"I'm put out too," said Lady Harriet. "I wanted to have come early, and here we are as late as this. I'm so cross and ill-tempered, I should be glad to hide myself in bed as soon as you will do."

She said this so sweetly that Mrs. Goodenough relaxed into a smile, and her crabbedness into a compliment.

"I don't believe as ever your ladyship can be cross and ill-tempered with that pretty face. I'm an old woman, so you must let me say so."

Lady Harriet stood up, and made a low curtsey. Then holding out her hand, she said,--

"I won't keep you up any longer; but I'll promise one thing in return for your pretty speech: if ever I am a d.u.c.h.ess, I'll come and show myself to you in all my robes and gewgaws. Good night, madam!"

"There! I knew how it would be!" said she, not resuming her seat.

"And on the eve of a county election too."

"Oh! you must not take old Mrs. Goodenough as a specimen, dear Lady Harriet. She is always a grumbler! I am sure no one else would complain of your all being as late as you liked," said Mrs. Gibson.

"What do you say, Molly?" said Lady Harriet, suddenly turning her eyes on Molly's face. "Don't you think we've lost some of our popularity,--which at this time means votes--by coming so late. Come, answer me! you used to be a famous little truth-teller."

"I don't know about popularity or votes," said Molly, rather unwillingly. "But I think many people were sorry you did not come sooner; and isn't that rather a proof of popularity?" she added.

"That's a very neat and diplomatic answer," said Lady Harriet, smiling, and tapping Molly's cheek with her fan.

"Molly knows nothing about it," said Mrs. Gibson, a little off her guard. "It would be very impertinent if she or any one else questioned Lady c.u.mnor's perfect right to come when she chose."

"Well, all I know is, I must go back to mamma now; but I shall make another raid into these regions by-and-by, and you must keep a place for me. Ah! there are--Miss Brownings; you see I don't forget my lesson, Miss Gibson."

"Molly, I cannot have you speaking so to Lady Harriet," said Mrs.

Gibson, as soon as she was left alone with her stepdaughter. "You would never have known her at all if it had not been for me, and don't be always putting yourself into our conversation."

"But I must speak if she asks me questions," pleaded Molly.

"Well! if you must, you must, I acknowledge. I'm candid about that at any rate. But there's no need for you to set up to have an opinion at your age."

"I don't know how to help it," said Molly.

"She's such a whimsical person; look there, if she's not talking to Miss Phoebe; and Miss Phoebe is so weak she'll be easily led away into fancying she is hand and glove with Lady Harriet. If there is one thing I hate more than another, it is the trying to make out an intimacy with great people."

Molly felt innocent enough, so she offered no justification of herself, and made no reply. Indeed she was more occupied in watching Cynthia. She could not understand the change that seemed to have come over her. She was dancing, it was true, with the same lightness and grace as before, but the smooth bounding motion, as of a feather blown onwards by the wind, was gone. She was conversing with her partner, but without the soft animation that usually shone out upon her countenance. And when she was brought back to her seat Molly noticed her changed colour, and her dreamily abstracted eyes.

"What is the matter, Cynthia?" asked she, in a very low voice.

"Nothing," said Cynthia, suddenly looking up, and in an accent of what, in her, was sharpness. "Why should there be?"

"I don't know; but you look different to what you did--tired or something."

"There's nothing the matter, or, if there is, don't talk about it.

It's all your fancy."

This was a rather contradictory speech, to be interpreted by intuition rather than by logic. Molly understood that Cynthia wished for quietness and silence. But what was her surprise, after the speeches that had pa.s.sed before, and the implication of Cynthia's whole manner to Mr. Preston, to see him come up to her, and, without a word, offer his arm and lead her away to dance. It appeared to strike Mrs. Gibson as something remarkable; for, forgetting her late pa.s.sage at arms with Molly, she asked, wonderingly, as if almost distrusting the evidence of her senses,--

"Is Cynthia going to dance with Mr. Preston?"

