Molly sat quite silent for a minute or two; then she mustered up courage to speak out what was in her mind.
‘Your ladyship’ (the title was the first-fruits of the lesson, as Molly took it, on paying due respect)—‘your ladyship keeps speaking of the sort of—the class of people to which I belong as if it was a kind of strange animal you were talking about; yet you talk so openly to me that———’
‘Well, go on—I like to hear you.’
Still silence.
‘You think me in your heart a little impertinent—now, don’t you?’ said Lady Harriet, almost kindly.
Molly held her peace for two or three moments; then she lifted her beautiful, honest eyes to Lady Harriet’s face, and said,—
‘Yes!—a little. But I think you a great many other things.’
‘We’ll leave the “other things” for the present. Don’t you see, little one, I talk after my kind, just as you talk after your kind. It’s only on the surface with both of us. Why, I dare say some of your good Hollingford ladies talk of the poor people in a manner which they would consider as impertinent in their turn, if they could hear it. But I ought to be more considerate when I remember how often my blood has boiled at the modes of speech and behaviour of one of my aunts, mamma’s sister, Lady———No! I won’t name names. Any one who earns his livelihood by any exercise of head or hands, from professional people and rich merchants down to labourers, she calls “persons.” She would never in her most shp-slop talk accord them even the conventional tide of “gentlemen”; and the way in which she takes possession of human beings, “my woman,” “my people,”—but, after all, it is only a way of speaking. I ought not to have used it to you; but somehow I separate you from all these Hollingford people.’
‘But why?’ persevered Molly. ‘I’m one of them.’
‘Yes, you are. But—now don’t reprove me again for impertinence—most of them are so unnatural in their exaggerated respect and admiration when they come up to the Towers, and put on so much pretence by way of fine manners, that they only make themselves objects of ridicule. You at least are simple and truthful, and that’s why I separate you in my own mind from them, and have talked unconsciously to you as I would—well! now here’s another piece of impertinence—as I would to my equal—in rank, I mean; for I don’t set myself up in solid things as any better than my neighbours. Here’s tea, however, come in time to stop me from growing too humble.’
It was a very pleasant little tea in the fading September twilight.
Just as it was ended, in came Mr. Preston again:
‘Lady Harriet, will you allow me the pleasure of showing you some alterations I have made in the flower-garden-in which I have tried to consult your taste—before it grows dark?’
‘Thank you, Mr. Preston. I will ride over with papa some day, and we will see if we approve of them.’
Mr. Preston’s brow flushed. But he affected not to perceive Lady Harriet’s haughtiness, and, turning to Molly, he said,—
‘Will not you come out, Miss Gibson, and see something of the gardens? You haven’t been out at all, I think, excepting to church.’
Molly did not like the idea of going out for a tête-à-tête walk with Mr. Preston; yet she pined for a little fresh air, would have liked to have seen the gardens, and have looked at the Manor-house from different aspects; and, besides this, much as she recoiled from Mr. Preston, she felt sorry for him under the repulse he had just received.
While she was hesitating, and slowly tending towards consent, Lady Harriet spoke,—
‘I cannot spare Miss Gibson. If she would like to see the place, I will bring her over some day myself’
When he had left the room, Lady Harriet said,—
‘I dare say it’s my own lazy selfishness has kept you indoors all day against your will. But, at any rate, you are not to go out walking with that man. I’ve an instinctive aversion to him; not entirely instinctive either; it has some foundation in fact; and I desire you don’t allow him ever to get intimate with you. He’s a very clever land-agent, and does his duty by papa, and I don’t choose to be taken up for libel; but remember what I say!’
Then the carriage came round, and after numberless last words from the earl—who appeared to have put off every possible direction to the moment when he stood, like an awkward Mercury, balancing himself on the step of the carriage—they drove back to the Towers.
‘Would you rather come in and dine with us—we should send you home, of course—or go home straight?’ asked Lady Harriet of Molly. She and her father had both been sleeping till they drew up at the bottom of the flight of steps.
‘Tell the truth, now and evermore. Truth is generally amusing, if it’s nothing else!’
‘I would rather go back to Miss Brownings’ at once, please,’ said Molly, with a nightmare-like recollection of the last, the only, evening she had spent at the Towers.
Lord Cumnor was standing on the steps, waiting to hand his daughter out of the carriage. Lady Harriet stopped to kiss Molly on the forehead, and to say,—
‘I shall come some day soon, and bring you a load of Miss Edgeworth’s tales, and make further acquaintance with Pecksy and Flapsy.’
‘No, don’t please,’ said Molly, taking hold of her, to detain her. ‘You must not come—indeed you must not.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I would rather not—because I think that I ought not to have any one coming to see me who laughs at the friends I am staying with, and calls them names,’ Molly’s heart beat very fast, but she meant every word that she said.
‘My dear little woman!’ said Lady Harriet, bending over her and speaking quite gravely. ‘I’m very sorry to have called them names—very, very sorry to have hurt you. If I promise you to be respectful to them in word and in deed—and in very thought, if I can—you’ll let me then, won’t you?’
Molly hesitated. ‘I’d better go home at once; I shall only say wrong things—and there’s Lord Cumnor waiting all this time.’
‘Let him alone; he’s very well amused hearing all the news of the day from Brown. Then I shall come—under promise?’
So Molly drove off in solitary grandeur; and Miss Brownings’ knocker was loosened on its venerable hinges by the never ending peal of Lord Cumnor’s footman.
They were full of welcome, full of curiosity. All through the long day they had been missing their bright young visitor and three or four times in every hour they had been wondering and settling what everybody was doing at that exact minute. What had become of Molly during all the afternoon had been a great perplexity to them; and they were very much oppressed with a sense of the great honour she had received in being allowed to spend so many hours alone with Lady Harriet. They were, indeed, more excited by this one fact than by all the details of the wedding, most of which they had known of beforehand, and talked over with much perseverance during the day. Molly began to feel as if there was some foundation for Lady Harriet’s inclination to ridicule the worship paid by the good people of Hollingford to their liege lord, and to wonder with what tokens of reverence they would receive Lady Harriet if she came to pay her promised visit. She had never thought of concealing the probability of this call until this evening; but now she felt as if it would be better not to speak of the chance, as she was not at all sure that the promise would be fulfilled.
Before Lady Harriet’s call was paid, Molly received another visit.
Roger Hamley came riding over one day with a note from his mother, and a wasps‘-nest as a present from himself Molly heard his powerful voice come sounding up the little staircase, as he asked if Miss Gibson was at home from the servant-maid at the door; and she was half amused and half annoyed as she thought how this call of his would give colour to Miss Browning’s fancies. ‘I would rather never be married at all,‘ thought she, ‘than marry an ugly man,—and dear, good Mr. Roger is really ugly; I don’t think one could even call him plain.’ Yet Miss Brownings, who did not look upon young men as if their natural costume was a helmet and a suit of armour, thought Mr. Roger Hamley a very personable young fellow, as he came into the room, his face flushed with exercise, his white teeth showing pleasantly in the courteous bow and smile he gave to all around. He knew the Miss Brownings slightly, and talked pleasantly to them while Molly read Mrs. Hamley’s little missive of sympathy and good wishes relating to the wedding; then he turned to her, and though Miss Brownings listened with all their ears, they could not find out anything remarkable either in the words he said or the tone in which they were spoken.