, that one question, which had so
haunted her before, came out of her lips before she was aware--a
literal impromptu,--

"Who did people think papa would marry? That time--long ago--soon
after mamma died?"

She dropped her voice very soft and low, as she spoke the last words.
The Squire turned round upon her, and looked at her face, he knew not
why. It was very grave, a little pale, but her steady eyes almost
commanded some kind of answer.

"Whew," said he, whistling to gain time; not that he had anything
definite to say, for no one had ever had any reason to join Mr.
Gibson's name with any known lady: it was only a loose conjecture
that had been hazarded on the probabilities--a young widower, with a
little girl.

"I never heard of any one--his name was never coupled with any
lady's--'twas only in the nature of things that he should marry
again; he may do it yet, for aught I know, and I don't think it would
be a bad move either. I told him so, the last time but one he was
here."

"And what did he say?" asked breathless Molly.

"Oh: he only smiled and said nothing. You shouldn't take up words so
seriously, my dear. Very likely he may never think of marrying again,
and if he did, it would be a very good thing both for him and for
you!"

Molly muttered something, as if to herself, but the Squire might have
heard it if he had chosen. As it was, he wisely turned the current of
the conversation.

"Look at that!" he said, as they suddenly came upon the mere, or
large pond. There was a small island in the middle of the glassy
water, on which grew tall trees, dark Scotch firs in the centre,
silvery shimmering willows close to the water's edge. "We must get
you punted over there, some of these days. I'm not fond of using the
boat at this time of the year, because the young birds are still in
the nests among the reeds and water-plants; but we'll go. There are
coots and grebes."

"Oh, look, there's a swan!"

"Yes; there are two pair of them here. And in those trees there's
both a rookery and a heronry; the herons ought to be here by now, for
they're off to the sea in August, but I've not seen one yet. Stay!
isn't that one--that fellow on a stone, with his long neck bent down,
looking into the water?"

"Yes! I think so. I have never seen a heron, only pictures of them."

"They and the rooks are always at war, which doesn't do for such near
neighbours. If both herons leave the nest they are building, the
rooks come and tear it to pieces; and once Roger showed me a long
straggling fellow of a heron, with a flight of rooks after him, with
no friendly purpose in their minds, I'll be bound. Roger knows a deal
of natural history, and finds out queer things sometimes. He'd have
been off a dozen times during this walk of ours, if he'd been here:
his eyes are always wandering about, and see twenty things where I
only see one. Why! I've known him bolt into a copse because he saw
something fifteen yards off--some plant, maybe, which he'd tell me
was very rare, though I should say I'd seen its marrow at every turn
in the woods; and, if we came upon such a thing as this," touching
a delicate film of a cobweb upon a leaf with his stick, as he spoke,
"why, he could tell you what insect or spider made it, and if it
lived in rotten fir-wood, or in a cranny of good sound timber, or
deep down in the ground, or up in the sky, or anywhere. It's a pity
they don't take honours in Natural History at Cambridge. Roger would
be safe enough if they did."

"Mr. Osborne Hamley is very clever, is he not?" Molly asked, timidly.

"Oh, yes. Osborne's a bit of a genius. His mother looks for great
things from Osborne. I'm rather proud of him myself. He'll get a
Trinity fellowship, if they play him fair. As I was saying at the
magistrates' meeting yesterday, 'I've got a son who will make a noise
at Cambridge, or I'm very much mistaken.' Now, isn't it a queer quip
of Nature," continued the squire, turning his honest face towards
Molly, as if he was going to impart a new idea to her, "that I, a
Hamley of Hamley, straight in descent from nobody knows where--the
Heptarchy, they say--What's the date of the Heptarchy?"

"I don't know," said Molly, startled at being thus appealed to.

