“Well, all I can say is, never be the heroine of a mystery that you can avoid, if you can’t help being an accessory. Then, I suppose I must yield to your wishes and let this scandal wear itself out without any notice from me?”

“What else can you do, under the circumstances?”

“Ay; what else, indeed? How shall you bear it?”

For an instant the quick hot tears sprang into her eyes: to have everybody—all her world—thinking evil of her, did seem hard to the girl who had never thought or said an unkind thing of them. But she smiled as she made answer—

“It’s like tooth-drawing; it will be over some time. It would be much worse, if I really had been doing wrong.”

“Cynthia shall beware”—— he began; but Molly put her hand before his mouth.

“Papa, Cynthia must not be accused, or suspected; you will drive her out of your house if you do; she is so proud, and so unprotected, except by you. And Roger—for Roger’s sake, you will never do or say anything to send Cynthia away, when he has trusted us all to take care of her, and love her in his absence. Oh! I think, if she were really wicked, and I did not love her at all, I should feel bound to watch over her, he loves her so dearly. And she is really good at heart, and I do love her dearly. You must not vex or hurt Cynthia, papa—remember she is dependent upon you!”

“I think the world would get on tolerably well, if there were no women in it. They plague the life out of one. You’ve made me forget, amongst you—poor old Job Houghton, that I ought to have gone to see an hour ago.”

Molly put up her mouth to be kissed. “You’re not angry with me now, papa, are you?”

“Get out of my way” (kissing her all the same). “If I’m not angry with you, I ought to be; for you’ve caused a great deal of worry, which won’t be over yet awhile, I can tell you.”

For all Molly’s bravery at the time of this conversation, it was she that suffered more than her father. He kept out of the way of hearing gossip; but she was perpetually thrown into the small society of the place. Mrs. Gibson herself had caught cold, and moreover was not tempted by the quiet old-fashioned visiting which was going on just about this time, provoked by the visit of two of Mrs. Dawes’s pretty unrefined nieces, who laughed, and chattered, and ate, and would fain have flirted with Mr. Ashton, the vicar, could he have been brought by any possibility to understand his share in the business. Mr. Preston did not accept the invitations to Hollingford tea-drinkings with the same eager gratitude as he had done a year before: or else the shadow which hung over Molly would not have extended to him, her co-partner in the clandestine meetings which gave such umbrage to the feminine virtue in the town. Molly herself was invited, because it would not do to pass any apparent slight on either Mr. or Mrs. Gibson; but there was a tacit and underhand protest against her being received on the old terms. Every one was civil to her, but no one was cordial; there was a very perceptible film of difference in their behaviour to her from what it was formerly; nothing that had outlines and could be defined. But Molly, for all her clear conscience and her brave heart, felt acutely that she was only tolerated, not welcomed. She caught the buzzing whispers of the two Miss Oakeses, who, when they first met the heroine of the prevailing scandal, looked at her askance, and criticised her pretensions to good looks, with hardly an attempt at undertones. Molly tried to be thankful that her father was not in the mood for visiting. She was even glad that her stepmother was too much of an invalid to come out, when she felt thus slighted, and, as it were, degraded from her place. Miss Browning herself, that true old friend, spoke to her with chilling dignity, and much reserve; for she had never heard a word from Mr. Gibson, since the evening when she had put herself to so much pain to tell him of the disagreeable rumours affecting his daughter.