I heard that your sister danced every dance.' 'It was very pleasant,' said Molly, quietly.'But, after all, I'm not sure if I want to go to another just yet; there seems to be so much trouble connected with a ball.' 'Ah! you are thinking of your sister, and her not being well?' 'No, I was not,' said Molly, rather bluntly.'I was thinking of the dress, and the dressing, and the weariness the next day.' He might think her unfeeling if he liked; she felt as if she had only too much feeling just then, for it was bringing on her a strange contraction of heart.But he was too inherently good himself to put any harsh construction on her speech.Just before he went away, while he was ostensibly holding her hand and wishing her good-by, he said to her in a voice too low to be generally heard, - 'Is there anything I could do for your sister? We have plenty of books, as you know, if she cares for reading.' Then, receiving no affirmative look or word from Molly in reply to this suggestion, he went on, - 'Or flowers? she likes flowers.Oh! and our forced strawberries are just ready - I will bring some over to-morrow.' 'I am sure she will like them,' said Molly.For some reason or other, unknown to the Gibsons, a longer interval than usual occurred between Osborne's visits, while Roger came almost every day, always with some fresh offering by which he openly sought to relieve Cynthia's indisposition as far as it lay in his power.Her manner to him was so gentle and gracious that Mrs Gibson became alarmed, lest, in spite of his 'uncouthness' (as she was pleased to term it), he might come to be preferred to Osborne, who was so strangely neglecting his own interests, in Mrs Gibson's opinion.In her quiet way, she contrived to pass many slights upon Roger; but the darts rebounded from his generous nature that could not have imagined her motives, and fastened themselves on Molly.She had often been called naughty and passionate when she was a child; and she thought now that she began to understand that she really had a violent temper.What seemed neither to hurt Roger nor annoy Cynthia made Molly's blood boil; and now she had once discovered Mrs Gibson's wish to make Roger's visits shorter and less frequent, she was always on the watch for indications of this desire.She read her stepmother's heart when the latter made allusions to the squire's loneliness, now that Osborne was absent from the Hall, and that Roger was so often away amongst his friends during the day, - 'Mr Gibson and I should be so delighted if you could have stopped to dinner;but, of course, we cannot be so selfish as to ask you to stay when we remember how your father would be left alone.We were saying yesterday we wondered how he bore his solitude, poor old gentleman!' Or, as soon as Roger came with his bunch of early roses, it was desirable for Cynthia to go and rest in her own room, while Molly had to accompany Mrs Gibson on some improvised errand or call.Still Roger, whose object was to give pleasure to Cynthia, and who had, from his boyhood, been always certain of Mr Gibson's friendly regard, was slow to perceive that he was not wanted.If he did not see Cynthia, that was his loss; at any rate, he heard how she was, and left her some little thing which he believed she would like, and was willing to risk the chance of his own gratification by calling four or five times in the hope of seeing her once.At last there came a day when Mrs Gibson went beyond her usual negative snubbiness, and when, in some unwonted fit of crossness, for she was a very placid-tempered person in general, she was guilty of positive rudeness, Cynthia was very much better.Tonics had ministered to a mind diseased, though she hated to acknowledge it; her pretty bloom and much of her light-heartedness had come back, and there was no cause remaining for anxiety.Mrs Gibson was sitting at her embroidery in the drawing-room, and the two girls were at the window, Cynthia laughing at Molly's earnest endeavours to imitate the French accent in which the former had been reading a page of Voltaire.
For the duty, or the farce, of settling to 'improving reading' in the mornings was still kept up, although Lord Hollingford, the unconscious suggestor of the idea, had gone back to town without making any of the efforts to see Molly again that Mrs Gibson had anticipated on the night of the ball.