Molly had scarcely time to answer before she herself was led off by her partner. She could hardly attend to him or to the figures of the quadrille for watching for Cynthia among the moving forms.

Once she caught a glimpse of her standing still--downcast--listening to Mr. Preston's eager speech. Again she was walking languidly among the dancers, almost as if she took no notice of those around her.

When she and Molly joined each other again, the shade on Cynthia's face had deepened to gloom. But, at the same time, if a physiognomist had studied her expression, he would have read in it defiance and anger, and perhaps also a little perplexity. While this quadrille had been going on, Lady Harriet had been speaking to her brother.

"Hollingford!" she said, laying her hand on his arm, and drawing him a little apart from the well-born crowd amid which he stood, silent and abstracted, "you don't know how these good people here have been hurt and disappointed with our being so late, and with the d.u.c.h.ess's ridiculous simplicity of dress."

"Why should they mind it?" asked he, taking advantage of her being out of breath with eagerness.

"Oh, don't be so wise and stupid; don't you see, we're a show and a spectacle--it's like having a pantomime with harlequin and columbine in plain clothes."

"I don't understand how--" he began.

"Then take it upon trust. They really are a little disappointed, whether they are logical or not in being so, and we must try and make it up to them; for one thing, because I can't bear our va.s.sals to look dissatisfied and disloyal, and then there's the election in June."

"I really would as soon be out of the House as in it."

"Nonsense; it would grieve papa beyond measure--but there's no time to talk about that now. You must go and dance with some of the townspeople, and I'll ask Sheepshanks to introduce me to a respectable young farmer. Can't you get Captain James to make himself useful? There he goes with Lady Alice! If I don't get him introduced to the ugliest tailor's daughter I can find for the next dance!" She put her arm in her brother's as she spoke, as if to lead him to some partner. He resisted, however--resisted piteously.

"Pray don't, Harriet. You know I can't dance. I hate it; I always did. I don't know how to get through a quadrille."

"It's a country dance!" said she, resolutely.

"It's all the same. And what shall I say to my partner? I haven't a notion: I shall have no subject in common. Speak of being disappointed, they'll be ten times more disappointed when they find I can neither dance nor talk!"

"I'll be merciful; don't be so cowardly. In their eyes a lord may dance like a bear--as some lords not very far from me are--if he likes, and they'll take it for grace. And you shall begin with Molly Gibson, your friend the doctor's daughter. She's a good, simple, intelligent little girl, which you'll think a great deal more of, I suppose, than of the frivolous fact of her being very pretty. Clare!

will you allow me to introduce my brother to Miss Gibson? he hopes to engage her for this dance. Lord Hollingford, Miss Gibson!"

Poor Lord Hollingford! there was nothing for it but for him to follow his sister's very explicit lead, and Molly and he walked off to their places, each heartily wishing their dance together well over. Lady Harriet flew off to Mr. Sheepshanks to secure her respectable young farmer, and Mrs. Gibson remained alone, wishing that Lady c.u.mnor would send one of her attendant gentlemen for her. It would be so much more agreeable to be sitting even at the f.a.g-end of n.o.bility than here on a bench with everybody; hoping that everybody would see Molly dancing away with a lord, yet vexed that the chance had so befallen that Molly instead of Cynthia was the young lady singled out; wondering if simplicity of dress was now become the highest fashion, and pondering on the possibility of cleverly inducing Lady Harriet to introduce Lord Albert Monson to her own beautiful daughter, Cynthia.

Molly found Lord Hollingford, the wise and learned Lord Hollingford, strangely stupid in understanding the mystery of "Cross hands and back again, down the middle and up again." He was constantly getting hold of the wrong hands, and as constantly stopping when he had returned to his place, quite unaware that the duties of society and the laws of the dance required that he should go on capering till he had arrived at the bottom of the room. He perceived that he had performed his part very badly, and apologized to Molly when once they had arrived at that haven of comparative peace; and he expressed his regret so simply and heartily that she felt at her ease with him at once, especially when he confided to her his reluctance at having to dance at all, and his only doing it under his sister's compulsion.

