It appeared as if Mrs. Gibson's predictions were likely to be
verified; for Osborne Hamley found his way to her drawing-room pretty
frequently. To be sure, sometimes prophets can help on the fulfilment
of their own prophecies; and Mrs. Gibson was not passive.
Molly was altogether puzzled by his manners and ways. He spoke of
occasional absences from the Hall, without exactly saying where he
had been. But that was not her idea of the conduct of a married man;
who, she imagined, ought to have a house and servants, and pay rent
and taxes, and live with his wife. Who this mysterious wife might be
faded into insignificance before the wonder of where she was. London,
Cambridge, Dover, nay, even France, were mentioned by him as places
to which he had been on these different little journeys. These facts
came out quite casually, almost as if he was unaware of what he was
betraying. Sometimes he dropped out such sentences as these:--"Ah,
that would be the day I was crossing! It was stormy indeed! Instead
of our being only two hours, we were nearly five." Or, "I met Lord
Hollingford at Dover last week, and he said," &c. "The cold now is
nothing to what it was in London on Thursday--the thermometer was
down at 15 ." Perhaps, in the rapid flow of conversation, these
small revelations were noticed by no one but Molly; whose interest
and curiosity were always hovering over the secret she had become
possessed of, in spite of all her self-reproach for allowing her
thoughts to dwell on what was still to be kept as a mystery.
It was also evident to her that Osborne was not too happy at home.
He had lost the slight touch of cynicism which he had affected when
he was expected to do wonders at college; and that was one good
result of his failure. If he did not give himself the trouble of
appreciating other people, and their performances, at any rate his
conversation was not so amply sprinkled with critical pepper. He was
more absent, not so agreeable, Mrs. Gibson thought, but did not say.
He looked ill in health; but that might be the consequence of the
real depression of spirits which Molly occasionally saw peeping out
through all his pleasant surface-talk. Now and then, when he was
talking directly to her, he referred to "the happy days that are
gone," or, "to the time when my mother was alive;" and then his voice
sank, and a gloom came over his countenance, and Molly longed to
express her own deep sympathy. He did not often mention his father;
and Molly thought she could read in his manner, when he did, that
something of the painful restraint she had noticed when she was last
at the Hall still existed between them. Nearly every particular she
knew of the family interior she had heard from Mrs. Hamley, and she
was uncertain how far her father was acquainted with them; so she
did not like to question him too closely; nor was he a man to be so
questioned as to the domestic affairs of his patients. Sometimes she
wondered if it was a dream--that short half-hour in the library at
Hamley Hall--when she had learnt a fact which seemed so all-important
to Osborne, yet which made so little difference in his way of
life--either in speech or action. During the twelve or fourteen hours
that she had remained at the Hall afterwards, no further allusion
had been made to his marriage, either by himself or by Roger. It was,
indeed, very like a dream. Probably Molly would have been rendered
much more uncomfortable in the possession of her secret if Osborne
had struck her as particularly attentive in his devotion to Cynthia.
She evidently amused and attracted him, but not in any lively or
passionate kind of way. He admired her beauty, and seemed to feel
her charm; but he would leave her side, and come to sit near Molly,
if anything reminded him of his mother, about which he could talk
to her, and to her alone. Yet he came so often to the Gibsons, that
Mrs. Gibson might be excused for the fancy she had taken into her
head, that it was for Cynthia's sake. He liked the lounge, the
friendliness, the company of two intelligent girls of beauty and
manners above the average; one of whom stood in a peculiar relation
to him, as having been especially beloved by the mother whose memory
he cherished so fondly. Knowing himself to be out of the category
of bachelors, he was, perhaps, too indifferent as to other people's
ignorance, and its possible consequences.