"Well! it was some time before King Alfred, because he was the
King of all England, you know; but, as I was saying, here am I, of
as good and as old a descent as any man in England, and I doubt
if a stranger, to look at me, would take me for a gentleman, with
my red face, great hands and feet, and thick figure, fourteen
stone, and never less than twelve even when I was a young man; and
there's Osborne, who takes after his mother, who couldn't tell her
great-grandfather from Adam, bless her; and Osborne has a girl's
delicate face, and a slight make, and hands and feet as small as a
lady's. He takes after madam's side, who, as I said, can't tell who
was her grandfather. Now, Roger is like me, a Hamley of Hamley, and
no one who sees him in the street will ever think that red-brown,
big-boned, clumsy chap is of gentle blood. Yet all those Cumnor
people, you make such ado of in Hollingford, are mere muck of
yesterday. I was talking to madam the other day about Osborne's
marrying a daughter of Lord Hollingford's--that's to say, if he had
a daughter--he's only got boys, as it happens; but I'm not sure if
I should consent to it. I really am not sure; for you see Osborne
will have had a first-rate education, and his family dates from the
Heptarchy, while I should be glad to know where the Cumnor folk were
in the time of Queen Anne?" He walked on, pondering the question of
whether he could have given his consent to this impossible marriage;
and after some time, and when Molly had quite forgotten the subject
to which he alluded, he broke out with--"No! I'm sure I should have
looked higher. So, perhaps, it's as well my Lord Hollingford has only
boys."

After a while, he thanked Molly for her companionship, with
old-fashioned courtesy; and told her that he thought, by this time,
madam would be up and dressed, and glad to have her young visitor
with her. He pointed out the deep purple house, with its stone
facings, as it was seen at some distance between the trees, and
watched her protectingly on her way along the field-paths.

"That's a nice girl of Gibson's," quoth he to himself. "But what a
tight hold the wench got of the notion of his marrying again! One had
need be on one's guard as to what one says before her. To think of
her never having thought of the chance of a stepmother. To be sure, a
stepmother to a girl is a different thing to a second wife to a man!"




CHAPTER VII.

FORESHADOWS OF LOVE PERILS.


[Illustration (untitled)]

If Squire Hamley had been unable to tell Molly who had ever been
thought of as her father's second wife, fate was all this time
preparing an answer of a pretty positive kind to her wondering
curiosity. But fate is a cunning hussy, and builds up her plans as
imperceptibly as a bird builds her nest; and with much the same kind
of unconsidered trifles. The first "trifle" of an event was the
disturbance which Jenny (Mr. Gibson's cook) chose to make at Bethia's
being dismissed. Bethia was a distant relation and protŽgŽe of
Jenny's, and she chose to say it was Mr. Coxe the tempter who ought
to have "been sent packing," not Bethia the tempted, the victim. In
this view there was quite enough plausibility to make Mr. Gibson
feel that he had been rather unjust. He had, however, taken care to
provide Bethia with another situation, to the full as good as that
which she held in his family. Jenny, nevertheless, chose to give
warning; and though Mr. Gibson knew full well from former experience
that her warnings were words, not deeds, he hated the discomfort, the
uncertainty,--the entire disagreeableness of meeting a woman at any
time in his house, who wore a grievance and an injury upon her face
as legibly as Jenny took care to do.

Down into the middle of this small domestic trouble came another, and
one of greater consequence. Miss Eyre had gone with her old mother,
and her orphan nephews and nieces, to the sea-side, during Molly's
absence, which was only intended at first to last for a fortnight.
After about ten days of this time had elapsed, Mr. Gibson received a
beautifully written, beautifully worded, admirably folded, and most
neatly sealed letter from Miss Eyre. Her eldest nephew had fallen ill
of scarlet fever, and there was every probability that the younger
children would be attacked by the same complaint. It was distressing
enough for poor Miss Eyre--this additional expense, this anxiety--the
long detention from home which the illness involved. But she said
not a word of any inconvenience to herself; she only apologized with
humble sincerity for her inability to return at the appointed time
to her charge in Mr. Gibson's family; meekly adding, that perhaps it
was as well, for Molly had never had the scarlet fever, and even if
Miss Eyre had been able to leave the orphan children to return to her
employments, it might not have been a safe or a prudent step.

"To be sure not," said Mr. Gibson, tearing the letter in two, and
throwing it into the hearth, where he soon saw it burnt to ashes. "I
wish I'd a five-pound house and not a woman within ten miles of me. I
might have some peace then." Apparently, he forgot Mr. Coxe's powers
of making mischief; but indeed he might have traced that evil back
to the unconscious Molly. The martyr-cook's entrance to take away
the breakfast things, which she announced by a heavy sigh, roused Mr.
Gibson from thought to action.

