‘Then, sir! are you aware of the injury you may do to a young lady’s reputation if you meet her, and detain her in long conversations, when she is walking by herself, unaccompanied by any one? You give rise—you have given rise to reports.’
‘My dear Harriet, are you not going too far? You don’t know—Mr. Preston may have intentions—acknowledged intentions.’
‘No, my lord. I have no intentions with regard to Miss Gibson. She may be a very worthy young lady—I have no doubt she is. Lady Harriet seems determined to push me into such a position that I cannot but acknowledge myself to be—it is not enviable—not pleasant to own—but I am, in fact, a jilted man; jilted by Miss Kirkpatrick, after a tolerably long engagement. My interviews with Miss Gibson were not of the most agreeable kind—as you may conclude when I tell you she was, I believe, the instigator—certainly, she was the agent in this last step of Miss Kirkpatrick’s. Is your ladyship’s curiosity’ (with an emphasis on this last word) ‘satisfied with this rather mortifying confession of mine?’
‘Harriet, my dear, you’ve gone too far—we had no right to pry into Mr. Preston’s private affairs.’
‘No more I had,’ said Lady Harriet, with a smile of winning frankness: the first smile she had accorded to Mr. Preston for many a long day; ever since the time, years ago, when, presuming on his handsomeness, he had assumed a tone of gallant familiarity with Lady Harriet, and paid her personal compliments as he would have done to an equal.
‘But he will excuse me, I hope,’ continued she, still in that gracious manner which made him feel that he now held a much higher place in her esteem than he had had at the beginning of their interview, ‘when he learns that the busy tongues of the Hollingford ladies have been speaking of my friend, Miss Gibson, in the most unwarrantable manner; drawing unjustifiable inferences from the facts of that intercourse with Mr. Preston, the nature of which he has just conferred such a real obligation on me by explaining.’
‘I think I need hardly request Lady Harriet to consider this explanation of mine as confidential,’ said Mr. Preston.
‘Of course, of course!’ said the earl; ‘every one will understand that.’ And he rode home, and told his wife and Lady Cuxhaven the whole conversation between Lady Harriet and Mr. Preston; in the strictest confidence, of course. Lady Harriet had to stand a good many strictures on manners and proper dignity for a few days after this. However, she consoled herself by calling on the Gibsons; and, finding that Mrs. Gibson (who was still an invalid) was asleep at the time, she experienced no difficulty in carrying off the unconscious Molly for a walk, which Lady Harriet so contrived that they twice passed through all the length of the principal street of the town, loitered at Grinstead’s for half an hour, and wound up by Lady Harriet’s calling on the Miss Brownings, who, to her regret, were not at home.
‘Perhaps it’s as well,’ said she, after a minute’s consideration. ‘I’ll leave my card, and put your name down underneath it, Molly’
Molly was a little puzzled by the manner in which she had been taken possession of, like an inanimate chattel, for all the afternoon, and exclaimed—
‘Please, Lady Harriet—I never leave cards; I have not got any, and on the Miss Brownings, of all people; why, I am in and out whenever I like.’
‘Never mind, little one. To-day you shall do everything properly, and according to full etiquette.’
‘And now tell Mrs. Gibson to come out to the Towers for a long day; we will send the carriage for her whenever she will let us know that she is strong enough to come. Indeed, she had better come for a few days; at this time of the year it doesn’t do for an invalid to be out in the evenings, even in a carriage.’ So spoke Lady Harriet, standing on the white doorsteps at Miss Brownings‘, and holding Molly’s hand while she wished her good-bye. ‘You’ll tell her, dear, that I came partly to see her—but that finding her asleep, I ran off with you, and don’t forget about her coming to stay with us for change of air—mamma will like it, I’m sure—and the carriage, and all that. And now good-bye, we’ve done a good day’s work! And better than you’re aware of,’ continued she, still addressing Molly, though the latter was quite out of hearing.
‘Hollingford is not the place I take it to be, if it doesn’t veer round in Miss Gibson’s favour after my to-day’s trotting of that child about.’
CHAPTER 50
Cynthia at Bay
Mrs. Gibson was slow in recovering her strength after the influenza, and before she was well enough to accept Lady Harriet’s invitation to the Towers, Cynthia came home from London. If Molly had thought her manner of departure was scarcely as affectionate and considerate as it might have been,—if such a thought had crossed Molly’s fancy for an instant, she was repentant for it as soon as ever Cynthia returned, and the girls met together face to face, with all the old familiar affection, going upstairs to the drawing-room with their arms round each other’s waists, and sitting there together hand in hand. Cynthia’s whole manner was more quiet than it had been, when the weight of her unpleasant secret rested on her mind, and made her alternately despondent or flighty.
‘After all,’ said Cynthia, ‘there’s a look of home about these rooms which is very pleasant. But I wish I could see you looking stronger, mamma! that’s the only unpleasant thing. Molly, why didn’t you send for me?’
‘I wanted to do,’ began Molly.
‘But I wouldn’t let her,’ said Mrs. Gibson. ‘You were much better in London than here, for you could have done me no good; and your letters were very agreeable to read; and now Helen is better, and I’m nearly well, and you’ve come home just at the right time, for everybody is full of the Charity Ball.’
‘But we are not going this year, mamma,’ said Cynthia, decidedly. ‘It’s on the 25th, isn’t it? and I’m sure you’ll never be well enough to take us.’
‘You really seem determined to make me out worse than I am, child,’ said Mrs. Gibson, rather querulously, she being one of those who, when their malady is only trifling, exaggerate it, but when it is really of some consequence, are unwilling to sacrifice any pleasures by acknowledging it. It was well for her in this instance that her husband had wisdom and authority enough to forbid her going to this ball, on which she had set her heart; but the consequence of his prohibition was an increase of domestic plaintiveness and low spirits, which seemed to tell on Cynthia—the bright gay Cynthia—herself; and it was often hard work for Molly to keep up the spirits of two other people as well as her own. Ill health might account for Mrs. Gibson’s despondency, but why was Cynthia so silent, not to say so sighing? Molly was puzzled to account for it, and all the more perplexed because from time to time Cynthia kept calling upon her for praise for some unknown and mysterious virtue that she had practised; and Molly was young enough to believe that, after any exercise of virtue, the spirits rose, cheered up by an approving conscience. Such was not the case with Cynthia, however. She sometimes said such things as these, when she had been particularly inert and desponding: —
‘Ah, Molly, you must let my goodness lie fallow for a while! It has borne such a wonderful crop this year. I have been so pretty-behaved—if you knew all!’ Or, ‘Really, Molly, my virtue must come down from the clouds! It was strained to the utmost in London—and I find it is like a kite—after soaring aloft for some time, it suddenly comes down, and gets tangled in all sorts of briers and brambles; which things are an allegory, unless you can bring yourself to believe in my extraordinary goodness while I was away—giving me a sort of right to fall foul of all mamma’s briers and brambles now.’