Mrs. Gibson could hardly wait till her husband had finished his
sentence before she testified against a part of it.
"'Convinced of Cynthia's intentions!' I should think she had made
them pretty clear! What more does the man want?"
"He's not as yet convinced that the letter wasn't written in a fit
of temporary feeling. I've told him that this was true; although I
didn't feel it my place to explain to him the causes of that feeling.
He believes that he can induce her to resume the former footing.
I don't; and I've told him so; but, of course, he needs the full
conviction that she alone can give him."
"Poor Cynthia! My poor child!" said Mrs. Gibson, plaintively. "What
she has exposed herself to by letting herself be over-persuaded by
that man!"
Mr. Gibson's eyes flashed fire. But he kept his lips tight closed;
and only said, "'That man,' indeed!" quite below his breath.
Molly, too, had been damped by an expression or two in her father's
speech. "Mere visits of ceremony!" Was it so, indeed? A "mere visit
of ceremony!" Whatever it was, the call was paid before many days
were over. That he felt all the awkwardness of his position towards
Mrs. Gibson--that he was in reality suffering pain all the time--was
but too evident to Molly; but, of course, Mrs. Gibson saw nothing
of this in her gratification at the proper respect paid to her by
one whose name was in the newspapers that chronicled his return, and
about whom already Lord Cumnor and the Towers family had been making
inquiry.
Molly was sitting in her pretty white invalid's dress, half reading,
half dreaming, for the June air was so clear and ambient, the garden
so full of bloom, the trees so full of leaf, that reading by the open
window was only a pretence at such a time; besides which, Mrs. Gibson
continually interrupted her with remarks about the pattern of her
worsted work. It was after lunch--orthodox calling time, when Maria
ushered in Mr. Roger Hamley. Molly started up; and then stood shyly
and quietly in her place while a bronzed, bearded, grave man came
into the room, in whom she at first had to seek for the merry boyish
face she knew by heart only two years ago. But months in the climates
in which Roger had been travelling age as much as years in more
temperate regions. And constant thought and anxiety while in daily
peril of life deepen the lines of character upon the face. Moreover,
the circumstances that had of late affected him personally were not
of a nature to make him either buoyant or cheerful. But his voice was
the same; that was the first point of the old friend Molly caught,
when he addressed her in a tone far softer than he used in speaking
conventional politenesses to her stepmother.