Osborne's conversation and ways might very possibly have been just the same as before, had he been thrown amongst new people; but Molly only saw him in their own circle in which he was on terms of decided intimacy. Still there was no doubt that he was really improved, though perhaps not to the extent for which Molly gave him credit; and this exaggeration on her part arose very naturally from the fact, that he, perceiving Roger's warm admiration for Cynthia, withdrew a little out of his brother's way; and used to go and talk to Molly in order not to intrude himself between Roger and Cynthia. Of the two, perhaps, Osborne preferred Molly; to her he needed not to talk if the mood was not on him--they were on those happy terms where silence is permissible, and where efforts to act against the prevailing mood of the mind are not required. Sometimes, indeed, when Osborne was in the humour to be critical and fastidious as of yore, he used to vex Roger by insisting upon it that Molly was prettier than Cynthia.

"You mark my words, Roger. Five years hence the beautiful Cynthia's red and white will have become just a little coa.r.s.e, and her figure will have thickened, while Molly's will only have developed into more perfect grace. I don't believe the girl has done growing yet; I'm sure she's taller than when I first saw her last summer."

"Miss Kirkpatrick's eyes must always be perfection. I cannot fancy any could come up to them: soft, grave, appealing, tender; and such a heavenly colour--I often try to find something in nature to compare them to; they are not like violets--that blue in the eyes is too like physical weakness of sight; they are not like the sky--that colour has something of cruelty in it."

"Come, don't go on trying to match her eyes as if you were a draper, and they a bit of ribbon; say at once 'her eyes are loadstars,' and have done with it! I set up Molly's grey eyes and curling black lashes, long odds above the other young woman's; but, of course, it's all a matter of taste."

And now both Osborne and Roger had left the neighbourhood. In spite of all that Mrs. Gibson had said about Roger's visits being ill-timed and intrusive, she began to feel as if they had been a very pleasant variety, now that they had ceased altogether. He brought in a whiff of a new atmosphere from that of Hollingford. He and his brother had been always ready to do numberless little things which only a man can do for women; small services which Mr. Gibson was always too busy to render. For the good doctor's business grew upon him. He thought that this increase was owing to his greater skill and experience, and he would probably have been mortified if he could have known how many of his patients were solely bia.s.sed in sending for him, by the fact that he was employed at the Towers. Something of this sort must have been contemplated in the low scale of payment adopted long ago by the c.u.mnor family. Of itself the money he received for going to the Towers would hardly have paid him for horse-flesh, but then, as Lady c.u.mnor in her younger days had worded it,--

"It is such a thing for a man just setting up in practice for himself to be able to say he attends at this house!"

So the prestige was tacitly sold and paid for; but neither buyer nor seller defined the nature of the bargain.

On the whole, it was as well that Mr. Gibson spent so much of his time from home. He sometimes thought so himself when he heard his wife's plaintive fret or pretty babble over totally indifferent things, and perceived of how flimsy a nature were all her fine sentiments. Still, he did not allow himself to repine over the step he had taken; he wilfully shut his eyes and waxed up his ears to many small things that he knew would have irritated him if he had attended to them; and, in his solitary rides, he forced himself to dwell on the positive advantages that had accrued to him and his through his marriage. He had obtained an unexceptionable chaperone, if not a tender mother, for his little girl; a skilful manager of his previous disorderly household; a woman who was graceful and pleasant to look at for the head of his table. Moreover, Cynthia reckoned for something on the favourable side of the balance. She was a capital companion for Molly; and the two were evidently very fond of each other. The feminine companionship of the mother and daughter was agreeable to him as well as to his child,--when Mrs. Gibson was moderately sensible and not over-sentimental, he mentally added; and then he checked himself, for he would not allow himself to become more aware of her faults and foibles by defining them. At any rate, she was harmless, and wonderfully just to Molly for a stepmother.

She piqued herself upon this indeed, and would often call attention to the fact of her being unlike other women in this respect. Just then sudden tears came into Mr. Gibson's eyes, as he remembered how quiet and undemonstrative his little Molly had become in her general behaviour to him; but how once or twice, when they had met upon the stairs, or were otherwise unwitnessed, she had caught him and kissed him--hand or cheek--in a sad pa.s.sionateness of affection. But in a moment he began to whistle an old Scotch air he had heard in his childhood, and which had never recurred to his memory since; and five minutes afterwards he was too busily treating a case of white swelling in the knee of a little boy, and thinking how to relieve the poor mother, who went out charring all day, and had to listen to the moans of her child all night, to have any thought for his own cares, which, if they really existed, were of so trifling a nature compared to the hard reality of this hopeless woe.

