“Yes,” said she, hesitating a little now.

“And pray how do you come to remember so exactly the name of the disease spoken of?”

“Because I went——now don’t be angry, I really can’t see any harm in what I did”——

“There, don’t deprecate anger! You went”——

“Into the surgery, and looked it out. Why might not I?”

Mr. Gibson did not answer—did not look at her. His face was very pale, and both forehead and lips were contracted. At length he roused himself, sighed, and said—

“Well! I suppose as one brews one must bake.”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” pouted she.

“Perhaps not,” he replied. “I suppose that it was what you heard on that occasion that made you change your behaviour to Roger Hamley? I’ve noticed how much more civil you’ve been to him of late.”

“If you mean that I have ever got to like him as much as Osborne, you are very much mistaken; no, not even though he has offered to Cynthia, and is to be my son-in-law.”

“Let me know the whole affair. You overheard—I will own that it was Osborne about whom we were speaking, though I shall have something to say about that presently— and then, if I understand you rightly, you changed your behaviour to Roger, and made him more welcome to this house than you had ever done before, regarding him as proximate heir to the Hamley estates?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘proximate.’ ”

“Go into the surgery, and look in the dictionary, then,” said he, losing his temper for the first time during the conversation.

“I knew,” said she through sobs and tears, “that Roger had taken a fancy to Cynthia; any one might see that; and as long as Roger was only a younger son, with no profession, and nothing but his Fellowship, I thought it right to discourage him, as any one would who had a grain of common sense in them; for a clumsier, more common, awkward, stupid fellow I never saw—to be called ‘county,’ I mean.”

“Take care; you’ll have to eat your words presently, when you come to fancy he’ll have Hamley some day.”

“No, I shan’t,” said she, not perceiving his exact drift. “You are vexed now because it is not Molly he’s in love with; and I call it very unjust and unfair to my poor fatherless girl. I am sure I have always tried to further Molly’s interests as if she was my own daughter.”

Mr. Gibson was too indifferent to this accusation to take any notice of it. He returned to what was of far more importance to him.

“The point I want to be clear about is this. Did you or did you not alter your behaviour to Roger, in consequence of what you overheard of my professional conversation with Dr. Nicholls? Have you not favoured his suit to Cynthia since then, on the understanding gathered from that conversation that he stood a good chance of inheriting Hamley?”

“I suppose I have,” said she sulkily. “And if I did, I can’t see any harm in it, that I should be questioned as if I were in a witness-box. He was in love with Cynthia long before that conversation, and she liked him so much. It was not for me to cross the path of true love. I don’t see how you would have a mother