he could have cried out for their pity, instead of their anger and resentment: 'Have mercy upon me, for I am very miserable.' How often have such dumb thoughts gone up from the hearts of those who have taken hold of their sorrow by the wrong end, as prayers against sin! And when the squire saw that his servants were learning to dread him, and his first-born to avoid him, he did not blame them. He knew he was becoming a domestic tyrant; it seemed as if all circumstances conspired against him, and as if he was too weak to struggle with them; else, why did everything indoors and out-of-doors go so wrong just now, when all he could have done, had things been prosperous, was to have submitted, in very imperfect patience, to the loss of his wife? But just when he needed ready money to pacify Osborne's creditors, the harvest had turned out remarkably plentiful, and the price of corn had sunk down to a level it had not touched for years. The squire had insured his life at the time of his marriage for a pretty large sum. It was to be a provision for his wife, if she had survived him, and for their younger children. Roger was the only representative of these interests now; but the squire was unwilling to lose the insurance by ceasing to pay the annual sum. He would not, if he could, have sold any part of the estate which he inherited from his father; and, besides, it was strictly entailed. He had sometimes thought how wise a step it would have been could he have sold a portion of it, and with the purchase-money have drained and reclaimed the remainder; and at length, learning from some neighbour that Government would make certain advances for drainage, &c. at a very low rate of interest, on condition that the work was done, and the money repaid, within a given time; his wife had urged him to take advantage of the proffered loan. But now that she was no longer here to encourage him, and take an interest in the progress of the work, he grew indifferent to it himself, and cared no more to go out on his stout roan cob, and sit square on his seat, watching the labourers on the marshy land all overgrown with rushes; speaking to them from time to time in their own strong nervous country dialect: but the interest to Government had to be paid all the same, whether the men worked well or ill. Then the roof of the Hall let in the melted snow-water this winter; and, on examination, it turned out that a new roof was absolutely required. The men who had come about the advances made to Osborne by the London money-lender, had spoken disparagingly of the timber on the estate—'Very fine trees—sound, perhaps, too, fifty years ago, but gone to rot now; had wanted lopping and clearing. Was there no wood-ranger or forester? They were nothing like the value young Mr. Hamley had represented them to be of.' The remarks had come round to the squire's ears. He loved the trees he had played under as a boy as if they were living creatures; that was on the romantic side of his nature. Merely looking at them as representing so many pounds sterling, he had esteemed them highly, and had had, until now, no opinion of another by which to correct his own judgment. So these words of the valuers cut him sharp, although he affected to disbelieve them, and tried to persuade himself that he did so. But, after all, these cares and disappointments did not touch the root of his deep resentment against Osborne. There is nothing like wounded affection for giving poignancy to anger. And the squire believed that Osborne and his advisers had been making calculations, based upon his own death. He hated the idea so much—it made him so miserable—that he would not face it, and define it, and meet it with full inquiry and investigation. He chose rather to cherish the morbid fancy that he was useless in this world—born under an unlucky star—that all things went badly under his management. But he did not become humble in consequence. He put his misfortunes down to the score of Fate—not to his own; and he imagined that Osborne saw his failures, and that his first-born grudged him his natural term of life. All these fancies would have been set to rights could he have talked them over with his wife; or even had he been accustomed to mingle much in the society of those whom he esteemed his equals; but, as has been stated, he was inferior in education to those who should have been his mates; and perhaps the jealousy and mauvaise honte that this inferiority had called out long ago, extended itself in some measure to the feelings he entertained towards his sons—less to Roger than to Osborne, though the former was turning out by far the most distinguished man. But Roger was practical; interested in all out-of-doors things, and he enjoyed the details, homely enough, which his father sometimes gave him of the every-day occurrences which the latter had noticed in the woods and the fields. Osborne, on the contrary, was what is commonly called 'fine;' delicate almost to effeminacy in dress and in manner; careful in small observances. All this his father had been rather proud of in the days when he had looked forward to a brilliant career at Cambridge for his son; he had at that time regarded Osborne's fastidiousness and elegance as another stepping-stone to the high and prosperous marriage which was to restore the ancient fortunes of the Hamley family. But now that Osborne had barely obtained his degree; that all the boastings of his father had proved vain; that the fastidiousness had led to unexpected expenses (to attribute the most innocent cause to Osborne's debts), the poor young man's ways and manners became a subject of irritation to his father. Osborne was still occupied with his books and his writings when he was at home; and this mode of passing the greater part of the day gave him but few subjects in common with his father when they did meet at meal-times, or in the evenings. Perhaps if Osborne had been able to have more out-of-door amusements it would have been better; but he was short-sighted, and cared little for the carefully-observant pursuits of his brother: he knew but few young men of his own standing in the county; his hunting even, of which he was passionately fond, had been curtailed this season, as his father had disposed of one of the two hunters he had been hitherto allowed. The whole stable establishment had been reduced; perhaps because it was the economy which told most on the enjoyment of both the squire and Osborne, and which, therefore, the former took a savage pleasure in enforcing. The old carriage—a heavy family coach bought in the days of comparative prosperity—was no longer needed after madam's death, and fell to pieces in the cobwebbed seclusion of the coach-house.' The best of the two carriage-horses was taken for a gig, which the squire now set up; saying many a time to all who might care to listen to him that it was the first time for generations that the Hamleys of Hamley had not been able to keep their own coach. The other carriage-horse was turned out to grass; being too old for regular work. Conqueror used to come whinnying up to the park palings whenever he saw the squire, who had always a piece of bread, or some sugar, or an apple for the old favourite—and made many a complaining speech to the dumb animal, telling him of the change of times since both were in their prime. It had never been the squire's custom to encourage his boys to invite their friends to the Hall. Perhaps this, too, was owing to his mauvaise honte, and also to an exaggerated consciousness of the deficiencies of his establishment as compared with what he imagined these lads were accustomed to at home. He explained this once or twice to Osborne and Roger when they were at Rugby.

'You see, all you public schoolboys have a kind of freemasonry of your own, and outsiders are looked on by you much as I look on rabbits and all that isn't game. Ay, you may laugh, but it is so; and your friends will throw their eyes askance at me, and never think on my pedigree, which would beat theirs all to shivers, I'll be bound. No: I'll have no one here at the Hall who will look down on a Hamley of Hamley, even if he only knows how to make a cross instead of write his name.'

Then, of course, they must not visit at houses to whose sons the squire could not or would not return a like hospitality. On all these points Mrs. Hamley had used her utmost influence without avail; his prejudices were immovable. As regarded his position as head of the oldest family in three counties, his pride was invincible; as regarded himself personally—ill at ease in the society of his equals, deficient in manners, and in education—his morbid sensitiveness was too sore and too self-conscious to be called humility.

Take one instance from among many similar scenes of the state of feeling between the squire and his eldest son, which, if it could not be called active discord, showed at least passive estrangement.

It took place on an evening in the March succeeding Mrs. Hamley's death. Roger was at Cambridge. Osborne had also been from home, and he had not volunteered any information as to his absence. The squire believed that Osborne had been either in Cambridge with his brother, or in London; he would have liked to hear where his son had been, what he had been doing, and whom he had seen, purely as pieces of news, and as some diversion from the domestic worries and cares which were pressing him hard; but he was too proud to ask any questions, and Osborne had not given him any details of his journey. This silence had aggravated the squire's internal dissatisfaction, and he came home to dinner weary and sore-hearted a day or two after Osborne's return. It was just six o'clock, and he went hastily into his own little business-room on the ground-floor, and, after washing his hands, came into the drawing-room feeling as if he were very late, but the room was empty. He glanced at the clock over the mantelpiece, as he tried to warm his hands at the fire. The fire had been neglected, and had gone out during the day; it was now piled with half-dried wood, which sputtered and smoked instead of doing its duty in blazing and warming the room, through which the keen wind was cutting its way in all directions. The clock had stopped, no one had remembered to wind it up, but by the squire's watch it was already past dinner-time. The old butler put his head into the room, but, seeing the squire alone, he was about to draw it back, and wait for Mr. Osborne, before announcing dinner. He had hoped to do this unperceived, but the squire caught him in the act.

'Why isn't dinner ready?' he called out sharply. 'It's ten minutes past six. And, pray, why are you using this wood? It's impossible to get oneself warm by such a fire as this.'

'I believe, sir, that Thomas—'

'Don't talk to me of Thomas. Send dinner in directly.'

About five minutes elapsed, spent by the hungry squire in all sorts of impatient ways—attacking Thomas, who came in to look after the fire; knocking the logs about, scattering out sparks, but considerably lessening the chances of warmth; touching up the candles, which appeared to him to give a light unusually insufficient for the large cold room. While he was doing this, Osborne came in dressed in full evening dress. He always moved slowly; and this, to begin with, irritated the squire. Then an uncomfortable consciousness of a rough black coat, drab trowsers, checked cotton cravat, and splashed boots, forced itself upon him as he saw Osborne's point-device costume. He chose to consider it affectation and finery in Osborne, and was on the point of bursting out with some remark, when the butler, who had watched Osborne downstairs before making the announcement, came in to say that dinner was ready.

'It surely isn't six o'clock?' said Osborne, pulling out his dainty little watch. He was scarcely more aware than it of the storm that was brewing.

'Six o'clock! It's more than a quarter past,' growled out his father,

'I fancy your watch must be wrong, sir. I set mine by the Horse Guards only two days ago.'

Now, impugning that old steady, turnip-shaped watch of the squire's was one of the insults which, as it could not reasonably be resented, was not to be forgiven. That watch had been given him by his father when watches were watches long ago. It had given the law to house-clocks, stable-clocks, kitchen-clocks—nay, even to Hamley Church clock in its day; and was it now, in its respectable old age, to be looked down upon by a little whipper-snapper of a French watch which could go into a man's waistcoat pocket, instead of having to be extricated, with due effort, like a respectable watch of size and position, from a fob in the waistband? No! Not if the whipper-snapper were backed by all the Horse Guards that ever were, with the Life Guards to boot. Poor Osborne might have known better than to cast this slur on his father's flesh and blood; for so dear did he hold his watch!

