"That's very possible, and yet it doesn't make any difference in my
opinion. Molly Gibson is capable of appreciating him."
"She is a very pretty, good little country-girl. I don't mean to say
anything against her, but--"
"Remember the Charity Ball; you called her 'unusually intelligent'
after you had danced with her there. But, after all, we are like
the genie and the fairy in the _Arabian Nights' Entertainment_, who
each cried up the merits of the Prince Caramalzaman and the Princess
Badoura."
"Hamley is not a marrying man."
"How do you know?"
"I know that he has very little private fortune, and I know that
science is not a remunerative profession, if profession it can be
called."
"Oh, if that's all--a hundred things may happen--some one may leave
him a fortune--or this tiresome little heir that nobody wanted, may
die."
"Hush, Harriet, that's the worst of allowing yourself to plan far
ahead for the future; you are sure to contemplate the death of some
one, and to reckon upon the contingency as affecting events."
"As if lawyers were not always doing something of the kind!"
"Leave it to those to whom it is necessary. I dislike planning
marriages or looking forward to deaths about equally."
"You are getting very prosaic and tiresome, Hollingford!"
"Only getting!" said he smiling; "I thought you had always looked
upon me as a tiresome matter-of-fact fellow."
"Now, if you're going to fish for a compliment I am gone. Only
remember my prophecy when my vision comes to pass; or make a bet,
and whoever wins shall spend the money on a present to Prince
Caramalzaman or Princess Badoura, as the case may be."
Lord Hollingford remembered his sister's words as he heard Roger say
to Molly as he was leaving the Towers on the following day,--
"Then I may tell my father that you will come and pay him a visit
next week? You don't know what pleasure it will give him." He had
been on the point of saying "will give _us_," but he had an instinct
which told him it was as well to consider Molly's promised visit as
exclusively made to his father.
The next day Molly went home; she was astonished at herself for
being so sorry to leave the Towers; and found it difficult, if not
impossible, to reconcile the long-fixed idea of the house as a place
wherein to suffer all a child's tortures of dismay and forlornness
with her new and fresh conception. She had gained health, she had
had pleasure, the faint fragrance of a new and unacknowledged hope
had stolen into her life. No wonder that Mr. Gibson was struck with
the improvement in her looks, and Mrs. Gibson impressed with her
increased grace.