To Molly he was an elderly widower, almost as old as her father, and by-and-by they got into very pleasant conversation. She learnt from him that Roger Hamley had just been publishing a paper in some scientific periodical, which had excited considerable attention, as it was intended to confute some theory of a great French physiologist, and Roger's article proved the writer to be possessed of a most unusual amount of knowledge on the subject. This piece of news was of great interest to Molly; and, in her questions, she herself evinced so much intelligence, and a mind so well prepared for the reception of information, that Lord Hollingford at any rate would have felt his quest of popularity a very easy affair indeed, if he might have gone on talking quietly to Molly during the rest of the evening. When he took her back to her place, he found Mr. Gibson there, and fell into talk with him, until Lady Harriet once more came to stir him up to his duties. Before very long, however, he returned to Mr. Gibson's side, and began telling him of this paper of Roger Hamley's, of which Mr. Gibson had not yet heard. In the midst of their conversation, as they stood close by Mrs. Gibson, Lord Hollingford saw Molly in the distance, and interrupted himself to say, "What a charming little lady that daughter of yours is! Most girls of her age are so difficult to talk to; but she is intelligent and full of interest in all sorts of sensible things; well read, too--she was up in _Le Regne Animal_--and very pretty!"

Mr. Gibson bowed, much pleased at such a compliment from such a man, were he lord or not. It is very likely that if Molly had been a stupid listener, Lord Hollingford would not have discovered her beauty; or the converse might be a.s.serted--if she had not been young and pretty, he would not have exerted himself to talk on scientific subjects in a manner which she could understand. But in whatever way Molly had won his approbation and admiration, there was no doubt that she had earned it somehow. And, when she next returned to her place, Mrs. Gibson greeted her with soft words and a gracious smile; for it does not require much reasoning power to discover, that if it is a very fine thing to be mother-in-law to a very magnificent three-tailed bashaw, it presupposes that the wife who makes the connection between the two parties is in harmony with her mother. And so far had Mrs. Gibson's thoughts wandered into futurity. She only wished that the happy chance had fallen to Cynthia's instead of to Molly's lot. But Molly was a docile, sweet creature, very pretty, and remarkably intelligent, as my lord had said. It was a pity that Cynthia preferred making millinery to reading; but perhaps that could be rectified. And there was Lord c.u.mnor coming to speak to her, and Lady c.u.mnor nodding to her, and indicating a place by her side.

It was not an unsatisfactory ball upon the whole to Mrs. Gibson, although she paid the usual penalty for sitting up beyond her ordinary hour in perpetual glare and movement. The next morning she awoke irritable and fatigued; and a little of the same feeling oppressed both Cynthia and Molly. The former was lounging in the window-seat, holding a three-days'-old newspaper in her hand, which she was making a pretence of reading, when she was startled by her mother's saying,--

"Cynthia! can't you take up a book and improve yourself? I am sure your conversation will never be worth listening to, unless you read something better than newspapers. Why don't you keep up your French?

There was some French book that Molly was reading--_Le Regne Animal_, I think."

"No! I never read it!" said Molly, blushing. "Mr. Roger Hamley sometimes read pieces out of it when I was first at the Hall, and told me what it was about."

"Oh! well. Then I suppose I was mistaken. But it comes to all the same thing. Cynthia, you really must learn to settle yourself to some improving reading every morning."

Rather to Molly's surprise, Cynthia did not reply a word; but dutifully went and brought down from among her Boulogne school-books, _Le Siecle de Louis XIV_. But after a while, Molly saw that this "improving reading" was just as much a mere excuse for Cynthia's thinking her own thoughts as the newspaper had been.