"Molly must stay a little longer at Hamley," he resolved. "They've
often asked for her, and now they'll have enough of her, I think. But
I can't have her back here just yet; and so the best I can do for her
is to leave her where she is. Mrs. Hamley seems very fond of her, and
the child is looking happy, and stronger in health. I'll ride round
by Hamley to-day at any rate, and see how the land lies."

He found Mrs. Hamley lying on a sofa placed under the shadow of the
great cedar-tree on the lawn. Molly was flitting about her, gardening
away under her directions; tying up the long sea-green stalks of
bright budded carnations, snipping off dead roses.

"Oh! here's papa!" she cried out, joyfully, as he rode up to the
white paling which separated the trim lawn and trimmer flower-garden
from the rough park-like ground in front of the house.

"Come in--come here--through the drawing-room window," said Mrs.
Hamley, raising herself on her elbow. "We've got a rose-tree to show
you that Molly has budded all by herself. We are both so proud of
it."

So Mr. Gibson rode round to the stables, left his horse there, and
made his way through the house to the open-air summer-parlour under
the cedar-tree, where there were chairs, table, books, and tangled
work. Somehow, he rather disliked asking for Molly to prolong her
visit; so he determined to swallow his bitter first, and then take
the pleasure of the delicious day, the sweet repose, the murmurous,
scented air. Molly stood by him, her hand on his shoulder. He sate
opposite to Mrs. Hamley.

"I've come here to-day to ask a favour," he began.

"Granted before you name it. Am not I a bold woman?"

He smiled and bowed, but went straight on with his speech.

"Miss Eyre, who has been Molly's governess, I suppose I must call
her--for many years, writes to-day to say that one of the little
nephews she took with her to Newport while Molly was staying here,
has caught the scarlet fever."

"I guess your request. I make it before you do. I beg for dear little
Molly to stay on here. Of course Miss Eyre can't come back to you;
and of course Molly must stay here!"

"Thank you; thank you very much. That was my request."

Molly's hand stole down to his, and nestled in that firm compact
grasp.

"Papa!--Mrs. Hamley!--I know you'll both understand me--but mayn't I
go home? I am very happy here; but--oh papa! I think I should like to
be at home with you best."

An uncomfortable suspicion flashed across his mind. He pulled her
round, and looked straight and piercingly into her innocent face. Her
colour came at his unwonted scrutiny, but her sweet eyes were filled
with wonder, rather than with any feeling which he dreaded to find.
For an instant he had doubted whether young red-headed Mr. Coxe's
love might not have called out a response in his daughter's breast;
but he was quite clear now.

"Molly, you're rude to begin with. I don't know how you're to make
your peace with Mrs. Hamley, I'm sure. And in the next place, do
you think you're wiser than I am; or that I don't want you at home,
if all other things were conformable? Stay where you are, and be
thankful."

Molly knew him well enough to be certain that the prolongation of her
visit at Hamley was quite a decided affair in his mind; and then she
was smitten with a sense of ingratitude. She left her father, and
went to Mrs. Hamley, and bent over her and kissed her; but she did
not speak. Mrs. Hamley took hold of her hand, and made room on the
sofa for her.

"I was going to have asked for a longer visit the next time you came,
Mr. Gibson. We are such happy friends, are not we, Molly? and now,
that this good little nephew of Miss Eyre's--"

"I wish he was whipped," said Mr. Gibson.

"--has given us such a capital reason, I shall keep Molly for a real
long visitation. You must come over and see us very often. There's a
room here for you always, you know; and I don't see why you should
not start on your rounds from Hamley every morning, just as well as
from Hollingford."

"Thank you. If you hadn't been so kind to my little girl, I might be
tempted to say something rude in answer to your last speech."

"Pray say it. You won't be easy till you have given it out, I know."

"Mrs. Hamley has found out from whom I get my rudeness," said Molly,
triumphantly. "It's an hereditary quality."

"I was going to say that proposal of yours that I should sleep at
Hamley was just like a woman's idea--all kindness, and no common
sense. How in the world would my patients find me out, seven miles
from my accustomed place? They'd be sure to send for some other
doctor, and I should be ruined in a month."

