"Of what sort, mamma?" said Cynthia, sharply.
"Why, of a more eligible offer. He must have known you might change
your mind, and meet with some one you liked better: so little as you
had seen of the world." Cynthia made an impatient movement, as if to
stop her mother.
"I never said I liked him better,--how can you talk so, mamma? I'm
going to marry Roger, and there's an end of it. I will not be spoken
to about it again." She got up and left the room.
"Going to marry Roger! That's all very fine. But who is to guarantee
his coming back alive? And if he does, what have they to marry
upon, I should like to know? I don't wish her to have accepted Mr.
Henderson, though I am sure she liked him; and true love ought to
have its course, and not be thwarted; but she need not have quite
finally refused him until--well, until we had seen how matters turn
out. Such an invalid as I am too! It has given me quite a palpitation
at the heart. I do call it quite unfeeling of Cynthia."
"Certainly,--" began Molly; but then she remembered that her
stepmother was far from strong, and unable to bear a protest in
favour of the right course without irritation. So she changed her
speech into a suggestion of remedies for palpitation; and curbed her
impatience to speak out her indignation at the contemplated falsehood
to Roger. But when they were alone, and Cynthia began upon the
subject, Molly was less merciful. Cynthia said,--
"Well, Molly, and now you know all! I've been longing to tell
you--and yet somehow I could not."
"I suppose it was a repetition of Mr. Coxe," said Molly, gravely.
"You were agreeable,--and he took it for something more."
"I don't know," sighed Cynthia. "I mean I don't know if I was
agreeable or not. He was very kind--very pleasant--but I did not
expect it all to end as it did. However, it's of no use thinking of
it."
"No!" said Molly, simply; for to her mind the pleasantest and kindest
person in the world put in comparison with Roger was as nothing; he
stood by himself. Cynthia's next words,--and they did not come very
soon,--were on quite a different subject, and spoken in rather a
pettish tone. Nor did she allude again in jesting sadness to her late
efforts at virtue.
In a little while Mrs. Gibson was able to accept the often-repeated
invitation from the Towers to go and stay there for a day or two.
Lady Harriet told her that it would be a kindness to Lady Cumnor to
come and bear her company in the life of seclusion the latter was
still compelled to lead; and Mrs. Gibson was flattered and gratified
with a dim unconscious sense of being really wanted, not merely
deluding herself into a pleasing fiction. Lady Cumnor was in that
state of convalescence common to many invalids. The spring of
life had begun again to flow, and with the flow returned the old
desires and projects and plans, which had all become mere matters of
indifference during the worst part of her illness. But as yet her
bodily strength was not sufficient to be an agent to her energetic
mind, and the difficulty of driving the ill-matched pair of body and
will--the one weak and languid, the other strong and stern,--made
her ladyship often very irritable. Mrs. Gibson herself was not quite
strong enough for a "_souffre-douleur_;" and the visit to the Towers
was not, on the whole, quite so happy a one as she had anticipated.
Lady Cuxhaven and Lady Harriet, each aware of their mother's state
of health and temper, but only alluding to it as slightly as was
absolutely necessary in their conversations with each other, took
care not to leave "Clare" too long with Lady Cumnor; but several
times when one or the other went to relieve guard they found Clare in
tears, and Lady Cumnor holding forth on some point on which she had
been meditating during the silent hours of her illness, and on which
she seemed to consider herself born to set the world to rights. Mrs.
Gibson was always apt to consider these remarks as addressed with a
personal direction at some error of her own, and defended the fault
in question with a sense of property in it, whatever it might happen
to be. The second and the last day of her stay at the Towers, Lady
Harriet came in, and found her mother haranguing in an excited tone
of voice, and Clare looking submissive and miserable and oppressed.