Wives and Daughters: An Every-Day Story - Page 324/572

The Squire was pleased with his own speech and his own thought, and

smiled a little as he finished speaking. Mr. Gibson was both pleased

and amused; and he smiled too, anxious as he was to be gone. The next

Thursday was soon fixed upon as the day on which Mr. Gibson was to

bring his womenkind out to the Hall. He thought that, on the whole,

the interview had gone off a good deal better than he had expected,

and felt rather proud of the invitation of which he was the bearer.

Therefore Mrs. Gibson's manner of receiving it was an annoyance to

him. She, meanwhile, had been considering herself as an injured woman

ever since the evening of the day of Roger's departure; what business

had any one had to speak as if the chances of Osborne's life being

prolonged were infinitely small, if in fact the matter was uncertain?

She liked Osborne extremely, much better than Roger; and would gladly

have schemed to secure him for Cynthia, if she had not shrunk from

the notion of her daughter's becoming a widow. For if Mrs. Gibson had

ever felt anything acutely it was the death of Mr. Kirkpatrick; and,

amiably callous as she was in most things, she recoiled from exposing

her daughter wilfully to the same kind of suffering which she herself

had experienced. But if she had only known Dr. Nicholls' opinion she

would never have favoured Roger's suit; never. And then Mr. Gibson

himself; why was he so cold and reserved in his treatment of her

since that night of explanation? She had done nothing wrong; yet she

was treated as though she were in disgrace. And everything about

the house was flat just now. She even missed the little excitement

of Roger's visits, and the watching of his attentions to Cynthia.

Cynthia too was silent enough; and as for Molly, she was absolutely

dull and out of spirits, a state of mind so annoying to Mrs. Gibson

just now, that she vented some of her discontent upon the poor girl,

from whom she feared neither complaint nor repartee.