"Couldn't they send on here? A messenger costs very little."

"Fancy old Goody Henbury struggling up to my surgery, groaning at
every step, and then being told to just step on seven miles farther!
Or take the other end of society:--I don't think my Lady Cumnor's
smart groom would thank me for having to ride on to Hamley every time
his mistress wants me."

"Well, well, I submit. I am a woman. Molly, thou art a woman! Go and
order some strawberries and cream for this father of yours. Such
humble offices fall within the province of women. Strawberries and
cream are all kindness and no common sense, for they'll give him a
horrid fit of indigestion."

"Please speak for yourself, Mrs. Hamley," said Molly, merrily.
"I ate--oh, such a great basketful yesterday, and the squire went
himself to the dairy and brought out a great bowl of cream, when he
found me at my busy work. And I'm as well as ever I was, to-day, and
never had a touch of indigestion near me."

"She's a good girl," said her father, when she had danced out of
hearing. The words were not quite an inquiry, he was so certain of
his answer. There was a mixture of tenderness and trust in his eyes,
as he awaited the reply, which came in a moment.

"She's a darling. I cannot tell you how fond the Squire and I are of
her; both of us. I am so delighted to think she isn't to go away for
a long time. The first thing I thought of this morning when I wakened
up, was that she would soon have to return to you, unless I could
persuade you into leaving her with me a little longer. And now she
must stay--oh, two months at least."

It was quite true that the Squire had become very fond of Molly. The
charm of having a young girl dancing and singing inarticulate ditties
about the house and garden, was indescribable in its novelty to him.
And then Molly was so willing and so wise; ready both to talk and to
listen at the right times. Mrs. Hamley was quite right in speaking
of her husband's fondness for Molly. But either she herself chose a
wrong time for telling him of the prolongation of the girl's visit,
or one of the fits of temper to which he was liable, but which he
generally strove to check in the presence of his wife, was upon him;
at any rate, he received the news in anything but a gracious frame of
mind.

"Stay longer! Did Gibson ask for it?"

"Yes! I don't see what else is to become of her; Miss Eyre away and
all. It's a very awkward position for a motherless girl like her to
be at the head of a household with two young men in it."

"That's Gibson's look-out; he should have thought of it before taking
pupils, or apprentices, or whatever he calls them."

"My dear Squire! why, I thought you'd be as glad as I was--as I am to
keep Molly. I asked her to stay for an indefinite time; two months at
least."

"And to be in the house with Osborne! Roger, too, will be at home."

By the cloud in the Squire's eyes, Mrs. Hamley read his mind.

"Oh, she's not at all the sort of girl young men of their age would
take to. We like her because we see what she really is; but lads of
one or two and twenty want all the accessories of a young woman."

"Want what?" growled the Squire.

"Such things as becoming dress, style of manner. They would not at
their age even see that she is pretty; their ideas of beauty would
include colour."

"I suppose all that's very clever; but I don't understand it. All I
know is, that it's a very dangerous thing to shut two young men of
one and three and twenty up in a country-house like this with a girl
of seventeen--choose what her gowns may be like, or her hair, or her
eyes. And I told you particularly I didn't want Osborne, or either of
them, indeed, to be falling in love with her. I'm very much annoyed."

Mrs. Hamley's face fell; she became a little pale.

"Shall we make arrangements for their stopping away while she is
here; staying up at Cambridge, or reading with some one? going abroad
for a month or two?"

"No; you've been reckoning this ever so long on their coming home.
I've seen the marks of the weeks on your almanack. I'd sooner speak
to Gibson, and tell him he must take his daughter away, for it's not
convenient to us--"

"My dear Roger! I beg you will do no such thing. It will be so
unkind; it will give the lie to all I said yesterday. Don't, please,
do that. For my sake, don't speak to Mr. Gibson!"

"Well, well, don't put yourself in a flutter," for he was afraid of
her becoming hysterical; "I'll speak to Osborne when he comes home,
and tell him how much I should dislike anything of the kind."

"And Roger is always far too full of his natural history and
comparative anatomy, and messes of that sort, to be thinking of
falling in love with Venus herself. He has not the sentiment and
imagination of Osborne."