'My watch is like myself,' said the squire, 'girning,' as the Scotch say—'plain, but steady-going. At any rate, it gives the law in my house. The King may go by the Horse Guards if he likes.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Osborne, really anxious to keep the peace; 'I went by my watch, which is certainly right by London time; and I'd no idea you were waiting for me, otherwise I could have dressed much quicker.'

'I should think so,' said the squire, looking sarcastically at his son's attire. 'When I was a young man I should have been ashamed to have spent as much time at my looking-glass as if I'd been a girl. I could make myself as smart as any one when I was going to a dance, or to a party where I was likely to meet pretty girls; but I should have laughed myself to scorn if I'd stood fiddle-faddling at a glass, smirking at my own likeness, all for my own pleasure.'

Osborne reddened, and was on the point of letting fly some caustic remark on his father's dress at the present moment; but he contented himself with saying, in a low voice,—

'My mother always expected us all to dress for dinner. I got into the habit of doing it to please her, and I keep it up now.' Indeed, he had a certain kind of feeling of loyalty to her memory in keeping up all the little domestic habits and customs she had instituted or preferred. But the contrast which the squire thought was implied by Osborne's remark, put him beside himself.

'And I, too, try to attend to her wishes. I do: and in more important things. I did when she was alive; and I do so now.'

'I never said you did not,' said Osborne, astonished at his father's passionate words and manner.

'Yes, you did, sir. You meant it. I could see by your looks. I saw you look at my morning-coat. At any rate, I never neglected any wish of hers in her life-time. If she'd wished me to go to school again and learn my A, B, C, I would. By—I would; and I wouldn't have gone playing me, and lounging away my time, for fear of vexing and disappointing her. Yet some folks older than schoolboys—' The squire choked here; but though the words would not come his passion did not diminish. 'I'll not have you casting up your mother's wishes to me, sir. You, who went near to break her heart at last!'

Osborne was strongly tempted to get up and leave the room. Perhaps it would have been better if he had; it might then have brought about an explanation, and a reconciliation between father and son. But he thought he did well in sitting still and appearing to take no notice. This indifference to what he was saying appeared to annoy the squire still more, and he kept on grumbling and talking to himself till Osborne, unable to bear it any longer, said, very quietly, but very bitterly,—'I am only a cause of irritation to you, and home is no longer home to me, but a place in which I am to be controlled in trifles, and scolded about trifles as if I were a child. Put me in a way of making a living for myself—that much your oldest son has a right to ask of you—I will then leave this house, and you shall be no longer vexed by my dress, or my want of punctuality.'

'You make your request pretty much as another son did long ago: "Give me the portion that falleth to me." But I don't think what he did with his money is much encouragement for me to—' Then the thought of how little he could give his son his 'portion,' or any part of it, stopped the squire.

Osborne took up the speech.

'I'm as ready as any man to earn my living; only the preparation for any profession will cost money, and money I haven't got.'

'No more have I,' said the squire, shortly.

'What is to be done then?' said Osborne, only half believing his father's words.

'Why, you must learn to stop at home, and not take expensive journeys; and you must redeem your tailor's bills. I don't ask you to help me in the management of the land—you're far too fine a gentleman for that; but if you can't earn money, at least you needn't spend it.'

'I've told you I'm willing enough to earn money,' cried Osborne, passionately at last. 'But how am I to do it? You really are very unreasonable, sir.'

'Am I?' said the squire—cooling in manner, though not in temper, as Osborne grew warm. 'But I don't set up for being reasonable: men who have to pay away money that they haven't got for their extravagant sons, aren't likely to be reasonable. There's two things you've gone and done which put me beside myself, when I think of them: you've turned out next door to a dunce at college, when your poor mother thought so much of you—and when you might have pleased and gratified her so if you chose—and, well! I won't say what the other thing is.'

'Tell me, sir,' said Osborne, almost breathless with the idea that his father had discovered his secret marriage; but the father was thinking of the money-lenders, who were calculating how soon Osborne would come into the estate.

'No!' said the squire. 'I know what I know; and I'm not going to tell you how I know it. Only, I'll just say this—your friends no more know a piece of good timber when they see it than you or I know how you could earn five pounds if it was to keep you from starving. Now, there's Roger—we none of us made an ado about him; but he'll have his fellowship now I'll warrant him, and be a bishop, or a chancellor, or something, before we've found out he's clever—we've been so much taken up thinking about you. I don't know what's come over me to speak of "we"—"we" in this way,' said he, suddenly dropping his voice,—a change of tone as sad as sad could be. 'I ought to say "I;" it will be "I" for evermore in this world.'

He got up and left the room in quick haste, knocking over his chair, and not stopping to pick it up. Osborne, who was sitting and shading his eyes with his hand, as he had been doing for some time, looked up at the noise, and then rose as quickly and hurried after his father, only in time to hear the study-door locked on the inside the moment he reached it.

Osborne returned into the dining-room chagrined and sorrowful. But he was always sensitive to any omission of the usual observances, which might excite remark; and even with his heavy heart he was careful to pick up the fallen chair, and restore it to its place near the bottom of the table; and afterwards so to disturb the dishes as to make it appear that they had been touched, before ringing for Robinson. When the latter came in, followed by Thomas, Osborne thought it necessary to say to him that his father was not well, and had gone into the study; and that he himself wanted no dessert, but would have a cup of coffee in the drawing-room. The old butler sent Thomas out of the room, and came up confidentially to Osborne.

'I thought master wasn't justly himself, Mr. Osborne, before dinner. And therefore I made excuses for him—I did. He spoke to Thomas about the fire, sir, which is a thing I could in nowise put up with, unless by reason of sickness, which I am always ready to make allowances for.'

'Why shouldn't my father speak to Thomas?' said Osborne. 'But, perhaps, he spoke angrily, I daresay; for I'm sure he's not well.'

'No, Mr. Osborne, it wasn't that. I myself am given to anger; and I'm blessed with as good health as any man in my years. Besides, anger's a good thing for Thomas. He needs a deal of it. But it should come from the right quarter—and that is me myself, Mr. Osborne. I know my place, and I know my rights and duties as well as any butler that lives. And it's my duty to scold Thomas, and not master's. Master ought to have said, "Robinson! you must speak to Thomas about letting out the fire," and I'd ha' given it him well,—as I shall do now, for that matter. But as I said before, I make excuses for master, as being in mental distress and bodily ill-health; so I've brought myself round not to give warning, as I should ha' done, for certain, under happier circumstances.'

'Really, Robinson, I think it's all great nonsense,' said Osborne, weary of the long story the butler had told him, and to which he had not half attended. 'What in the world does it signify whether my father speaks to you or to Thomas? Bring me coffee in the drawing-room, and don't trouble your head any more about scolding Thomas.'

Robinson went away offended at his grievance being called nonsense. He kept muttering to himself in the intervals of scolding Thomas, and saying,—'Things is a deal changed since poor missis went. I don't wonder master feels it, for I'm sure I do. She was a lady who had always a becoming respect for a butler's position, and could have understood how he might be hurt in his mind. She'd never ha' called his delicacies of feelings nonsense—not she; no more would Mr. Roger. He's a merry young gentleman, and over-fond of bringing dirty, slimy creatures into the house; but he's always a kind word for a man who is hurt in his mind. He'd cheer up the squire, and keep him from getting so cross and wilful. I wish Mr. Roger was here, I do.'

The poor squire, shut up with his grief and his ill-temper as well, in the dingy, dreary study in which he daily spent more and more of his indoors life, turned over his cares and troubles till he was as bewildered with the process as a squirrel must be in going round in a cage. He had out day-books and ledgers, and was calculating up back- rents; and every time the sum-totals came to different amounts. He could have cried like a child over his sums; he was worn out and weary, angry and disappointed. He closed his books at last with a bang.

'I'm getting old,' he said, 'and my head's less clear than it used to be. I think sorrow for her has dazed me. I never was much to boast on; but she thought a deal of me—bless her! She'd never let me call myself stupid; but, for all that, I am stupid. Osborne ought to help me. He's had money enough spent on his learning; but instead, he comes down dressed like a popinjay, and never troubles his head to think how I'm to pay his debts. I wish I'd told him to earn his living as a dancing- master,' said the squire, with a sad smile at his own wit. 'He's dressed for all the world like one. And how he's spent the money no one knows! Perhaps Roger will turn up some day with a heap of creditors at his heels. No, he won't—not Roger; he may be slow, but he's steady, is old Roger. I wish he was here. He's not the eldest son, but he'd take an interest in the estate; and he'd do up these weary accounts for me. I wish Roger was here!'



