"Oh, papa, papa--I'm not myself--I don't know what to say about this
hateful--detestable--"
He led his horse out. She did not know if he heard her words. Just as
he mounted, he turned round upon her with a grey grim face--
"I think it's better for both of us, for me to go away now. We
may say things difficult to forget. We are both much agitated. By
to-morrow we shall be more composed; you will have thought it over,
and have seen that the principal--one great motive, I mean--was your
good. You may tell Mrs. Hamley--I meant to have told her myself. I
will come again to-morrow. Good-by, Molly."
For many minutes after he had ridden away--long after the sound of
his horse's hoofs on the round stones of the paved lane, beyond the
home-meadows, had died away--Molly stood there, shading her eyes,
and looking at the empty space of air in which his form had last
appeared. Her very breath seemed suspended; only, two or three times,
after long intervals, she drew a miserable sigh, which was caught up
into a sob. She turned away at last, but could not go into the house,
could not tell Mrs. Hamley, could not forget how her father had
looked and spoken--and left her.
She went out through a side-door--it was the way by which the
gardeners passed when they took the manure into the garden--and the
walk to which it led was concealed from sight as much as possible by
shrubs and evergreens and over-arching trees. No one would know what
became of her--and, with the ingratitude of misery, she added to
herself, no one would care. Mrs. Hamley had her own husband, her own
children, her close home interests--she was very good and kind, but
there was a bitter grief in Molly's heart, with which the stranger
could not intermeddle. She went quickly on to the bourne which she
had fixed for herself--a seat almost surrounded by the drooping
leaves of a weeping-ash--a seat on the long broad terrace walk on
the other side of the wood, that overlooked the pleasant slope of
the meadows beyond. The walk had probably been made to command this
sunny, peaceful landscape, with trees, and a church spire, two or
three red-tiled roofs of old cottages, and a purple bit of rising
ground in the distance; and at some previous date, when there might
have been a large family of Hamleys residing at the Hall, ladies
in hoops, and gentlemen in bag-wigs with swords by their sides,
might have filled up the breadth of the terrace, as they sauntered,
smiling, along. But no one ever cared to saunter there now. It was a
deserted walk. The squire or his sons might cross it in passing to a
little gate that led to the meadow beyond; but no one loitered there.
Molly almost thought that no one knew of the hidden seat under the
ash-tree but herself; for there were not more gardeners employed upon
the grounds than were necessary to keep the kitchen-gardens and such
of the ornamental part as was frequented by the family, or in sight
of the house, in good order.