"Ah, you don't know; you never can be sure about a young man! But
with Roger it wouldn't so much signify. He would know he couldn't
marry for years to come."

All that afternoon the Squire tried to steer clear of Molly, to whom
he felt himself to have been an inhospitable traitor. But she was so
perfectly unconscious of his shyness of her, and so merry and sweet
in her behaviour as a welcome guest, never distrusting him for a
moment, however gruff he might be, that by the next morning she had
completely won him round, and they were quite on the old terms again.
At breakfast this very morning, a letter was passed from the Squire
to his wife, and back again, without a word as to its contents; but--

"Fortunate!"

"Yes! very!"

Little did Molly apply these expressions to the piece of news Mrs.
Hamley told her in the course of the day; namely, that her son
Osborne had received an invitation to stay with a friend in the
neighbourhood of Cambridge, and perhaps to make a tour on the
Continent with him subsequently; and that, consequently, he would not
accompany his brother when Roger came home.

Molly was very sympathetic.

"Oh, dear! I am so sorry!"

Mrs. Hamley was thankful her husband was not present, Molly spoke the
words so heartily.

"You have been thinking so long of his coming home. I am afraid it is
a great disappointment."

Mrs. Hamley smiled--relieved.

"Yes! it is a disappointment certainly, but we must think of
Osborne's pleasure. And with his poetical mind, he will write us such
delightful travelling letters. Poor fellow! he must be going into the
examination to-day! Both his father and I feel sure, though, that he
will be a high wrangler. Only--I should like to have seen him, my own
dear boy. But it is best as it is."

Molly was a little puzzled by this speech, but soon put it out of her
head. It was a disappointment to her, too, that she should not see
this beautiful, brilliant young man, his mother's hero. From time to
time her maiden fancy had dwelt upon what he would be like; how the
lovely boy of the picture in Mrs. Hamley's dressing-room would have
changed in the ten years that had elapsed since the likeness was
taken; if he would read poetry aloud; if he would even read his own
poetry. However, in the never-ending feminine business of the day,
she soon forgot her own disappointment; it only came back to her on
first wakening the next morning, as a vague something that was not
quite so pleasant as she had anticipated, and then was banished as a
subject of regret. Her days at Hamley were well filled up with the
small duties that would have belonged to a daughter of the house had
there been one. She made breakfast for the lonely squire, and would
willingly have carried up madam's, but that daily piece of work
belonged to the squire, and was jealously guarded by him. She read
the smaller print of the newspapers aloud to him, city articles,
money and corn markets included. She strolled about the gardens with
him, gathering fresh flowers, meanwhile, to deck the drawing-room
against Mrs. Hamley should come down. She was her companion when she
took her drives in the close carriage; they read poetry and mild
literature together in Mrs. Hamley's sitting-room upstairs. She was
quite clever at cribbage now, and could beat the squire if she took
pains. Besides these things, there were her own independent ways of
employing herself. She used to try to practise an hour daily on
the old grand piano in the solitary drawing-room, because she had
promised Miss Eyre she would do so. And she had found her way into
the library, and used to undo the heavy bars of the shutters if the
housemaid had forgotten this duty, and mount the ladder, sitting on
the steps, for an hour at a time, deep in some book of the old
English classics. The summer days were very short to this happy girl
of seventeen.




CHAPTER VIII.

DRIFTING INTO DANGER.


On Thursday, the quiet country household was stirred through all
its fibres with the thought of Roger's coming home. Mrs. Hamley had
not seemed quite so well, or quite in such good spirits for two or
three days before; and the squire himself had appeared to be put out
without any visible cause. They had not chosen to tell Molly that
Osborne's name had only appeared very low down in the mathematical
tripos. So all that their visitor knew was that something was out of
tune, and she hoped that Roger's coming home would set it to rights,
for it was beyond the power of her small cares and wiles.

