'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 last few 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 quietly 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 need not 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.'

'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 "Shakespeare" 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 is 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 someone 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 is 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 Verecundiae ounce i Fidelitatis Domesticae ounce i Reticentiae gr iij.

M. Capiat hanc dosim ter die in aqua pura.

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 cars. 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 degage 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 dare say, 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 dare say 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 conductor 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 would not have been better still.'

'And if I had said it, sir—perhaps I ought to have said it,' said poor 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 suppositious 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 dare say, to make up for the mortification I should have given you, I should 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 the day long, till at the 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, was not 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 is 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 into 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 slow 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 am 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 . . . 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 would not 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 should not 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 must not 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 will 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 are not like what they were when we were young. All the love now-a-days 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 are 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 reasons 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, was it not? 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 might not 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 dare say I shall like it when I have thought a little more about it. Just now I am so startled by the suddenness of the affair, I have not 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 is all nonsense, papa, and you are 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 have had no new gowns this year, and I have outgrown all my last summer frocks. I have only three that I can wear at all. Betty was saying only yesterday that I ought to have some more.'

'That will do that you have got on, won't it? It is 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 has not got them?'

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

'Can't you go to Miss Rose's? Does not 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 are 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 is not 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 are 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 had 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 the way 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 am only where I was when she comes back; at least, if that foolish fellow goes on with his imaginary 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 the 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 dare say 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 was not 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 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, m 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 grey eyes, shaded both above and below by curling black eye-lashes.

'I don't think I am pretty,' thought Molly, as she turned away from the glass; 'and yet I am 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 threadbare 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,' he said, 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 are 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 this mother. I should not 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 the 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 is 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 have not seen one yet. Stay! is not 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 does not 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 would 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 have known him bolt into a copse because he saw something fifteen yards off—some plant, maybe, which he would 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 is 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, is it not 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 when—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 could not 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 their 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 am 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 step-mother. To be sure, a step-mother to a girl is a different thing to a second wife to a man!'



CHAPTER VII

FORESHADOWS OF LOVE PERILS

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 protegee 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 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, a 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 have come here to-day to ask for 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 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 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 wished 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 had not 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.'

'Could not 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 me 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 is not 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 a daily hour 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 noontide 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 in which they were making hay—the scent of which came in sudden wafts distinct from that of the nearer roses and honey-suckles—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 cranching 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 staircase 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 'Hollo! 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,—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 does not 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, which 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 to 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 sate 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, 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 had 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 the same.

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. Voe, victis!

And so in mute opposition on Molly's side, in polite indifference, scarcely verging on 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 came 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, 'When may I come home, papa?' It was not that she was unhappy, or uncomfortable; she was passionately fond of Mrs. Hamley, she was a favourite of the squire's, and could not as yet fully understand why some people were so much afraid of him; and as for Roger, if he did not add to her pleasure, he scarcely took away from it. But she wanted to be at home once more. The reason why she could not tell; but this she knew full well. Mr. Gibson reasoned with her till she was weary of being completely convinced that it was right and necessary for her to stay where she was. And then with an effort she stopped the cry upon her tongue, for she saw that its repetition harassed her father.

During this absence of hers Mr. Gibson was drifting into matrimony. He was partly aware of whither he was going; and partly it was like the soft floating movement of a dream. He was more passive than active in the affair; though, if his reason had not fully approved of the step he was tending to—if he had not believed that a second marriage was the very best way of cutting the Gordian knot of domestic difficulties, he could have made an effort without any great trouble to himself, and extricated himself without pain from the mesh of circumstances. It happened in this manner:—