Osborne came home first. He returned, in fact, not long after Roger had gone away; but he was languid and unwell, and, though he did not complain, he felt unequal to any exertion. Thus a week or more elapsed before any of the Gibsons knew that he was at the Hall; and then it was only by chance that they became aware of it. Mr. Gibson met him in one of the lanes near Hamley; the acute surgeon noticed the gait of the man as he came near, before he recognized who it was.

When he overtook him he said,--

"Why, Osborne, is it you? I thought it was an old man of fifty loitering before me! I didn't know you had come back."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WHY, OSBORNE, IS IT YOU?"]

"Yes," said Osborne, "I've been at home nearly ten days. I daresay I ought to have called on your people, for I made a half promise to Mrs. Gibson to let her know as soon as I returned; but the fact is, I'm feeling very good-for-nothing,--this air oppresses me; I could hardly breathe in the house, and yet I'm already tired with this short walk."

"You'd better get home at once; and I'll call and see you as I come back from Rowe's."

"No, you mustn't on any account!" said Osborne, hastily; "my father is annoyed enough about my going from home, so often, he says, though I hadn't been from it for six weeks. He puts down all my languor to my having been away,--he keeps the purse-strings, you know," he added, with a faint smile, "and I'm in the unlucky position of a penniless heir, and I've been brought up so--In fact, I must leave home from time to time, and, if my father gets confirmed in this notion of his that my health is worse for my absences, he'll stop the supplies altogether."

"May I ask where you do spend your time when you are not at Hamley Hall?" asked Mr. Gibson, with some hesitation in his manner.

"No!" replied Osborne, reluctantly. "I will tell you this:--I stay with friends in the country. I lead a life which ought to be conducive to health, because it is thoroughly simple, rational, and happy. And now I've told you more about it than my father himself knows. He never asks me where I've been; and I shouldn't tell him if he did--at least, I think not."

Mr. Gibson rode on by Osborne's side, not speaking for a moment or two.

"Osborne, whatever sc.r.a.pes you may have got into, I should advise your telling your father boldly out. I know him; and I know he'll be angry enough at first, but he'll come round, take my word for it; and, somehow or another, he'll find money to pay your debts and set you free, if it's that kind of difficulty; and if it's any other kind of entanglement, why still he's your best friend. It's this estrangement from your father that's telling on your health, I'll be bound."

"No," said Osborne, "I beg your pardon; but it's not that; I am really out of order. I daresay my unwillingness to encounter any displeasure from my father is the consequence of my indisposition; but I'll answer for it, it is not the cause of it. My instinct tells me there is something really the matter with me."

"Come, don't be setting up your instinct against the profession,"

said Mr. Gibson, cheerily.

He dismounted, and throwing the reins of his horse round his arm, he looked at Osborne's tongue and felt his pulse, asking him various questions. At the end he said,--

"We'll soon bring you about, though I should like a little more quiet talk with you, without this tugging brute for a third. If you'll manage to ride over and lunch with us to-morrow, Dr. Nicholls will be with us; he's coming over to see old Rowe; and you shall have the benefit of the advice of two doctors instead of one. Go home now, you've had enough exercise for the middle of a day as hot as this is.

And don't mope in the house, listening to the maunderings of your stupid instinct."

"What else have I to do?" said Osborne. "My father and I are not companions; one can't read and write for ever, especially when there's no end to be gained by it. I don't mind telling you--but in confidence, recollect--that I've been trying to get some of my poems published; but there's no one like a publisher for taking the conceit out of one. Not a man among them would have them as a gift."

"Oho! so that's it, is it, Master Osborne? I thought there was some mental cause for this depression of health. I wouldn't trouble my head about it, if I were you, though that's always very easily said, I know. Try your hand at prose, if you can't manage to please the publishers with poetry; but, at any rate, don't go on fretting over spilt milk. But I mustn't lose my time here. Come over to us to-morrow, as I said; and what with the wisdom of two doctors, and the wit and folly of three women, I think we shall cheer you up a bit."

So saying, Mr. Gibson remounted, and rode away at the long, slinging trot so well known to the country people as the doctor's pace.

