All these days the buzzing gossip about Molly's meetings with Mr.
Preston, her clandestine correspondence, the secret interviews in
lonely places, had been gathering strength, and assuming the positive
form of scandal. The simple innocent girl, who walked through the
quiet streets without a thought of being the object of mysterious
implications, became for a time the unconscious black sheep of the
town. Servants heard part of what was said in their mistresses'
drawing-rooms, and exaggerated the sayings amongst themselves with
the coarse strengthening of expression common with uneducated people.
Mr. Preston himself became aware that her name was being coupled with
his, though hardly to the extent to which the love of excitement and
gossip had carried people's speeches; he chuckled over the mistake,
but took no pains to correct it. "It serves her right," said he to
himself, "for meddling with other folk's business," and he felt
himself avenged for the discomfiture which her menace of appealing to
Lady Harriet had caused him, and the mortification he had experienced
in learning from her plain-speaking lips, how he had been talked
over by Cynthia and herself, with personal dislike on the one side,
and evident contempt on the other. Besides, if any denial of Mr.
Preston's stirred up an examination as to the real truth, more might
come out of his baffled endeavours to compel Cynthia to keep to her
engagement to him than he cared to have known. He was angry with
himself for still loving Cynthia; loving her in his own fashion, be
it understood. He told himself that many a woman of more position and
wealth would be glad enough to have him; some of them pretty women
too. And he asked himself why he was such a confounded fool as to go
on hankering after a penniless girl, who was as fickle as the wind?
The answer was silly enough, logically; but forcible in fact. Cynthia
was Cynthia, and not Venus herself could have been her substitute.
In this one thing Mr. Preston was more really true than many worthy
men; who, seeking to be married, turn with careless facility from the
unattainable to the attainable, and keep their feelings and fancy
tolerably loose till they find a woman who consents to be their wife.
But no one would ever be to Mr. Preston what Cynthia had been, and
was; and yet he could have stabbed her in certain of his moods. So,
Molly, who had come between him and the object of his desire, was not
likely to find favour in his sight, or to obtain friendly actions
from him.
There came a time--not very distant from the evening at Mrs.
Dawes'--when Molly felt that people looked askance at her. Mrs.
Goodenough openly pulled her grand-daughter away, when the young girl
stopped to speak to Molly in the street, and an engagement which
the two had made for a long walk together was cut very short by a
very trumpery excuse. Mrs. Goodenough explained her conduct in the
following manner to some of her friends:--