“I shall go home and ask Molly herself what’s the meaning of it all; that’s all I shall do. It’s too ridiculous—knowing Molly as I do, it’s perfectly ridiculous.” He got up and walked about the room with hasty steps, laughing short unnatural laughs from time to time. “Really, what will they say next? ‘Satan finds some mischief still for idle tongues to do.’ ”

“Don’t talk of Satan, please, in this house. No one knows what may happen, if he’s lightly spoken about,” pleaded Miss Browning.

He went on, without noticing her, talking to himself—“I’ve a great mind to leave the place;—and what food for scandal that piece of folly would give rise to!” Then he was silent for a time; his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the ground, as he continued his quarter-deck march. Suddenly he stopped close to Miss Browning’s chair: “I’m thoroughly ungrateful to you, for as true a mark of friendship as you’ve ever shown me. True or false, it was right I should know the wretched scandal that is being circulated; and it couldn’t have been pleasant for you to tell it me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!”

“Indeed, Mr. Gibson, if it was false, I would never have named it, but let it die away.”

“It’s not true, though!” said he doggedly, letting drop the hand he had taken in his effusion of gratitude.

She shook her head. “I shall always love Molly for her mother’s sake,” she said. And it was a great concession from the correct Miss Browning. But her father did not understand it as such.

“You ought to love her for her own. She has done nothing to disgrace herself. I shall go straight home, and probe into the truth.”

“As if the poor girl who has been led away into deceit already would scruple much at going on in falsehood!” was Miss Browning’s remark on this last speech of Mr. Gibson’s; but she had discretion enough not to make it, until he was well out of hearing.