"No, don't!" said Molly, putting her hand before Cynthia's mouth, in
almost a passion of impatience. "Don't, don't--I won't hear you--I
ought not to have asked you--it makes you tell lies!"
"Why, Molly!" said Cynthia, in her turn seeking to read Molly's
face, "what's the matter with you? One might think you cared for him
yourself."
"I?" said Molly, all the blood rushing to her heart suddenly; then it
returned, and she had courage to speak, and she spoke the truth as
she believed it, though not the real actual truth.
"I do care for him; I think you have won the love of a prince amongst
men. Why, I am proud to remember that he has been to me as a brother,
and I love him as a sister, and I love you doubly because he has
honoured you with his love."
"Come, that's not complimentary!" said Cynthia, laughing, but
not ill-pleased to hear her lover's praises, and even willing to
depreciate him a little in order to hear more.
"He's well enough, I daresay, and a great deal too learned and clever
for a stupid girl like me; but even you must acknowledge he's very
plain and awkward; and I like pretty things and pretty people."
"Cynthia, I won't talk to you about him. You know you don't mean what
you are saying, and you only say it out of contradiction, because I
praise him. He shan't be run down by you, even in joke."
"Well, then, we won't talk of him at all. I was so surprised when
he began to speak--so--" and Cynthia looked very lovely, blushing
and dimpling up as she remembered his words and looks. Suddenly she
recalled herself to the present time, and her eye caught on the leaf
full of blackberries--the broad, green leaf, so fresh and crisp when
Molly had gathered it an hour or so ago, but now soft and flabby, and
dying. Molly saw it, too, and felt a strange kind of sympathetic pity
for the poor inanimate leaf.
"Oh! what blackberries! you've gathered them for me, I know!" said
Cynthia, sitting down and beginning to feed herself daintily,
touching them lightly with the ends of her taper fingers, and
dropping each ripe berry into her open mouth. When she had eaten
about half she stopped suddenly short.
"How I should like to have gone as far as Paris with him!" she
exclaimed. "I suppose it wouldn't have been proper; but how pleasant
it would have been! I remember at Boulogne" (another blackberry),
"how I used to envy the English who were going to Paris; it seemed
to me then as if nobody stopped at Boulogne, but dull, stupid
school-girls."