CHAPTER XXIII

OSBORNE HAMLEY REVIEWS HIS POSITION

Osborne had his solitary cup of coffee in the drawing-room. He was very unhappy too, after his fashion. He stood on the hearth-rug pondering over his situation. He was not exactly aware how hardly his father was pressed for ready-money; the squire had never spoken to him on the subject without being angry; and many of his loose contradictory statements—all of which, however contradictory they might appear, had their basis in truth—were set down by his son to the exaggeration of passion. But it was uncomfortable enough to a young man of Osborne's age to feel himself continually hampered for want of a five-pound note. The principal supplies for the liberal—almost luxurious table at the Hall, came off the estate; so that there was no appearance of poverty as far as the household went; and as long as Osborne was content at home, he had everything he could wish for; but he had a wife elsewhere—he wanted to see her continually—and that necessitated journeys. She, poor thing! had to be supported: where was the money for the journeys and for Aimee's modest wants to come from? That was the puzzle in Osborne's mind just now. While he had been at college his allowance— heir of the Hamleys—had been three hundred, while Roger had to be content with a hundred less. The payment of these annual sums had given the squire a good deal of trouble; but he thought of it as a merely temporary inconvenience, perhaps unreasonably thought so. Osborne was to do great things; take high honours, get a fellowship, marry a long- descended heiress, live in some of the many uninhabited rooms at the Hall, and help the squire in the management of the estate that would some time be his. Roger was to be a clergyman; steady, slow Roger was just fitted for that, and when he declined entering the Church, preferring a life of more activity and adventure, Roger was to be— anything; he was useful and practical, and fit for all the employments from which Osborne was shut out by his fastidiousness, and his (pseudo) genius; so it was well he was an eldest son, for he would never have done to struggle through the world; and as for his settling down to a profession, it would be like cutting blocks with a razor! And now here was Osborne, living at home, but longing to be elsewhere; his allowance stopped in reality; indeed the punctual payment of it during the last year or two had been owing to his mother's exertions; but nothing had been said about its present cessation by either father or son: money matters were too sore a subject between them. Every now and then the squire threw him a ten-pound note or so; but the sort of suppressed growl with which they were given, and the entire uncertainty as to when he might receive them, rendered any calculation based upon their receipt exceedingly vague and uncertain.

'What in the world can I do to secure an income?' thought Osborne, as he stood on the hearth-rug, his back to a blazing fire, his cup of coffee sent up in the rare old china that had belonged to the Hall for generations; his dress finished, as dress of Osborne's could hardly fail to be. One could hardly have thought that this elegant young man, standing there in the midst of comfort that verged on luxury, should have been turning over that one great problem in his mind; but so it was. 'What can I do to be sure of a present income? Things cannot go on as they are. I should need support for two or three years, even if I entered myself at the Temple, or Lincoln's Inn.' It would be impossible for live on my pay in the army; besides, I should hate that profession. In fact, there are evils attending all professions—I couldn't bring myself to become a member of any I've ever heard of. Perhaps I'm more fitted to take orders than anything else, but to be compelled to write weekly sermons whether one had anything to say or not, and, probably, doomed only to associate with people below one in refinement and education! Yet poor Aimee must have money. I can't bear to compare our dinners here, overloaded with joints and game and sweets, as Morgan will persist in sending them up, with Aimee's two little mutton-chops. Yet what would my father say if he knew I'd married a Frenchwoman? In his present mood he'd disinherit me, if that is possible; and he'd speak about her in a way I couldn't stand. A Roman Catholic, too! Well, I don't repent it. I'd do it again. Only if my mother had been in good health, if she could have heard my story, and known Aimee! As it is, I must keep it secret; but where to get money? Where to get money?'

Then he bethought him of his poems—would they sell, and bring him in money? In spite of Milton, he thought they might; and he went to fetch his MSS. out of his room. He sate down near the fire, trying to study them with a critical eye, to represent public opinion as far as he could. He had changed his style since the Mrs. Hemans' days. He was essentially imitative in his poetic faculty; and of late he had followed the lead of a popular writer of sonnets.' He turned his poems over: they were almost equivalent to an autobiographical passage in his life. Arranging them in their order, they came as follows:—

'To Aimee, Walking with a Little Child.' 'To Aimee, Singing at her Work.' 'To Aimee, turning away from me while I told my Love.' 'Aimee's Confession.' 'Aimee in Despair.' 'The Foreign Land in which my Aimee dwells.' 'The Wedding Ring.' 'The Wife.'

When he came to this last sonnet he put down his bundle of papers and began to think. 'The wife.' Yes, and a French wife, and a Roman Catholic wife—and a wife who might be said to have been in service! And his father's hatred of the French, both collectively and individually—collectively, as tumultuous brutal ruffians, who murdered their king, and committed all kinds of bloody atrocities: individually, as represented by 'Boney,' and the various caricatures of 'Johnny Crapaud' that had been in full circulation about five-and-twenty years before this time—when the squire had been young and capable of receiving impressions. As for the form of religion in which Mrs. Osborne Hamley had been brought up, it is enough to say that Catholic emancipation had begun to be talked about by some politicians, and that the sullen roar of the majority of Englishmen, at the bare idea of it, was surging in the distance with ominous threatenings; the very mention of such a measure before the squire was, as Osborne well knew, like shaking a red flag before a bull.

And then he considered that if Aimee had had the unspeakable, the incomparable blessing of being born of English parents, in the very heart of England—Warwickshire, for instance—and had never heard of priests, or mass, or confession, or the Pope, or Guy Fawkes, but had been born, baptized, and bred in the Church of England, without having ever seen the outside of a dissenting meeting-house, or a papist chapel—even with all these advantages, her having been a (what was the equivalent for 'bonne' in English? 'nursery governess' was a term hardly invented) nursery-maid, with wages paid down once a quarter, liable to be dismissed at a month's warning, and having her tea and sugar doled out to her, would be a shock to his father's old ancestral pride that he would hardly ever get over.

'If he saw her!' thought Osborne. 'If he could but see her!' But if the squire were to see Aimee, he would also hear her speak her pretty broken English—precious to her husband, as it was in it that she had confessed brokenly with her English tongue, that she loved him soundly with her French heart—and Squire Hamley piqued himself on being a good hater of the French. 'She would make such a loving, sweet, docile little daughter to my father—she would go as near as any one could towards filling up the blank void in this house, if he would but have her; but he won't; he never would; and he shan't have the opportunity of scouting her. Yet if I called her "Lucy" in these sonnets; and if they made a great effect—were praised in Blackwood and the Quarterly—and all the world was agog to find out the author; and I told him my secret—I could if I were successful—I think then he would ask who Lucy was, and I could tell him all then. If—how I hate "ifs." "If me no ifs." My life has been based on "whens;" and first they have turned to "ifs," and then they have vanished away. It was "when Osborne gets honours," and then "if Osborne," and then a failure altogether. I said to Aimee, "When my mother sees you," and now it is "If my father saw her," with a very faint prospect of its ever coming to pass.' So he let the evening hours flow on and disappear in reveries like these; winding up with a sudden determination to try the fate of his poems with a publisher, with the direct expectation of getting money for them, and an ulterior fancy that, if successful, they might work wonders with this father.

When Roger came home Osborne did not let a day pass before telling his brother of his plans. He never did conceal anything long from Roger; the feminine part of his character made him always desirous of a confidant, and as sweet sympathy as he could extract. But Roger's opinion had no effect on Osborne's actions; and Roger knew this full well. So when Osborne began with—'I want your advice on a plan I have got in my head,' Roger replied: 'Some one told me that the Duke of Wellington's maxim was never to give advice unless he could enforce its being carried into effect. Now I can't do that; and you know, old boy, you don't follow out my advice when you've got it.'

'Not always, I know. Not when it does not agree with my own opinion. You are thinking about this concealment of my marriage, but you're not up in all the circumstances. You know how fully I meant to have done it, if there had not been that row about my debts; and then my mother's illness and death. And now you've no conception how my father is changed—how irritable he has become! Wait till you've been at home a week! Robinson, Morgan—it's the same with them all; but worst of all with me!'

'Poor fellow!' said Roger; 'I thought he looked terribly changed; shrunken, and his ruddiness of complexion altered.'

'Why, he hardly takes half the exercise he used to do, so it's no wonder. He has turned away all the men off the new works, which used to be such an interest to him; and because the roan cob stumbled with him one day, and nearly threw him, he won't ride it; and yet he won't sell it and buy another, which would be the sensible plan; so there are two old horses eating their heads off, while he is constantly talking about money and expense. And that brings me to what I was going to say. I'm desperately hard up for money, and so I've been collecting my poems— weeding them well, you know—going over them quite critically, in fact; and I want to know if you think Deighton would publish them. You've a name in Cambridge, you know; and I daresay he would look at them if you offered them to him.'

'I can but try,' said Roger; 'but I'm afraid you won't get much by them.'

'I don't expect much. I'm a new man, and must make my name. I should be content with a hundred. If I'd a hundred pounds I'd set myself to do something. I might keep myself and Aimee by my writings while I studied for the bar; or, if the worst came to the worst, a hundred pounds would take us to Australia.'

'Australia! Why, Osborne, what could you do there? And leave my father! I hope you'll never get your hundred pounds, if that's the use you're to make of it! Why, you'd break the squire's heart.'

'It might have done once,' said Osborne, gloomily, 'but it would not now. He looks at me askance, and shies away from conversation with me. Let me alone for noticing and feeling this kind of thing. It's this very susceptibility to outward things that gives me what faculty I have; and it seems to me as if my bread, and my wife's too, were to depend upon it. You'll soon see for yourself the terms which I am on with my father!'

Roger did soon see. His father had slipped into a habit of silence at meal times—a habit which Osborne, who was troubled and anxious enough for his own part, had not striven to break. Father and son sate together, and exchanged all the necessary speeches connected with the occasion civilly enough; but it was a relief to them when their intercourse was over, and they separated—the father to brood over his sorrow and his disappointment, which were real and deep enough, and the injury he had received from his boy, which was exaggerated in his mind by his ignorance of the actual steps Osborne had taken to raise money. If the money-lenders had calculated the chances of his father's life or death in making their bargain, Osborne himself had thought only of how soon and how easily he could get the money requisite for clearing him from all imperious claims at Cambridge, and for enabling him to follow Aimee to her home in Alsace, and for the subsequent marriage. As yet, Roger had never seen his brother's wife; indeed, he had only been taken into Osborne's full confidence after all was decided in which his advice could have been useful. And now, in the enforced separation, Osborne's whole thought, both the poetical and practical sides of his mind, ran upon the little wife who was passing her lonely days in farmhouse lodgings, wondering when her bridegroom husband would come to her next. With such an engrossing subject it was, perhaps, no wonder that he unconsciously neglected his father; but it was none the less sad at the time, and to be regretted in its consequences.

'I may come in and have a pipe with you, sir, mayn't I?' said Roger, that first evening, pushing gently against the study-door, which his father held only half open.

