"Well, if you think that they will consider we have acted uprightly
by them, let it be Michaelmas with all my heart. What does Lady
Cumnor say?"
"Oh! I told her I was afraid you wouldn't like waiting, because of
your difficulties with your servants, and because of Molly--it would
be so desirable to enter on the new relationship with her as soon as
possible."
"To be sure; so it would. Poor child! I'm afraid the intelligence of
my engagement has rather startled her."
"Cynthia will feel it deeply, too," said Mrs. Kirkpatrick, unwilling
to let her daughter be behind Mr. Gibson's in sensibility and
affection.
"We will have her over to the wedding! She and Molly shall be
bridesmaids," said Mr. Gibson, in the unguarded warmth of his heart.
This plan did not quite suit Mrs. Kirkpatrick: but she thought it
best not to oppose it, until she had a presentable excuse to give,
and perhaps also some reason would naturally arise out of future
circumstances; so at this time she only smiled, and softly pressed
the hand she held in hers.
It is a question whether Mrs. Kirkpatrick or Molly wished the most
for the day to be over which they were to spend together at the
Towers. Mrs. Kirkpatrick was rather weary of girls as a class. All
the trials of her life were connected with girls in some way. She was
very young when she first became a governess, and had been worsted
in her struggles with her pupils, in the first place she ever went
to. Her elegance of appearance and manner, and her accomplishments,
more than her character and acquirements, had rendered it easier
for her than for most to obtain good "situations;" and she had been
absolutely petted in some; but still she was constantly encountering
naughty or stubborn, or over-conscientious, or severe-judging, or
curious and observant girls. And again, before Cynthia was born, she
had longed for a boy, thinking it possible that if some three or
four intervening relations died, he might come to be a baronet; and
instead of a son, lo and behold it was a daughter! Nevertheless, with
all her dislike to girls in the abstract as "the plagues of her life"
(and her aversion was not diminished by the fact of her having kept
a school for "young ladies" at Ashcombe), she really meant to be as
kind as she could be to her new step-daughter, whom she remembered
principally as a black-haired, sleepy child, in whose eyes she had
read admiration of herself. Mrs. Kirkpatrick accepted Mr. Gibson
principally because she was tired of the struggle of earning her own
livelihood; but she liked him personally--nay, she even loved him in
her torpid way, and she intended to be good to his daughter, though
she felt as if it would have been easier for her to have been good to
his son.