"And to be in the house with Osborne! Roger, too, will be at home."
By the cloud in the Squire's eyes, Mrs. Hamley read his mind.
"Oh, she's not at all the sort of girl young men of their age would
take to. We like her because we see what she really is; but lads of
one or two and twenty want all the accessories of a young woman."
"Want what?" growled the Squire.
"Such things as becoming dress, style of manner. They would not at
their age even see that she is pretty; their ideas of beauty would
include colour."
"I suppose all that's very clever; but I don't understand it. All I
know is, that it's a very dangerous thing to shut two young men of
one and three and twenty up in a country-house like this with a girl
of seventeen--choose what her gowns may be like, or her hair, or her
eyes. And I told you particularly I didn't want Osborne, or either of
them, indeed, to be falling in love with her. I'm very much annoyed."
Mrs. Hamley's face fell; she became a little pale.
"Shall we make arrangements for their stopping away while she is
here; staying up at Cambridge, or reading with some one? going abroad
for a month or two?"
"No; you've been reckoning this ever so long on their coming home.
I've seen the marks of the weeks on your almanack. I'd sooner speak
to Gibson, and tell him he must take his daughter away, for it's not
convenient to us--"
"My dear Roger! I beg you will do no such thing. It will be so
unkind; it will give the lie to all I said yesterday. Don't, please,
do that. For my sake, don't speak to Mr. Gibson!"
"Well, well, don't put yourself in a flutter," for he was afraid of
her becoming hysterical; "I'll speak to Osborne when he comes home,
and tell him how much I should dislike anything of the kind."
"And Roger is always far too full of his natural history and
comparative anatomy, and messes of that sort, to be thinking of
falling in love with Venus herself. He has not the sentiment and
imagination of Osborne."
"Ah, you don't know; you never can be sure about a young man! But
with Roger it wouldn't so much signify. He would know he couldn't
marry for years to come."
All that afternoon the Squire tried to steer clear of Molly, to whom
he felt himself to have been an inhospitable traitor. But she was so
perfectly unconscious of his shyness of her, and so merry and sweet
in her behaviour as a welcome guest, never distrusting him for a
moment, however gruff he might be, that by the next morning she had
completely won him round, and they were quite on the old terms again.
At breakfast this very morning, a letter was passed from the Squire
to his wife, and back again, without a word as to its contents; but--