“I don’t see why you need to call it anything. Indeed, I don’t understand what you mean by ‘it.’ You should always try to express yourself intelligibly. It really is one of the first principles of the English language. In fact, philosophers might ask what is language given us for at all, if it is not that we may make our meaning understood?”

“But there is something between Cynthia and Roger; they are more to each other than I am to Osborne, for instance. What am I to call it?”

“You should not couple your name with that of any unmarried young man; it is so difficult to teach you delicacy, child. Perhaps one may say there is a peculiar relation between dear Cynthia and Roger, but it is very difficult to characterise it; I have no doubt that is the reason she shrinks from speaking about it. For, between ourselves, Molly, I really sometimes think it will come to nothing. He is so long away, and, privately speaking, Cynthia is not very, very constant. I once knew her very much taken before—that little affair is quite gone by; and she was very civil to Mr. Henderson, in her way; I fancy she inherits it, for when I was a girl I was beset by lovers, and could never find in my heart to shake them off. You have not heard dear papa say anything of the old Squire, or dear Osborne, have you? It seems so long since we have heard or seen anything of Osborne. But he must be quite well, I think, or we should have heard of it.”

“I believe he is quite well. Some one said the other day that they had met him riding—it was Mrs. Goodenough, now I remember—and that he was looking stronger than he had done for years.”

“Indeed! I am truly glad to hear it. I always was fond of Osborne; and, do you know, I never really took to Roger? I respected him and all that, of course; but to compare him with Mr. Henderson! Mr. Henderson is so handsome and well-bred, and gets all his gloves from Houbigant!”

It was true that they had not seen anything of Osborne Hamley for a long time; but, as it often happens, just after they had been speaking about him he appeared. It was on the day following Mr. Gibson’s departure that Mrs. Gibson received one of the notes, not so common now as formerly, from the family in town, asking her to go over to the Towers, and find a book, or a manuscript, or something or other that Lady Cumnor wanted with all an invalid’s impatience. It was just the kind of employment she required for an amusement on a gloomy day, and it put her into a good humour immediately. There was a certain confidential importance about it, and it was a variety, and it gave her the pleasant drive in a fly up the noble avenue, and the sense of being the temporary mistress of all the grand rooms once so familiar to her. She asked Molly to accompany her, out of an access of kindness, but was not at all sorry when Molly excused herself and preferred stopping at home. At eleven o’clock Mrs. Gibson was off, all in her Sunday best (to use the servants’ expression, which she herself would so have contemned), well- dressed in order to impose on the servants at the Towers, for there was no one else to see or to be seen by.

“I shall not be at home until the afternoon, my dear! But I hope you will not find it dull. I don’t think you will; for you are something like me, my love—‘never less alone than when alone’, as one of the great authors has justly expressed it.”

Molly enjoyed the house to herself fully as much as Mrs. Gibson would enjoy having the Towers to herself. She ventured on having her lunch brought up on a tray into the drawing-room, so that she might eat her sandwiches while she went on with her book. In the middle, Mr. Osborne Hamley was announced. He came in, looking wretchedly ill in spite of purblind Mrs. Goodenough’s report of his healthy appearance.

“This call is not on you, Molly,” said he, after the first greetings were over. “I was in hopes I might have found your father at home; I thought lunch-time was the best hour.” He had sate down, as if thoroughly glad of the rest, and fallen into a languid stooping position, as if it had become so natural to him that no sense of what were considered good manners sufficed to restrain him now.