“Papa—didn’t you hear him? Oh, no! it was before you were down this morning. Papa met Mr. Sheepshanks yesterday, and he told him it was all settled; you know we heard a rumour about it in the spring!”
Cynthia was very silent after this. Presently, she said that she had gathered all the flowers she wanted, and that the heat was so great she would go indoors. And then Osborne went away. But Molly had set herself a task to dig up such roots as had already flowered, and to put down some bedding-out plants in their stead. Tired and heated as she was, she finished it, and then went upstairs to rest, and change her dress. According to her wont, she sought for Cynthia; there was no reply to her soft knock at the bed-room-door opposite to her own; and, thinking that Cynthia might have fallen asleep, and be lying uncovered in the draught of the open window, she went in softly. Cynthia was lying upon the bed, as if she had thrown herself down on it without caring for the ease or comfort of her position. She was very still; and Molly took a shawl, and was going to place it over her, when she opened her eyes, and spoke—
“Is that you, dear? Don’t go. I like to know that you are there.”
She shut her eyes again, and remained quite quiet for a few minutes longer. Then she started up into a sitting posture, pushed her hair away from her forehead and burning eyes, and gazed intently at Molly.
“Do you know what I’ve been thinking, dear?” said she. “I think I’ve been long enough here, and that I had better go out as a governess.”
“Cynthia! what do you mean?” asked Molly, aghast. “You’ve been asleep—you’ve been dreaming. You’re over-tried,” continued she, sitting down on the bed, and taking Cynthia’s passive hand, and stroking it softly—a mode of caressing that had come down to her from her mother— whether as an hereditary instinct, or as a lingering remembrance of the tender ways of the dead woman, Mr. Gibson often wondered within himself, when he observed it.
“Oh, how good you are, Molly! I wonder, if I had been brought up like you, whether I should have been as good. But I’ve been tossed about so.”
“Then, don’t go and be tossed about any more,” said Molly softly.
“Oh, dear! I had better go. But, you see, no one ever loved me like you, and, I think, your father—doesn’t he, Molly? And it’s hard to be driven out.”
“Cynthia, I am sure you’re not well, or else you’re not half awake.”
Cynthia sate with her arms encircling her knees, and looking at vacancy.
“Well!” said she, at last, heaving a great sigh, but then smiling as she caught Molly’s anxious face. “I suppose there’s no escaping one’s doom; and anywhere else I should be much more forlorn and unprotected.”
“What do you mean by your doom?”
“Ah, that’s telling, little one,” said Cynthia, who seemed now to have recovered her usual manner. “I don’t mean to have one, though. I think that, though I am an arrant coward at heart, I can show fight.”
“With whom?” asked Molly, really anxious to probe the mystery—if, indeed, there was one—to the bottom, in the hope of some remedy being found for the distress Cynthia was in, when first Molly entered.
Again Cynthia was lost in thought; then, catching the echo of Molly’s last words in her mind, she said—
“ ‘With whom?’—oh! show fight with whom?—why, my doom, to be sure. Am not I a grand young lady to have a doom? Why, Molly, child, how pale and grave you look!” said she, kissing her all of a sudden.