On Thursday, the housemaid apologized to her for some slight
negligence in her bedroom, by saying she had been busy scouring
Mr. Roger's rooms. "Not but what they were as clean as could be
beforehand; but mistress would always have the young gentlemen's
rooms cleaned afresh before they came home. If it had been Mr.
Osborne, the whole house would have had to be done; but, to be sure,
he was the eldest son, so it was but likely." Molly was amused at
this testimony to the rights of heirship; but somehow she herself had
fallen into the family manner of thinking that nothing was too great
or too good for "the eldest son." In his father's eyes, Osborne was
the representative of the ancient house of Hamley of Hamley, the
future owner of the land which had been theirs for a thousand years.
His mother clung to him because they two were cast in the same
mould, both physically and mentally--because he bore her maiden name.
She had indoctrinated Molly with her faith, and, in spite of her
amusement at the housemaid's speech, the girl visitor would have
been as anxious as any one to show her feudal loyalty to the heir,
if indeed it had been he that was coming. After luncheon, Mrs. Hamley
went to rest, in preparation for Roger's return; and Molly also
retired to her own room, feeling that it would be better for her to
remain there until dinner-time, and so to leave the father and mother
to receive their boy in privacy. She took a book of MS. poems with
her; they were all of Osborne Hamley's composition; and his mother
had read some of them aloud to her young visitor more than once.
Molly had asked permission to copy one or two of those which were
her greatest favourites; and this quiet summer afternoon she took
this copying for her employment, sitting at the pleasant open window,
and losing herself in dreamy out-looks into the gardens and woods,
quivering in the noon-tide heat. The house was so still, in its
silence it might have been the "moated grange;" the booming buzz of
the blue flies, in the great staircase window, seemed the loudest
noise in-doors. And there was scarcely a sound out-of-doors but the
humming of bees, in the flower-beds below the window. Distant voices
from the far-away fields where they were making hay--the scent of
which came in sudden wafts distinct from that of the nearer roses
and honeysuckles--these merry piping voices just made Molly feel the
depth of the present silence. She had left off copying, her hand
weary with the unusual exertion of so much writing, and she was
lazily trying to learn one or two of the poems off by heart.

   I asked of the wind, but answer made it none,
   Save its accustomed sad and solitary moan--

she kept saying to herself, losing her sense of whatever meaning the
words had ever had, in the repetition which had become mechanical.
Suddenly there was the snap of a shutting gate; wheels crackling on
the dry gravel, horses' feet on the drive; a loud cheerful voice
in the house, coming up through the open windows, the hall, the
passages, the staircase, with unwonted fulness and roundness of tone.
The entrance-hall downstairs was paved with diamonds of black and
white marble; the low wide staircase that went in short flights
around the hall, till you could look down upon the marble floor from
the top story of the house, was uncarpeted--uncovered. The Squire
was too proud of his beautifully-joined oaken flooring to cover this
stair-case up unnecessarily; not to say a word of the usual state of
want of ready money to expend upon the decorations of his house. So,
through the undraperied hollow square of the hall and staircase every
sound ascended clear and distinct; and Molly heard the Squire's glad
"Hallo! here he is," and madam's softer, more plaintive voice; and
then the loud, full, strange tone, which she knew must be Roger's.
Then there was an opening and shutting of doors, and only a distant
buzz of talking. Molly began again--

   I asked of the wind, but answer made it none.

And this time she had nearly finished learning the poem, when she
heard Mrs. Hamley come hastily into her sitting-room that adjoined
Molly's bedroom, and burst out into an irrepressible half-hysterical
fit of sobbing. Molly was too young to have any complication of
motives which should prevent her going at once to try and give what
comfort she could. In an instant she was kneeling at Mrs. Hamley's
feet, holding the poor lady's hands, kissing them, murmuring soft
words; which, all unmeaning as they were of aught but sympathy with
the untold grief, did Mrs. Hamley good. She checked herself, smiling
sadly at Molly through the midst of her thick-coming sobs.

"It's only Osborne," said she, at last. "Roger has been telling us
about him."

"What about him?" asked Molly, eagerly.

"I knew on Monday; we had a letter--he said he had not done so well
as we had hoped--as he had hoped himself, poor fellow! He said he had
just passed, but was only low down among the _junior optimes_, and
not where he had expected, and had led us to expect. But the Squire
has never been at college, and does not understand college terms, and
he has been asking Roger all about it, and Roger has been telling
him, and it has made him so angry. But the squire hates college
slang;--he has never been there, you know; and he thought poor
Osborne was taking it too lightly, and he has been asking Roger about
it, and Roger--"

There was a fresh fit of the sobbing crying. Molly burst out,--"I
don't think Mr. Roger should have told; he had no need to begin so
soon about his brother's failure. Why, he hasn't been in the house an
hour!"