"I don't like his looks," thought Mr. Gibson to himself at night, as over his daybooks he reviewed the events of the day. "And then his pulse. But how often we're all mistaken; and, ten to one, my own hidden enemy lies closer to me than his does to him--even taking the worse view of the case."

Osborne made his appearance a considerable time before luncheon the next morning; and no one objected to the earliness of his call.

He was feeling better. There were few signs of the invalid about him; and what few there were disappeared under the bright pleasant influence of such a welcome as he received from all. Molly and Cynthia had much to tell him of the small proceedings since he went away, or to relate the conclusions of half-accomplished projects.

Cynthia was often on the point of some gay, careless inquiry as to where he had been, and what he had been doing; but Molly, who conjectured the truth, as often interfered to spare him the pain of equivocation--a pain that her tender conscience would have felt for him, much more than he would have felt it for himself.

Mrs. Gibson's talk was desultory, complimentary, and sentimental, after her usual fashion; but still, on the whole, though Osborne smiled to himself at much that she said, it was soothing and agreeable. Presently, Dr. Nicholls and Mr. Gibson came in; the former had had some conference with the latter on the subject of Osborne's health; and, from time to time, the skilful old physician's sharp and observant eyes gave a comprehensive look at Osborne.

Then there was lunch, when every one was merry and hungry, excepting the hostess, who was trying to train her midday appet.i.te into the genteelest of all ways, and thought (falsely enough) that Dr.

Nicholls was a good person to practise the semblance of ill-health upon, and that he would give her the proper civil amount of commiseration for her ailments, which every guest ought to bestow upon a hostess who complains of her delicacy of health. The old doctor was too cunning a man to fall into this trap. He would keep recommending her to try the coa.r.s.est viands on the table; and, at last, he told her if she could not fancy the cold beef to try a little with pickled onions. There was a twinkle in his eye as he said this, that would have betrayed his humour to any observer; but Mr.

Gibson, Cynthia, and Molly were all attacking Osborne on the subject of some literary preference he had expressed, and Dr. Nicholls had Mrs. Gibson quite at his mercy. She was not sorry when luncheon was over to leave the room to the three gentlemen; and ever afterwards she spoke of Dr. Nicholls as "that bear."

Presently, Osborne came upstairs, and, after his old fashion, began to take up new books, and to question the girls as to their music.

Mrs. Gibson had to go out and pay some calls, so she left the three together; and after a while they adjourned into the garden, Osborne lounging on a chair, while Molly employed herself busily in tying up carnations, and Cynthia gathered flowers in her careless, graceful way.

"I hope you notice the difference in our occupations, Mr. Hamley.

Molly, you see, devotes herself to the useful, and I to the ornamental. Please, under what head do you cla.s.s what you are doing?

I think you might help one of us, instead of looking on like the Grand Seigneur."

"I don't know what I can do," said he, rather plaintively. "I should like to be useful, but I don't know how; and my day is past for purely ornamental work. You must let me be, I'm afraid. Besides, I'm really rather exhausted by being questioned and pulled about by those good doctors."

"Why, you don't mean to say they have been attacking you since lunch!" exclaimed Molly.

"Yes; indeed, they have; and they might have gone on till now if Mrs.

Gibson had not come in opportunely."

"I thought mamma had gone out some time ago!" said Cynthia, catching wafts of the conversation as she flitted hither and thither among the flowers.

"She came into the dining-room not five minutes ago. Do you want her, for I see her crossing the hall at this very moment?" and Osborne half rose.

"Oh, not at all!" said Cynthia. "Only she seemed to be in such a hurry to go out, I fancied she had set off long ago. She had some errand to do for Lady c.u.mnor, and she thought she could manage to catch the housekeeper, who is always in the town on Thursday."

"Are the family coming to the Towers this autumn?"

"I believe so. But I don't know, and I don't much care. They don't take kindly to me," continued Cynthia, "and so I suppose I'm not generous enough to take kindly to them."

"I should have thought that such a very unusual blot in their discrimination would have interested you in them as extraordinary people," said Osborne, with a little air of conscious gallantry.

"Isn't that a compliment?" said Cynthia, after a pause of mock meditation. "If any one pays me a compliment, please let it be short and clear. I'm very stupid at finding out hidden meanings."

"Then such speeches as 'you are very pretty,' or 'you have charming manners,' are what you prefer. Now, I pique myself on wrapping up my sugar-plums delicately."

"Then would you please to write them down, and at my leisure I'll pa.r.s.e them."