Wives and Daughters: An Every-Day Story - Page 258/572

"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. That Alnaschar vision had

fallen to the ground. It was as yet early morning; a delicious,

fresh, lovely June day, the air redolent with the scents of

flower-growth and bloom; and half the time the girls had been

ostensibly employed in the French reading they had been leaning out

of the open window trying to reach a cluster of climbing roses. They

had secured them at last, and the buds lay on Cynthia's lap, but many

of the petals had fallen off; so, though the perfume lingered about

the window-seat, the full beauty of the flowers had passed away. Mrs.

Gibson had once or twice reproved them for the merry noise they were

making, which hindered her in the business of counting the stitches

in her pattern; and she had set herself a certain quantity to do

that morning before going out, and was of that nature which attaches

infinite importance to fulfilling small resolutions, made about

indifferent trifles without any reason whatever.