'It is only a very little thing.I won't burden your conscience with telling you how I get my letters, but it is not through a person I can trust with money; and I must force him to take back his twenty-three pounds odd shillings.I have put it together at the rate of five per cent., and it's sealed up.Oh, Molly, I should go off with such a light heart if you would only try to get it safely to him.It's the last thing; there would be no immediate hurry, you know.You might meet him by chance in a shop, in the street, even at a party - and if you only had it with you in your pocket, there would be nothing so easy.'
Molly was silent.'Papa would give it to him.There would be no harm in that.I would tell him he must ask no questions as to what it was.'
'Very well,' said Cynthia, 'have it your own way.I think my way is the best; for if any of this affair comes out -- But you've done a great deal for me already, and I won't blame you now for declining to do any more!'
'I do so dislike having these underhand dealings with him,' pleaded Molly.
'Underhand! just simply giving him a letter from me! If I left a note for Miss Browning, should you dislike giving it to her?'
'You know that's very different.I could do it openly.'
'And yet there might be writing in that; and there would not be a line with the money.It would only be the winding-up - the honourable, honest winding-up of an affair which has worried me for years! But do as you like!'
'Give it me!' said Molly.'I will try.'
'There's a darling! You can but try; and if you can't give it to him in private, without getting yourself into a scrape, why, keep it till Icome back again.He shall have it then, whether he will or no!'
Molly looked forward to her tête-?tête two days with Mrs Gibson with very different anticipations to those with which she had welcomed the similar intercourse with her father.In the first place, there was no accompanying the travellers to the inn from which the coach started;leave-taking in the market-place was quite out of the bounds of Mrs Gibson's sense of propriety.Besides this, it was a gloomy, rainy even yoing, and candles had to be brought in at an unusually early hour.There would be no break for six hours - no music, no reading; but the two ladies would sit at their worsted work, pattering away at small-talk, with not even the usual break of dinner; for, to suit the requirements of those who were leaving, they had already dined early.But Mrs Gibson really meant to make Molly happy, and tried to be an agreeable companion, only Molly was not well, and uneasy about many apprehended cares and troubles - and at such hours of indisposition as she was then passing through, apprehensions take the shape of certainties, lying await in our paths.Molly would have given a good deal to have shaken off all these feelings, unusual enough to her;but the very house and furniture, and rain-blurred outer landscape, seemed steeped with unpleasant associations, most of them dating from the last few days.
'You and I must go on the next journey, I think, my dear,' said Mrs Gibson, almost chiming in with Molly's wish that she could get away from Hollingford into some new air and life, for a week or two.'We have been stay-at-homes for a long time, and variety of scene is so desirable for the young! But I think the travellers will be wishing themselves at home by this nice bright fireside."There's no place like home," as the poet says.' "Mid pleasures and palaces although I may roam," it begins, and it's both very pretty and very true.It's a great blessing to have such a dear little home as this, is not it, Molly?'
'Yes,' said Molly, rather drearily, having something of the 'Toujours perdrix' feeling at the moment.If she could but have gone away with her father, just for two days, how pleasant it would have been.
'To be sure, love, it would be very nice for you and me to go a little journey all by ourselves.You and I.No one else.If it were not such miserable weather we would have gone off on a little impromptu tour.I've been longing for something of the kind for some weeks; but we live such a restricted kind of life here! I declare sometimes I get quite sick of the very sight of the chairs and tables that I know so well.And one misses the others too! It seems so flat and deserted without them!'
'Yes! We are very forlorn to-night; but I think it's partly owing to the weather!'
'Nonsense, dear.I can't have you giving in to the silly fancy of being affected by weather.Poor dear Mr Kirkpatrick used to say, "a cheerful heart makes its own sunshine." He would say it to me, in his pretty way, whenever I was a little low - for I am a complete barometer - you may really judge of the state of the weather by my spirits, I have always been such a sensitive creature! It is well for Cynthia that she does not inherit it; I don't think her easily affected in any way, do you?'
Molly thought for a minute or two, and then replied, - 'No, she is certainly not easily affected - not deeply affected perhaps I should say.'
'Many girls, for instance, would have been touched by the admiration she excited - I may say the attentions she received when she was at her uncle's last summer.'
'At Mr Kirkpatrick's?'
'Yes.There was Mr Henderson, that young lawyer; that's to say he is studying law, but he has a good private fortune and is likely to have more, so he can' only be what I call playing at law.Mr Henderson was over head and ears in love with her.It is not my fancy, although I grant mothers are partial; both Mr and Mrs Kirkpatrick noticed it; and in one of Mrs Kirkpatrick's letters, she said that poor Mr Henderson was going into Switzerland for the long vacation,' doubtless to try and forget Cynthia; but she really believed he would find it only dragging at each remove a lengthening chain.
I thought it such a refined quotation, and altogether worded so prettily.
You must know aunt Kirkpatrick some day, Molly, my love: she is what Icall a woman of a truly elegant mind.'
'I can't help thinking it was a pity that Cynthia did not tell them of her engagement.'