‘Don’t you think that your pattern young man, and my favourite young woman, are finding out each other’s good qualities?’
He had not been observing as she had been.
‘Who do you mean?’ said he.
‘Look along the avenue; who are those?’
‘Mr. Hamley and—is it not Miss Gibson? I can’t quite make out. Oh! if you’re letting your fancy run off in that direction, I can tell you it’s quite waste of time. Roger Hamley is a man who will soon have a European reputation!’
‘That’s very possible, and yet it doesn’t make any difference in my opinion. Molly Gibson is capable of appreciating him.’
‘She is a very pretty, good little country-girl. I don’t mean to say anything against her, but—’
‘Remember the Charity Ball; you called her “unusually intelligent” after you had danced with her there. But, after all, we’re like the genie and the fairy in the Arabian Nights Entertainment, who each cried up the merits of the Prince Caramalzaman and the Princess Badoura.’
‘Hamley is not a marrying man.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know that he has very little private fortune, and I know that science is not a remunerative profession, if profession it can be called.’
‘Oh, if that’s all—a hundred things may happen—some one may leave him a fortune—or this tiresome little heir that nobody wanted may die.’
‘Hush, Harriet, that’s the worst of allowing yourself to plan far ahead for the future; you are sure to contemplate the death of some one, and to reckon upon the contingency as affecting events.’
‘As if lawyers were not always doing something of the kind.’
‘Leave it to those to whom it is necessary. I dislike planning marriages, or looking forward to deaths, about equally.’
‘You are getting very prosaic and tiresome, Hollingford!’
‘Only getting!’ said he, smiling. ‘I thought you had always looked upon me as a tiresome matter-of-fact fellow.’
‘Now, if you’re going to fish for a compliment I am gone. Only remember my prophecy when my vision comes to pass; or make a bet, and whoever wins shall spend the money on a present to Prince Caramalzaman or Princess Badoura, as the case may be.’
Lord Hollingford remembered his sister’s words as he heard Roger say to Molly as he was leaving the Towers on the following day,—
‘Then I may tell my father that, you will come and pay him a visit next week? You don’t know what pleasure it will give him.’ He had been on the point of saying will give us, but he had an instinct which told him it was as well to consider Molly’s promised visit as exclusively made to his father.
The next day Molly went home; she was astonished at herself for being so sorry to leave the Towers; and found it difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the long-fixed idea of the house, as a place wherein to suffer all a child’s tortures of dismay and forlornness, with her new and fresh conception. She had gained health, she had had pleasure, the faint fragrance of a new and unacknowledged hope had stolen into her life. No wonder that Mr. Gibson was struck with the improvement in her looks, and Mrs. Gibson impressed with her increased grace.
‘Ah Molly,’ said she, ‘it’s really wonderful to see what a little good society will do for a girl. Even a week of association with such people as one meets with at the Towers is, as somebody said of a lady of rank whose name I have forgotten, “a polite education in itself.” There is something quite different about you—a je ne sais quoiei—that would tell me at once that you have been mingling with the aristocracy. With all her charms, it was what my darling Cynthia wanted; not that Mr. Henderson thought so, for a more devoted lover can hardly be conceived. He absolutely bought her a parure of diamonds. I was obliged to say to him that I had studied to preserve her simplicity of taste, and that he must not corrupt her with too much luxury. But I was rather disappointed at their going off without a maid. It was the one blemish in the arrangements—the spot in the sun. Dear Cynthia, when I think of her, I do assure you, Molly, I make it my nightly prayer that I may be able to find you just such another husband. And all this time you have never told me who you met at the Towers?’
Molly ran over a list of names. Roger Hamley’s came last.
‘Upon my word! That young man is pushing his way up!’
‘The Hamleys are a far older family than the Cumnors,’ said Molly, flushing up.
‘Now, Molly, I can’t have you democratic. Rank is a great distinction. It is quite enough to have dear papa with democratic tendencies. But we won’t begin to quarrel. Now that you and I are left alone, we ought to be bosom friends, and I hope we shall be. Roger Hamley did not say much about that unfortunate little Osborne Hamley, I suppose?’
‘On the contrary, he says his father dotes on the child; and he seemed very proud of him, himself.’
‘I thought the squire must be getting very much infatuated with something. I dare say the French mother takes care of that. Why! he has scarcely taken any notice of you for this month or more, and before that you were everything.’
It was about six weeks since Cynthia’s engagement had become publicly known, and that might have had something to do with the squire’s desertion, Molly thought. But she said,—
‘The squire has sent me an invitation to go and stay there next week if you have no objection, mamma. They seem to want a companion for Mrs. Osborne Hamley, who is not very strong.’
‘I can hardly tell what to say,—I don’t like your having to associate with a Frenchwoman of doubtful rank; and I can’t bear the thought of losing my child—my only daughter now. I did ask Helen Kirkpatrick, but she can’t come for some time; and the house is going to be altered. Papa has consented to build me another room at last, for Cynthia and Mr. Henderson will, of course, come and see us; we shall have many more visitors, I expect, and your bedroom will make a capital lumber-room; and Maria wants a week’s holiday. I am always so unwilling to put any obstacles in the way of one’s pleasure, —weakly unwilling, I believe,—but it certainly would be very convenient to have you out of the house for a few days; so, for once, I will waive my own wish for your companionship, and plead your cause with papa.’
Miss Brownings came to call and hear the double batch of news. Mrs. Goodenough had come the very day on which they had returned from Miss Hornblower’s, to tell them the astounding fact of Molly Gibson having gone on a visit to the Towers; not to come back at night, but to sleep there, to be there for two or three days, just as if she was a young lady of quality. So Miss Brownings came to hear all the details of the wedding from Mrs. Gibson, and the history of Molly’s visit at the Towers as well. But Mrs. Gibson did not like this divided interest, and some of her old jealousy of Molly’s intimacy at the Towers had returned.