'You'll not like it,' said the squire, still holding the door against him, but speaking in a relenting tone. 'The tobacco I use isn't what young men like. Better go and have a cigar with Osborne.'

'No. I want to sit with you, and I can stand pretty strong tobacco.'

Roger pushed in, the resistance slowly giving way before him.

'It will make your clothes smell. You'll have to borrow Osborne's scents to sweeten yourself,' said the squire, grimly, at the same time pushing a short smart amber-mouthed pipe to his son.

'No; I'll have a churchwarden. Why, father, do you think I'm a baby to put up with a doll's head like this?' looking at the carving upon it.

The squire was pleased in his heart, though he did not choose to show it. He only said, 'Osborne brought it me when he came back from Germany. That's three years ago.' And then for some time they smoked in silence. But the voluntary companionship of his son was very soothing to the squire, though not a word might be said. The next speech he made showed the direction of his thoughts; indeed his words were always a transparent medium through which the current might be seen.

'A deal of a man's life comes and goes in three years—I've found that out.' And he puffed away at his pipe again. While Roger was turning over in his mind what answer to make to this truism, the squire again stopped his smoking and spoke.

'I remember when there was all that fuss about the Prince of Wales being made Regent, I read somewhere—I daresay it was in a newspaper— that kings and their heirs-apparent were always on bad terms. Osborne was quite a little chap then: he used to go out riding with me on White Surrey; you won't remember the pony we called White Surrey?'

'I remember it; but I thought it a tall horse in those days.'

'Ah! that was because you were such a small lad, you know. I had seven horses in the stable then—not counting the farm-horses. I don't recollect having a care then, except—she was always delicate, you know. But what a beautiful boy Osborne was! He was always dressed in black velvet—it was a foppery, but it wasn't my doing, and it was all right, I'm sure. He's a handsome fellow now, but the sunshine has gone out of his face.'

'He's a good deal troubled about this money, and the anxiety he has given you,' said Roger, rather taking his brother's feelings for granted.

'Not he,' said the squire, taking the pipe out of his mouth, and hitting the bowl so sharply against the hob that it broke in pieces. 'There! But never mind! I say, not he, Roger! He's none troubled about the money. It's easy getting money from Jews if you're the eldest son, and the heir. They just ask, "How old is your father, and has he had a stroke, or a fit?" and it's settled out of hand, and then they come prowling about a place, and running down the timber and land—Don't let us speak of him; it's no good, Roger. He and I are out of tune, and it seems to me as if only God Almighty could put us to rights. It's thinking of how he grieved her at last that makes me so bitter with him. And yet there's a deal of good in him! and he's so quick and clever, if only he'd give his mind to things. Now, you were always slow, Roger—all your masters used to say so.'

Roger laughed a little,—

'Yes; I'd many a nickname at school for my slowness,' said he.

'Never mind!' said the squire, consolingly. 'I'm sure I don't. If you were a clever fellow like Osborne yonder, you'd be all for caring for books and writing, and you'd perhaps find it as dull as he does to keep company with a bumpkin-Squire Jones like me. Yet I daresay they think a deal of you at Cambridge,' said he, after a pause, 'since you've got this fine wranglership; I'd nearly forgotten that—the news came at such a miserable time.'

'Well, yes! They're always proud of the senior wrangler of the year up at Cambridge. Next year I must abdicate.'

The squire sate and gazed into the embers, still holding his useless pipe-stem. At last he said, in a low voice, as if scarcely aware he had got a listener,—'I used to write to her when she was away in London, and tell her the home news. But no letter will reach her now! Nothing reaches her!'

Roger started up.

'Where's the tobacco-box, father? Let me fill you another pipe!' and when he had done so, he stooped over his father and stroked his cheek. The squire shook his head.

'You've only just come home, lad. You don't know me, as I am now-a- days! Ask Robinson—I won't have you asking Osborne, he ought to keep it to himself—but any of the servants will tell you I'm not like the same man for getting into passions with them. I used to be reckoned a good master, but that is past now! Osborne was once a little boy, and she was once alive—and I was once a good master—a good master—yes! It is all past now.'

He took up his pipe, and began to smoke afresh, and Roger, after a silence of some minutes, began a long story about some Cambridge man's misadventure on the hunting-field, telling it with such humour that the squire was beguiled into hearty laughing. When they rose to go to bed, his father said to Roger,—

'Well, we've had a pleasant evening—at least, I have. But perhaps you have not; for I'm but poor company now, know.'

'I don't know when I've passed a happier evening, father,' said Roger. And he spoke truly, though he did not trouble himself to find out the cause of his happiness.



CHAPTER XXIV

MRS GIBSON'S LITTLE DINNER

All this had taken place before Roger's first meeting with Molly and Cynthia at Miss Brownings'; and the little dinner on the Friday at Mr. Gibson's, which followed in due sequence.

Mrs. Gibson intended the Hamleys to find this dinner pleasant; and they did. Mr. Gibson was fond of these two young men, both for their parents' sake and their own, for he had known them since boyhood; and to those whom he liked Mr. Gibson could be remarkably agreeable. Mrs. Gibson really gave them a welcome—and cordiality in a hostess is a very becoming mantle for any other deficiencies there may be. Cynthia and Molly looked their best, which was all the duty Mrs Gibson absolutely required of them, as she was willing enough to take her full share in the conversation. Osborne fell to her lot, of course, and for some time he and she prattled on with all the ease of manner and commonplaceness of meaning which go far to make the 'art of polite conversation.' Roger, who ought to have made himself agreeable to one or the other of the young ladies, was exceedingly interested in what Mr. Gibson was telling him of a paper on comparative osteology in some foreign journal of science, which Lord Hollingford was in the habit of forwarding to his friend the country surgeon. Yet every now and then while he listened he caught his attention wandering to the face of Cynthia, who was placed between his brother and Mr. Gibson. She was not particularly occupied with attending to anything that was going on; her eyelids were carelessly dropped, as she crumbled her bread on the tablecloth, and her beautiful long eyelashes were seen on the clear tint of her oval cheek. She was thinking of something else; Molly was trying to understand with all her might. Suddenly Cynthia looked up, and caught Roger's gaze of intent admiration too fully for her to be unaware that he was staring at her. She coloured a little, but after the first moment of rosy confusion at his evident admiration of her, she flew to the attack, diverting his confusion at thus being caught, to the defence of himself from her accusation.

'It is quite true!' she said to him. 'I was not attending: you see I don't know even the A B C of science. But, please, don't look so severely at me, even if I am a dunce!'

'I did not know—I did not mean to look severely, I am sure,' replied he, not knowing well what to say.

'Cynthia is not a dunce either,' said Mrs. Gibson, afraid lest her daughter's opinion of herself might be taken seriously. 'But I have always observed that some people have a talent for one thing and some for another. Now Cynthia's talents are not for science and the severer studies. Do you remember, love, what trouble I had to teach you the use of the globes?'

'Yes; and I don't know longitude from latitude now; and I'm always puzzled as to which is perpendicular and which is horizontal.'

'Yet, I do assure you,' her mother continued, rather addressing herself to Osborne 'that her memory for poetry is prodigious. I have heard her repeat the "Prisoner of Chillon" from beginning to end.'

'It would be rather a bore to have to hear her, I think,' said Mr Gibson, smiling at Cynthia, who gave him back one of her bright looks of mutual understanding.

'Ah, Mr. Gibson, I have found out before now that you have no soul for poetry; and Molly there is your own child. She reads such deep books— all about facts and figures: she'll be quite a blue-stocking by and by.'

'Mamma,' said Molly, reddening, 'you think it was a deep book because there were the shapes of the different cells of bees in it; but it was not at all deep. It was very interesting.'

'Never mind, Molly,' said Osborne. 'I stand up for blue-stockings!'

'And I object to the distinction implied in what you say,' said Roger. 'It was not deep, ergo, it was very interesting. Now, a book may be both deep and interesting.'

'Oh, if you are going to chop logic and use Latin words, I think it is time for us to leave the room,' said Mrs. Gibson.

'Don't let us run away as if we were beaten, mamma,' said Cynthia. 'Though it may be logic, I, for one, can understand what Mr. Roger Hamley said just now; and I read some of Molly's book; and whether it was deep or not I found it very interesting—more so than I should think the "Prisoner of Chillon" now-a-days. I've displaced the Prisoner to make room for Johnnie Gilpin as my favourite poem.'

'How could you talk such nonsense, Cynthia?' said Mrs. Gibson, as the girls followed her upstairs. 'You know you are not a dunce. It is all very well not to be a blue-stocking, because gentle-people don't like that kind of woman; but running yourself down, and contradicting all I said about your liking for Byron, and poets and poetry—to Osborne Hamley of all men, too!'

Mrs. Gibson spoke quite crossly for her.

'But, mamma,' Cynthia replica, 'I am either a dunce, or I am not. If I am, I did right to own it; if I am not, he's a dunce if he doesn't find out I was joking.'

'Well,' said Mrs. Gibson, a little puzzled by this speech, and wanting some elucidatory addition.

'Only that if he's a dunce his opinion of me is worth nothing. So, any way, it doesn't signify.'

'You really bewilder me with your nonsense, child. Molly is worth twenty of you.'

'I quite agree with you, mamma,' said Cynthia, turning round to take Molly's hand.

'Yes; but she ought not to be,' said Mrs. Gibson, still irritated. 'Think of the advantages you've had.'

'I'm afraid I had rather be a dunce than a blue-stocking,' said Molly; for the term had a little annoyed her, and the annoyance was rankling still.

'Hush; here they are coming: I hear the dining-room door! I never meant you were a blue-stocking, dear, so don't look vexed.—Cynthia, my love, where did you get those lovely flowers—anemones, are they? They suit your complexion so exactly.'

'Come, Molly, don't look so grave and thoughtful,' exclaimed Cynthia. 'Don't you perceive mamma wants us to be smiling and amiable?'

