Osborne read the letter and returned it to Roger. After a moment or
two of silence he said,--"Why do you want money? Are we taking too
much from you? It's a great shame of me; but what can I do? Only
suggest a career for me, and I'll follow it to-morrow." He spoke as
if Roger had been reproaching him.
"My dear fellow, don't get those notions into your head! I must
do something for myself sometimes, and I've been on the look-out.
Besides, I want my father to go on with his drainage; it would do
good both to his health and his spirits. If I can advance any part of
the money requisite, he and you shall pay me interest until you can
return the capital."
"Roger, you're the providence of the family," exclaimed Osborne,
suddenly struck by admiration at his brother's conduct, and
forgetting to contrast it with his own.
So Roger went up to London and Osborne followed him, and for two or
three weeks the Gibsons saw nothing of the brothers. But as wave
succeeds to wave, so interest succeeds to interest. "The family,"
as they were called, came down for their autumn sojourn at the
Towers, and again the house was full of visitors, and the Towers'
servants, and carriages, and liveries were seen in the two streets of
Hollingford, just as they might have been seen for scores of autumns
past.
So runs the round of life from day to day. Mrs. Gibson found the
chances of intercourse with the Towers rather more personally
exciting than Roger's visits, or the rarer calls of Osborne Hamley.
Cynthia had an old antipathy to the great family who had made so much
of her mother and so little of her; and whom she considered as in
some measure the cause why she had seen so little of her mother in
the days when the little girl had craved for love and found none.
Moreover, Cynthia missed her slave, although she did not care for
Roger one thousandth part of what he did for her; yet she had found
it not unpleasant to have a man whom she thoroughly respected, and
whom men in general respected, the subject of her eye, the glad
ministrant to each scarce-spoken wish, a person in whose sight
all her words were pearls or diamonds, all her actions heavenly
graciousness, and in whose thoughts she reigned supreme. She had
no modest unconsciousness about her; and yet she was not vain.
She knew of all this worship; and when from circumstances she no
longer received it, she missed it. The Earl and the Countess, Lord
Hollingford and Lady Harriet, lords and ladies in general, liveries,
dresses, bags of game, and rumours of riding parties, were as nothing
to her compared to Roger's absence. And yet she did not love him.
No, she did not love him. Molly knew that Cynthia did not love him.
Molly grew angry with her many and many a time as the conviction of
this fact was forced upon her. Molly did not know her own feelings;
Roger had no overwhelming interest in what they might be; while his
very life-breath seemed to depend on what Cynthia felt and thought.
Therefore Molly had keen insight into her "sister's" heart; and she
knew that Cynthia did not love Roger. Molly could have cried with
passionate regret at the thought of the unvalued treasure lying at
Cynthia's feet; and it would have been a merely unselfish regret.
It was the old fervid tenderness: "Do not wish for the moon, O my
darling, for I cannot give it thee." Cynthia's love was the moon
Roger yearned for; and Molly saw that it was far away and out of
reach, else would she have strained her heart-cords to give it to
Roger.