"Oh! she was over-tired by the ball. Papa has seen her, and says she
will be all right very soon."
"I wonder if she wants change of air?" said Roger, meditatively. "I
wish--I do wish we could have her at the Hall; you and your mother
too, of course. But I don't see how it would be possible--or else how
charming it would be!"
Molly felt as if a visit to the Hall under such circumstances would
be altogether so different an affair to all her former ones, that she
could hardly tell if she should like it or not.
Roger went on,--
"You got our flowers in time, did you not? Ah! you don't know how
often I thought of you that evening! And you enjoyed it too, didn't
you?--you had plenty of agreeable partners, and all that makes a
first ball delightful? 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,--