"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-tired," 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. "You
ought not to care so much for me; I'm not good enough for you to
worry yourself about me. I've given myself up a long time ago as a
heartless baggage!"