Mr. Gibson had had to go out to his evening round; and the young men were all too glad to come up into the pretty drawing-room; the bright little wood fire; the comfortable easy chairs which, with so small a party, might be drawn round the hearth; the good-natured hostess; the pretty, agreeable girls. Roger sauntered up to the corner where Cynthia was standing, playing with a hand-screen.

'There is a charity ball in Hollingford soon, isn't there?' asked he.

'Yes; on Easter Tuesday,' she replied.

'Are you going? I suppose you are?'

'Yes; mamma is going to take Molly and me.'

'You will enjoy it very much—going together?'

For the first time during this little conversation she glanced up at him—real honest pleasure shining out of her eyes.

'Yes; going together will make the enjoyment of the thing. It would be dull without her.'

'You are great friends, then?' he asked.

'I never thought I should like any one so much,—any girl I mean.'

She put in the final reservation in all simplicity of heart; and in all simplicity did he understand it. He came ever so little nearer, and dropped his voice a little.

'I was so anxious to know. I am so glad. I have often wondered how you two were getting on.'

'Have you?' said she, looking up again. 'At Cambridge? You must be very fond of Molly!'

'Yes, I am. She was with us so long; and at such a time! I look upon her almost as a sister.'

'And she is very fond of all of you. I seem to know you all from hearing her talk about you so much.—All of you!' said she, laying an emphasis on 'all' to show that it included the dead as well as the living. Roger was silent for a minute or two.

'I didn't know you, even by hearsay. So you mustn't wonder that I was a little afraid. But as soon as I saw you, I knew how it must be; and it was such a relief!'

'Cynthia,' said Mrs. Gibson, who thought that the younger son had had quite his share of low, confidential conversation, 'come here, and sing that little French ballad to Mr. Osborne Hamley.'

'Which do you mean, mamma? "Tu t'en repentiras, Colin"?'

'Yes; such a pretty, playful little warning to young men,' said Mrs Gibson, smiling up at Osborne. 'The refrain is—

"Tu t'en repentiras, Colin, Tu t'en repentiras, Car si tu prends une femme, Colin, Tu t'en repentiras."

The advice may apply very well when there is a French wife in the case; but not, I am sure, to an Englishman who is thinking of an English wife.'

This choice of a song was exceedingly mal-apropos, had Mrs Gibson but known it. Osborne and Roger knowing that the wife of the former was a Frenchwoman, and, conscious of each other's knowledge, felt doubly awkward, while Molly was as much confused as though she herself were secretly married. However, Cynthia carolled the saucy ditty out, and her mother smiled at it, in total ignorance of any application it might have. Osborne had instinctively gone to stand behind Cynthia, as she sate at the piano, so as to be ready to turn over the leaves of her music if she required it. He kept his hands in his pockets and his eyes fixed on her fingers; his countenance clouded with gravity at all the merry quips which she so playfully sang. Roger looked grave as well, but was much more at his ease than his brother; indeed, he was half- amused by the awkwardness of the situation. He caught Molly's troubled eyes and heightened colour, and he saw that she was feeling this contretemps more seriously than she needed to do. He moved to a seat by her, and half whispered, 'Too late a warning, is it not?'

Molly looked up at him as he leant towards her, and replied in the same tone,—'Oh, I am so sorry!'

'You need not be. He won't mind it long; and a man must take the consequences when he puts himself in a false position.'

Molly could not tell what to reply to this, so she hung her head and kept silence. Yet she could see that Roger did not change his attitude or remove his hand from the back of his chair, and, impelled by curiosity to find out the cause of his stillness, she looked up at him at length, and saw his gaze fixed on the two who were near the piano. Osborne was saying something eagerly to Cynthia, whose grave eyes were upturned to him with soft intentness of expression, and her pretty mouth half-open, with a sort of impatience for him to cease speaking, that she might reply.

'They are talking about France,' said Roger, in answer to Molly's unspoken question. 'Osborne knows it well, and Miss Kirkpatrick has been at school there, you know. It sounds very interesting; shall we go nearer and hear what they are saying?'

It was all very well to ask this civilly, but Molly thought it would have been better to wait for her answer. Instead of waiting, however, Roger went to the piano, and, leaning on it, appeared to join in the light merry talk, while he feasted his eyes as much as he dared by looking at Cynthia. Molly suddenly felt as if she could scarcely keep from crying—a minute ago he had been so near to her, and talking so pleasantly and confidentially; and now he almost seemed as if he had forgotten her existence. She thought that all this was wrong; and she exaggerated its wrongness to herself; 'mean,' and 'envious of Cynthia,' and 'ill-natured,' and 'selfish,' were the terms she kept applying to herself; but it did no good, she was just as naughty at the last as at the first.

Mrs. Gibson broke into the state of things which Molly thought was to endure for ever. Her work had been intricate up to this time, and had required a great deal of counting; so she had had no time to attend to her duties, one of which she always took to be to show herself to the world as an impartial stepmother. Cynthia had played and sung, and now she must give Molly her turn of exhibition. Cynthia's singing and playing was light and graceful, but anything but correct; but she herself was so charming, that it was only fanatics for music who cared for false chords and omitted notes. Molly, on the contrary, had an excellent ear, if she had ever been well taught; and both from inclination and conscientious perseverance of disposition, she would go over an incorrect passage for twenty times. But she was very shy of playing in company; and when forced to do it, she went through her performance heavily, and hated her handiwork more than any one.

'Now, you must play a little, Molly,' said Mrs. Gibson; 'play us that beautiful piece of Kalkbrenner's,' my dear.'

Molly looked up at her stepmother with beseeching eyes, but it only brought out another form of request, still more like a command.

'Go at once, my dear. You may not play it quite rightly; and I know you are very nervous; but you're quite amongst friends.'

So there was a disturbance made in the little group at the piano, and Molly sate down to her martyrdom.

'Please, go away!' said she to Osborne, who was standing behind her ready to turn over. 'I can quite well do it for myself. And oh! if you would but talk!'

Osborne remained where he was in spite of her appeal, and gave her what little approval she got; for Mrs. Gibson, exhausted by her previous labour of counting her stitches, fell asleep in her comfortable sofa- corner near the fire; and Roger, who began at first to talk a little in compliance with Molly's request, found his tete-a-tete with Cynthia so agreeable, that Molly lost her place several times in trying to catch a sudden glimpse of Cynthia sitting at her work, and Roger by her, intent on catching her low replies to what he was saying.

'There, now I've done!' said Molly, standing up quickly as soon as she had finished the eighteen dreary pages; 'and I think I will never sit down to play again!'

Osborne laughed at her vehemence. Cynthia began to take some part in what was being said, and thus made the conversation general. Mrs Gibson wakened up gracefully, as was her way of doing all things, and slid into the subjects they were talking about so easily, that she almost succeeded in making them believe she had never been asleep at all.



CHAPTER XXV

HOLLINGFORD IN A BUSTLE

All Hollingford felt as if there was a great deal to be done before Easter this year. There was Easter proper, which always required new clothing of some kind, for fear of certain consequences from little birds, who were supposed to resent the impiety of those who do not wear some new article of dress on Easter-day.' And most ladies considered it wiser that the little birds should see the new article for themselves, and not have to take it upon trust, as they would have to do if it were merely a pocket-handkerchief, or a petticoat, or any article of under- clothing. So piety demanded a new bonnet, or a new gown; and was barely satisfied with an Easter pair of gloves. Miss Rose was generally very busy just before Easter in Hollingford. Then this year there was the charity ball. Ashcombe, Hollingford, and Coreham were three neighbouring towns, of about the same number of population, lying at the three equidistant corners of a triangle. In imitation of greater cities with their festivals, these three towns had agreed to have an annual ball for the benefit of the county hospital to be held in turn at each place; and Hollingford was to be the place this year.

It was a fine time for hospitality, and every house of any pretension was as full as it could hold, and flys were engaged long months before.

If Mrs. Gibson could have asked Osborne, or in default, Roger Hamley to go to the ball with them and to sleep at their house,—or if, indeed, she could have picked up any stray scion of a 'county family' to whom such an offer would have been a convenience, she would have restored her own dressing-room to its former use as the spare-room, with pleasure. But she did not think it was worth her while to put herself out for any of the humdrum and ill-dressed women who had been her former acquaintance at Ashcombe. For Mr Preston it might have been worth while to give up her room, considering him in the light of a handsome and prosperous young man, and a good dancer besides. But there were more lights in which he was to be viewed. Mr. Gibson, who really wanted to return the hospitality shown to him by Mr. Preston at the time of his marriage, had yet an instinctive distaste to the man, which no wish of freeing himself from obligation, nor even the more worthy feeling of hospitality, could overcome. Mrs. Gibson had some old grudges of her own against him, but she was not one to retain angry feelings, or be very active in her retaliation; she was afraid of Mr. Preston, and admired him at the same time. It was awkward too—so she said—to go into a ball-room without any gentleman at all, and Mr. Gibson was so uncertain! On the whole—partly for this last-given reason, and partly because conciliation was the best policy, Mrs. Gibson herself was slightly in favour of inviting Mr. Preston to be their guest. But as soon as Cynthia heard the question discussed—or rather, as soon as she heard it discussed in Mr. Gibson's absence, she said that if Mr. Preston came to be their visitor on the occasion, she for one would not go to the ball at all. She did not speak with vehemence or in anger; but with such quiet resolution that Molly looked up in surprise. She saw that Cynthia was keeping her eyes fixed on her work, and that she had no intention of meeting any one's gaze, or giving any further explanation. Mrs. Gibson, too, looked perplexed, and once or twice seemed on the point of asking some question; but she was not angry as Molly had fully expected. She watched Cynthia furtively and in silence for a minute or two, and then said that after all she could not conveniently give up her dressing-room; and altogether, they had better say no more about it. So no stranger was invited to stay at Mr. Gibson's at the time of the ball; but Mrs Gibson openly spoke of her regret at the unavoidable inhospitality, and hoped that they might be able to build an addition to their house before the triennial Hollingford ball.

