Still she was silent. At length she said—
“So I was sent out of the house that all this might be quietly arranged in my absence?”
Out of the bitterness of her heart she spoke, but she was roused out of her assumed impassiveness by the effect produced. Her father started up, and quickly left the room, saying something to himself—what, she could not hear, though she ran after him, followed him through dark stone-passages, into the glare of the stable-yard, into the stables—
“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 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-bye, 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.
When she had once got to the seat, she broke out with suppressed passion of grief. She did not care to analyse the sources of her tears and sobs—her father was going to be married again—her father was angry with her; she had done very wrong—he had gone away displeased; she had lost his love; he was going to be married—away from her—away from his child—his little daughter—forgetting her own dear, dear mother. So she thought in a tumultuous kind of way, sobbing till she was wearied out, and had to gain strength by being quiet for a time, to break forth into her passion of tears afresh. She had cast herself on the ground—that natural throne for violent sorrow—and leant up against the old moss- grown seat; sometimes burying her face in her hands; sometimes clasping them together, as if by the tight painful grasp of her fingers she could deaden mental suffering.