So they remained in silence for a little while; he breaking off and examining one or two abnormal leaves of the ash-tree, partly from the custom of his nature, partly to give her time to recover.
“Papa is going to be married again,” said she at length.
She could not have said why she told him this; an instant before she spoke, she had no intention of doing so. He dropped the leaf he held in his hand, turned round, and looked at her. Her poor wistful eyes were filling with tears as they met his, with a dumb appeal for sympathy. Her look was much more eloquent than her words. There was a momentary pause before he replied, and then it was more because he felt that he must say something than that he was in any doubt as to the answer to the question he asked.
“You are sorry for it?”
She did not take her eyes away from his, as her quivering lips formed the word “Yes,” though her voice made no sound. He was silent again now; looking on the ground, kicking softly at a loose pebble with his foot. His thoughts did not come readily to the surface in the shape of words; nor was he apt at giving comfort, till he saw his way clear to the real source from which consolation must come. At last he spoke—almost as if he was reasoning out the matter with himself.
“It seems as if there might be cases where—setting the question of love entirely on one side—it must be almost a duty to find some one to be a substitute for the mother.… I can believe,” said he, in a different tone of voice, and looking at Molly afresh, “that this step may be greatly for your father’s happiness—it may relieve him from many cares, and may give him a pleasant companion.”
“He had me. You don’t know what we were to each other—at least, what he was to me,” she added humbly.
“Still he must have thought it for the best, or he wouldn’t have done it. He may have thought it the best for your sake even more than for his own.”
“That is what he tried to convince me of.”
Roger began kicking the pebble again. He had not got hold of the right end of the clue. Suddenly he looked up.
“I want to tell you of a girl I know. Her mother died when she was about sixteen—the eldest of a large family. From that time—all through the bloom of her youth—she gave herself up to her father, first as his comforter, afterwards as his companion, friend, secretary—anything you like. He was a man with a great deal of business on hand, and often came home only to set-to afresh to preparations for the next day’s work. Harriet was always there, ready to help, to talk, or to be silent. It went on for eight or ten years in this way; and then her father married again—a woman not many years older than Harriet herself. Well—they are just the happiest set of people I know—you wouldn’t have thought it likely, would you?”
She was listening, but she had no heart to say anything. Yet she was interested in this little story of Harriet—a girl who had been so much to her father, more than Molly in this early youth of hers could have been to Mr. Gibson. “How was it?” she sighed out at last.
“Harriet thought of her father’s happiness before she thought of her own,” Roger answered, with something of severe brevity. Molly needed the bracing. She began to cry again a little.
“If it were for papa’s happiness”——
“He must believe that it is. Whatever you fancy, give him a chance. He cannot have much comfort, I should think, if he sees you fretting or pining—you who have been so much to him, as you say. The lady herself, too—if Harriet’s stepmother had been a selfish woman, and been always clutching after the