Another cause of unusual bustle at Hollingford this Easter was the expected return of the family to the Towers, after their unusually long absence. Mr. Sheepshanks might be seen trotting up and down on his stout old cob, speaking to attentive masons, plasterers, and glaziers about putting everything—on the outside at least—about the cottages belonging to 'my lord,' in perfect repair. Lord Cumnor owned the greater part of the town; and those who lived under other landlords, or in houses of their own, were stirred up by the dread of contrast to do up their dwellings. So the ladders of whitewashers and painters were sadly in the way of the ladies tripping daintily along to make their purchases, and holding their gowns up in a bunch behind, after a fashion quite gone out in these days.' The housekeeper and steward from the Towers might also be seen coming in to give orders at the various shops; and stopping here and there at those kept by favourites, to avail themselves of the eagerly-tendered refreshments.

Lady Harriet came to call on her old governess the day after the arrival of the family at the Towers. Molly and Cynthia were out walking when she came—doing some errands for Mrs. Gibson, who had a secret idea that Lady Harriet would call at the particular time she did, and had a not uncommon wish to talk to her ladyship without the corrective presence of any member of her own family.

Mrs. Gibson did not give Molly the message of remembrance that Lady Harriet had left for her; but she imparted various pieces of news relating to the Towers with great animation and interest. The Duchess of Menteith and her daughter, Lady Alice, were coming to the Towers; would be there the day of the ball; would come to the ball; and the Menteith diamonds were famous. That was piece of news the first. The second was that ever so many gentlemen were coming to the Towers—some English, some French. This piece of news would have come first in order of importance had there been much probability of their being dancing men, and, as such, possible partners at the coming ball. But Lady Harriet had spoken of them as Lord Hollingford's friends, useless scientific men in all probability. Then, finally, Mrs. Gibson was to go to the Towers next day to lunch; Lady Cumnor had written a little note by Lady Harriet to beg her to come; if Mrs. Gibson could manage to find her way to the Towers, one of the carriages in use should bring her back to her own home in the course of the afternoon.

'The dear countess!' said Mrs. Gibson, with soft affection. It was a soliloquy, uttered after a minute's pause, at the end of all this information.

And all the rest of that day her conversation had an aristocratic perfume hanging about it. One of the few books she had brought with her into Mr. Gibson's house was bound in pink, and in it she studied 'Menteith, Duke of, Adolphus George,' &c. &c., till she was fully up in all the duchess's connections, and probable interests. Mr. Gibson made his mouth up into a droll whistle when he came home at night, and found himself in a Towers' atmosphere. Molly saw the shade of annoyance through the drollery; she was beginning to see it oftener than she liked, not that she reasoned upon it, or that she consciously traced the annoyance to its source; but she could not help feeling uneasy in herself when she knew her father was in the least put out.

Of course a fly was ordered for Mrs. Gibson. In the early afternoon she came home. If she had been disappointed in her interview with the countess she never told her woe, nor revealed the fact that when she first arrived at the Towers she had to wait for an hour in Lady Cumnor's morning-room, uncheered by any companionship save that of her old friend Mrs. Bradley, till suddenly, Lady Harriet coming in, she exclaimed, 'Why, Clare! you dear woman! are you here all alone? Does mamma know?' And, after a little more affectionate conversation, she rushed to find her ladyship, perfectly aware of the fact, but too deep in giving the duchess the benefit of her wisdom and experience in trousseaux to be at all aware of the length of time Mrs. Gibson had been passing in patient solitude. At lunch Mrs. Gibson was secretly hurt by my lord's supposing it to be her dinner, and calling out his urgent hospitality from the very bottom of the table, giving as a reason for it, that she must remember it was her dinner. In vain she piped out in her soft, high voice, 'Oh, my lord! I never eat meat in the middle of the day; I can hardly eat anything at lunch.' Her voice was lost, and the duchess might go away with the idea that the Hollingford doctor's wife dined early; that is to say, if her grace ever condescended to have any idea on the subject at all; which presupposes that she was cognizant of the facts of there being a doctor at Hollingford, and that he had a wife, and that his wife was the pretty, faded, elegant-looking woman sending away her plate of untasted food—food that she longed to eat, for she was really desperately hungry after her drive and her solitude.

And then, after lunch, there did come a tete-a-tete with Lady Cumnor, which was conducted after this wise:—

'Well, Clare! I am really glad to see you. I once thought I should never get back to the Towers, but here I am! There was such a clever man at Bath—a Doctor Snape—he cured me at last—quite set me up. I really think if ever I am ill again I shall send for him: it is such a thing to find a really clever medical man. Oh, by the way, I always forget you've married Mr. Gibson—of course he is very clever, and all that. (The carriage to the door in ten minutes, Brown, and desire Bradley to bring my things down.) What was I asking you? Oh! how do you get on with the step-daughter. She seemed to me to be a young lady with a pretty stubborn will of her own. I put a letter for the post down somewhere, and I cannot think where; do help me to look for it, there's a good woman. Just run to my room, and see if Brown can find it, for it is of great consequence.'

Off went Mrs. Gibson rather unwillingly; for there were several things she had wanted to speak about, and she had not heard half of what she had expected to learn of the family gossip. But all chance was gone; for when she came back from her fruitless errand, Lady Cumnor and the duchess were in full talk, Lady Cumnor with the missing letter in her hand, which she was using something like a baton to enforce her words.

'Every iota from Paris! Every i-o-ta!'

Lady Cumnor was too much of a lady not to apologize for useless trouble, but they were nearly the last words she spoke to Mrs Gibson, for she had to go out and drive with the duchess; and the brougham to take 'Clare' (as she persisted in calling Mrs. Gibson) back to Hollingford, followed the carriage to the door. Lady Harriet came away from her entourage of young men and young ladies, all prepared for some walking expedition, to wish Mrs. Gibson good-by.

'We shall see you at the ball,' she said. 'You'll be there with your two girls, of course, and I must have a little talk with you there; with all these visitors in the house, it has been impossible to see anything of you to-day, you know.'

Such were the facts, but rose-colour was the medium through which they were seen by Mrs. Gibson's household listeners on her return.

'There are many visitors staying at the Towers—oh, yes! a great many: the duchess and Lady Alice, and Mr. and Mrs. Grey, and Lord Albert Monson and his sister, and my old friend Captain James of the Blues— many more, in fact. But of course I preferred going to Lady Cumnor's own room, where I could see her and Lady Harriet quietly, and where we were not disturbed by the bustle downstairs. Of course we were obliged to go down to lunch, and then I saw my old friends, and renewed pleasant acquaintances. But I really could hardly get any connected conversation with any one. Lord Cumnor seemed so delighted to see me there again: though there were six or seven between us, he was always interrupting with some civil or kind speech especially addressed to me. And after lunch Lady Cumnor asked me all sorts of questions about my new life with as much interest as if I had been her daughter. To be sure, when the duchess came in we had to leave off, and talk about the trousseau she is preparing for Lady Alice. Lady Harriet made such a point of our meeting at the ball; she is a good, affectionate creature, is Lady Harriet!'

This last was said in a tone of meditative appreciation.

The afternoon of the day on which the ball was to take place, a servant rode over from Hamley with two lovely nosegays, 'with the Mr Hamleys' compliments to Miss Gibson and Miss Kirkpatrick.' Cynthia was the first to receive them. She came dancing into the drawing-room, flourishing the flowers about in either hand, and danced up to Molly, who was trying to settle to her reading, by way of passing the time away till the evening came.

'Look, Molly, look! Here are bouquets for us! Long life to the givers!'

'Who are they from?' asked Molly, taking hold of one, and examining it with tender delight at its beauty.

'Who from? Why, the two paragons of Hamleys, to be sure! Is it not a pretty attention?'

'How kind of them!' said Molly.

'I'm sure it is Osborne who thought of it. He has been so much abroad, where it is such a common compliment to send bouquets to young ladies.'

'I don't see why you should think it is Osborne's thought!' said Molly, reddening a little. 'Mr. Roger Hamley used to gather nosegays constantly for his mother, and sometimes for me.'

'Well, never mind whose thought it was, or who gathered them; we've got the flowers, and that's enough. Molly, I'm sure these red flowers will just match your coral necklace and bracelets,' said Cynthia, pulling out some camellias, then a rare kind of flower.

'Oh, please, don't!' exclaimed Molly. 'Don't you see how carefully the colours are arranged—they have taken such pains; please, don't.'

'Nonsense!' said Cynthia, continuing to pull them out; 'see, here are quite enough. I'll make you a little coronet of them—sewn on black velvet, which will never be seen—just as they do in France!'

'Oh, I am so sorry! It is quite spoilt,' said Molly.

'Never mind! I'll take this spoilt bouquet; I can make it up again just as prettily as ever; and you shall have this, which has never been touched.' Cynthia went on arranging the crimson buds and flowers to her taste. Molly said nothing, but kept on watching Cynthia's nimble fingers tying up the wreath.

'There,' said Cynthia, at last, 'when that is sewn on black velvet, to keep the flowers from dying, you'll see how pretty it will look. And there are enough red flowers in this untouched nosegay to carry out the idea!'

'Thank you' (very slowly). 'But shan't you mind having only the wrecks of the other?'

'Not I; red flowers would not go with my pink dress.'

'But—I daresay they arranged each nosegay so carefully!'

'Perhaps they did. But I never would allow sentiment to interfere with my choice of colours; and pink does tie one down. Now you, in white muslin, just tipped with crimson, like a daisy, may wear anything.'

