(Mrs Gibson could afford to call it an (engagement' now.) 'I never did give him credit for very deep feelings.' 'On the contrary, he feels it very acutely.He and I had a long talk about it, yesterday.' Both Molly and Mrs Gibson would have liked to have heard something more about this conversation; but Mr Gibson did not choose to go on with the subject.The only point which he disclosed was that Roger had insisted on his right to have a personal interview with Cynthia; and, on hearing that she was in London at present, had deferred any further explanation or expostulation by letter, preferring to await her return.Molly went on with her questions on other subjects.'And Mrs Osborne Hamley?
How is she?' 'Wonderfully brightened up by Roger's presence.I don't think I have ever seen her smile before; but she gives him the sweetest smiles from time to time.They are evidently good friends; and she loses her strange startled look when she speaks to him.I suspect she has been quite aware of the squire's wish that she should return to France; and has been hard put to it to decide whether to leave her child or not.The idea that she would have to make some such decision came upon her when she was completely shattered by grief and illness, and she has not had any one to consult as to her duty until Roger came, upon whom she has evidently firm reliance.He told me something of this himself.' 'You seem to have had quite a long conversation with him, papa!' 'Yes.I was going to see old Abraham, when the squire called to me over the hedge, as I was jogging along.He told me the news; and there was no resisting his invitation to come back and lunch with them.Besides, one gets a great deal of meaning out of Roger's words; it did not take so very long a time to hear this much.' 'I should think he would come and call upon us soon,' said Mrs Gibson to Molly; 'and then we shall see how much we can manage to hear.' 'Do you think he will, papa?' said Molly, more doubtfully.She remembered the last time he was in that very room, and the hopes with which he left it; and she fancied that she could see traces of this thought in her father's countenance at his wife's speech.'I cannot tell, my dear.Until he is quite convinced of Cynthia's intentions, it cannot be very pleasant for him to come on mere visits of ceremony to the house in which he has known her; but he is one who will always do what he thinks right, whether pleasant or not.' Mrs Gibson could hardly wait till her husband had finished his sentence before she testified against a part of it.'"Convinced of Cynthia's intentions!" I should think she had made them pretty clear! What more does the man want?' 'He is not as yet convinced that the letter was not written in a fit of temporary feeling.I have told him that this was true; although I did not feel it my place to explain to him the causes of that feeling.He believes that he can induce her to resume the former footing.I do not; and I have told him so; but of course he needs the full conviction that she alone can give him.' 'Poor Cynthia! My poor child!' said Mrs Gibson, plaintively.'What she has exposed herself to by letting herself be over-persuaded by that man!' Mr Gibson's eyes flashed fire.But he kept his lips tight closed; and only said, '"That man," indeed!' quite below his breath.Molly, too, had been damped by an expression or two in her father's speech.
'Mere visits of ceremony!' Was it so, indeed? A 'mere visit of ceremony!'
Whatever it was, the call was paid before many days were over.That he felt all the awkwardness of his position towards Mrs Gibson - that he was in reality suffering pain all the time - was but too evident to Molly;but of course Mrs Gibson saw nothing of this in her gratification at the proper respect paid to her by one whose name was already in the newspapers that chronicled his return, and about whom already Lord Cumnor and the Towers family had been making inquiry.Molly was sitting in her pretty white invalid's dress, half reading, half dreaming, for the June air was so clear and ambient, the garden so full of bloom, the trees so full of leaf, that reading by the open window was only a pretence at such a time; besides which Mrs Gibson continually interrupted her with remarks about the pattern of her worsted-work.It was after lunch - orthodox calling time, when Maria ushered in Mr Roger Hamley.Molly started up; and then stood shyly and quietly in her place while a bronzed, bearded, grave man came into the room, in whom she at first had to seek for the merry boyish face she knew by heart only two years ago.But months in the climates in which Roger had been travelling age as much as years in more temperate districts.And constant thought and anxiety while in daily peril of life deepen the lines of character upon a face.Moreover, the circumstances that had of late affected him personally were not of a nature to make him either buoyant or cheerful.But his voice was the same; that was the first point of the old friend Molly caught, when he addressed her in a tone far softer than he used in speaking conventional politenesses to her stepmother.'I was so sorry to hear how ill you had been! You are looking but delicate!'