"Hush, hush, love!" said Mrs. Hamley. "Roger is so good. You don't
understand. The squire would begin and ask questions before Roger had
tasted food--as soon as ever we had got into the dining-room. And all
he said--to me, at any rate--was that Osborne was nervous, and that
if he could only have gone in for the Chancellor's medals, he would
have carried all before him. But Roger said that after failing like
this, he is not very likely to get a fellowship, which the Squire had
placed his hopes on. Osborne himself seemed so sure of it, that the
squire can't understand it, and is seriously angry, and growing more
so the more he talks about it. He has kept it in two or three days,
and that never suits him. He is always better when he is angry about
a thing at once, and doesn't let it smoulder in his mind. Poor, poor
Osborne! I did wish he had been coming straight home, instead of
going to these friends of his; I thought I could have comforted him.
But now I'm glad, for it will be better to let his father's anger
cool first."

So talking out what was in her heart, Mrs. Hamley became more
composed; and at length she dismissed Molly to dress for dinner, with
a kiss, saying,--

"You're a real blessing to mothers, child! You give one such pleasant
sympathy, both in one's gladness and in one's sorrow; in one's
pride (for I was so proud last week, so confident), and in one's
disappointment. And now your being a fourth at dinner will keep
us off that sore subject; there are times when a stranger in the
household is a wonderful help."

Molly thought over all that she had heard, as she was dressing
and putting on the terrible, over-smart plaid gown in honour of
the new arrival. Her unconscious fealty to Osborne was not in the
least shaken by his having come to grief at Cambridge. Only she was
indignant--with or without reason--against Roger, who seemed to have
brought the reality of bad news as an offering of first-fruits on his
return home.

She went down into the drawing-room with anything but a welcome to
him in her heart. He was standing by his mother; the Squire had not
yet made his appearance. Molly thought that the two were hand in hand
when she first opened the door, but she could not be quite sure. Mrs.
Hamley came a little forwards to meet her, and introduced her in so
fondly intimate a way to her son, that Molly, innocent and simple,
knowing nothing but Hollingford manners, which were anything but
formal, half put out her hand to shake hands with one of whom she had
heard so much--the son of such kind friends. She could only hope he
had not seen the movement, for he made no attempt to respond to it;
only bowed.

He was a tall powerfully-made young man, giving the impression
of strength more than elegance. His face was rather square,
ruddy-coloured (as his father had said), hair and eyes brown--the
latter rather deep-set beneath his thick eyebrows; and he had a trick
of wrinkling up his eyelids when he wanted particularly to observe
anything, which made his eyes look even smaller still at such times.
He had a large mouth, with excessively mobile lips; and another trick
of his was, that when he was amused at anything, he resisted the
impulse to laugh, by a droll manner of twitching and puckering up
his mouth, till at length the sense of humour had its way, and
his features relaxed, and he broke into a broad sunny smile; his
beautiful teeth--his only beautiful feature--breaking out with a
white gleam upon the red-brown countenance. These two tricks of
his--of crumpling up the eyelids, so as to concentrate the power
of sight, which made him look stern and thoughtful; and the odd
twitching of the lips that was preliminary to a smile, which made
him look intensely merry--gave the varying expressions of his face
a greater range "from grave to gay, from lively to severe," than is
common with most men. To Molly, who was not finely discriminative
in her glances at the stranger this first night, he simply appeared
"heavy-looking, clumsy," and "a person she was sure she should never
get on with." He certainly did not seem to care much what impression
he made upon his mother's visitor. He was at that age when young men
admire a formed beauty more than a face with any amount of future
capability of loveliness, and when they are morbidly conscious of the
difficulty of finding subjects of conversation in talking to girls
in a state of feminine hobbledehoyhood. Besides, his thoughts were
full of other subjects, which he did not intend to allow to ooze out
in words, yet he wanted to prevent any of that heavy silence which
he feared might be impending--with an angry and displeased father,
and a timorous and distressed mother. He only looked upon Molly as
a badly-dressed, and rather awkward girl, with black hair and an
intelligent face, who might help him in the task he had set himself
of keeping up a bright general conversation during the rest of the
evening; might help him--if she would, but she would not. She thought
him unfeeling in his talkativeness; his constant flow of words upon
indifferent subjects was a wonder and a repulsion to her. How could
he go on so cheerfully while his mother sat there, scarcely eating
anything, and doing her best, with ill-success, to swallow down the
tears that would keep rising to her eyes; when his father's heavy
brow was deeply clouded, and he evidently cared nothing--at first at
least--for all the chatter his son poured forth? Had Mr. Roger Hamley
no sympathy in him? She would show that she had some, at any rate. So
she quite declined the part, which he had hoped she would have taken,
of respondent, and possible questioner; and his work became more
and more like that of a man walking in a quagmire. Once the Squire
roused himself to speak to the butler; he felt the need of outward
stimulus--of a better vintage than usual.