Cynthia took the utmost pains in dressing Molly, leaving the clever housemaid to her mother's exclusive service. Mrs. Gibson was more anxious about her attire than was either of the girls; it had given her occasion for deep thought and not a few sighs. Her deliberation had ended in her wearing her pearl-grey satin wedding-gown, with a profusion of lace, and white and coloured lilacs. Cynthia was the one who took the affair the most lightly. Molly looked upon the ceremony of dressing for a first ball as rather a serious ceremony; certainly as an anxious proceeding. Cynthia was almost as anxious as herself; only Molly wanted her appearance to be correct and unnoticed; and Cynthia was desirous of setting off Molly's rather peculiar charms—her cream- coloured skin, her profusion of curly black hair, her beautiful long- shaped eyes, with their shy, loving expression. Cynthia took up so much time in dressing Molly to her mind, that she herself had to perform her toilette in a hurry. Molly, ready dressed, sate on a low chair in Cynthia's room, watching the pretty creature's rapid movements, as she stood in her petticoat before the glass, doing up her hair, with quick certainty of effect. At length, Molly heaved a long sigh, and said,—

'I should like to be pretty!'

'Why, Molly,' said Cynthia, turning round with an exclamation on the tip of her tongue; but when she caught the innocent, wistful look on Molly's face, she instinctively checked what she was going to say, and, half-smiling to her own reflection in the glass, she said,—'The French girls would tell you, to believe that you were pretty would make you so.'

Molly paused before replying,—

'I suppose they would mean that if you knew you were pretty, you would never think about your looks; you would be so certain of being liked, and that it is caring—'

'Listen! that's eight o'clock striking. Don't trouble yourself with trying to interpret a French girl's meaning, but help me on with my frock, there's a dear one.'

The two girls were dressed, and were standing over the fire waiting for the carriage in Cynthia's room, when Maria (Betty's successor) came hurrying into the room. Maria had been officiating as maid to Mrs. Gibson, but she had had intervals of leisure, in which she had rushed upstairs, and, under the pretence of offering her services, she had seen the young ladies' dresses, and the sight of so many fine clothes had sent her into a state of excitement which made her think nothing of rushing upstairs for the twentieth time, with a nosegay still more beautiful than the two previous ones.

'Here, Miss Kirkpatrick! No, it's not for you, miss!' as Molly, being nearer to the door, offered to take it and pass it to Cynthia. 'It's for Miss Kirkpatrick; and there's a note for her besides!'

Cynthia said nothing, but took the note and the flowers. She held the note so that Molly could read it at the same time she did.

I send you some flowers; and you must allow me to claim the first dance after nine o'clock, before which time I fear I cannot arrive.—R. P.

'Who is it?' asked Molly.

Cynthia looked extremely irritated, indignant, perplexed—what was it turned her cheek so pale, and made her eyes so full of fire?

'It is Mr. Preston,' said she, in answer to Molly. 'I shall not dance with him; and here go his flowers—'

Into the very middle of the embers, which she immediately stirred down upon the beautiful shrivelling petals as if she wished to annihilate them as soon as possible. Her voice had never been raised; it was as sweet as usual; nor, though her movements were prompt enough, were they hasty or violent.

'Oh!' said Molly, 'those beautiful flowers! We might have put them in water.'

'No,' said Cynthia; 'it's best to destroy them. We don't want them; and I can't bear to be reminded of that man.'

'It was an impertinent familiar note,' said Molly. 'What right had he to express himself in that way—no beginning, no end, and only initials. Did you know him well when you were at Ashcombe, Cynthia?'

'Oh, don't let us think any more about him,' replied Cynthia. 'It is quite enough to spoil any pleasure at the ball to think that he will be there. But I hope I shall get engaged before he comes, so that I can't dance with him—and don't you, either!'

'There! they are calling for us,' exclaimed Molly, and with quick step, yet careful of their draperies, they made their way downstairs to the place where Mr. and Mrs. Gibson awaited them. Yes: Mr. Gibson was going; even if he had to leave them afterwards to attend to any professional call. And Molly suddenly began to admire her father as a handsome man, when she saw him now, in full evening attire. Mrs Gibson, too—how pretty she was! In short, it was true that no better-looking a party than these four people entered the Hollingford ball-room that evening.



CHAPTER XXVI

A CHARITY BALL

At the present time there are few people at a public ball besides the dancers and their chaperones, or relations in some degree interested in them. But in the days when Molly and Cynthia were young—before railroads were, and before their consequences, the excursion-trains, which take every one up to London now-a-days, there to see their fill of gay crowds and fine dresses—to go to an annual charity-ball, even though all thought of dancing had passed by years ago, and without any of the responsibilities of a chaperone, was a very allowable and favourite piece of dissipation to all the kindly old maids who thronged the country towns of England. They aired their old lace and their best dresses; they saw the aristocratic magnates of the country side; they gossipped with their coevals, and speculated on the romances of the young around them in a curious yet friendly spirit. The Miss Brownings would have thought themselves sadly defrauded of the gayest event of the year, if anything had prevented their attending the charity-ball, and Miss Browning would have been indignant, Miss Phoebe aggrieved, had they not been asked to Ashcombe and Coreham, by friends at each place, who had, like them, gone through the dancing stage of life some five- and-twenty years before, but who liked still to haunt the scenes of their former enjoyment, and see a younger generation dance on 'regardless of their doom.' They had come in one of the two sedan- chairs that yet lingered in use at Hollingford; such a night as this brought a regular harvest of gains to the two old men who, in what was called the 'town's livery,' trotted backwards and forwards with their many loads of ladies and finery. There were some postchaises, and some 'flys,' but after mature deliberation Miss Browning had decided to keep to the more comfortable custom of the sedan-chair; 'which,' as she said to Miss Piper, one of her visitors, 'came into the parlour, and got full of the warm air, and nipped you up, and carried you tight and cosy into another warm room, where you could walk out without having to show your legs by going up steps, or down steps.' Of course only one could go at a time; but here again a little of Miss Browning's good management arranged everything so very nicely, as Miss Hornblower (their other visitor) remarked. She went first, and remained in the warm cloak-room until her hostess followed; and then the two ladies went arm-in-arm into the ball-room, finding out convenient seats whence they could watch the arrivals and speak to their passing friends, until Miss Phoebe and Miss Piper entered, and came to take possession of the seats reserved for them by Miss Browning's care. These two younger ladies came in, also arm-in-arm, but with a certain timid flurry in look and movement very different from the composed dignity of their seniors (by two or three years). When all four were once more assembled together, they took breath, and began to converse.

'Upon my word, I really do think this is a better room than our Ashcombe Court-house!'

'And how prettily it is decorated!' piped out Miss Piper. 'How well the roses are made! But you all have such taste at Hollingford.'

'There's Mrs. Dempster,' cried Miss Hornblower; 'she said she and her two daughters were asked to stay at Mr. Sheepshanks'. Mr Preston was to be there, too; but I suppose they could not all come at once. Look! and there is young Roscoe, our new doctor. I declare it seems as if all Ashcombe were here. Mr. Roscoe! Mr. Roscoe! come here and let me introduce you to the Miss Brownings, the friends we are staying with. We think very highly of our young doctor, I can assure you, Miss Browning.'

Mr. Roscoe bowed, and simpered at hearing his own praises. But Miss Browning had no notion of having any doctor praised, who had come to settle even on the very verge of Mr. Gibson's practice, so she said to Miss Hornblower,—

'You must be glad, I am sure, to have somebody you can call in, if you are in any sudden hurry, or for things that are too trifling to trouble Mr. Gibson about; and I should think Mr. Roscoe would feel it a great advantage to profit, as he will naturally have the opportunity of doing, by witnessing Mr. Gibson's skill!'

Probably Mr. Roscoe would have felt more aggrieved by this speech than he really was, if his attention had not been called off just then by the entrance of the very Mr. Gibson who was being spoken of. Almost before Miss Browning had ended her severe and depreciatory remarks, he had asked his friend Miss Hornblower,—

'Who is that lovely girl in pink, just come in?'

'Why, that's Cynthia Kirkpatrick!' said Miss Hornblower, taking up a ponderous gold eyeglass to make sure of her fact. 'How she has grown! To be sure it is two or three years since she left Ashcombe—she was very pretty then—people did say Mr. Preston admired her very much; but she was so young!'

'Can you introduce me?' asked the impatient young surgeon. 'I should like to ask her to dance.' When Miss Hornblower returned from her greeting to her former acquaintance, Mrs. Gibson, and had accomplished the introduction which Mr. Roscoe had requested, she began her little confidences to Miss Browning.

'Well, to be sure! How condescending we are! I remember the time when Mrs. Kirkpatrick wore old black silks, and was thankful and civil as became her place as a schoolmistress, and as having to earn her bread. And now she is in a satin; and she speaks to me as if she just could recollect who I was, if she tried very hard! It isn't so long ago since Mrs. Dempster came to consult me as to whether Mrs Kirkpatrick would be offended, if she sent her a new breadth for her lilac silk-gown, in place of one that had been spoilt by Mrs Dempster's servant spilling the coffee over it the night before; and she took it and was thankful, for all she's dressed in pearl-grey satin now! And she would have been glad enough to marry Mr. Preston in those days.'

'I thought you said he admired her daughter,' put in Miss Browning to her irritated friend.

'Well! perhaps I did, and perhaps it was so; I am sure I can't tell; he was a great deal at the house. Miss Dixon keeps a school in the same house now, and I am sure she does it a great deal better.'

'The earl and the countess are very fond of Mrs. Gibson,' said Miss Browning. 'I know, for Lady Harriet told us when she came to drink tea with us last autumn; and they desired Mr. Preston to be very attentive to her when she lived at Ashcombe.'

'For goodness' sake don't go and repeat what I've been saying about Mr. Preston and Mrs. Kirkpatrick to her ladyship. One may be mistaken, and you know I only said "people talked about it."'

