"You mark my words, Roger. Five years hence the beautiful Cynthia's
red and white will have become just a little coarse, and her figure
will have thickened, while Molly's will only have developed into more
perfect grace. I don't believe the girl has done growing yet; I'm
sure she's taller than when I first saw her last summer."
"Miss Kirkpatrick's eyes must always be perfection. I cannot fancy
any could come up to them: soft, grave, appealing, tender; and such a
heavenly colour--I often try to find something in nature to compare
them to; they are not like violets--that blue in the eyes is too like
physical weakness of sight; they are not like the sky--that colour
has something of cruelty in it."
"Come, don't go on trying to match her eyes as if you were a draper,
and they a bit of ribbon; say at once 'her eyes are loadstars,' and
have done with it! I set up Molly's grey eyes and curling black
lashes, long odds above the other young woman's; but, of course, it's
all a matter of taste."
And now both Osborne and Roger had left the neighbourhood. In spite
of all that Mrs. Gibson had said about Roger's visits being ill-timed
and intrusive, she began to feel as if they had been a very pleasant
variety, now that they had ceased altogether. He brought in a whiff
of a new atmosphere from that of Hollingford. He and his brother had
been always ready to do numberless little things which only a man can
do for women; small services which Mr. Gibson was always too busy to
render. For the good doctor's business grew upon him. He thought that
this increase was owing to his greater skill and experience, and he
would probably have been mortified if he could have known how many
of his patients were solely biassed in sending for him, by the fact
that he was employed at the Towers. Something of this sort must have
been contemplated in the low scale of payment adopted long ago by
the Cumnor family. Of itself the money he received for going to the
Towers would hardly have paid him for horse-flesh, but then, as Lady
Cumnor in her younger days had worded it,--
"It is such a thing for a man just setting up in practice for himself
to be able to say he attends at this house!"
So the prestige was tacitly sold and paid for; but neither buyer nor
seller defined the nature of the bargain.
On the whole, it was as well that Mr. Gibson spent so much of his
time from home. He sometimes thought so himself when he heard his
wife's plaintive fret or pretty babble over totally indifferent
things, and perceived of how flimsy a nature were all her fine
sentiments. Still, he did not allow himself to repine over the step
he had taken; he wilfully shut his eyes and waxed up his ears to many
small things that he knew would have irritated him if he had attended
to them; and, in his solitary rides, he forced himself to dwell on
the positive advantages that had accrued to him and his through his
marriage. He had obtained an unexceptionable chaperone, if not a
tender mother, for his little girl; a skilful manager of his previous
disorderly household; a woman who was graceful and pleasant to
look at for the head of his table. Moreover, Cynthia reckoned for
something on the favourable side of the balance. She was a capital
companion for Molly; and the two were evidently very fond of each
other. The feminine companionship of the mother and daughter was
agreeable to him as well as to his child,--when Mrs. Gibson was
moderately sensible and not over-sentimental, he mentally added; and
then he checked himself, for he would not allow himself to become
more aware of her faults and foibles by defining them. At any rate,
she was harmless, and wonderfully just to Molly for a stepmother.
She piqued herself upon this indeed, and would often call attention
to the fact of her being unlike other women in this respect. Just
then sudden tears came into Mr. Gibson's eyes, as he remembered how
quiet and undemonstrative his little Molly had become in her general
behaviour to him; but how once or twice, when they had met upon the
stairs, or were otherwise unwitnessed, she had caught him and kissed
him--hand or cheek--in a sad passionateness of affection. But in a
moment he began to whistle an old Scotch air he had heard in his
childhood, and which had never recurred to his memory since; and
five minutes afterwards he was too busily treating a case of white
swelling in the knee of a little boy, and thinking how to relieve the
poor mother, who went out charring all day, and had to listen to the
moans of her child all night, to have any thought for his own cares,
which, if they really existed, were of so trifling a nature compared
to the hard reality of this hopeless woe.