"Bring up a bottle of the Burgundy with the yellow seal."

He spoke low; he had no spirit to speak in his usual voice. The
butler answered in the same tone. Molly sitting near them, and silent
herself, heard what they said.

"If you please, sir, there are not above six bottles of that seal
left; and it is Mr. Osborne's favourite wine."

The Squire turned round with a growl in his voice.

"Bring up a bottle of the Burgundy with the yellow seal, as I said."

The butler went away wondering. "Mr. Osborne's" likes and dislikes
had been the law of the house in general until now. If he had liked
any particular food or drink, any seat or place, any special degree
of warmth or coolness, his wishes were to be attended to; for he
was the heir, and he was delicate, and he was the clever one of
the family. All the out-of-doors men would have said the same.
Mr. Osborne wished a tree cut down, or kept standing, or had
such-and-such a fancy about the game, or desired something unusual
about the horses; and they had all to attend to it as if it were
law. But to-day the Burgundy with the yellow seal was to be brought;
and it was brought. Molly testified with quiet vehemence of action;
she never took wine, so she need not have been afraid of the man's
pouring it into her glass; but as an open mark of fealty to the
absent Osborne, however little it might be understood, she placed the
palm of her small brown hand over the top of the glass, and held it
there, till the wine had gone round, and Roger and his father were in
full enjoyment of it.

After dinner, too, the gentlemen lingered long over their dessert,
and Molly heard them laughing; and then she saw them loitering
about in the twilight out-of-doors; Roger hatless, his hands in his
pockets, lounging by his father's side, who was now able to talk in
his usual loud and cheerful way, forgetting Osborne. _V¾ victis!_


[Illustration: V® VICTIS!]


And so in mute opposition on Molly's side, in polite indifference,
scarcely verging upon kindliness on his, Roger and she steered
clear of each other. He had many occupations in which he needed no
companionship, even if she had been qualified to give it. The worst
was, that she found he was in the habit of occupying the library,
her favourite retreat, in the mornings before Mrs. Hamley came down.
She opened the half-closed door a day or two after his return home,
and found him busy among books and papers, with which the large
leather-covered table was strewn; and she softly withdrew before he
could turn his head and see her, so as to distinguish her from one
of the housemaids. He rode out every day, sometimes with his father
about the outlying fields, sometimes far away for a good gallop.
Molly would have enjoyed accompanying him on these occasions, for
she was very fond of riding; and there had been some talk of sending
for her habit and grey pony when first she came to Hamley; only the
Squire, after some consideration, had said he so rarely did more
than go slowly from one field to another, where his labourers were
at work, that he feared she would find such slow work--ten minutes
riding through heavy land, twenty minutes sitting still on horseback,
listening to the directions he should have to give to his men--rather
dull. Now, when if she had had her pony here she might have ridden
out with Roger, without giving him any trouble--she would have taken
care of that--nobody seemed to think of renewing the proposal.

Altogether it was pleasanter before he came home.

Her father rode over pretty frequently; sometimes there were long
unaccountable absences, it was true; when his daughter began to
fidget after him, and to wonder what had become of him. But when
he made his appearance he had always good reasons to give; and the
right she felt that she had to his familiar household tenderness;
the power she possessed of fully understanding the exact value of
both his words and his silence, made these glimpses of intercourse
with him inexpressibly charming. Latterly her burden had always been,

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