Miss Hornblower was evidently alarmed lest her gossip should be repeated to the Lady Harriet, who appeared to be on such an intimate footing with her Hollingford friends. Nor did Miss Browning dissipate the illusion. Lady Harriet had drunk tea with them, and might do it again; and, at any rate, the little fright she had put her friend into was not a bad return for that praise of Mr. Roscoe, which had offended Miss Browning's loyalty to Mr. Gibson.

Meanwhile Miss Piper and Miss Phoebe, who had not the character of esprit-forts to maintain, talked of the dresses of the people present, beginning by complimenting each other.

'What a lovely turban you have got on, Miss Piper, if I may be allowed to say so: so becoming to your complexion!'

'Do you think so?' said Miss Piper, with ill-concealed gratification; it was something to have a 'complexion' at forty-five. 'I got it at Brown's, at Somerton, for this very ball. I thought I must have something to set off my gown, which isn't quite so new as it once was; and I have no handsome jewellery like you'—looking with admiring eyes at a large miniature set round with pearls, which served as a shield to Miss Phoebe's breast.

'It is handsome,' that lady replied. 'It is a likeness of my dear mother; Sally has got my father on. The miniatures were both taken at the same time; and just about then my uncle died and left us each a legacy of fifty pounds, which we agreed to spend on the setting of our miniatures. But because they are so valuable Sally always keeps them locked up with the best silver, and hides the box somewhere; she never will tell me where, because she says I've such weak nerves, and that if a burglar, with a loaded pistol at my head, were to ask me where we kept our plate and jewels, I should be sure to tell him; and she says, for her part, she would never think of revealing under any circumstances. (I'm sure I hope she won't be tried.) But that's the reason I don't wear it often; it's only the second time I've had it on; and I can't even get at it, and look at it, which I should like to do. I shouldn't have had it on to-night, but that Sally gave it out to me, saying it was but a proper compliment to pay to the Duchess of Menteith, who is to be here in all her diamonds.'

'Dear-ah-me! Is she really! Do you know I never saw a duchess before.' And Miss Piper drew herself up and craned her neck, as if resolved to 'behave herself properly,' as she had been taught to do at boarding- school thirty years before, in the presence of 'her grace.' By-and-by she said to Miss Phoebe, with a sudden jerk out of position,—'Look, look! that's our Mr. Cholmley, the magistrate' (he was the great man of Coreham), 'and that's Mrs. Cholmley in red satin, and Mr. George and Mr. Harry from Oxford, I do declare; and Miss Cholmley, and pretty Miss Sophy. I should like to go and speak to them, but then it's so formidable crossing a room without a gentleman. And there is Coxe the butcher and his wife! Why, all Coreham seems to be here! And how Mrs. Coxe can afford such a gown I can't make out for one, for I know Coxe had some difficulty in paying for the last sheep he bought of my brother.'

Just at this moment the band, consisting of two violins, a harp, and an occasional clarionet, having finished their tuning, and brought themselves as nearly into accord as was possible, struck up a brisk country-dance, and partners quickly took their places. Mrs. Gibson was secretly a little annoyed at Cynthia's being one of those to stand up in this early dance, the performers in which were principally the punctual plebeians of Hollingford, who, when a ball was fixed to begin at eight, had no notion of being later, and so losing part of the amusement for which they had paid their money. She imparted some of her feelings to Molly, sitting by her, longing to dance, and beating time to the spirited music with one of her pretty little feet.

'Your dear papa is always so very punctual! To-night it seems almost a pity, for we really are here before there is any one come that we know.'

'Oh! I see so many people here that I know. There are Mr. and Mrs Smeaton, and that nice good-tempered daughter.'

'Oh! booksellers and butchers if you will.'

'Papa has found a great many friends to talk to.'

'Patients, my dear—hardly friends. There are some nice-looking people here,' catching her eye on the Cholmleys; 'but I daresay they have driven over from the neighbourhood of Ashcombe or Coreham, and have hardly calculated how soon they would get here. I wonder when the Towers' party will come. Ah! there's Mr. Ashton, and Mr. Preston. Come, the room is beginning to fill.'

So it was, for this was to be a very good ball, people said; and a large party from the Towers was coming, and a duchess in diamonds among the number. Every great house in the district was expected to be full of guests on these occasions; but, at this early hour, the townspeople had the floor almost entirely to themselves; the county magnates came dropping in later; and chiefest among them all was the lord-lieutenant from the Towers. But to-night they were unusually late, and the aristocratic ozone being absent from the atmosphere, there was a flatness about the dancing of all those who considered themselves above the plebeian ranks of the tradespeople. They, however, enjoyed themselves thoroughly, and sprang and pounded till their eyes sparkled and their cheeks glowed with exercise and excitement. Some of the more prudent parents, mindful of the next day's duties, began to consider at what hour they ought to go home; but with all there was an expressed or unexpressed curiosity to see the duchess and her diamonds; for the Menteith diamonds were famous in higher circles than that now assembled; and their fame had trickled down to it through the medium of ladies'-maids and housekeepers. Mr. Gibson had had to leave the ball- room for a time, as he had anticipated, but he was to return to his wife as soon as his duties were accomplished; and, in his absence, Mrs. Gibson kept herself a little aloof from the Miss Brownings and those of her acquaintance who would willingly have entered into conversation with her, with the view of attaching herself to the skirts of the Towers' party, when they should make their appearance. If Cynthia would not be so very ready in engaging herself to every possible partner who asked her to dance, there were sure to be young men staying at the Towers who would be on the look-out for pretty girls: and who could tell to what a dance would lead? Molly, too, though a less good dancer than Cynthia, and, from her timidity, less graceful and easy, was becoming engaged pretty deeply; and, it must be confessed, she was longing to dance every dance, no matter with whom. Even she might not be available for the more aristocratic partners Mrs. Gibson anticipated. She was feeling very much annoyed with the whole proceedings of the evening when she was aware of some one standing by her; and, turning a little to one side, she saw Mr. Preston keeping guard, as it were, over the seats which Molly and Cynthia had just quitted. He was looking so black that, if their eyes had not met, Mrs. Gibson would have preferred not speaking to him; as it was, she thought it unavoidable.

'The rooms are not well-lighted to-night, are they, Mr. Preston?'

'No,' said he; 'but who could light such dingy old paint as this, loaded with evergreens, too, which always darken a room.'

'And the company, too! I always think that freshness and brilliancy of dress go as far as anything to brighten up a room. Look what a set of people are here: the greater part of the women are dressed in dark silks, really only fit for a morning. The place will be quite different, by-and-by, when the county families are in a little more force.'

Mr. Preston made no reply. He had put his glass in his eye, apparently for the purpose of watching the dancers. If its exact direction could have been ascertained, it would have been found that he was looking intently and angrily at a flying figure in pink muslin: many a one was gazing at Cynthia with intentness besides himself, but no one in anger. Mrs. Gibson was not so fine an observer as to read all this; but here was a gentlemanly and handsome young man, to whom she could prattle, instead of either joining herself on to objectionable people, or sitting all forlorn until the Towers' party came. So she went on with her small remarks.

'You are not dancing, Mr. Preston!'

'No! The partner I had engaged has made some mistake. I am waiting to have an explanation with her.'

Mrs. Gibson was silent. An uncomfortable tide of recollections appeared to come over her; she, like Mr. Preston, watched Cynthia; the dance was ended, and she was walking round the room in easy unconcern as to what might await her. Presently her partner, Mr Harry Cholmley, brought her back to her seat. She took that vacant next to Mr. Preston, leaving that by her mother for Molly's occupation. The latter returned a moment afterwards to her place. Cynthia seemed entirely unconscious of Mr. Preston's neighbourhood. Mrs. Gibson leaned forwards, and said to her daughter,—

'Your last partner was a gentleman, my dear. You are improving in your selection. I really was ashamed of you before, figuring away with that attorney's clerk. Molly, do you know whom you have been dancing with? I have found out he is the Coreham bookseller.'

'That accounts for his being so well up in all the books I have been wanting to hear about,' said Molly, eagerly, but with a spice of malice in her mind. 'He really was very pleasant, mamma,' she added; 'and he looks quite a gentleman, and dances beautifully!'

'Very well. But remember if you go on this way you will have to shake hands over the counter to-morrow morning with some of your partners of to-night,' said Mrs. Gibson, coldly.

'But I really don't know how to refuse when people are introduced to me and ask me, and I am longing to dance. You know to-night it is a charity-ball, and papa said everybody danced with everybody,' said Molly, in a pleading tone of voice; for she could not quite and entirely enjoy herself if she was out of harmony with any one. What reply Mrs. Gibson would have made to this speech cannot now be ascertained, for, before she could make reply, Mr. Preston stepped a little forwards, and said, in a tone which he meant to be icily indifferent, but which trembled with anger,—

'If Miss Gibson finds any difficulty in refusing a partner, she has only to apply to Miss Kirkpatrick for instructions.'

Cynthia lifted up her beautiful eyes, and, fixing them on Mr Preston's face, said, very quietly, as if only stating a matter of fact,—

'You forget, I think, Mr. Preston: Miss Gibson implied that she wished to dance with the person who asked her—that makes all the difference. I can't instruct her how to act in that difficulty.'

And to the rest of this little conversation, Cynthia appeared to lend no car; and she was almost directly claimed by her next partner. Mr. Preston took the seat now left empty much to Molly's annoyance. At first she feared lest he should be going to ask her to dance; but, instead, he put out his hand for Cynthia's nosegay, which she had left on rising, entrusted to Molly. It had suffered considerably from the heat of the room, and was no longer full and fresh; not so much so as Molly's, which had not, in the first instance, been pulled to pieces in picking out the scarlet flowers which now adorned Molly's hair, and which had since been cherished with more care. Enough, however, remained of Cynthia's to show very distinctly that it was not the one Mr. Preston had sent; and it was perhaps to convince himself of this, that he mutely asked to examine it. But Molly, faithful to what she imagined would be Cynthia's wish, refused to allow him to touch it; she only held it a little nearer.