The last afternoon of her stay at the Hall came. Roger had gone out on the squire’s business. Molly went into the garden, thinking over the last summer, when Mrs. Hamley’s sofa used to be placed under the old cedar-tree on the lawn, and when the warm air seemed to be scented with roses and sweet brier. Now, the trees leafless,—there was no sweet odour in the keen frosty air; and looking up at the house, there were the white sheets of blinds, shutting out the pale winter sky from the invalid’s room. Then she thought of the day her father had brought her the news of his second marriage: the thicket was tangled with dead weeds and rime and hoar-frost; and the Beautiful fine articulations of branches and boughs and delicate twigs were all intertwined in leafless distinctness against the sky. Could she ever be so passionately unhappy again? Was it goodness, or was it numbness, that made her feel as though life was too short to be troubled much about anything? Death seemed the only reality. She had neither energy nor heart to walk far or briskly; and turned back towards the house. The afternoon sun was shining brightly on the windows; and, stirred up to unusual activity by some unknown cause, the housemaids had opened the shutters and windows of the generally unused library. The middle window was also a door; the white-painted wood went half-way up. Molly turned along the little flag-paved path that led past the library windows to the gate in the white railings at the front of the house, and went in at the opened door. She had had leave given to choose out any books she wished to read, and to take them home with her; and it was just the sort of half-dawdling employment suited to her taste this afternoon. She mounted on the ladder to get to a particular shelf high up in a dark corner of the room; and finding there some volume that looked interesting, she sat down on the step to read part of it. There she sat, in her bonnet and cloak, when Osborne suddenly came in. He did not see her at first; indeed, he seemed in such a hurry that he probably might not have noticed her at all, if she had not spoken.
‘Am I in your way? I only came here for a minute to look for some books.’ She came down the steps as she spoke, still holding the book in her hand.
‘Not at all. It is I who am disturbing you. I must just write a letter for the post, and then I shall be gone. Is not this open door too cold for you?’
‘Oh, no. It is so fresh and pleasant.’
She began to read again, sitting on the lowest step of the ladder; he to write at the large old-fashioned writing-table close to the window. There was a minute or two of profound silence, in which the rapid scratching of Osborne’s pen upon the paper was the only sound. Then came a click of the gate, and Roger stood at the open door. His face was towards Osborne, sitting in the light; his back to Molly, crouched up in her corner. He held out a letter, and said in hoarse breathlessness—
‘Here’s a letter from your wife, Osborne. I went past the post office and thought——’
Osborne stood up, angry dismay upon his face.
‘Roger! what have you done? Don’t you see her?’
Roger looked round, and Molly stood up in her corner, red, trembling, miserable, as though she were a guilty person. Roger entered the room. All three seemed to be equally dismayed. Molly was the first to speak; she came forward and said—
‘I am so sorry! I didn’t wish to hear it, but I couldn’t help it. You will trust me, won’t you?’ and turning to Roger she said to him with tears in her eyes—‘Please say you know I shall not tell.’
‘We can’t help it,’ said Osborne, gloomily. ‘Only Roger, who knew of what importance it was, ought to have looked round him before speaking.’
‘So I should,’ said Roger. ‘I’m more vexed with myself than you can conceive. Not but what I’m as sure of you as of myself,’ continued he, turning to Molly.
‘Yes; but,’ said Osborne, ‘you see how many chances there are that even the best-meaning persons may let out what it is of such consequence to me to keep secret.’
‘I know you think it so,’ said Roger.
‘Well, don’t let us begin that old discussion again—at any rate, before a third person.’
Molly had had hard work all this time to keep from crying. Now that she was alluded to as the third person before whom conversation was to be restrained, she said—
‘I’m going away. Perhaps I ought not to have been here. I’m very sorry—very But I will try and forget what I’ve heard.’
‘You can’t do that,’ said Osborne, still ungraciously. ‘But will you promise me never to speak about it to any one—not even to me, or to Roger? Will you try to act and speak as if you had never heard it? I’m sure, from what Roger has told me about you, that if you give me this promise I may rely upon it.’
‘Yes; I will promise,’ said Molly, putting out her hand as a kind of pledge. Osborne took it, but rather as if the action was superfluous. She added, ‘I think I should have done so, even without a promise. But it is, perhaps, better to bind oneself I will go away now. I wish I’d never come into this room.’
She put down her book on the table very softly, and turned to leave the room, choking down her tears until she was in the solitude of her own chamber. But Roger was at the door before her, holding it open for her, and reading—she felt that he was reading—her face. He held out his hand for hers, and his firm grasp expressed both sympathy and regret for what had occurred.
She could hardly keep back her sobs till she reached her bedroom. Her feelings had been overwrought for some time past, without finding the natural vent in action. The leaving Hamley Hall had seemed so sad before; and now she was troubled with having to bear away a secret which she ought never to have known, and the knowledge of which had brought out a very, uncomfortable responsibility. Then there would arise a very natural wonder as to who Osborne’s wife was. Molly had not stayed so long and so intimately in the Hamley family without being well aware of the manner in which the future lady of Hamley was planned for. The squire, for instance, partly in order to show that Osborne, his heir, was above the reach of Molly Gibson, the doctor’s daughter, in the early days before he knew Molly well, had often alluded to the grand, the high, and the wealthy marriage which Hamley of Hamley, as represented by his clever, brilliant, handsome son Osborne, might be expected to make. Mrs. Hamley, too, unconsciously on her part, showed the projects that she was constantly devising for the reception of the unknown daughter-in-law that was to be.